by Мишель Роуэн
Blood is sent to places like Darkside by professional blood delivery services. They get their blood from willing donors who are paid well for their contributions. It was all very civilized. The rarer the blood type, the more expensive the shot.
I stuck with B-Positive. It was my fave. Because of the name, I could fool myself into believing it would cheer me up.
I tossed the shot back and waited for the euphoria to hit me.
A couple of minutes later I was still waiting.
The complimentary drink rested on a Darkside coaster. Other than the logo for the club, I noticed something else on the thick, round piece of cardboard. Handwriting. In blue ink.
Sarah—
I took in a shaky breath and glanced around the club again, paying particular attention to the corner the man who sent me the drink had allegedly been in. Still empty.
My palm was sweating as I picked up the coaster and turned it over to see there was more writing on the other side.
Meet me out back. I must see you.
I casually slipped the coaster into my handbag. Without saying anything to Amy and
George, still dancing their little hearts out, I slid into the shadows of the club on the other side of the dance floor, moved past the bouncer at the door, and emerged into the cold night air outside. With a quick check over my shoulder to make sure no one was following me, I swiftly walked around the building to the back where it was dark and silent. The nearly full moon cast a pale glow on the deserted alley.
“Hello?” I whispered, barely loud enough for even myself to hear. “Where are you?”
Other than the expected Dumpsters and snowdrifts, there seemed to be no one there. With my sensitive vampire ears, I could hear the bass thump of the dance music from inside very weakly. I hugged my arms tightly around myself. The temperature didn’t bother me much anymore, but it did seem particularly cold that night.
I took a few more steps into the darkness. “Don’t worry, we’re alone.”
I was answered only by more silence so I moved over to the other side of the building and peered around the corner. I didn’t have very long before my friends wondered where I’d gone. Although, considering how many drinks I’d downed, they’d probably assume I was in the washroom.
I froze when I heard footsteps behind me. The very next moment, strong arms came around me and my back was pressed up against the cold brick wall. A hand came over my mouth, since my first instinct was to scream my lungs out.
Luckily, it was the person I’d been expecting.
Thierry removed his hand, leaned over, and crushed his mouth against mine in a kiss that took my breath away. I gasped against his lips, but then kissed him back deeply, wrapping my arms around his neck before sliding my hands up into his dark hair. His body warmed me in the cold night.
It wasn’t the first time we’d secretly met after everyone thought we’d broken up, but I hadn’t expected it tonight. Everyone else thought he’d only just returned from a trip to
France, but he’d never left the city. Since it was vital that nobody saw us together, it had been difficult finding a time and place to meet. I’d missed him a lot.
When the kiss broke off and my heartbeat came back to a normal pace, I looked up at him, raising an eyebrow. “A message on a coaster? Is that seriously the best you could do?”
“I wasn’t sure you’d be able to get away. Calling or messaging you on your phone could be traced.”
“And being spotted in a nightclub buying me drinks is much less risky?”
“I’m very discreet.”
I managed to smile. “By the way, your handwriting is nearly illegible.”
His mouth quirked. “Yet you figured out what it said.”
“Barely.” I grabbed hold of his black shirt and kissed him again quickly. We were shielded by the very romantic trash holders on either side of us but I still felt nervous that somebody might see us together. “What are you doing here?”
“I had to see you.” His silver-eyed gaze moved down the length of me and back up to my face.
Just as the bartender had described my drink sender, Thierry de Bennicoeur was tall and knee-weakeningly delicious—my words, not his. Dark hair, broad shoulders, full lips, straight nose, stern black eyebrows over gray eyes that sometimes appeared to be silver.
You’d never expect that he was pushing seven hundred years old, a vampire sired during the Black Death plague in Europe in the 1400s.
Not even my closest friends could find out we were still together. Amy and George were total blabbermouths. Since I wasn’t the best secret-keeper in the universe it had been sheer torture to keep my mouth shut.
I had to keep my mouth shut about a lot of things.
I even kept a few things from Thierry.
For example, if he knew that over the last week and a half I’d become Gideon Chase’s personal assistant and general errand girl, he wouldn’t be very happy about that.
And that was an understatement.
He considered Gideon the most dangerous man in the world—and somebody he wanted me to stay far away from for my own safety. But when the burned-by-hellfire leader of the vampire hunters wanted something, he could be extremely… well, insistent was a good word.
Gideon couldn’t find out that Thierry and I were still together, and Thierry couldn’t find out I was currently at Gideon’s beck and call.
Gideon usually checked in with me daily. In fact, he’d sent me to pick up a package for him earlier that day on the other side of the city. I got the impression he knew where I was and who I was with at all times. Just being in the alley with Thierry for a few stolen moments made me extremely nervous and more paranoid than usual. Which was saying something.
“Any luck finding Gideon’s hired guns?” I asked.
His expression was tight. “No. That’s one of the reasons I needed to see you this evening.”
“To tell me to be careful?”
“Of course.” He hissed out a long sigh. “I hate standing back and seeing you in harm’s way like this. It has to stop.”
“It will.”
