Dumpsters and wait for my mark. Go!”
Pixie and Twitch stepped into the middle of the alley, dodging from shadow to shadow, guns outstretched.
Ruan turned to Dante. “You stay here and block this exit to the club. Don’t let anyone out this door, you understand? Don’t let anything take you away from this post and watch the street behind you. A therian walks by this alley, you take care of business, all right?”
Dante nodded, withdrawing his blade.
“I’m going to the roof to drop in on their little party. We’re going to show these therians what it’s like to be ganged up on.”
Dante growled in excitement, his eyes narrowing to determined slits.
Ruan only made it a few strides before flashes of brilliant white light engulfed the area behind the Dumpsters. Like a strobe light gone haywire, the area flashed between light and dark so quickly, Pixie and Twitch looked disjointed. Like their movements were staccato and forced, instead of fluid, like the attack maneuvers Ruan had taught them over the last month.
What the hell was going on? The whole place was lighting up like their Winter Solstice celebration.
His trainees eyed him intensely, their eyes full of surprise and wonder. They were as confused about the situation as he was. Unlike him, their surprise made them stupid. They rounded the Dumpster on their own command, knives at the ready.
The strobe lights died out. Darkness reigned. Pixie screamed.
Running full-speed with gun drawn, desperate to save his team and get the hell out of there, Ruan turned the corner of the Dumpster, squinted into the light, and stopped. A beast of a man—well over six feet tall, with short stubbly hair and skin pale as the moon—hovered over a pile of crumpled forms on the ground: two vamps and Pixie and Twitch. The light surrounded him like it came from him. It formed a perfect, pure circle of light.
Ruan had never seen anything like it. He imagined an aura to be just as encompassing, the white light at the end of the hypothetical tunnel of death just as bright. It was nothing of this earth, he was sure. He stood dumbfounded at the vision before him.
The two mundanes, who were in some sort of hypnotic state, took off running once he skidded to a halt, elbowing him as they ran past.
The sudden movement caught the beast’s attention. He whipped around. Before Ruan could make out any features of the beast’s face, he was shoved into the air by a flying orb of light that radiated from the beast’s arms. That shit hurt like a motherfucker. Way more than if he’d taken a hit to the gut with a sledgehammer.
He hit the brick wall with a thud and fell to the asphalt, tearing the hell out of Slade’s pants. Pissed off as hell, half-blinded by the orb surrounding the beast, Ruan clambered to his feet, crouched low, and hissed.
Good thing he didn’t need to see to kick therian ass.
Withdrawing his blade, he closed his eyes, feeling the air pulse and twinge around him. He sensed Dante’s anxiety at the mouth of the alley to his right. He was obeying orders, but riding a fine line between ditching his post to lend a hand . . . or a weapon. The light in front of Ruan flickered for a fraction of a second. Ruan felt the light soften like someone lowered the dimmer on the power source.
Ruan took the opportunity; pushed off the wall and charged straight into the most intense energy he’d ever felt.
Everything went black. Black as a never-ending abyss. Was he blinded by the dark as he was blinded by the light? Were his eyes taking their sweet time to adjust? Ruan stopped moving. He went completely still. His breathing shallow. His knife ready to slice into the next thing that bumped him.
Get a grip, he told himself. Get a fucking grip.
Images took root. He was alone, standing in a narrow stretch of alley between two Dumpsters. In addition to the four bodies piled one on top of the other at his feet, another pile of limbs and ghostly faces were stacked against the back wall; five therians in battle gear. Scorch marks burned the asphalt around them in odd, mystifying lines.
Why would this . . . thing . . . kill both the vamps and the therians, but leave the mundanes free to walk away? He’d seen this thing shift, hadn’t he? It was therian in canine clothing—a dog or a wolf—so his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him.
Ruan’s gaze traveled to the wall he’d been thrown against. The bricks had cracked into a starburst pattern where his back had mashed into the mortar. Whatever that thing was, it was powerful. And the beast who had wielded the light, the therian with nasty powers . . . yeah, that asshole was long gone.
