Dark Heart of the Sun

by SK Ryder

  Garrett ignored her.

  Cassidy worked her wrist in the cuff, but her hand, even clammy as it was wouldn’t slide free. Pushing against the desk, she discovered it bolted to the floor. “Son of a bitch,” she muttered, watching Garrett for any clue of what he might have in mind for her and completely unnerved by his detached calm.

  Something on his other side kept tugging at her attention, something she recognized although she didn’t know why. The blue flame dragon on the screen guarded a login box that filled and emptied, filled and emptied, over and over again, trying and failing to gain access. It was a very long password . . .

  Dominic’s laptop, she realized, shocked. There was only one reason it would be here, and it was the last thing she wanted to believe.

  “Jackson, you freaking son of a bitch,” she said with a great deal more feeling.

  The corner of Garrett’s mouth tilted up.

  A cascade of noises like small gunshots echoed through the murky cavern, and a new, soft light began to build together with an incessant hum and a peculiar rushing hiss. Cassidy’s gaze darted around, bewildered.

  “What’s happening?”

  He didn’t look at her. “Sunset.”

  Though clearly not in here. Fifty feet up, the ceiling was packed wall to wall with the biggest lamps she had ever seen.

  The box in the center of the room emerged from the shadows, gleaming a dull gray, a cube perhaps ten feet on each side. Off to one side a ladder leaned against it. Garrett got up and went to stand in front of the box, grim-faced, hands on hips. A minute dragged by, and the lights reached maximum brilliance, their hum growing into a drone.

  A sudden, explosive bang made Cassidy leap up only to be painfully checked by the handcuff cutting into her wrist.

  “There’s our—” Garrett said before he was drowned out by an agonized scream coming from inside the box—along with a tremendous psychic surge of pain and rage that vibrated in her bones and drove tears to her eyes.

  “Dominic,” she gasped.

  Silence—both actual and mental. He had caught her blood scent in the air, but shut her out again the instant he sensed her alive. Like smoke on wind, he disappeared from her awareness.

  Garrett was beside her now. “It’s titanium. He can’t get out.”

  She could hardly find her voice. “What have you done?”

  He pulled a key ring from a drawer and unlocked her handcuffs. As they fell away, he stepped back and pulled the gun out of its holster, though he kept the muzzle pointed at the floor.

  “Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to get up, walk around to the front and say hello. After that, you’re going to prove me right and try to kill me.”

  The idea was as appealing as it was ludicrous. “With my bare hands?”

  “You won’t care.”

  She glanced at the gun. “And . . . you’ll kill me. In self-defense?”

  “Probably.”

  She got up, locking her knees, not quite trusting them to hold her. She couldn’t even imagine what would cause her to attack a man with a gun. If that’s what Dominic wanted her to do, she would have already felt that at this point. Forcing each foot in front of the other, aware of little but the gun behind her, she rounded the corner to the front of the box—the cage—and peered past the narrow vertical bars. The thing huddling in the far shadows was almost unrecognizable. The once proud and beautiful young vampire had been reduced to an animated corpse draped in raw skin.

  Cassidy stood rooted to the spot. She wanted to weep. She wanted to rage. She did neither. “Why? Why would you do this to him?”

  “He’s not human.”

  “But he was,” she cried, facing the man with the gun. “And he’s still a living thing. He feels pain. He’s suffering!”

  “By his own choice. All he has to do to make this stop is call his sire through their blood bond. But instead he wants to tell us stories, first about how he has no blood bonds, then how he killed his sire. An impossibility in their world, I might add.”

  You’re telling them what? she thought at Dominic and felt him recoil. If they believed him, they would have no reason to keep him alive.

  “I think he hasn’t screamed loud enough yet,” Garrett said. “He will eventually. They all do. Then we can put them both down and put this behind us.”

  All her blood drained to her feet. “Put them . . . down?”

  “It’s what the Foundation does. And we’re damn good at it, if I do say so myself.”

  Dominic’s mind brushed against hers, a whisper of an impression. He wouldn’t fight them, not even if he could. At long last, he had found a way to die.

  The breath rushed out of her. Over my dead body. Very deliberately, she turned and took a single step toward the cage.

  “You should know, Miss Chandler. The only blood he’s had lately is his own.”

  Dominic’s warning was a great deal less vague. His panic battered at her, willing her to stay back.

  She took another step. So much for this powerful vampire’s control over her. “If I’m going to die here, Mr. Striker, I’ll take his fangs over your bullets any . . . night.”

  “Then by all means. Be my guest.”

  Dominic withdrew a little farther. Both terror and hunger surged from him in waves, each more powerful than the last, propelling his silent cries. Do not ask this of me.

  She kept moving forward. Help me prove this wacko wrong, Dominic. I know you can.

  I have no control!

  Which is what he expects—a bloodthirsty monster that’ll tear me apart. But you’re better than that, and you know it. You know it in your heart. Just like I know it.

  Not tonight! The vampire sprang up and paced in the shadows at the back of the cage, frantic, searching for a way out that wasn’t there.

