After Dark

by Gena Showalter

  Once she met up with her contact, she would be escorted to the nest. Damon and the other hunters would monitor her movements from a safe distance and follow her to the location. Damon had instructed her to play it cool once she was inside and not draw too much attention to herself. Caius’s subordinates would undoubtedly engage in a power struggle if they assumed he was dead. She needed to encourage them in the direction of declaring him missing, instead. Ideally she would also find out who was behind the zombie virus.

  While Tiffany distracted the vamps, the tech specialists would map a layout of the building and use a high-powered heat sensor to detect where all the beings in the residence resided. It was Damon’s job to make the call on when to enter and to direct their routes of entry.

  Tiffany promised him that once the hunters were inside, she would seek safety in the van with the tech team.

  The hunters’ objective was simple: annihilate as many vamps as possible, particularly the ones showing any signs of viral infection. With luck all the Rochester vamps would be in attendance, including the bloodsucker orchestrating the spread of the disease.

  No matter what, they hoped to effectively control the situation by destroying the source of infection, even if they were unable to identify him, which would free Damon to hunt down any remaining infected vamps—should there be any left—as quickly as possible.

  He finished tucking his weapons into place, with one last piece to go. With care, he removed a long black case from the top shelf of his weapons closet and laid it across his bed. Damn, it had been a long time since he’d opened this thing.

  He unhooked the latches and opened the lid to reveal his father’s pure silver slaying sword. The sword had passed through the past ten generations of Damon’s family, a treasured possession even before the Execution Underground’s formation in the late 1600s, uniting freelancing hunters who were newly settled in the Americas into one central group, a group which would later become international. The beautifully crafted piece of weaponry had served his ancestors in slaying thousands of vampires over the years, and now he intended to use it for the very first time.

  He strapped the custom scabbard on his back and slipped the sword in. Assessing his mental check list, he made certain he’d prepared. He glanced at his watch. Ten minutes before the Sergeant’s chosen hunters arrived.

  He grabbed his jacket from the bed, felt something in a pocket and realized what it was. Tiffany’s letters.

  A tight feeling constricted his chest.

  Before he could change his mind, he snatched the letters from the pocket and opened the single envelope holding them.

  Tiffany was right. He needed to know.

  He had ten minutes. He sat down on his bed and opened the pages. The first letter was dated three weeks after Mark’s death.

  Dear B,

  Your letters are piling up. I’ve received one every day for a week now. I haven’t read a single one.

  Damon stopped breathing. Deep down, he wasn’t surprised she’d never read them, but it still hurt.

  But she had read his letters now. One, anyway.

  The letter.

  He flipped to the next letter.

  Dear B,

  I wish you’d stop sending letters. Every time I see the return address of the Execution Underground, my stomach churns because I know it’s either a check that’s meant to pay me off for the brother I lost, a check I have to cash if I don’t want to be homeless...or a letter from you. I don’t know which makes me feel worse.

  He bit his lip. Shit. That one stung.

  Dear B,

  Why?

  All I can think is why...?

  A sharp pain stabbed at his heart as he read the words. The next was merely a single sentence.

  I feel nothing...

  God help him. He had to keep reading. He couldn’t pause to think. It hurt too much.

  Dear B,

  I tried believing this today.

  Everything is normal. Mark is not dead. You are not the cause of any pain in my life. Life is the way it used to be. I’m a happy college student, preparing for med school.

  Yeah...it didn’t fool me for a second, either.

  And the next:

  If you were here, I’d stab a knife straight into your back, just like you did to Mark. What worthless excuse for a man betrays his friends? What kind of pathetic human being leaves the ones they love to die?

  You do.

  Next:

  I wish I hated you. Things would be less complicated if I hated you.

  He hated to keep reading, but he had to.

  Dear B,

  I’m addressing this to you, because though I know I’ll never send it, I don’t know who else to write to. It’s strange that the only person left in this world who I feel a strong connection to is the man responsible for the death of my brother.

  I’m all alone now. I have no family left. My grandparents are dead. Aunt Cecelia’s dead. My parents are dead. Mark is dead. And now you might as well be dead, too.

  I must be next....

  Tiffany

  He had to force himself to keep going.

  Dear B,

  I realize now that not only is my brother really dead, but so is the friendship you and I had. I’ve run through endless possibilities of ways to fix this, ways we could reconcile, but there is no way.

  Tiffany

  He wanted to stop, but he couldn’t.

  Dear B,

  I need to move on, to forget about you and put the past behind me, but your letters just keep coming.

  I tried to burn them. I built a small fire out behind my apartment building last night. As I watched the flames, I held your letters—all of them, the ones I’ve read and the ones I haven’t—over the fire. But even though I will never read them again, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t burn a single one.

  Tiffany

  And finally...

