Chaos and Moonlight (Order of the Nines Book 1)

by Marrow, A. D.

  She smiled as she picked up the remote next to her and hit the back button on her TiVo. Bane watched with a wicked smile at the American interview gone terribly wrong. He turned his gaze away to bring a heavy fist down onto the middle of the bed.

  “Really, Bane. Such violence,” she said, her voice dripping sweetness and sarcasm.

  When the interview was over, Bane turned back to Morrigan, the malevolent smile on his face spreading from ear to ear.

  “So when are we leaving?”

  Morrigan flopped back onto the bed, unable to move her legs from the dead weight on top of them. “An hour. I’ve already reserved the flight. Managed to bitch my way into a penthouse until we can either buy or steal something big enough.” She darted her eyes to meet Bane’s, her cobalt blues now focused, deadly. “When we get there, you bring her to me.”

  She lifted up the sheet at her waist and huffed when she looked down at her legs.

  “Damn it, Bane, you knocked him out.”

  “Like you care. Wasn’t even on the job, that one.”

  Bane stood up and jerked back the covers, revealing the naked, unconscious body of a man who was, until recently, trying his best to win over Morrigan with nothing but his lips and a prayer. Bane leaned down and placed his polished fingers against the man’s neck.

  “Think I killed him.” He stood up, taking in a drag of his cigarette.

  “Well, fuck me.” Morrigan let out an exasperated sigh.

  “If you insist.” Bane said, his voice dripping sarcasm as he threw down his robe and slowly crawled on top of her. His pierced tongue left a burning trail up her calf. The dead body was impeding his progress, so with a muscular arm, he sent it crashing to the floor with a thud. Morrigan looked up at him with half-narrowed bedroom eyes once he was stretched completely over her. With his large hands guiding them, she lifted her long legs over his shoulders.

  “I want her alive and well when you bring her to me. She’s no good to me if she can’t work.” She closed her eyes as she felt his hard body press against her. He didn’t move.

  “Don’t talk business when I’m in you, Morrigan. I will do things my way.” Bane pulled his hips back and with a growl, he drove into her, hard and fast.

  * * *

  There was nothing more chilling than the midnight sound of silence.

  Taris sat on the rooftop, his long legs dangling over the concrete edge, and he listened. He didn’t move. He barely breathed. Deep within his center, he was pulling in the darkness, reveling in the chilly air that surrounded him. Every sense he possessed was on fire, heightened to its very peak.

  This was the life he missed. This was the way his life was supposed to be. He wasn’t supposed to be stuck in a house, watching the years tick away. It was in his nature to live in a constant state of high alert at all times. Gone were the days where he would watch, protect, and defend. Now, he was relegated to being a leader.

  It wasn’t that he despised the status that being the oldest vampire alive gave him. There were times when he reveled in it. It softened the need for him to feel useful, important. With few exceptions, the sparse members of his race who were left looked to him for guidance and wisdom. They turned to him for advice. He wasn’t a king or a government head. There were ancient rules in place that most of the rest of the vampire community adhered to, and for those who did not abide by those unwritten rules, there were ancient and unsanctioned enforcers. At one time, Taris was that unsanctioned enforcer. Now, he was more like the sage in the forest that all of the villagers went to for their spiritual liftoff.

  But the temperament of his youth was far different from the temperament of his slowly earned wisdom, and he spent decades shirking the reverence the people of his race gave him. It was in his blood to fight, to be a warrior, a soldier as his father was before him, so he fought against those who would seek to destroy their kind, both vampire and human alike. Centuries of battle had molded and scarred his body. They turned him into a lethal killing machine, one that operated with grace and skill, one that his opponents never saw coming.

  It wasn’t until the realization that the vampire race was teetering on the verge of extinction that he began to reassess his responsibilities, and even then, it took a hefty shove from his fellow friends and warriors to make him actually take them on. He was their one shot, their hope. It was that proverbial bitch slap that made him finally face the bitter truth: without his leadership, the race would collapse into nothingness. And so, with the lead-heavy heart and a mouth full of curses, he put away the blades and began devoting every waking moment to fighting a different kind of battle, one that slowly consumed him more than any bloodied hand-to-hand combat ever had before.