The intense energy he sensed had dissipated, leaving his body chilled and his thoughts running rampant.
“Ruan,” Dante yelled from the mouth of the alley. “Out here!”
Ruan dashed around the Dumpster. His stomach jumped into his throat. A curtain of black smoke floated across the ground like a serpent, headed right for Dante. It bubbled and breathed, writhed and hissed, like . . . almost like it was a living thing. A smudge of black. Pure evil seethed from its depths. He’d heard Slade and Dylan describe something like this before.
It came up on Dante fast. Ruan reacted on instinct, flinging two blades into the air simultaneously. They went right through the shadow, hitting the concrete and cartwheeling away. The shadow hovered a few feet above the ground, picking up speed as it rose to wash over Dante.
With reflexes nearly too fast for Ruan’s eyes to track, Dante leaped into the air, twisted and turned over the curtain of smoke. Although he tucked his arms and legs, careful not to touch a wisp of the black with any part of his body, a single vine of smoke reached into the air, right for him, brushing against his hand. The bulk of the shadow swept past, underneath Dante’s overarching body. It gathered into a thick mass, then slithered around the corner of Mirage.
Dante landed in a crouched position facing the street, dagger touching asphalt, breathing heavy.
“You all right?” Ruan asked, running to Dante’s side, eyeing the hand touched by the dark shadow. It had left a nasty black smudge that trailed from his finger to his wrist. “I thought you were a goner.”
Dante stood, spun his blade back into his belt, and flipped his hand over, examining the mark himself. “I have a few tricks up my sleeve.”
“I see that.”
“What the hell happened back there?” Dante asked. “What was that thing?”
“A death shade.” When Ruan received a blank, expectant look, he continued. “The dark spirit of a vampire elder. Tonight friends of mine told me someone’s trying to unleash those things.”
“Sounds like a picnic.” Dante shook his head. “Are the others—?”
“Gone.”
“Damn it.”
“Let’s clean up this mess and get them out of here. You got Pixie, I got Twitch.”
Nodding, Dante followed Ruan’s lead back to the Dumpsters. Ruan knelt down, looking for signs of attack: blood, wounds, scratches. Pixie looked fine. He put a finger to her neck to be sure his instincts were right. Yeah, she was fine, minus the still heart that was beating not ten minutes ago.
“You ever seen anything like this before?” Dante asked. “They look like they just dropped dead. And that light . . . what the hell was it? Did that come from the death shade?”
Ruan shook his head. “I’ve seen loads of things in my day, but nothing like that. Only thing I’ve ever heard that’s as bright as that light is an orb of protection, but only certain elders have those.” Seemed there was a new evil for vampires to hunt, lurking in the shadows of the city. And it seemed to know a hell of a lot more about him than vice versa.
“Ruan, look,” Dante said, pointing at Twitch.
His dark eyes were open, staring into the distance. “Hey, buddy, talk to me. Can you hear me?” Ruan asked, cupping one hand behind his head, feeling a pulse on his neck every now and again. “Say something if you can hear me.” If the sucker said he was looking into a tu
nnel of bright light, Ruan might’ve smacked him upside his massive head for playing dumb.
He opened his mouth slowly and expelled a heavy breath. A single word hung on his lips and puffed into the cold winter air. “Eve.” His head lolled back. His heart stilled.
“Did he just say—” Dante stopped short when he read Ruan’s expression. It must’ve shown pure rage, because he backed away to the far wall, leaving Ruan crouching over a pile of dead vamps.
Police sirens droned in the distance. They were getting louder, coming closer. Some drunk fools, probably the mundane morons who almost got their necks sliced and diced earlier, had called the police.
“Come on, boss, that’s our cue.” Dante scanned the sides of the alley, the sky, inside the Dumpsters. “Time to go.”
Ruan couldn’t leave. He had to explain the unexplainable. The light. The dark. The beast who controlled both. The death shade . . . all the evidence was here. He could feel the remnants of the power surge. He couldn’t explain it, but he could almost gather the fragments of power within himself. If he could just . . .
