Stain of Midnight

by Cassandra Moore

  But the unnatural pain had released him from its grasp. The darkness fled with a furious hiss.

  Cameron thought he heard Teresa scream with indignation. Through eyes that stung with tears from the smoke, he watched her dash forward at an unnatural speed. Her left shoulder jerked back, and he would have sworn he saw fear flicker across her features.

  A bipedal shape stormed into the room. Its face looked distorted, eyes too large and too dark to be human, nose and mouth just a gaping black hole. But he recognized the weapon it held as a hand crossbow, loaded with a wooden bolt. It fired, reloaded from a quiver strapped to its thigh, fired again as it circled to stand over Cameron like an implacable sentinel.

  Up close, the too-big eyes became a pair of dark goggles. The gaping lower face became a black air filter strapped to his rescuer’s head. And hanging between the straps, Cameron could see a familiar black ponytail.

  Sunny?

  It was his last thought before he passed out.

  Chapter Eleven

  Phantoms of perception drifted through the blackness that dragged Cameron’s mind into the unconscious abyss. Shouts, angry first, then concerned. Heat that warmed his skin but could not touch the deeper cold that lurked in his spirit. Familiar male and female voices that murmured below the threshold of what he could understand. Strong hands under his shoulders and around his ankles as they lifted him. He struggled weakly against the grips, but a voice he knew said, “Cam, take it easy.” He stopped fighting, and unconsciousness returned.

  In the dead of the night, the dream crept in. It started with a soft, rhythmic tattoo of sound in the back of his mind. Lub-dub. Lub-dub. An unknown heartbeat, one not his own. The darkness around him throbbed, contracted and released with grotesque motions. A rush of rivers joined the sound, a higher accompaniment over a bass beat.

  Darkness stretched out in every direction. Not shadows, but a claustrophobic absence of light. From out of it came the voice. Feminine. Melodious with its Latin accent coloring the words in a way his very American experiences found exotic. “Have you ever seen such darkness before? A darkness so profound, it claims all you are?”

  He had no awareness of himself, past the experience of dreaming. No sense of a body. No sense of self. No ability to spin around in search of the speaker. He was lost, floating without anchor, silent, disembodied, alone but for the voice of Teresa Espina.

  “Did you know before now what it is like to lose yourself? To lose who you are, to lose all you have known? To have the very essence of yourself taken away?” Cool curiosity chilled her words.

  He had no voice to answer. No breath. Just the heartbeat, not his own, and her voice to give form to the void.

  “What would you give to regain yourself? Everything?” Laughter then, harsh with bitterness. “But you have lost yourself! You have nothing to give as sacrifice. So then, tell me, how far would you go? What would you conquer, what would you take? Are there any lengths you would not go to, in order to regain yourself?”

  Even had he possessed a voice, he would not have used it. He had no answers, only the questions she had asked.

  “You have no idea what you are.” Her words cut with a keen edge. “You never have. Everything you hold in your hands wastes away. But I know. I know what you are. Let me show you. Allow me to give you back yourself, your true self, and there will be no more unnecessary bloodshed.”

  Bloodshed. That he remembered. Blood spattered over a broken corpse. Blood welling from the chest of a friend. He could not recall the face of the corpse, the identity of the friend, but Cameron remembered the depthless loss left in the wake of death. The dread potential of another friend gone. All he had to do to avoid it, to save his friends, was surrender.

  No.

  He remembered loyalty. With it came defiance. Surrender would doom everyone he loved – he remembered love, now, a face on a screen, dark eyes looking over the rims of sunglasses, a canine head peeking over her shoulder – and he would never give in.

  Teresa Espina snarled. “I know what I must do, Cameron. I know how far I will go to regain myself. And you will be there at the end of the journey, begging for mercy I lost long ago.”

  At last, he remembered the untamed power that answered when he called. Threaded with the black ooze that had coated the rivers in his first dream, but bright enough to banish the darkness around him. He howled to drown out the sound of the heartbeat that tried to deafen him, and the power came to his hands—

  “Cameron!”