  Dear B,

  This is the last letter I will ever write to you. I’m moving forward with my life.

  I wish I could say what we once had between us was good, but I question whether a relationship built entirely on letters is really a relationship at all. The bitter, cynical side of me says it was never really anything. The nostalgic side disagrees and insists that at one point in time we did have something good, but that the goodness was just lost.

  On most days, it feels as if I’m at war with myself about what to make of what we once were and what we are now. Was it good? Bad? Worth it? Not worth it? I don’t know if I’ll ever fully come to terms with either feeling. Perhaps that’s because it’s a little of both.

  All I can hope for is that in the future I’ll be able to go a day, maybe a week, maybe even a month or, finally, years without thinking about you, because at the current moment...

  You occupy my mind every second, and without you, life doesn’t feel worth living.

  Yours truly,

  Tiff

  Damon folded the letters and placed them back inside the envelope. Mechanically, he tucked them inside his pocket again. A knock sounded at the front door. The team had arrived.

  Tiffany called out to him from downstairs. “Damon?”

  For a long moment he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak. His heart pounded, and adrenaline pierced through him. He could feel her pain, her grief within every word, but...

  Damn. Despite everything she’d said, her feelings had never faltered. They were back to where they’d been prior to Mark’s death. He sucked in a deep breath. A massive weight lifted off his shoulders. They were back to where they’d started, as if they’d continued writing all along. Back to both of them knowing but never speaking it aloud.

  She loved him...and God help him, he loved her, too.

  * * *


  Tiffany stood stock-still as Damon attached the tracking device to the clasp of her bra. Despite all her nerves, the feeling of his fingertips brushing her skin sent chills racing down her spine, and heat rushed between her legs. The last time she’d felt that feeling, he’d been on top of her, pushing inside her. Pure ecstasy.

  She barely noticed the small device rubbing against her skin as Damon lowered the hem of her shirt. With gentle movements he moved her long hair to hang free down her spine. She bit her lower lip. She didn’t know why, but since right before they left his apartment with the E.U. team, he’d been more tender with her than ever, similar to how he’d been in bed, but...different.

  Not that she was complaining.

  “Are you ready?” he whispered in her ear.

  She nodded. “Yeah, as ready as a girl can be for playing in a vampire nest.” Nerves built inside her again. A light sheen of sweat covered her palms. She always felt a little clammy before meeting vamps, even when fully armed, with her gun hidden beneath her jacket as it was now. But the feeling always subsided when she encountered them and her hatred for what they’d done to her family rose to the top.

  It was the anticipation that raked her nerves, not the mission itself.

  “Repeat to me what you’re going to do again. I want to be completely certain we’re on the same page,” Damon said.

  She let out a long sigh and faced him. “I’ve already repeated this to you twenty times, but all right. I’m driving to Club Fantasy and meeting up with Janette. I’m riding with her to the nest, and when we enter, I’ll stall the discussion of Caius’s disappearance for as long as I can. When you guys burst in, I’ll hightail it out of there to the van.”

  He gave her a single nod. “Good.” He met her eyes as he placed his hands on her shoulders. “We’ll be close by the whole time. Nothing will happen to you. I swear it.”

  She smiled as much as she could, considering her nerves. “I trust you to keep me safe.”

  He circled his arms around her waist and pulled her flush against him. Pressing his lips against hers, he kissed her deep. A small round of catcalls and whistles echoed from his fellow hunters.

  He released her and shot a glare in their direction. “All you morons shut your gaping mouths and get back in position before I put you there,” he commanded.

  The other operatives snapped to attention. Their mouths slammed shut.

  Tiffany planted a kiss on her palm, before pressing it against his lips. She grinned. “For you to keep.”

  She longed to hear him utter three words to her. But she knew how hard that would be for him. For a man who’d been taught to bottle up his emotions, to be distant for the sake of the job, telling her how he felt would be torture. He wasn’t prepared for that yet, not while he still bore the guilt of Mark’s death.

  He opened his mouth, trying to force words out, but she placed a single finger over his lips.

  “You don’t have to say it. I already know.” She ran her hand over his arm before she sighed. “Let’s go massacre some leeches.” She turned away and walked toward the door.

  * * *

  Fifteen minutes later she sat in the passenger seat of Janette’s silver sedan, cruising away from the city. She had no idea where they were going. She assured herself that there was nothing for her to be afraid of; Damon and the rest of the Execution Underground team were right behind her.

  Once the vamps had accepted her suggestion of a meeting, entering the nest should have been a piece of blood pudding, but a mounting feeling of dread crept through her. She couldn’t shake the feeling that the night wasn’t going to go as smoothly as planned.

  After thirty minutes of silence, Janette parked her car outside what appeared to be an abandoned warehouse. Tiffany nearly scoffed. What a cliché. Was it just her, or did all drug dealers, gangsters, monsters and the general underbelly of the population operate from inside old warehouses?