“He spoke her name,” Ruan said, more to himself than to Dante. “What my friends tried to tell me earlier tonight was real. More real than I gave them credit for. The death shade. It’s after her.”
Out of the corner of his eye Ruan saw Dante sink his fangs into his own arm. He gnashed his teeth against his skin until blood gushed onto the concrete.
“What the hell are you doing?” Ruan bit his tongue when Dante unsheathed his fangs and waved his arms over the piles of bodies. Thick drops of blood mixed with rainfall, wetting the dead completely. Dante reached into his back pocket, pulled out a long match, and kneeled on the pavement.
Red and blue lights lit up the alley from both directions as police sirens peaked, then muted completely. Car doors slammed.
“Whatever crazy ritual you’re doin’ here, dude, you gotta cut it short. We have to get these bodies out of here before the police find more organs than they bargained for on their autopsies, if you get what I mean.”
“One second.” Dante scratched the head of the match along the ground, beneath the Dumpster where the ground was still dry. It lit to life. Touching the flame with two fingers, he flicked a tear of red onto the pile of therian bodies by the wall, then tossed the entire match onto the lifeless vamps. Both piles erupted into flames, lighting the shadows rich shades of red and orange. More importantly, the pile of vamps shriveled into nothing but charred forms of dirt and dust. Nothing recognizable.
Dante’s blood was like . . . almost like . . . lighter fluid. How the hell was that possible? Did he really see Dante use his own blood as a convenient alternative to kerosene? Shit, he really was losing his mind tonight.
Beams of flashlights danced along the alley walls. “This is the police!” A gruff voice yelled. They were closing in fast. “We got a report that people were hurt! Is everyone all right back there?” Heavy steps pounded pavement mere feet from their position.
Time was up. Ruan scanned the alley right, then left. Looked up to the roof and the less-than-likely leap he could make to the top.
One instant Ruan was standing beside Dante, too preoccupied to pay attention to what the suddenly-ritualistic fool was doing. The next instant, Dante lunged for Ruan and pulled his hood over his head. He grabbed him around the shoulders and squeezed tight, mumbling in some foreign language Ruan had never heard.
It all happened so fast. He didn’t have time to react, think . . . hell, he hardly had time to breathe.
Air swooshed through Ruan’s ears. Everything went dark again. His body went limp, tingly and numb. Stabbing pain pierced through his temples, forcing him to pinch his eyes tight, and then—Pop!—the pain, the numbness, the swooshing were gone. He slowly opened his eyes. They were in the Tahoe, watching police swarm the street in front of Mirage like a horrible dream.
Dante was curled up in the passenger seat in a cold sweat, shivering from head to toe.
Ruan eyed Dante carefully, not sure what just happened or how they ended up back in his Tahoe. He ran through the events of the last few seconds. They were in the alley with zero options and their timer run dry. Dante used his blood to light fire to the vamps, obliterating their remains, then they somehow ended up back in his car. He’d officially catapulted into a wicked episode of the Twilight Zone.
“I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced.” Ruan gripped the shaft of the knife on his belt. “My name’s Ruan. Mind telling me who, or what, the hell you are?”
Chapter Fifteen
“Dogs howling in the dark of night howl for death before daylight.”
Crimson Bay Superstition
NOTHING SAYS “STUCK between a rock and a hard place” more than having to teleport someone against their will when they didn’t know you possessed the ability to begin with. But what choice did Dante have? He couldn’t let them get busted by SFPD, especially with dead bodies at their feet and no rational explanation of how they got there.
Dante refused to answer any of Ruan’s rapid-fire questions until they were as far away from Mirage as possible. He didn’t know what had happened with the light behind the Dumpster or—what had Ruan called it?—the death shade? Whatever it was, he wanted to put as much space between them as possible.
Ruan exited Van Ness Avenue, headed right for Golden Gate Park. The sky darkened with each passing mile. Rain battered the windows, making the windshield wipers work overtime. They swiped the glass in a dull, thumping rhythm that numbed Dante’s mind.