“Not if we can’t discover his secrets. He has too much power at the moment, even if it’s only lent itself to verbal threats. If he harms you—”
“He hasn’t.” I stroked Thierry’s tense face. “Gideon isn’t going to hurt me.”
“Not until he gets what he wants.”
“Exactly.” I frowned. Wait. That didn’t make me feel much better.
“I will kill him,” he said darkly. “If he harms you in any way, the pain from the hellfire will be a pleasant memory for him.”
“I appreciate the offer of mayhem and torture, really. But it’s best if we stay calm and collected about this.”
“You seem calm and collected enough for the both of us.”
“I’m trying to stay Zen. I do yoga now, you know.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You do?”
“Well, I have an instructional DVD on yoga. Haven’t had a chance to watch it with all the drama going on lately, but I’m looking forward to it.”
“We must find a solution in three days. You cannot sire him.”
Thierry had a black-and-white attitude about pretty much everything. He drew his lines in the sand in permanent ink—and how he felt about Gideon was one of those lines. To him, Gideon was 100 percent evil incarnate. Couldn’t say I blamed him much for that impression. After all, Gideon was the leader of the hunters. They didn’t exactly make our lives a Technicolor musical production number. And Gideon, from everything I’d heard about him, had no problem getting his hands dirty when it came to slaying. He was exactly like Buffy—that is, if she was a six-foot-five billionaire playboy with hellfire scars from slaying a demon. And a tendency to kill things that weren’t actually evil.
So, really, not like Buffy at all.
“I need to get back inside,” I said, “and try to act like everything’s normal—”
Another kiss managed to easily push my w
ords and thoughts away. Thierry could kiss. Six hundred years of practice would make someone an expert, after all. I’d prefer not to give a lot of thought to how many women may have come before me. We both had our romantic histories. His was simply a little longer than mine, that’s all.
By about 650 years.
My heart felt heavy when we parted. This whole situation seriously sucked. Just when I found a man I could be completely crazy about—despite our many differences—and one who loved me in return, we couldn’t be together except for stolen moments like this.
“You shouldn’t try to see me again till this is all over.” I tried to ignore the lump in my throat. “I’m afraid he’s going to find out.”
“Perhaps you should have taken Amy up on the blind date she arranged for you.”
I eyed him. “So Gideon’s not the only one spying on me?”
He smiled. “If you had someone new in your life, or I in mine, Gideon would have no suspicions about us, would he?”
“Good point. But are you trying to say you want to see other people? Because I’m in the mood to kick some ass tonight and it might be yours.”
Amusement slid behind his gaze. “I’m talking about appearances, nothing more. In fact, I think it’s a very good idea.”
“You want me to start dating somebody else?”
“Desperate times call for drastic measures. And speaking of that—” He was quiet for a moment. “You need to know something important.”
That sounded ominous. “What?”
“I contacted the Red Devil. He’s in the city right now. I thought we could use his help.”
My eyes widened. “Really?”
He nodded gravely.
The Red Devil in a nutshell was this: a vampire vigilante who had been around for a thousand years, give or take a century or two. He saved innocent vamps from slaughter at the hands of hunters. He wore a mask so nobody knew who he was, and, in fact, most thought he was only a legend. Legend or not, he’d disappeared a hundred years ago and hadn’t been seen since.
Gideon Chase, wearing a scarf over his scarred face to hide his true identity, had convinced me he was the Red Devil—in fact, he’d saved my life when I’d been staked so he could gain my confidence. But the real Red Devil was now in Toronto? Stop the presses.
“Who is he?” I asked.
“His identity is secret.”
“So you don’t know who he is? How did you contact him?”
“We have a mutual connection.”
“Who?”
“I can’t say.”
“You can trust me.”
“I know,” he said. But he didn’t go into any further detail.
I pushed my frustration at his vague answers away. Or tried to, anyhow. “What’s he doing here? Or is that a secret as well?”
“I wanted him to assess the situation with Gideon. I thought it also important for him to keep an eye on you and he has agreed to this.”
I felt stunned. “Are you trying to tell me that the Red Devil is my shiny new bodyguard?”
“He promises to be very discreet. You won’t even know he’s around.”
I leaned back against the cold wall behind me and tried to process this info. The legendary, reclusive Red Devil was my bodyguard? And Thierry was acting as if this was a completely normal decision?
“You trust this guy?” I asked.
“Implicitly.”
He sounded pretty certain about it. But how could he trust somebody who’d been off the map for a century? Somebody who’d just pop up thanks to a well-timed phone call?
“Where is he right now?”
“Close. It’s best you know as little as possible, Sarah. It’s safer that way.”
“For him or for me?”
“Definitely both.” He hooked a finger under my gold chain. He knew what it was and what it did. When I didn’t have it and was acting all murderous and deadly and seductive, he’d done everything in his power to find a solution. Although truthfully, I think he kind of liked the seductive part.
“If I learn anything new I will contact you as soon as I can,” he said.
“Same here.” The fresh guilt at not telling him about my strange new job as Gideon’s assistant ate at me. It was on the tip of my tongue but I didn’t want to worry him more than he already was. “I love you, Thierry.”
