Beckoned: Born of Darkness (Book 1)

by R. B. Fields

  I inhale the way a bloodhound might scent a fox, letting her scent reach the deepest recesses of my sinuses. My mouth waters. The prick of my teeth is sharp against my lower lip.

  If Mikael’s goons come for her … they can have her. But not if I get to her first.

  I should do it soon, before the others get too attached.

  6

  Silas

  I let my fingers push each ivory key of the piano as if of their own accord. My brain is in turmoil.

  Any sane vampire would give her to them. Try to make their peace, try to protect their own hive — their family. Yet standing beside her on the driveway, feeling her skin against mine on the motorcycle ride over here … it’s become too much to bear.

  And far too much to deny.

  I’m not a believer in love at first sight, I never have been, but I’ve never smelled blood like hers — I’ve never once felt so … enchanted by another. I’ve never had the drive to protect anyone the way I want to protect her. This is not merely an emotional experience. This is physical — innate. I did not recognize it on the bridge, had written it off as wanting to save an innocent, but those rats were Markula’s — I would have thrown myself on them if I needed to, would have let them tear me limb from limb. Would have fought against Markula himself, my own family. For her.

  It makes no sense.

  Was Markula trying to scare her, trying to run her off? I can hope so, but it will take more than rats to frighten a girl like Dawn. I almost smile, but I can’t. Because I know Markula’s motivations are likely more sinister.

  He will see her as a threat. That’s his role in our hive — he is our hunter, a Warrior. He’ll take care of her if he thinks we cannot. I don’t know if that means using her as a bargaining chip with Mikael’s hive, or if it means killing her right off in the hopes of appeasing them — I can’t let those happen. He may be our leader, but he is not infallible.

  He is right about one thing, though: she is a threat. In more ways than one.

  Our powers do not work well when she is nearby, that much is clear. Most humans — and she is human, I’m certain of it — are noisy, a barrage of inconsequential worries, but I have no idea what’s happening inside her head. Then there’s the matter of the blade. I intended to tell them about the knife, but I could not bring myself to do it. It’s still important, the knife can hurt us, but I don’t want to tell anyone, not until I know why. I should examine it, try to decipher those foreign markings. I should.

  But my insides … it’s as if there is an itch in my soul that I cannot scratch. I hear the pulse of blood in her veins. I smell her, even from here. She might be here to kill us. She might want nothing more than to kill me with the weapon she used on Mikael.

  Is she a killer? Is she a hunter? She doesn’t smell like a hunter. All vampires know what a hunter smells like, and she wouldn’t be here if she was — they hate us as much as we hate them, and being in our presence would be intolerable. I would want to spit at her scent, not drown in it. Perhaps the knife is just an heirloom. Perhaps she is who she says — a nurse with an adventurous steak, bent on saving people both inside and outside the hospital.

  I cannot put my family at risk. I have to know for sure.

  My fingers stall on the keys. For a moment, I can almost imagine that I feel her warm breath against my neck. It concerns me that the thought brings such pleasure.

  7

  Dawn

  “Hide, Dawn.” My mother’s voice is a hissed whisper. “Beneath the bed. Don’t. Make. A sound.”

  I slide under the mattress on my belly, my nose itching with dust bunnies, the wood hard on my cheek. The air around me crackles with electricity, but not the kind you feel when you’re excited — it slithers up my spine, leaving needles of gooseflesh prickling in its wake. And my bones …

  I feel them in my marrow.

  But I don’t know who they are or why they’re here. It’s crazy, I know it is, a nightmare, my imagination, but my mother’s whispered plea is not the stuff of fantasy. The blade in my hand is hot.

  The door crashes open.

  I can only see the bottom of the dresser, a backdrop for the intruder’s feet. Black boots advance on my mother’s bare toes, but the rubber treads barely make a sound against the wood.

  “Please,” my mother says. “I’ll do anything you ask, but — ”

  For a moment, nothing moves, my mother’s feet and those boots perfectly still, but then I hear it — a dripping coming from somewhere above the bed where I can’t see, the pattering of water on wood … but it’s not water, I know it’s not water. And the dresser — it’s speckled with crimson.