  He woke up muddled, surrounded by the gloom of midnight. Sheets tangled his limbs but did little to banish the cold that clung to him. Yet the hand on his chest burned like fire. He stared up into Sonja’s face where she leaned over him, her brow lined with concern. Brown-black hair tumbled loose over her shoulders to tickle his cheeks.

  “Sunny.” He raised both hands to cup her face. Nothing felt real but her in the wake of the dream. “Tell me you’re here. That you’re real.”

  “I’m here, Cam. I haven’t left. I’m here, and I’m real, and I’m not leaving.” She scooted closer, so her side pressed against his. “Are you all right?”

  “No.” He took a deep breath, too aware of how the air felt in his chest. Afraid to exhale, in case he couldn’t feel another. “There was a heartbeat, but it wasn’t mine. I was lost in the dark.”

  The hand on his chest flexed. “I can feel your heartbeat right here. You aren’t lost. Not anymore.”

  Doubts nagged him in the fog left over from the dream. “How do you know?”

  “Because I found you.” Her other hand found his arm, lowered his hand to lay on her chest. Beneath the cotton of her shirt, beneath her skin, he felt the faint lub-dub of her pulse. “There is my heartbeat. Do you believe in that?”

  That question had but one answer. “Yes.”

  “Then if you don’t believe in yourself, believe in me. You are right here, with me, real and safe.” Her hand pressed his harder to her chest. Her heat warmed his palm as her words thawed his mind.

  He pulled her to him to press their lips together. With her, he was never lost, never alone. He knew who he was, because it became part of her, and he could never doubt her now. Sun against the night, heat against the cold, reality against the formless void.

  Wounds ached as she threw her leg over to lay against him, but he didn’t care. Pain was real; it meant he was still alive to feel it. He knew this pain, this old childhood companion, this protestation of bruised bones and chafed lacerations. Her hair fell around his face when she leaned down for another kiss, veiling him against the real world in favor of one where it was just him, and her, and the feel of her lips on his.

  A sweeter ache rose as his cock brushed against the join of her legs. Thin cotton panties did nothing to disguise the heat of her sex. His hands found the bare skin of her hips, below her shirt and above her low-cut panties, before he realized he’d moved. He pulled them forward to grind her soft, cloth-covered mound against his hard shaft.

  She whimpered. The vulnerable sound made his cock twitch again. “You’re still hurt,” she murmured against his lips.

  “I need to feel you,” he said, voice raw. “Please. You’re the only thing I know is real.”

  Her mouth covered his again, almost violent with its ardor. She slid her legs over to the same side of him without breaking the kiss. At first, he wanted to stop her, tell her to stay on him and never let go. But when her panties hit the floor, he understood. She straddled him again, bare below the waist. Her wet pussy slid over his belly as she settled her leg against him then slipped down to rest her hips over his, and it was almost enough to steal away his control.

  Wet heat touched the head of his cock. He gasped as the sensation blazed through him, acute after the dream’s numbing cold. Moonlight from the window illuminated her features, gave them the otherworldly cast of a goddess who had come down from the sky to rekindle his faith.

  For her, he would believe. He reached for her again, this time to push the s
hirt up over her belly. Once she saw what he wanted, she wasted no time. She stretched her arms over her head to tug the cloth off. Enraptured, he watched her, the graceful bend of her limbs, the slow reveal of her breasts as the cloth lifted away. If this were part of the dream, then he would choose to stay in it forever. Nothing meant more than the vision of this perfect woman as she sat over him and bared herself for him.

  But she was everything real. Their eyes locked as she lowered her hips over his. His cock touched the slick folds of her pussy then slipped between them. No matter how his eyes tried to close against the devastating pleasure that flashed through him, he couldn’t bear to look away from her. He could see her pleasure in her furrowed brow, in the way her lips parted for a shuddery gasp.

  Her hips rolled. She pressed lower, took him deeper as her weight sank onto him. When she touched home, with his balls nestled against her ass, he groaned at how tight she felt around him. How perfectly he fit inside her.