He touched my face softly and slid his thumb over my bottom lip. “I love you, too.”
And, with a last kiss, he was gone.
Well, he didn’t just disappear, but he could walk really fast. I watched his dark form move away into the shadows.
Then I slowly trudged back around the side of the building until I’d nearly reached the front doors. A woman was being unceremoniously kicked out of the club by the big, brawny bouncer.
“Go home and don’t come back,” he advised her harshly. “We don’t want you here.”
She hurled a couple of choice expletives at him and turned her back, stomping away down the dark street in a short red minidress and silver stilettos.
“Nice girl,” I said.
“Fledgling vamp caught her sire cheating on her,” the bouncer explained. “She’d only been turned a few nights ago. She made a scene and nearly bit the chick the guy was with tonight.” He swept his gaze over me. “You’re the Slayer of Slayers, aren’t you?”
Oh, brother. Just what I needed. A fanboy.
I shook my head. “You know, I actually get that all the time. We’re both brunettes and there is a fleeting resemblance. I saw her once, but she’s kind of ugly. Probably from all that slayer slaying.”
“If you say so.” The bouncer shrugged. “You coming back in, or what?”
“Yeah.” I glanced over in the direction of the jilted fledgling and I noticed two men a block up step out from a dark alley and begin to silently trail after the oblivious vampiress.
“Hey, check that out. Do you think those are hunters?”
He followed my line of sight. “Could be.”
I looked at him. “Don’t you want to do something about it? She’s a helpless fledgling out on her own. They’ll kill her.”
“What do you suggest I do?”
“Go save her?”
He laughed. “Not going to happen. I don’t think they saw where she came from, and I’m not getting a stake through my chest tonight for trying to save some worthless bitch.”
“Oh, that’s really charming.”
He smiled thinly at me. “For fifteen bucks an hour I don’t have to be charming. Why don’t you go save her?”
I narrowed my gaze at him. “Maybe I will.”
“Good luck with that.” He turned around and slipped back inside the club. The door closed heavily behind him leaving me out in the cold night alone.
I scanned the street again. No one was around. It wasn’t that long ago that I was the hapless fledgling who wandered dark and lonely places I shouldn’t go.
Since then, I’d aged. I’d matured. I would eternally look twenty-eight years old, but I’d been through enough stress in the past three months to give me gray hair. Metaphorically speaking, that is. Thankfully, I had no gray hair, and if I did I’d totally dye it back to normal.
But that was neither here nor there.
I began following the girl and her stalkers. Maybe it was just my overworked imagination that she was in danger. They were probably just heading in the same direction, was all.
Nothing to be concerned with. Paranoia was one of my closest pals lately, although normally I had it about myself, not somebody I didn’t even know.
It was a gut thing. I had to know. Something felt terribly off.
I’d check it out, make sure the girl was safe and sound, and then I’d go back to the club and pretend to have a good time.
And then I heard a shriek: female. And a laugh: male.
Shit.
I picked up my pace and my breathing increased. Damn that bouncer for not helping out. I was right. The girl was in trouble, and now what?
Save the fledgling, save the world. Did I look like a superhero?
As much as I’d like to think I was tough and able to bravely face off against those who’d harm others, I knew I didn’t have a chance in hell against the hunters. They were two big, muscular guys, and I was… well, me. And I’d be willing to bet each of them had done this many times before.
Unfortunately, there was no time for me to go back to the club and get reinforcements, and from the terrified whimpering I now heard just around the corner in the alleyway where the hunters had cornered the fledgling, I had only seconds to decide what to do next.
Maybe I should have turned my back and run away. There’d been plenty of vamps who’d found themselves on the sharp end of a stake since I’d been sired. But this… this was different. It was here, it was now, and I couldn’t simply walk away and pretend it never happened.
The girl let out another frightened scream and the decision was made. There was one way
I knew how to be a bit tougher than I naturally was. It wouldn’t hurt if I did it just once, would it?
I sure hoped not.
Cursing under my breath, I reached back and undid the clasp of my gold chain with shaking fingers. It slipped off my throat. I slid it into my purse for safekeeping.
It was a bit like Diana Prince spinning around three times to become Wonder Woman, only I wasn’t suddenly wearing a shiny red, white, and blue leotard with a magical golden lasso and tiara. My change was a little more subtle than that.
I’d tested taking off the gold chain a couple of times since I got it. In the beginning, my nightwalker symptoms took a while to completely manifest in all their nasty glory. But now they came on me almost immediately. It was dangerous—mostly for other people— so I didn’t play around with it much.
It started with my vision closing in on either side so I could keep my prey in sight. No distractions. Clear, predatory focus. My heartbeat came to a slow stop. Or almost a stop.
A vampire’s heart beats slower than a human’s, but now my heart, without the chain, would beat approximately four times an hour. Nightwalkers weren’t living beings like regular vampires. Nightwalkers were the reason regular vamps had the reputation of being undead. Barely a heartbeat and no real need to breathe.