“It’s got to be code for something. Or some gibberish written by your elders to frustrate the hell out of us so we’ll go bat-shit crazy and stake ourselves.”
Dylan’s lips twisted into a pout. “That’s not funny, Slade. And they’re your elders now too, remember?” She bent over the scroll again, searching through the age spots for something that might clue her in as to what the random letters referred to. There was just too much dirt on the curled pages.
If only someone knew what had happened to the Grimorium Verum after the Crimson Bay Massacre of 1912, they might be able to find a way out of this mess. Although some pages of the prophetic tome were ripped from its binding, hidden, then recovered by Dylan and Slade last month, they were incomplete and mostly incomprehensible.
“I don’t have any clue where these . . .” She skimmed her fingers over the random letters mashed against one another. “ . . . fit in with the rest. If only we could get our hands on more scrolls or on the entire Grimorium Verum with the scrolls still inside. It would make our job a helluva lot easier.”
Getting more frustrated by the second, Dylan moved on. As she glanced over a tiny section at the top, her gaze caught on words scribbled in English. Squinting, she read slowly so as not to mistake a single phrase. “Place of horror . . . time will come . . . elders will fall . . .”
“ . . . all will succumb,” Slade finished for her, his voice barely above a whisper.
Their gaze met over the desk. Even with the muted glow of the overhead lights cascading around them in soft currents of amber and crimson, Slade looked as rough as a Vampire Marital Arts champion on a real bad day. Black leather pants and a black shirt hiding a hard body beneath it screamed don’t fuck with me, which matched his usual no bullshit demeanor. His dark hair was buzzed short and stubbly, showing off the squareness of his jaw and the jaggedness of his cheekbones. His ruby-red eyes had enough depth in them to make Dylan wonder if he experienced every emotion as deeply as he did love. As Dylan had found out over the last few months, Slade’s love was more intense than anything she’d experienced in her two hundred years on this earth.
She was honored to stand beside a man so loyal, so loving, so . . .
“I could make you succumb right now,” he growled, a seductive twinkle in his eye.
. . . so damn irresistible. She’d never get any work done this way.
“Slade, I hardly think this is the time to indulge your fantasies.” She dragged her attention back to the writing on the scrolls.
Could they be misreading elders will fall? Sure, it was rumored that elders were hunted for sale on the black market, but even if those rumors were true, they wouldn’t be killed—just taken hostage and controlled for use of their supernatural abilities. What could that mean for their race and the war against therians if people were killing the strongest and wisest vamps?
Slade caught her hand, lifted it to his mouth, and planted a warm kiss on her palm. “You didn’t seem to have a problem indulging my fantasies last night in ReVamp’s back office . . . or the night before in the haven broom closet, or the afternoon before in—”
Shivers rode an electric current up her arm as he kissed her again between words. “Okay, okay.” Heat flushed her center as memories of their lovemaking came to the forefront of her mind. When Slade set his sights on something in their wild love life (usually Dylan’s naked body hovering over him in more-than-risqué situations), or his career as a kick-ass Assassin, he got it.
Feeling her fangs hum and her stomach coil, Dylan rolled her chair to a side filing cabinet and slid open the bottom drawer. After digging through Bloodlust Therapy registration forms and Vampire Outreach Home contracts, her fingers snagged what she was looking for—a ReVamp special Bloodblaster Bar. She tore open the wrapper and shoved it into her mouth.
“Have I ever told you how hot you are when you go on one of your chocolate binges?” Slade’s eyebrows reached for his hairline as a playful smile danced on his lips. “Almost too sexy to resist.”
She switched cheeks, tossing the chocolatey-nougat and O+ combo around in her mouth as she bent over the scrolls again. She picked a fallen morsel off her jeans. “Would you rather I feed like you do?”
“AB and Rum isn’t that bad.” He crossed his arms and leaned back on his desk—the one situated not five feet away that she’d graciously given him so he’d stop sitting on the edge of hers. Dylan swore the man hated chairs. “Dylan, as long as you still get your kicks feeding from me, I could care less how you get your nutrition.”