  A heavy thunk vibrates the pads of my fingers as something hits the floor just in front of the bed.

  I want to scream, want to call her name, but I can’t breathe.

  Her blue eyes stare at me, already glassy, already dead. Her severed neck is a jagged mess of bone and sinew. I close my eyes and listen to the wet tearing of teeth on flesh, the grunting of hungry animals, the —

  I bolt upright, gasping for breath, my T-shirt damp and sticking to my flesh. I’m not there. I’m not sixteen anymore. I’m safe … well, safe-ish, at least for now.

  During times of stress, the nightmares always come back — I’m only human after all — but I could have used a good night’s rest today of all days. Parts of it are real, my mother’s severed head, most notably, but I’m not sure about the rest. The police said it was burglars that broke into our home, not vampires — they trashed the whole place, stole all our silverware and my mother’s jewelry, brutally murdered my mother when she got in the way. Vampires don’t have a reason to steal silverware, right?

  I sigh, my eyes on the blade of moonlight that slices through the room and slashes at the covers. My bedroom here is bigger than my entire apartment, and the Van Halen T-shirt Silas gave me feels entirely out of place in the lap of luxury, as do the bandages I’ve wrapped around my arm. My back is oily with sweat. My chest aches. At least the scratches don’t hurt much anymore.

  But what happens next? I know this is temporary, but how temporary remains to be seen. I’m not worried about leaving my old life behind, not really. Yeah, I love nursing, but maybe I can fix up the occasional vamp or save random humans caught in the crossfire. It’s hard to imagine just going home, heading back to work, sewing up arms and heads while watching the shadows for teeth. Already every sound outside the window is the scratching of demon claws, every howl of the wind a werewolf, every creaking floorboard the pulsing throb of an otherworldly heart. The only thing that helps even a little is the steady tinkling notes of a piano from somewhere else in the house — calming, the way Draynor’s voice had been calming, though I don’t understand that one bit. He was glaring at me, and my body was like: “Yeah, cool, NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT.” I probably need to get some clarification on what vampires can do to humans. Draynor clearly has some control over my insides — he eased my anxiety without my permission or knowledge, I would bet money on it.

  I roll over, strangling the silky pillowcase like it owes me money. I always thought I had darkness in my blood, but I don’t — I have a level of human darkness, but this isn’t the same. Sure, I’ll give a few evil vampires hell the same way I give serial killers hell, but I can’t help but feel a little outmatched. How does a human compete with an immortal? My gut feeling is … they don’t.

  I throw the pillow aside, frustrated. I’m not going to sleep tonight; why am I even trying?

  I slip from the bed, my skin silvered in the haze of the moon, and rummage on the chair for my clothes. I slip into my jogging pants. My bra. But I freeze when I’m staring at the seat cushion. Where the fuck is my knife? My teeth grind together hard enough to squeal. Vampire or not, I will fuck him up — it had to be Silas. He was the only one in here … though they can move faster than I can see, can’t they? It turns out I don’t know dick about vampires, which puts me at a distinct disadvantage.

  The hallway is dark, bu
t the music is loud and laced with melancholy. I follow the noise, my toes chilly on the wood. I know where Silas’s bedroom is — he pointed it out on the way to my room, in case I needed anything, though he probably didn’t expect that I’d be banging on his door in the middle of the night looking for a stolen weapon. I square my shoulders and raise my fist. The music stops, and before I can bring my fist to the door, it flings open with the last sad piano notes still echoing through the corridor.

  Silas stands on the opposite side of the door in a clean white T-shirt and loose blue jeans that do nothing to hide the finely honed curve of his waist and the broadness of his chest. His blond hair is neatly combed despite the late hour. Light spills into the hall.

  I want to say “Where the fuck is my mother’s knife?” but I learned a long time ago that playing at friendly gets better results. “Did I wake you?” There you go, Dawn, buy a little time.