  She and Janette exited the vehicle and slipped inside the freezing cold building. Tiffany almost choked on her own tongue. The inside held more vampires than she had ever imagined resided in Rochester. Nearly thirty bloodsuckers filled the room, along with only a small scattering of the humans she knew to be Hosts.

  With twenty members of the Execution Underground at Damon’s side, the vampires outnumbered them. She tried not to think about that. Few of the vampires were very old, of that she was certain. She prayed the E.U. hunters could handle the extra monsters.

  All eyes turned to her and Janette as they entered the room. Tiffany scanned the crowd and recognized several faces. The closest in rank to Caius was Lucas. The regular bartender at Club Fantasy, Lucas had been on this earth since the mid-1800s, when he’d been working as a scientist, or so Caius had told her. The vamp wasn’t nearly as ancient as his egotistical Roman superior had been, but in age he trumped all the other vamps in the room. Caius had told her that Lucas was the second-eldest vampire in the city, another migrant from N.Y.C.

  “Finally our absent leader’s pet is here,” Lucas said with a grin.

  From the look on his face, she already knew he couldn’t have been happier about Caius’s disappearance. With Caius gone, it was highly likely power would fall to him. Others might try to battle him for the position, but considering his age, his defeat would be highly unlikely.

  He eyed her up and down. “You don’t look to be grieving very deeply over the death of your master.”

  Master, my ass. In her head, Tiffany pulled her gun and shot Lucas point-blank solely for the disgustingly smug grin painted across his face. She fixed him with a hard glare. “I’m not grieving because Caius is not dead,” she said.

  A murmur of whispers ignited throughout the small crowd. So much for not drawing attention to herself.

  Lucas raised a brow. “That’s quite an assertive claim. Do you know something we don’t?”

  She shrugged. “Perhaps. It depends on what you know. Gentlemen first.”

  Lucas frowned. He didn’t like being sassed by a lowly human. His lips remained shut.

  Janette answered instead. Her ghostly face reminded Tiffany of a skeleton. And, man, was the red lipstick freaky against that pale skin. Janette glanced in her direction. “All we know is that Caius, Carl and the car have disappeared. Perhaps you know something more than we do?”

  Tiffany continued to stare straight at Lucas. “Actually, I don’t. But why Caius going missing would cause all of you to believe he is dead is beyond me.” She scanned the crowd, meeting several pairs of eyes along the way. “There is nothing pointing to Caius’s death, and knowing him as I do—as we all do—it seems quite likely to me that he’s putting a plan in motion, something he doesn’t want anyone to know about until he’s ready to reveal it. It sounds to me—” her gaze locked with Lucas’s again “—that some may be all too eager to declare him dead.”

  His jaw clenched. “Don’t get too cocky, human,” he spat.

  She feigned an innocent look. “Too cocky? I’m just trying to protect Caius’s interests...exactly like everyone else here who is loyal to him.”

  Many vampires and Hosts alike nodded.

  She cleared her throat. She had to keep this situation under control. “Rather than bickering about whether or not Caius is dead, I think it would benefit all of us to come up with a strategy to search for him. Until it’s proven otherwise, we should proceed as if Caius is alive and well. I’m quite certain he left to attend to pressing business.”

  Lucas chuckled. “Without informing you or any of his fellow vampires?”

  Tiffany shrugged innocently. “Who am I to question the motivations of my master?” Her stomach churned. The word tasted disgusting on her tongue.

  He crossed his arms over his chest. “Perhaps you’re correct.”

  What? Tiffany’s eyes widened. Where was he going with this? Why was
he agreeing with a human?

  A devious grin spread across Lucas’s face. “May I have a word, Tiffany? While the others create possible action plans, you and I can discuss the finer details of Caius’s disappearance in private.”

  Damn it all to hell. With everyone standing there watching, she couldn’t refuse or she would appear insubordinate, a deadly sin for a human, as if she had something to hide or a reason to fear. And as Caius’s favorite, she was somewhat safe—hurting her would be as blatant as attacking Caius himself. So if she wanted to appear as if she truly believed he was still alive, she couldn’t act as if she feared Lucas in any way. But she wouldn’t put it past him—or any powerful vampire, for that matter—to attack her in Caius’s absence, if only to strike a blow at Caius if he sought the elder’s position.

  She flashed a fake smile. “Of course.”

  Lucas gestured for her to follow him down a nearby hall. Voices erupted in open discussion behind them, heatedly debating Caius’s disappearance, as she walked toward what felt like her doom.

  She followed Lucas to the end of the hall, where he held open a door to what had probably once been an office. She walked inside, and he followed suit. Adrenaline raced through her. When he closed the door behind them, the distinct sound of a dead bolt clicking into place sounded in her ears.