Before Dylan could swallow the Bloodblaster and shoot off a snappy comment, the telephone rang.
“ReVamp,” Slade answered, with the kindness of a grizzly bear. “Slade speaking.”
Dylan shook her head, remembering how he’d first seduced her with the strong gruff of his voice. She hadn’t known what he was then: a therian in vampire form, infiltrating her haven to complete a mission. She couldn’t have known what an important role he was going to play in her life, or her heart.
“We’re on our way.” He hung up the phone and had his trench coat around his shoulders before she could flinch. “There’s trouble at the haven.”
“What are you talking about? What kind of trouble?” Their haven had been quiet since last month’s Winter Solstice. Therians had retreated to their safe-holes in the city after their power-hungry leader was taken out of commission. And Dylan’s khiss had solidified after the long-awaited return of their Primus, Slade’s uncle Hiram. “Is it therians?”
“No.” The sharp edge in his voice didn’t bode well. “It’s something else.”
She took the cue and gathered her things as quickly as she could. She rolled up the scrolls, locked them in the back office, and flipped a Closed sign on ReVamp’s front door.
They were in Slade’s deep-ocean-blue Hummer, driving into the thick of the industrial district in ten minutes flat. When the haven appeared on the right—looking like anything but a plain warehouse, with its large blacked-out windows and cathedral-style door—Dylan got the feeling something was off-kilter.
When Hiram first called, Dylan thought maybe he was having problems with some newborns. Maybe they weren’t acclimating to her khiss’s quiet way of life or having issues digesting the synthetic blood ReVamp provided. She didn’t expect the haven to look like it was on lockdown. This was more serious than she’d initially thought.
The place was too quiet.
No khissmates socialized in the wrought-iron lounge chairs on the partially covered side patio. Most of the vehicles—luxury sports cars and spiffed-out SUVs that normally littered the parking lot—were gone. Shadows drenched the side alleys and the front door overhang. No softly glowing red lights illuminated the curved pathways around the building. Thick fog rolled over the hugely vaulted roof, giving cover to otherworldly things that may’ve decided to crash a vamp party.
Good thing Slade was at her side. If a therian even breathed downwind of this place, he would know it.
Slade parked behind the haven and shot Dylan a sideways glance before opening his door.
“I’m not staying in the car, so don’t even say it.” She slid out and stormed around to his side. He sighed as he closed his own door and locked the Hummer. “By now you should know better than to even think it,” she said.
“Baby, I wasn’t even going to go there.”
Wind picked up, blowing scraps of paper around the deserted alley. Slade caught one of the wild mahogany curls fluttering about her face and secured it behind her ear. He palmed the small of her back as he walked toward the back door.
“Besides, you have nothing to worry about. I can take care of myself, thank you very much.” Dylan lifted up her blue cable-knit sweater and revealed a sterling silver dagger with a diamond-encrusted handle.
“Well, doesn’t that look familiar.”
“I never leave home without it. Just in ca
se.” He’d given it to her not long after the Valcdana ceremony. When he’d drained her of her blood, then let her fill up on him to pull herself back amongst the living. It was the ultimate sacrifice, bonding them for the remainder of their extended lives.
“Well, get ready to use it,” he said as he pulled open the door. “Hiram said there’s something that looks like dark shadows terrorizing the haven.”
Chapter Seven
“Drink from acceptable sources for nourishment. Drink from your lover for pleasure. Drink to kill, and you’ll not only find yourself without a khiss, but without hope.”
San Francisco Haven Rule #4
DYLAN’S BROWS KNIT together. “Shadows?”
As her mind backtracked to the books on vampire lore she’d skimmed through the years, she recalled reading something about elders’ spirits coming to life—living, breathing like some sort of demonic ghost from the other side. She tried to remember something more than a fanciful tale meant to scare vampires into believing elders were all-powerful, but came up blank.