  Right. Guess that explains why you’re back there. While I’m . . . here. She wrapped one hand around a cool titanium bar.

  Dominic turned into a blur, crashing back and forth between the two sides like a hyper accelerated projectile before landing in a back corner where he rolled up into a tight ball. Merde!

  “He doesn’t look all that happy to see you,” Garrett remarked, sounding perplexed.

  “He doesn’t want to hurt me. But he . . . can’t—” A flaky black substance crackled between her fingers. She pulled her hand away from the bar and watched it drift into the direct glare of the overhead lights. With a tiny puff of smoke, the flake disintegrated into fine gray powder. The floor was littered with the stuff—both in front of and inside the cage.

  Cassidy stared at the powder. Ash. She glanced back at the cage bars. Blood. And skin. Or what was left of it after the silver coating finished with it. The air reeked with the stench of its burn.

  White-hot rage tore through her heart. She turned around.

  Garrett raised his gun.

  Suddenly Dominic was there, hands sizzling around the bars, his voice a hoarse whisper. “No.”

  “I want to kill him. For what he’s done to you, I want to kill him.” Tears blurred her vision.

  “You must not. You cannot.”

  Cassidy turned to look into his gaunt face and the deep, glazed black pools of his eyes shimmering behind the matted shock of hair. Smoke curled around his clenched fingers. The stink of burning flesh rose.

  She extended her right hand through the bars, reaching for his face.

  “No,” he hissed, jerking back. When he let go of the bars, fragments of blackened skin remained stuck to them.

  It was the first good look she got at him, and the sight made both her heart and stomach turn over. Dominic’s skin wasn’t just raw. Large patches of it were completely missing. Only the thinnest film covered the withering muscle and bone of his left arm and side. Dropping to hi
s haunches, he put his head down on his knees, unwilling to see her reaction to his condition.

  Cassidy’s legs buckled beneath her. She slid down the bars. Her hand settled in the ash inside the cage, palm up. “Eat. You need to eat.”

  For interminable seconds, he didn’t move. Then, slowly, Dominic brushed his fingers against hers. Physically his touch was the caress of a corpse. Mentally it was a lightning strike to her soul. Ma belle amie. Feeding now only prolongs the inevitable. I cannot last long like this, and I yearn for this misery that is my life to end. I only hoped that you would never know what happened to me.

  Cassidy twined her fingers with his, pulled his presence deeper into her mind by its virtual scruff. But I do know. And I’m not going to let you do this. I’m not letting you give up.

  I no longer have a choice. He stirred a little, his attention captured by the leaking Band-Aid in her elbow and the bruise growing around it.

  How did this happen, Dominic?

  Still watching her injury, he showed her. Agonizing memories flowed through her. His decision to let her go to live free of his darkness. His relief at finding Jackson willing to give her the life he believed she deserved. The trap of light. The abysmal depths of Jackson’s bottled rage. The sick pleasure Garrett took from Dominic’s suffering.

  Her heart twisted in her chest, then ripped right down the middle. She moaned. I brought him into your life . . .

  For this reason. My destiny as Serge would claim, non?

  Serge is an idiot!

  He speaks truth. This is a fitting end for me, and you are the key to make it happen. Now you must find it in your heart to let Jackson keep you safe from things such as me. He is angry and frightened, but he is not evil.

  But his uncle is. She gave him her own memories of how she came to be here, what Garrett had done to her and why. What he surely meant to do to her still. The well of despair within Dominic expanded into a yawning chasm.

  You see why I can’t do that, don’t you? If you die, your blood is on their hands as well as mine. They could never trust me, and they’d be right. With her free hand she yanked off the small bandage and squeezed the puncture until it oozed. I don’t know how, but I’m going to get you out of there, and you’ll need your strength. Eat.

  She felt him struggle, but when the shiny bead of blood turned into a rivulet, he leaned toward it. As he did, she caught sight of his back—and smothered a cry. Bare ribs and knobby spine protruded from a spongy red and black pulp of tissue. As if he’d been sitting in front of a blowtorch.

  Dominic shivered when he licked at her arm, closing the tiny wound with a prickle. His grip tightened around her hand, but he did not bite her. Do you see why ten of you and twenty more would not be enough to recover my strength? The only thing you can do is make that monster finish me quickly. And then live your life in peace. For me.

  Jackson entered the cage room and felt a punch to the gut. There before the cage, on her knees, clinging to the bars . . .

  “No. Cassidy, get back.”

  “Finally. I was beginning to wonder when you might show up,” Garrett said. He stood off to the side, holstering the Beretta. “You’re missing quite the show.”

  “What the fuck have you done, you insane fucking bastard?” Jackson railed.

  “How about saving your incompetent ass? Did you really think she wasn’t going to figure it out? If not today, next week, next month or even next year? You can not leave a compromised individual at large. You know that.”

  “She’s not Rafael,” Jackson snapped and pulled the small, full spectrum flashlight from his pocket. There was no time to get a light gun from the chargers in the outer office.

  “Do not go near that cage. She’ll push you into his claws.”

