Dark Awakening

by Ryder, S. K.

  “Do you understand what it is you have become?”

  Emilio considered. “We are…vampires?”

  “Monsters,” Dominic corrected softly, well aware Kambyses would be privy to every word spoken aboard this vessel.

  A milky-white grin split Emilio’s coffee face. While he had bleached quite a bit during the transformation, he had been dark enough originally to still pass as human now. A predator with natural camouflage.

  “Powerful.” The youngling’s eyes darkened with excitement. Flashes of memory filtered past Dominic’s defenses. A cop, yes, but with no altruistic motives to speak of. Power was his game. Money, drugs, and influence were his currency of choice. And now not only could he pursue these trivial things with the ruthless strength of a blood-drinker, but he could also pursue them forever.

  Dominic’s heart sank. “We are not free,” he countered. “We do nothing that Kambyses does not permit.”

  Emilio clapped a hand to Dominic’s shoulder. “Ah, Nico—that is your name, right?—Nico, you no’ all that good at peggin’ people, are you? I am. I’ve got a nose for his kin’.” He tapped the side of his flaring nostrils for emphasis. “Him and me? We in the same place. On this, you can trust me.” When Dominic gave no response, he could feel Emilio’s haphazard attempts at reading his mind. Then the youngling chuckled deep in his chest and gave Dominic’s arm a jarring, brotherly slap. “Stop frettin’. Relax.”

  As far as Emilio was concerned, being transformed into a vampire was the best thing to ever happen to him. In the nights that followed, he swam in the old monster’s wake, fawning over him, gazing upon him with unfettered adoration, and hanging on his every word of instruction.

  Kambyses was not immune to the attention, Dominic saw. Though little about his distracted demeanor changed, he seemed to take special pleasure in supplying elaborate answers to Emilio’s questions, all of which centered around the nature and strengths of their kind, never the ‘how’ or ‘why’ of it.

  Dominic withdrew. He tolerated Kambyses only when he needed him to feed without adding to the body count. Beyond that, he guarded his thoughts and watched from a distance.

  The youngling frothed with excitement. Under Kambyses’s watchful eye, Emilio amused himself by compelling people to do things ranging from the cruel to the blood-chilling. Soon, his cabin was stuffed with duffel bags bulging with money, cases of jewels, and kilos of drugs. He didn’t find much use for the first, wore the second with the fervor of a gangsta rap star, and did his best to enjoy the last even though his supernatural body barely registered an effect.

  Dominic loathed this child of his blood, and he wondered if Silence had harbored similar sentiments toward him. Or worse, had she pitied him?

  ‘This way is easier,’ she had said about her silence. But was it? Dominic kept to himself now as she had, but felt more the outsider than ever. He could change this, of course. All he had to do was ‘relax’ and accept Emilio’s increasingly rare invitations to join him and Kambyses in their nightly adventures. But he couldn’t. Dominic felt ill even considering it.

  What Kambyses thought of his behavior, Dominic couldn’t guess. No more guidance was forthcoming. Only the old one’s speculative gaze followed him, making Dominic’s flesh crawl to the point where he preferred the empty stares of the crew.

  He cherished the hours he spent alone aboard Apokryphos, or, more accurately, on the seabed beneath her hull. There, quite by accident, he learned to hunt something else entirely when a shark took an interest in him. On impulse, he subdued the creature. Hypnotized by its struggle, he took its salty blood straight from the heart. Without a true mind to connect to, it wasn’t the heady euphoria of taking a human life. But it was enough to appease the beast.

  Dominic had just climbed aboard after such a hunt when he heard the dinghy approach from shore. He was about to retreat when he spotted the human girl riding at the bow, her dark hair streaming behind her, a smile plastered to her face.

  Emilio’s mind buzzed with anticipation, and thorny vines of dread squeezed Dominic’s chest. Tucking a towel around his waist, he waited.

  The girl bounced onto the deck before the crewman on duty could finish securing the line.

  Emilio followed, puffed up like a rooster, his gold and diamond necklaces, earrings and bracelets sparkling in the utility lights. He frowned when he saw Dominic. “What you doin’, fool? You know you can no swim.”

  Dominic kept his face and his mind closely guarded. “I don’t swim.”

  Chuckling, Emilio shook his head. “You are the most borin’ creature I have ever met. But I like you. So tonight, I bring the lime to you.”

  “You should not have bothered. I do not…lime.” Not anymore. Dominic’s ‘party’ days had been snuffed out along with the sun.

  Undeterred, Emilio placed his hand on the small of the girl’s back. He pushed her forward. “A gift for you.”

  The ‘gift’ was a dusky-skinned, doe-eyed Caribbean blend of Africa, Europe, and India. She could not have been a day past eighteen, and her taut, young body was on full display in a form-fitting halter top and ragged jean shorts. The way she peeked at Dominic through thick lashes as she caught her lower lip between her teeth made him stir beneath his towel in uncomfortable ways. He stayed the erotic impulse with a deliberate memory of Jeovana’s dead body.

  “Her name is Jasmin,” Emilio said. “The big guy himself picked her out for you.”