All he could think about was the hum of his body, its cold chill smattering bumps across his skin. He was cold. From the inside out. He hated feeling like a freak, like he was different from everyone around him.
But he was different, wasn’t he? He couldn’t sleep, and not just in the typical insomniac sense; Dante hadn’t slept in fifty years. Not a single wink since the day he was born. He could walk in sunlight without getting one of those deadly sunburns “normal” vamps were always complaining about. There was his teleporting gig, which he couldn’t explain if he wanted to, which he didn’t. Oh, and he had fangs, yet didn’t thirst for blood. No, what he hungered for was much worse . . .
Instead of keeping his freak flag in the closet, Dante had let it fly to get them out of a sticky spot. Now, the person he wanted respect from the most was probably thinking he was some Sideshow Bob.
Ruan pulled the Tahoe into a parking spot facing a stretch of grass, then swiveled in his seat, dogging Dante with a glare meant to kill.
Great.
“It’s going to be awhile before the heat dies down and I can take you back to your car. Until then, you’re going to explain a few things for me.” Ruan’s brows furrowed. His golden hair was matted down from the rain; it fell flat against his shoulders in thick strings. He shoved his fingers through it, then wrestled out of his soaked sweatshirt, tossing it in back. “I’m not letting you out of my sight until I’m satisfied with your answers.”
Low voices, too muffled to make out, buzzed in Dante’s ears. Dark whispers, telling him to do horrible things to decent people, pushed to the forefront, becoming clearer. No. This isn’t happening. Not now. Not with Ruan sitting dangerously close.
Needing to silence the hum before he did something he regretted, Dante darted out of the Tahoe and into the park. He needed to run, breathe, and focus before he acted out. A door slammed behind his, followed by thumping footsteps. Man, now was not the time to be his shadow.
The path Dante trudged swerved in and around clumps of eucalyptus and cypress trees. He bobbed beneath low hanging branches, weaved around gnarly trunks. A clearing appeared on the right. Dante veered left, choosing to remain cloaked by shadows of the branch overhangs.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Ruan asked, keeping stride with Dante effortlessly.
Dante didn’t know how long his feet would strike the
cement pathway snaking through the park, or where it would take him. It didn’t matter. He didn’t care if Ruan came along, either. Hell, he could follow him to the edge of this god-forsaken earth as long as Dante drowned out those damn voices. “I needed to burn some steam.”
“I can see that.” Their pace was grueling. Their shouts muffled by the driving wind and rain. “Don’t think for a second that I can’t drag you back if you don’t answer my questions.”
Dante knew full well what Ruan was capable of. The man was legendary. Invincible. The last thing he wanted was to lose him as a friend.
Dante shot a glance to Ruan’s belt, and the weapons harnessed there. It was enough to bring down a bear. Even if Dante thought he could take him, which he doubted, he didn’t want to fight Ruan. He admired him. If it was one thing Dante’d learned over the course of fifty years of sunrises and sunsets running together into one long-ass day, it was that you didn’t insult the admirable ones or the good ones. And you definitely didn’t give in to your urges to make them bleed . . .
Tonight, though, high regard didn’t matter. The voices were strong and getting stronger. He could feel his body yearning to listen. “You’re not dragging me back anywhere,” he breathed.
Ruan sped in front of him, planting a firm hand against his chest. “I need some answers.”
Dante tried to push past, but the sucker was too big and too strong. His shoes slipped in the grass and mud. “Ruan, under any other circumstances, I’d say fine, have it your way. But not tonight. If you knew what was good for you, you’d get your hands off me.”
“Really,” Ruan said with a laugh, matching Dante’s steps left for left and right for right. There was no way around his monstrous frame. “If you knew what was good for you, you’d keep your mouth in check. You see, I’ve just witnessed you dousing vamps in blood and lighting them on fire then doing some disappearing act like Houdini. I’m not about to let you out of my sight until I get what I want.”
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