  “At which point feel free to shoot me.” Jackson pointed the light and switched it on as he marched straight at the front of the cage.

  “She’s loaded with serum, Jack.” Garrett sounded as beside himself as Jackson had ever heard him and looked like he would have tackled his nephew physically if he wasn’t already so close to the front of the cage. “She’s his creature.”

  “Not for long.” Jackson came up behind Cassidy’s hunched back, keeping the brilliant beam trained on her and the part of the cage immediately around her.

  Her tear-streaked face blinked up at him. “Oh. Is that what you used at the beach?”

  He hesitated. “Yes, that’s how I saved your life on the beach. With this light.” He held out his free hand, coaxing. “Come on, Cassidy. Come with me. Let me save you again.”

  “I don’t need saving,” she whispered. “Turn that off.”

  Jackson glanced around the cage, most of it obscured now in gray and empty shadows. Where was he? He resisted the temptation to swing the light around, leaving Cassidy exposed. She had an arm reaching through the bars . . . . And then he saw it. The vampire was curled up right in front of her—in her shadow. “Son of a bitch!”

  “Turn it off, Jackson. Please, turn it off,” she begged, pulling herself to her feet. “I’ll come with you if you do.”

  “Over my dead body.” He angled around to get a clear line of sight. She moved with him, the vampire ghosting in her shadow with remarkable agility. Jackson came closer.

  “Jack, no,” Garrett yelled. “For the love of God, leave her be. She’s in no danger from him. He needs her alive, don’t you see that?”

  The only thing Jackson saw was Cassidy near a demon who could tear her limb from limb even through the bars. Keeping the light trained on her face, he reached out quickly and grabbed the braid hanging across her shoulder. With a shriek, she spun around. The vampire’s skin and bones arm shot out. Jackson felt the impact like a nail going through his hand, and was sure the next—and last—thing he would feel was that jaw closing on his arm. Instead, Cassidy, off-balance, crashed into him and sent them both tumbling to the ground. He heard the flashlight shatter as it hit the ground and didn’t care. Wrapping his arms around her, he pulled her close. “I’ve got you. You’re going to be okay.”

  “You imbecile,” Garrett barked.

  “You idiot,” Cassidy said, squirming to get out of his embrace.

  Jackson cursed as he released her and searched her arms for bite marks. He found only an impressive bruise. No delicate feeding this time, obviously. It was a miracle she still lived. Come dawn, he would put that bloodsucker down, and to hell with the sire and Garrett, too. Then he’d not let her out of his sight until every molecule of serum had dissipated from her system.

  Garrett gripped Jackson’s arm and pulled it up hard, turning the wrist in front of Jackson’s face. Two ugly gashes ran across the back of his hand, oozing blood where the vampire’s nails had raked him. Now that he noticed them, they started burning like a mother. Jackson’s jaw clenched. Garrett dropped his arm, disgusted. He didn’t have to say it. Half an inch closer to the cage and Jackson would have suffered his twin brother’s fate.

  At some point during the commotion, Garrett had retrieved the light guns from the office, for he had them both now, raising them up, aiming at the cage. When he pulled the triggers, the interior lit up bright as high noon in the Sahara.

  The vampire turned his scorched back to the blast and curled up small. His piercing, inhuman shriek was the stuff of nightmares.

  A hard grip closed on Jackson’s arm. He looked down to see Cassidy shake violently, her mouth gaping in a silent scream of her own. Then her eyes rolled up, and she slumped forward into his arms, unconscious.

  The back of her shirt was soaked.

  With blood.

  Chapter 35

  Under the Influence

  Spiders. Spiders crawling on her shoulders. On scratchy, hairy legs.

  Cassidy came to with a start.

  “Easy. You’re safe.”

>   The fact that it was Jackson telling her this made her feel anything but. That she lay naked face-down in a bed—Jackson’s bed at the Striker mansion—further bore this out. His hand on her arm, keeping her there, chilled her with fear.

  “Just a minute. I’m almost done.”

  She shivered. Jackson dabbed something at her back. The tingling moved along with it.

  “What are you doing? What’s happening?”

  “I’m healing your wounds. I doubt you’ll be shocked if I tell you I’m using vampire blood on you.”

  She pushed herself up. “Whose?”

  Jackson pressed her back down. “I have no idea. We keep some in storage for testing purposes.”

  She waited for him to finish and wipe her back clean, taking the reprieve to try and figure out what the hell had happened to her. That infernal light had lit up Dominic’s back. Too powerful to contain, the fiery agony had flooded through their link. But more than the feeling had reached her. Her skin had burned along with his.

  “Garrett wouldn’t let me take you to the ER. So I improvised,” Jackson explained. “All done.”

  Cassidy sat up and pulled the red satin sheet up around her. “Your uncle. Of course.”

  His eyes slide away from hers as he screwed the top back onto a small, black vile.

  “Since you always do everything he says, it’s all his fault then, is it? He’s the reason you trapped Dominic? So Garrett can cook him alive?” Her gorge rose remembering the bones, the charred flesh. The stink of it still clung to her hair.