  With a low growl, Dominic cut his gaze to Kambyses, who stood wrapped in his cloak and magnificent hair at the edge of the platform, watching with the rapt attention of a theater patron. “How dare you?”

  “What? You no like women?” Emilio asked.

  “Take her back. Now,” Dominic demanded of Kambyses even as he took a measured step away from Jasmin and the temptation she presented.

  “You fool chile,” Emilio drawled. “Why you wan’ to make my foreva so miserable?”

  “You infernal piece of shit. Do you realize what happens to humans we fuck?”

  Jasmin, who was obviously compelled, swiveled between him and Emilio as though trying to figure out what language they were speaking. She still smiled. Still smoldered at Dominic. But she was essentially a vacant vessel.

  “Of course, I do. Blood and sex. Best…drink…eva.” Emilio’s eyes darkened as he said this, his hips thrusting to punctuate the words.

  “They die,” Dominic snarled. Part of him still hoped the youngling simply didn’t know this, that saying it out loud would finally drive home the true horror of what they were, would snap him out of whatever delusion he was in.

  It didn’t.

  Emilio laughed uproariously. “Oh, c’mon. Would be no fun if they did no die, would it?” At Dominic’s aghast stare, Emilio turned to Jasmin and used the tip of his finger to pull her chin around to face him. “Well, if you don’t wan’ her…”

  It was the last thing Emilio would ever say.

  Dominic was aware of no conscious thought to act, but the bloodlust and memories burning in the youngling’s mind seared him. Emilio had killed in passion before—with Kambyses’s blessing, no less—and not only did he enjoy it, but it was also his preferred method of feeding.

  Not anymore. Never again.

  Emilio’s corpse lay at Dominic’s feet, gushing blood from his neck into a thick tangle of gold chains. The man’s head dangled by his jaw from Dominic’s fingers.

  The girl stared at him. Rapture glowed on her face.

  Dominic glared at Kambyses, challenging him to utter so much as a single word.

  Kambyses only raised one brow as though to say, ‘And now what, Nico?’

  Remembering Kambyses’s no-human-left-alive policy, Dominic motioned to the girl. “Follow me.”

  She grinned.

  Down in Emilio’s cabin, Dominic shoved as many bags of money at Jasmin as she could carry. The remaining contraband he tossed onto the bunk, bundled the sheets, and hauled it up the narrow stairway and out onto deck. Behind him, the girl huf
fed and stumbled under her load, but didn’t protest. He catapulted the entire stash as far out into the night as his supernatural strength would allow. Most of it made a satisfyingly large splash and disappeared. The money bags bobbed on the surface.

  Kambyses still stood on the aft platform when Dominic returned there, Jasmin in tow.

  “I’m taking her back. You can’t stop me.” He knew better even as he said it. Kambyses could stop him with ease. Could kill him with ease. None of it mattered. The only thing Dominic still had left to lose was his integrity. To keep it, there was no price too high.

  Without a word, Kambyses stepped aside and let Dominic usher the girl into the dinghy, untie the line, and motor away. On the beach, Dominic somehow managed to gain enough control to compel her to remember nothing unusual about her evening, nor anything at all about the three strange men she had met aboard a black-hulled yacht.

  When he returned fifteen minutes later, Kambyses still stood rooted to the same spot. Two crewmen were hosing down the deck around him. Emilio’s head and body lay where they had dropped.

  Dominic stepped in front of Kambyses and steeled himself for anything, including an attempt on his life. “Is this what you want us to be?” He waved at the headless body. “Is this what you want me to be? It will never happen. Never!”

  Kambyses’s lips twitched. Maybe a smile, maybe a sneer. Hard to say which through the angry red haze.

  “Leave the body for the sun in the usual place, Nico,” he said. And vanished.

  8

  A Way Out

  If Dominic believed he had won any victories by shepherding the human girl off Apokryphos, he soon discovered just how wrong he was. Kambyses suffered no mortal aboard to leave alive—or unaltered. Within days, he took Dominic into the island’s quiet dockyard where a disoriented and sickly pale Jasmin found them as if guided by a silent command. Which, of course, she was.

  “No. No, no, no,” Dominic whispered.

  “Do you want her to live, Nico? Give her your blood,” Kambyses said after drinking from her so heavily she collapsed to the ground in a boneless, glassy-eyed heap.

  Dominic hesitated, but forced himself to step away.

  “Then she will die.”

  “You can give her your own blood, you sick sonofabitch,” he ground out.

  “Why would I? You are the one who chose her.”

  This made Dominic pause. He had chosen her to live, but not like this. Would Kambyses truly not give the girl his blood to save her? No, he wouldn’t, Dominic realized. The callous demon considered humans to be food and little more. To him, making blood-sucking fiends of them was a game, and if this girl was given blood, she would become tangled in the same game.

  On some level, Dominic understood she would die anyway, for disposing of other immortals was also a game to Kambyses. He had stirred Dominic’s anger until he had destroyed Silence. And then incited Emilio to test him beyond endurance. Whatever this girl would be manipulated into doing, Dominic couldn’t yet imagine. But one thing was certain—one of them would end up dead.