  He smiles — all those teeth. Where are your fangs, jerkface? “We don’t sleep,” he says.

  “Oh.” Duh. He steps back and motions me in — every wall is black, the chandelier throwing prisms of light against every inky surface. Even the ceiling is black. The piano. The bench. Everything but the floor, a cold and brilliantly white marble.

  “What’s your excuse?” he asks.

  “Huh?”

  “Why are you up?”

  “Where’s my mother’s knife?” Fucking smooth, Dawn. I guess I’ve never had a lot of patience, and being forced to grin and bear it makes me want to kick someone in the taint with a steel-toed boot.

  He blinks, the purple of his eyes run through with the shining cornucopia of colors from the chandelier prisms. “It’s here. I didn’t mean to worry you.”

  “Can I have it back now?”

  This time, the pause is longer. “Yes.” He wants to ask me more, but he’s holding his tongue and his temper same as I am. What’s the big deal about my knife? An immortal can’t be that afraid of a family heirloom.

  He turns away from me, and I follow him deeper into the room — toward the piano. He leans over the bench, reaches into the belly of the baby grand, and slides the blade from a place behind the shiny wooden front.

  “Don’t steal from me again, Silas.” I reach for the blade, but he pulls his hand back — he’s not touching the weapon itself. He’s holding the leather holster gingerly as if it were a dead squirrel.

  “This blade … it needs to go if you want to stay here. A regular knife wouldn’t be able to hurt a vampire, but Mikael sure felt it.”

  I frown. Huh? “Listen, I don’t know why it hurt him, but it didn’t hurt him that bad — he tried to kill me after I stabbed him. And I’m not giving it up. I got the knife from my mom, and I don’t have anything else of hers. But if it makes you feel better, I’ll only use it to protect myself from serial killers.” I shrug.

  But he still doesn’t offer up the knife. He watches me.

  “What’s the problem, anyway? If it hurts vampires, and we’re both running from vampires now … Isn’t this useful to both of us?”

  He stares for another heartbeat. The blood in my veins goes hot, not the calm relaxing warmth like when Draynor was staring at me, but the hotter burn of electricity. He finally extends my blade.

  Welcome back, baby. My fingertips tingle against his skin as I take it from him — hot, as if he has a fever. “Why are you so warm? Do vampires get sick?”

  “No, we can’t get sick. We can’t pass any diseases.” He shrugs. “And I’m not usually warm — none of us are. I think it’s you.”

  It’s me? “I’m not imagining it,” I scoff, my fingers tightening around the leather holster. “I know what a fever feels like.”

  “No, I mean … I think your presence … something strange is happening here. You … ” He edges closer; his eyes bore into mine. “You’re special. To us — to me. Maybe to all vampires.”

  “That’s ridiculous.” But I’m having a hard time focusing. The heat of him is making my skin vibrate, and all those sad notes on the piano … . I suddenly want to stop that sadness. I want to … fix it. And what a ridiculous thing to consider right now — it’s not like we have a savage hive of vampires plotting to murder us.

  “I can’t be special,” I force out. “Mikael’s friends want to eat me.”

  He nods. “They want to eat everyone.”

  “But your group doesn’t eat humans, right? I mean, you saved me, so it’s not like you’re out there murdering people.”

  This time, the pause is longer. “A hive without a leader tends to be disorganized, which will give us an advantage. We have Markula.”

  Which is in no way an answer to my question, but now I have a more pressing one. “Markula’s your leader? The one who you have to keep me away from?” Shit. I hoped it was him — the one dude who really wants me here.

  “Don’t worry about Markula,” he says, laying a hand on my cheek. “I’ll take care of him.”

  I hear him, but it takes a moment for me to register the words — the throbbing of his heart is echoing in my ears as if his palm against my face is a conduit. But vampires don’t have beating hearts, do they? And yet, that sound washes over me, again, again — my insides dance to it, swaying … listening.

  “You killed him for me,” I say. “You started a war.”