  They moved together. Her hips circled to grind him inside her, his lifted to press deeper inside. Dark hair spilled over her shoulders, coiled over her collarbone as her head fell back and her eyes closed. Her breasts swayed with the motion of their hips. Pert nipples tempted him to taste them. He pulled her down to him as he sat halfway up to suckle her, tongue lapping with broad strokes over the hardened nub of flesh.

  A throaty cry escaped her. Her hips bucked and writhed against his in an ecstatic rhythm. The frantic motions almost stole her breast from his lips. With one hand, he cupped the soft mound of flesh to keep it where he could taste it. The other found her hip and worked her harder on his cock. Hilt deep in her, he still wasn’t close enough to sate the desire that drove him. He wanted her, all of her, wanted to fill her and possess her and surrender to her until she claimed him.

  She cried out as her cunt squeezed around him. Shudders wracked her body beneath his hands and against his flesh. Animal desire overcame him as he felt her orgasm on his cock. Heedless of his wounds, he lunged up and sideways to fling her onto her back against the bed. It dislodged his cock for a moment, but he plunged it into her in a single stroke.

  Another wail broke from her. Both legs wrapped around him to urge him deeper into her pussy. Merciless in the face of their need, he thrust into her with fierce abandon. The release burst through him without warning, a wave of pure heat that drove away the last vestiges of dream-induced doubt. He shouted a ragged, harsh cry as his cock pulsed within her.

  He collapsed onto the bed as the last waves of pleasure faded. Exhaustion crept over him in the wake of his release, a weariness that permeated down to his core. No matter how hard he fought them, his eyelids drooped closed, and his limbs seemed to weigh four times what they should.

  Dimly, he felt Sonja’s hands help him back up to the pillows. “Too much exertion too soon.” Her voice sounded very far away. “Rest now, Cam.”

  “Sunny—”

  “Rest,” she repeated. “Sleep. No more dreams.”

  Unable to resist the siren song of unconsciousness, he slept.

  When he opened his eyes, daytime had banished the night. A few deep golden sunbeams escaped around the edges of a blackout curtain that hung over a window on the far wall and provided the only illumination in the bedroom. Not his; he had never bothered to choose a shade other than basic white for his walls, let alone the soothing shade of sage green someone had selected here. Neither did he recognize any of the locations in the pictures framed around the room as places he had visited, though he might have seen them in travel documentaries when he couldn’t find anything else to watch.

  As he moved to get a better look at the room, a weight at the end of the bed shifted. Two large ears perked straight up, and Cameron found himself staring into a pair of concerned canine eyes. A little smile tugged up the corners of Cameron’s lips. “Charlie,” he murmured.

  The dog’s tail thumped on the comforter. With care, he belly crawled up the bed where Cameron could stroke his head. Tension drained away with the simple act of petting the friendly dog who kept watch over Cameron’s sleep. But where there was Charlie...

  It took Cameron a moment to spot her in the gloom. Sonja slouched in a chair in the corner nearest the bed, half curled into the padded seat with her head tucked down against her chest. She had put on ratty, comfortable sweats, with the logo for the United States Army partially visible on the front. He almost didn’t notice the shotgun leaning against the arm of the chair, within easy reach of the sleeper.

  Memories flooded back. The fight in the basement. The vampire, Teresa, with control over Noah. The voice in Cameron’s mind, whispering for him to give in. Sonja’s arrival, sudden and fearless and right in the nick of time before the whispers could subvert Cameron’s will. Then her presence in the night, heated and passionate and blissfully alive.

  After everything they’d been through, after every time she had put herself in danger for him and for his friends, he wondered how he had ever mistaken her lack of commitment to the pack for a lack of caring. But it raised other questions, such as why, if she cared so deeply as he now knew she did, she would keep herself apart from those who would care for her in return. Maybe she’s just a lone wolf. Some folks are like that. He could respect it if she felt that way. But he still wondered.

  He leveraged himself into a sitting position, and she stirred at the noise. Her eyes opened, gaze sharp and intent as it found him. “You’re awake. And it looks like my sheets are still in one piece.”

  “Were you going to shoot me if they weren’t?”

  “They’re expensive sheets. Bad enough when Charlie puts his toenails through them. I don’t need you shredding them, too.” She gave him a wry, relieved look.