“I know that skeptical gleam in your eye,” Slade said, severing her concentration. “But therians can only shift into living forms, so you can rule that out right now.”
She didn’t mean to insinuate therians were involved. But now that he’d mentioned it, wasn’t it an option worth considering?
She roped her hand around his, keeping her other hand free for the dagger in case he was wrong. Therians were suckers for silver. One swipe of Mathilda through the heart and a therian would fall in a heartflicker. One slip of her dagger’s feminine name to Slade and he’d fall into a fit of hysteria. “You were able to change into a vampire when it’d never been done before. Are you sure this thing can’t be therian?”
“I was able to shift into a vampire because I have both vampire and therian blood.” He led her down a wide hallway cloaked in shadows and candlelight. “I can tell you this thing isn’t either of those.”
“How do you know for sure?”
“Because I’m one of a kind.” With a smart-ass smirk, Slade surveyed the flickering amber lights, listened to subtle creaks of the old, dark building, and took a few deep breaths of the heavily fragranced air. “Whatever it is, I don’t like the vibe it’s giving off. Can you feel that?”
She sent out what Slade called her spidey-senses, which were terribly out of practice. What was she trying to feel for anyway? She’d never been good at this kind of mumbo jumbo. Give her an equation to solve at ReVamp and she was all for it. Feeling for creepy things that go bump in the night—not so much. “I don’t feel anything.”
Smirking, he squeezed her hand with extra effort. Her knuckles cracked.
“Well I feel that.” Damn him and his twisted sense of humor.
The bulky gold ring on his middle finger dug into her skin. Embossed on the top, the symbol of the Crimson Council—a black heart tangled in vines of barbed wire—was given only to members serving on the board. Protection of vampires in the area was paramount. Lately the group of haven leaders had had success after success.
As they rounded the corner to the great room, Dylan gasped. Large groups of her khissmates were gathered together beneath the vaulted wood ceiling. It was easy for Dylan to differentiate between the branches of khiss administration, but having them all together in one place puzzled her. She’d never seen it done before.
Members of the military branch were on post at entry points to the haven. Erock, who happened to be the Primus’s nephew as well as the leader of the fight-hungry crew, was pacing the room like a hungry predator, checking on his men standing strong at the doors and windows with stakes at the ready. Dylan could make out that greasy mop of black hair anywhere.
Sitting closely together in the center, trying to make sense of the situation, were khiss guards, medics, educators, local blood distributors, and general members.
The heavily glossed black stone floor stretching through the main living space was jam-packed. Deep-mocha-colored leather couches had been pushed to the outskirts of the pentagonal great room to make space for more. Dark ruby-red walls, normally soothing and calm, now made the place feel cramped and anxious from too many bodies in such a confined space.
They must’ve been on high alert, gathered together so as not to lose track of a single soul.
Hiram, their active Primus, approached Dylan and Slade immediately. He was a whitewashed powerhouse with fire blazing behind his luminescent eyes. From his gray slacks to his off-white polo, up to his silver hair and paler-than-pale skin. He was the walking tinman from Oz with enough heart to make you fight beside him, whether his cause was a lost one or not.
“What’s going on?” Slade asked, surveying the crowd of confused vamps.
Hiram spoke barely above a whisper, his light eyes paling out, as he led Dylan and Slade around the great room. “We got wind of something sweeping through the haven from one room to another. Not a big threat, per se, just something out of the ordinary catching peoples’ eyes. Like a fog, or a—”
“Dark shadow,” Slade finished. “Got it.”
Dylan knew he was already forming his plan of attack. No doubt that plan entailed him bashing and smashing, killing whatever this thing was, and brushing off his hands like it was nothing.
Hiram ushered them toward a large wing leading to the registrar’s office and a private movie theatre that played all-night showings of classic romance flicks like When Harry Bit Sally and Breakfast at Tiffany’s Throat.