  “I’d do it again.”

  And he would. I feel the truth of this in my bones. But I also feel something stronger, the pull of him, the smell of him in my veins — it’s as if he’s inside me, not in a sexual way, but in the way of the moon steadily pulling the tides.

  “Are you doing that?” he asks suddenly, and I step back, away from his hand, the skin of my cheek still tingling where his palm rested.

  “Doing what?”

  “You feel it, don’t you? That … pressure.”

  I do. I don’t understand what it is, but I don’t care, don’t even register the decision to put my mouth on his. I do register his hands, his fingertips resting gently on the tops of my hips. His tongue is warm, his lips soft, and through it all, that steady pulsing throbbing of his heartbeat washes over me, over us. I moan into his mouth and stagger backward, and he steadies me with a hand at the small of my back. And then his lips are gone, my mouth cold, and I reach for his face, but he’s already on his knees, gently pressing his lips between my breasts, kissing my navel, each touch of his skin sending electricity through my blood.

  I pull the shirt over my head, my arm stinging just a bit where Mikael scratched me, but I forget about the wound as his fingers find the waistband of my workout pants. He draws them down over my thighs, and his hot breath through my panties is all I can bear.

  “Take them off,” I whisper. It’s crazy, this is crazy, but I suddenly don’t care what it is, what it means, or even what might happen tomorrow. This is far better than a washing machine, and nothing bad could come out of making him want me — being connected to him might save me. And I don’t think I’ve ever wanted someone as much as I want him.

  He looks up and meets my gaze — those purple eyes like pools of amethyst. “Your wish is my command.” I can’t even remember what I asked of him, but he’s already sliding my panties slowly toward the floor. I step back, out of the puddle of clothing … and stumble against the piano bench — falling, I’m falling. The bench is cold against my bare ass.

  Smooth, Dawn; real smooth.

  But I don’t have time to register embarrassment because Silas is kneeling between my legs, his tongue wet and soft against my clit. He parts me with the tip of his tongue, and I hiss an inhale through clenched teeth as spirals of electricity spread lightning through my blood. I feel his teeth — those vicious teeth — against my labia, cold as ice and dangerously sharp, but I don’t care, I can’t care, because his tongue is drawing circles on my feverish flesh. I spread my legs wider. I’m not sure when he lost his shirt, but his shoulder muscles ripple in the light — every inch of him is sculpted, tight, any gym rat’s wet dream.

  He slips a fin
ger inside me.

  I cry out, easing back against the piano, which screams with me with a discordant clang, but even that’s somehow musical. Silas works me with his fingers, first one, then two, my body contracting around him. His other hand trails upward to my nipple, flicking softly, then harder as he laps at my pussy. I buck against his face. The energy between us rolls out, then in — like the tide. My body shudders with each stroke of his hand, of his mouth.

  I can’t this take anymore.

  His head snaps up, his eyes wide.

  “Fuck me,” I whisper. It’s been so long, and my entire body is on fire with his touch.

  He smiles, violet eyes sparkling. “Not yet.”

  “What happened to ‘your wish is my command?’” I’m panting. Shaking.

  “Well, I only half meant that.” He shrugs. “Vampires lie sometimes.”

  Humans do, too.

  “Probably more than we do,” he says, but I didn’t say that aloud, did I?

  He squints at me, frozen — is something wrong? And then I’m in his arms, flying through the room, my body no longer awkward against the keys of the piano. The mattress is soft beneath my spine. His tongue is softer on my right nipple, twirling, teasing, and I arch into him — his fingers find my clit once more.

  “Are you going to bite me?” I whisper.

  He shakes his head, but I feel his teeth against the tender flesh of my breast.

  “Do you want to?”

  This time he doesn’t answer. He shoves three fingers inside me, and I gasp, arching against him, his thumb on my clit. He unbuttons his pants and slowly eases them down his hips, and soon I feel the tip of his cock between my legs, sliding against my wetness. He pauses, one arm on either side of me, and lowers his lips to the line of bruising on my throat.