  The centuries he had spent working on the cure to their looming extinction problem had turned him into something more than just a skilled fighter and a menacing force to be feared. The two hundred years had turned him into the scholar his mother always wanted him to be and the deliverer his people always prayed he would become. Now, instead of literally grappling with a physical force that carried death, he fought an unseen evolutionary killer, one that left fewer than five hundred vampires—that he knew of—left on earth with no perceived hope of replenishing their numbers.

  Sitting there on the rooftop across from Dr. Bridgeman’s apartment building, he felt like his old self again. No, he felt better. Combined with the warrior was a wiser being, someone who now knew more about the world and the things in it. From his perch high above the street, he felt brand new.

  He had been watching the window to her apartment for an hour now. Finding her wasn’t terribly difficult. Since the interview the night before, he’d scoured the NC Medical Board website and put two and two together. Add to it his borderline scary ability to hack into just about anything, and he had her address and phone number in no time.

  The wind was beginning to whirl around as he stood up on the ledge of the rooftop. His trench licked the air behind him, stretching out like thick leather wings as he braced himself against the night. Toe to heel, he stepped back from the concrete edge, feeling the pebbles rolling under his rubber soles until he was on the opposite side of the roof.

  “Here goes nothing.”

  Pursing his lips, he let out a long breath and started toward the place where he had been sitting at a dead run. Once he hit the ledge, he launched himself with all of his might, sending his body hurtling through the air. He felt the wind hit his face and whistle through his earrings as the good doctor’s apartment building drew closer and closer, until the gravel of the rooftop was finally firmly underneath his thick, steel-toed combat boots. He hit the ground with a firm thud, landing a solid three feet from the edge. He stood and looked over at the other building. He smiled and fought the urge to laugh. The distance between the two buildings was at least fifty feet. How long had it been since he had used his power like that? A hundred years, maybe?

  “Not bad, old man. Not bad,” he whispered as he looked down at the street. The gravel crunched underneath his feet as he walked to the building access door. As he suspected, it was locked. He gripped the stripped metal knob, and with a firm twist, he pulled the front half of the casing off. His fingers worked quickly, busting through to the cement landing on the steps. The dead bolt directly above it was the next thing to go. Just like the inside half of the doorknob, it hit the floor with a metal clack after he punched it clean out of the frame. He easily nudged the door open with the toe of his boot and stepped over the ruined metal locks as he began to follow the service stairs down into the apartment building.

  As his boots pounded down the stairs, his heart began to race from more than just the physical exertion of moving his big body through the tight space in the stairwell. The anticipation that coursed through him made his feet move faster, quickly passing the eighth and the seventh floors. He was mere feet away from a woman who could save them all, and the thought of it sent his head reeling. If this worked out—if she worked out—his entire life could change. He co
uld reclaim the existence he had once lost, but now with a heightened, more globalized sense of things.

  Whereas he was on the verge of giddy on the inside, his outside was all business, no play. No recess, strictly schoolwork. From the top of his head to the bottom of his size thirteen steel-toes, Taris was ready for anything that lay beyond the other side of the door that led from the stairwell to the hallway of the fifth floor.

  Taris pushed on the metal spring bar with one hand and nudged the door open. The plain brick walls and narrow concrete slabs of the roof access stairs gave way to brand-new Berber carpet and oatmeal-colored walls. He could see all four doors, separated by a wide corridor. Between the doors, aptly marked A, B, C, and D, were typical neutral Impressionist prints that one would expect to see in a doctor’s office or a bank. The decor could only be described as boring as shit with a touch of yawn. The hallway was brightly lit, the faux brass lantern wall sconces blazing. His eyes drew back to the floor, and he couldn’t stop the sneer from contorting his face.

  “Eh, carpet. Why does everyone have carpet?” Taris mumbled in disgust as he let the door shut slowly behind him. His boots led him slowly and, thanks to the padding underneath his feet, quietly to the apartment marked B.