“At first we thought it was just some vamp who knew basic magic playing a joke,” Hiram explained. “We sent out a scout to check it out. When he failed to report, we sent a search party after him. He was found behind the Dumpsters in the alley, right near the back door. Not a scratch on him. Cause of death is unclear . . . it’s like his heart simply stopped beating.”
Dylan and Slade exchanged heated glances, Slade giving a quick shake of his head. There was no way it was therian.
“We sent a second scout with professional training at Erock’s request,” Hiram continued. “Same story. No report back. We started asking around, thinking we’d find him at his post looking the same as the last scout.”
“And?” Dylan asked.
“We found him all right. He was in the broom closet with Debbie from Registrar.”
Dylan felt Slade’s eyes bore down on her . . . the broom closet was one of their favorite places to have their own fun. Secluded, quiet. It seemed others had the same idea.
“Guess this vamp didn’t take his job as seriously as Erock thought. His pants were down around his ankles. Debbie was stripped down completely. And they were both lying on the floor. Stone dead.”
“Where was Debbie right before she left with the second scout?” Slade asked.
Hiram pointed to the desk of the registrar. The registrar’s office wasn’t really an office at all. Actually, it wasn’t even a room. At least not by any standards Dylan had ever known. It was an alcove pushed back five feet from the hallway wall—just enough space for a desk and a few filing cabinets. No door. Certainly no privacy. Tonight, records had been pulled out of their little cubbies and spilled all over the floor and into the hallway.
“Looks like a tornado came through here,” Dylan said, sifting through the cards.
“Exactly,” Hiram said. “We’re not sure what went on, but it looks like some sort of a struggle took place. Whether it was from the two of them having fun or this lurking shadow, we may never know.”
Slade kept his eyes on the hallway leading to the great room. Dylan wondered if he was hearing something or just being overly cautious.
Two girls, dressed head to toe in the latest vamp fashion—plaid school-girl skirts and laced-to-the-knee black boots—walked by them, toward the open theatre door ahead on the right.
“So this . . . shadow . . . roams around the haven, harassing scouts and Debbie from Registrar
, and leaving others fine and dandy to report its odd behavior?” Not giving the newbies a second look, Slade kicked through a pile of papers and walked toward the map on the side wall. “Doesn’t sound like it’ll be much of a problem to figure out. Dylan and I will start researching ghosts and check in on the other species that go bump in the night around this part of the city.”
A high-pitched sound of air being sucked quickly out of a duct echoed through the hall. Dylan and Slade’s gaze snapped to the girls. They screamed and froze in their tracks, huddling against one another, staring wide-mouthed at the ominous fog coming right for them.
Slade bounded down the hall so fast Dylan couldn’t follow his movements—one of the benefits of Slade being the strongest and fastest of the species. Hiram stood protectively in front of Dylan. She palmed Mathilda, giving its diamond shaft a finger roll for good luck.
The blanket of charcoal-gray smoke slithered along the floor, holding the naïve girls in its sight. It hissed and writhed, spitting and bubbling as it slid along the ground. Evil churned inside its black depths. Hatred fueled its snakelike movement. It shrank and grew, floating right for them.
Dylan yelled, “Don’t just stand there! Run!”
As if they were mesmerized by something inside the ghost shadow, the girls remained where they stood. Black tar-like fingers clawed up their bodies in thick vines. The girl on the right gasped loudly, inhaling a giant plume of smoke as it ran up her chest and past her lips.
Slade must’ve realized that things were happening much too fast. That he couldn’t save both girls. The encroaching fog was going to cover the girl on the left in a hiccup. In a flash that looked more like a whirlwind than a man moving, Slade roped his arm around the girl on the right and pulled her from the clutches of her blonde friend. She spun out of his arms and hit the wall with a thud, safely out of the range of the slithering shadow. Slade turned toward the blonde, who was still as stone.
Like an expelled puff of cigar smoke, the dark fog enveloped her from toe to blonde curls. It fizzed and writhed as it collapsed around her, covering her in its blanket of black.
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