  Cameron glanced down at the dog. “Hear that, Charlie? You’re getting me in trouble here.”

  The dog nuzzled Cameron’s hand again. It had fallen still. The lack of petting had not gone unnoticed.

  Cameron chuckled. “You’re pitiful, dog. Sunny, why were you sleeping in the chair?”

  “After your dream last night, I got a little paranoid. Teresa’s crashed one party already. If she decided to visit, I wanted to be ready. How do you feel?”

  “Like secondhand shit,” he admitted. “I’m pretty sure we got our asses handed to us last night. If you hadn’t shown up when you did...”

  Now, she did move, from the chair to the edge of the bed. The shotgun remained by the chair. “But I did. Pirelli and I put together the last information I needed to figure out what was happening. I almost couldn’t get there in time.”

  “But you did,” he echoed, and lifted his hand to cup her cheek. “You were a pretty damn big hero.”

  He could feel her skin heat against his palm as the blush reddened her cheek. “I wouldn’t go that far.”

  “I would.” He leaned forward to place a soft kiss on her lips. “Thank you.”

  Her gaze caught his. “You would’ve done the same for me.”

  He didn’t understand the look in her eyes, the mix of determination, hope, and a plea for reassurance. Still, he was all too glad to give it to her. “I’d do the same for you without a second thought. It’s not even a question in my mind.”

  Her shoulders relaxed. “I know,” she said, though Cameron didn’t believe it.

  He let it slide. “I didn’t see Pirelli when you came. Though I didn’t see much through that light and smoke, to be honest.”

  “Then the flashbangs did their job. Even without them, you probably won’t see Pirelli anytime soon.” Disgust made her tone sharp. “He’s hiding.”

  One of his eyebrows went up. “What you mean he’s hiding? This Teresa Espina asshole is a problem vampire, and she’s in Pirelli’s turf. It’s his job to deal with her.”

  “You’d think so,” she said, with a wry twist of her mouth. “I’ve never seen Vincenzo Pirelli back down from a fight. But this one has him battening down the hatches. As of last night, he’d started to fortify his estate and told me the wolves were on their ow
n.”

  Offense and anger simmered in Cameron’s mind. He had never trusted Vincenzo Pirelli, but the vampire had come through when Kiplinger had threatened the pack. The traditional but unspoken bargain had always held: werewolves policed their own, and vampires did the same. When Noah had all but gone rogue after Kayla’s disappearance, the vampires hadn’t wasted any time in demanding that Peter call off his rabid dog. It had taken a hasty truce between Peter and Pirelli, brokered by Sonja and Moira, to prevent hostilities from boiling over. The city’s Boss Biter had supported peace, but it seemed he wasn’t willing to work for it.

  Cameron summed his feelings up with one sentence. “Well, that’s a bunch of bullshit,” he said.

  Sonja gusted a frustrated breath. “He’s scared,” she said. “I’ve dealt with a lot of vampires. I’ve seen them beg for their lives while the sun came up over the horizon. And I’ve never seen one as afraid as Pirelli was last night. The second we sorted out what was happening, he ordered Gaeta to start fortifications for protection of the manor. He’s terrified of what Teresa will do to him.”

  “Me, too, but you don’t see me running off with my tail between my legs.” Anger leaked into his voice, but he didn’t care. “I’m more worried about what Teresa is going to do to the city. To the land. And fuck knows I’m afraid of what she’s going to do to my friends.”

  Sonja held up both hands to placate him. “I’m not defending him, Cameron. It will be hard for me to defend Pirelli ever again. All I’m saying is, this is bad enough to scare the most powerful vampire I know. And fear makes people do stupid, shitty things.”

  He sighed. “Sorry, Sunny. I didn’t mean to take it out on you. I’m afraid, and fear...” He rolled his hand in an and-so-on gesture.

  She touched his forearm. “I know,” she said. “Trust me, I know. I’m afraid, too.”

  They sat like that in silence for too many heartbeats. A question burned in his mind, but as much as he needed the answer, he wasn’t sure he wanted it. At last, he asked, “What about Noah? The rest of the pack?”