  Taris stood in front of the door and took in a deep, calming breath. He shrugged his coat on tighter around his shoulders and ran a hand through his hair, doing everything in the world he could to avoid knocking. He’d waited for this moment for centuries. The nervous anticipation was making his entire body shake. Now he knew how kids must feel on Christmas morning. The promise of something amazing was just behind that slab of wood. He brought his hand up to the door and knocked several times before the realization that he had no idea what to say set in.

  “Jesus, Taris, think first, would you?” he grumbled to himself as he stepped away from the door. “Okay, what to say? Um. ‘Hello, I’m a vampire.’ Fuck, that’s stupid. Eh. ‘Hi, my name is Taris, and I saw your interview, and I would like to hire you.’ Yeah, explain that one. ‘I’m eight hundred years old, and I need you to save a race of people who have been turned into horror movie villains and romance heroes from extinction.’” He chuckled. “Not likely.”

  Despite his lack of a plan, he lifted his hand and knocked again. There was still no answer. Taris pressed his ear to the door but could not hear any noise coming from inside, either.

  One noise he could hear was the elevator ascending its cables. He glanced behind him and saw that the little numbers across the top were quickly blinking closer to the floor he was on. If anyone saw him there, his entire mission was screwed. He gripped the doorknob and almost gave it a twist out of its casing but quickly pulled his hand away. Nothing blew a covert operation like a busted door. “Time to pull another trick out of the bag,” he mumbled. He stared intently at the dead bolt on the door to the apartment and concentrated. He envisioned the thick metal sliding out of the notch in the doorframe. As he imagined it, he heard it slide, unlocking the apartment door.

  He pushed open the door just enough to sneak in. Once he’d slipped his way through the narrow space, he gently pushed the door closed and turned the dead bolt, making a beeline for a closet on the opposite side of the room. The louvered doors snapped shut just as he heard the scratching of keys in the lock to the front door.

  “Shit,” he mumbled quietly. It was the doctor, all right, but there was a man with her, and damn if that didn’t complicate things to the nth degree. His best bet was to be as silent as the grave and pray to God he didn’t have to make his presence known.

  “You can’t blame yourself for this.”

  The man’s voice rumbled through the front door.

  “Damn it. I lost my temper on national television and managed to get both of us suspended. How can I not blame myself for this?”

  Taris leaned in and listened as best he could. Through the slats in the door, he could make out where the light from the corridor beamed just above the threshold, and four long shadows cast into the darkness of the apartment. He could hear more mumbling and another jingle of keys before the dead bolt slid back and the door pushed wide open.

  Dr. Bridgeman stormed in and flipped on the light, illuminating the open floor plan of her apartment. It caught him off guard, so even through the narrow slats of the closet, Taris had to squint his eyes for a moment. She was followed in by a tall man who even Taris had to admit was damn good looking.

  “Well, for one thing, it’s not your fault I couldn’t make the interview instead of you.” The man shut the front door and looked at the doctor with an expression that made Taris want to punch him in the mouth.

  “That’s hardly fair,” she replied as she tossed her purse onto the kitchen counter. She held out her hand for the man’s overcoat, but he shook his head and laid it over the back of the couch. She shrugged hers off and turned toward the coat closet. “You had an episode, and you can’t exactly flip those on and off with a switch, now can you? Besides, it may have been better that you didn’t go. This woman would have taxed your nerves to the point of passing out.”

  Taris’ heart started to pound as she stepped closer and closer to the closet. There was nowhere to hide in the damned thing. He clenched his hands by his side and waited for the confrontation but was instead smacked in the face with a thick wool coat. He sat there for a minute, holding perfectly still, just in case the door was still open. After the loud click reverberated around him, he let out a breath he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding. Gripping the coat in his hands, he went to set it on the floor but paused when the faint smell of warm vanilla and sugar swirled around him.

  Dr. Bridgeman stood in front of the closet and said something to the man. There was something about the sound of her voice that stroked him in places it shouldn’t have. It was sweet and mellow and deep enough to make a man shudder.

  Considering he was basically a Peeping Tom who had broken into her house, he had little to no moral ground to stand on, but he stared at her through the slats of the closet, listening to her voice rise and fall as she complained about her boss, the interview, and the fact that she’d been suspended from work. He wondered what it would be like to just sit and talk to her.

  “I still feel bad that you had to do it and that this whole thing has blown up.” The man was working his way around the kitchen.

  “Nick, as much as I wanted to kick your ass last night, there is no way I am going to blame you for this.”

  Okay, Nick. Nicholas. Patton, wasn’t it? That must be her research partner. But their relationship seemed more than a little chummy for just co-workers. And the man knew his way around her apartment. If he lived there with her, this was going to be a much taller order than Taris had initially bargained for.

  “Quit fussing about coffee and sit down,” she said as she flopped down onto the couch. He felt like such a fucking creeper, but he couldn’t help but admire the way she moved; every ounce of her oozed confidence. She was tall and lean. She didn’t have many curves, but she didn’t look awkward or masculine. Just graceful. She fumbled with her long, brown curls and tried several times to pull them up neatly into a rubber tie but then gave up and twisted them into a sloppy ball secured at the nape of her neck.

  “I want coffee, Sarah, and damn it, I’m going to make it.”

  Sarah twisted her face and shook her head to mock him. Taris almost laughed.

  “I wish I could make this better for you,” Nick said as he sat down next to her, handing her a steaming cup. “The best I can tell you is to just ride it out, and for God’s sake, don’t do any more interviews.”

  “No shit,” she smiled, blowing into the mug before taking a sip. “Maybe this could be a good thing for me. I could probably parlay this into a way to fill my date book.”

  Nick laughed. “I don’t think you’d want the kind of attention this sort of exposure gets you. Remember the magazine article about me that landed me the train of women?”

  “It got you laid, didn’t it? Last time I h
ad any sort of decent sex was before you and I started working together.”

  “Hey, I did offer.”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have refused.”

  Taris felt an odd tingle of jealousy flare up when he saw Sarah lean over and pull Nick close to her. He watched as her fingers stroked his back. The tenderness between them was almost too familial to watch. He needed to look away, but something about the genuine outpouring of love she clearly had for him was touching in ways he didn’t know humans possessed anymore.

  “Guess we’ll never know, will we?” Nick muttered, pulling away from her. “Besides, humping you now would be like humping my sister.”

  “Oh hell, thanks, Nick.”

  “Don’t mention it.” Nick stood and held out a hand to her. “What is family for but to make each other feel really shitty, while at the same time letting them know you love them unconditionally?”

  Sarah stood in front of him and hurled his coat at his face. “And, thank the Lord, you’re the only family I’ve got.”

  Sarah walked him to the door and mumbled something about him staying.

  “I have to take my medicine. I have to pick up a refill tomorrow, and the hospital insurance won’t cover it anymore. Guess it’s a good thing I’m making the big bucks. Next time, I won’t catch such an expensive disease.”

  “Yeah, someone should really do a PSA about the dangers of HIV on your pocketbook,” Sarah faintly smiled.

  From where he stood, Taris could only see her hands on the door, but he heard the sound of her lips on what he hoped was his cheek. There was a little mumbling, and then she closed the door.

  The moment the dead bolt turned, he could literally see the weight of the world sink down onto her shoulders. The light in her chocolate brown eyes seemed to flicker out as soon as she thought she was alone. He knew how that felt, how to live with a spark of hope in front of everyone else, only to let it die slowly when no one was watching.

  She clicked on a lamp and turned out the overhead light, filling the apartment with a faint orange glow. For a brief moment, his mission changed. His objective shifted, and he wanted nothing more than to let her know that he was there, to hold her and let her cry the tears he could see were welling in her eyes. From the bits of conversation he’d picked up, he knew she’d spent the better part of the last twenty-four hours being hounded by the media. She’d been suspended from her job, and the one “family” member she had was dying of an incurable disease.