  So be it, he thought. It might as well be now. “No. I did not choose her for this. I will not give her my blood.”

  “Are you sure?” Kambyses asked with terrifying softness.

  Dominic braced himself. “I am.”

  He never saw Kambyses move. The demon suddenly had a hold of him with crushing strength. Dominic yelped with surprise and pain as a thumbnail sliced so deeply into his forearm it scraped bone. No amount of twisting and squirming could free him as Kambyses pushed his gushing arm at the girl’s mouth.

  She moaned, entranced for a few moments before the transformation swept through her and her ecstasy became agony.

  When Kambyses released him, Dominic collapsed to the ground and let the despair take him. With stunned horror, he saw the process unfold a second time, watched the girl writhe in the dirt, her skin bleaching and eyes emptying. Worst of all, he felt the mindless bloodlust roar to life in her heart as though it were his own.

  “You unspeakable abomination,” he whispered and closed his eyes and his mind and became silent, for silence was easier.

  Two weeks later, Jasmin’s reaction to waking as a vampire was different yet again. After the first shock, she warmed to the idea quickly enough. Despite Dominic’s best efforts to shut out her thoughts, he was well aware of her romanticized ideas about the supernatural. He knew she found him hot and mysterious, but ‘no fun’ at all as he made a point of keeping to himself. It was Kambyses she latched onto as her mentor, her guiding light, and, before long, her would-be lover.

  Dominic was as amused as he was disgusted by her attempts to seduce Kambyses, who neither discouraged her nor succumbed. Jasmin’s frustrations were soon palpable. And all that delicious power coursing through her immortal body without a sexual outlet made her a sharp and dangerous weapon.

  A weapon Kambyses skillfully trained on Dominic.

  At first, he didn’t know what it meant, the subtle extra attention Kambyses gave him, the soft smiles and casual touches. But the night Kambyses greeted him with a lingering kiss that took Dominic so by surprise he froze in place, he saw the future coalesce in Jasmin’s furious black eyes. He couldn’t help but smile at her bitterly as Kambyses walked away with a parting caress of his cheek.

  Poor fool, Dominic thought and saw her jerk with the shock of hearing him in her mind for the first time. It is what he does. We are both his pawns.

  Her jaw set. He is mine!

  Dominic shook his head. Wiped his mouth. Suit yourself.

  Jasmin’s attempt on Dominic’s life came just before dawn shortly after Apokryphos headed into open seas. Aware of every thought escaping her untrained head, he was ready for her. While he lay in his usual place at the bow, staring into the sky, he sensed her creeping across the deck, brandishing a meat cleaver she had pilfered from the galley. Closing his eyes, he waited until the blade swung for his neck before snaking out a hand to capture her wrist.

  He held her gaze calmly. Instead of fear at having been discovered, Jasmin exploded with fury. Her beast claimed her on the spot.

  Dominic shoved her across the helipad, leapt to his feet, and grabbed the wakizashi he had tucked away beside him. He didn’t go after her. Instead, he waited for her to come for him, the cleaver brandished high. Spinning out of reach, he swung the short sword. Her head thumped to the deck. Her body followed.

  “Poor fool,” he whispered, talking to her corpse as much as to himself. For another minute or two, he stood watching the slowly rolling black water slide by and listened to it hiss against the hull. Then he retreated to his cabin to wait for the day.

  Whatever thoughts Kambyses might have had about Jasmin’s death, he didn’t share them. The next night passed as though she had never been. The two of them silently rode the dinghy into a different port in search of new prey.

  A little more than a week later, Kambyses found another plaything. Dominic knew it because once again, Apokryphos halted her ceaseless travels. This time when Kambyses asked him to give the fevered mortal his blood, Dominic didn’t hesitate.

  He killed the wretch at once.

  Kambyses hissed in surprise.

  Dominic smiled with all the venom in his heart. “This one will not be yours.”

  The rumbling growl that emanated from Kambyses chilled Dominic’s blood. “Do not become useless to me, Nico. That you will regret.”

  The threat was so palpable Dominic thought better of asking yet again just how Kambyses thought him useful. His keeper was well past angry, and Dominic’s damnable sense of self-preservation had him cowering.

  When Kambyses asked for his blood yet again, Dominic provided it without argument or comment. He tried one more time to educate the latest youngling about the truth of their situation, but only three nights later, this one, too, came for him intending murder. As did the next. And the one after that. One way or another, all were manipulated into turning against him, some with more skill and self-righte
ous outrage than others. Dominic shut them out the way Silence had shut him out. He became still as she had been still.

  Twice more, he tried to escape. The first attempt, he waited until Kambyses was well away from the yacht with his latest recruit. Dominic tucked himself into the most obscure place he could find on the current island’s distant shore. Kambyses appeared near dawn, merely holding out his hand in mute invitation to follow him back to their floating lair.

  Several nights after that, Dominic crawled the seabed until dawn and buried himself in the soft sand beneath a reef. The day’s oblivion claimed him as a free man filled with bitter satisfaction. Yet when darkness fell, he woke damp and sandy on his cabin floor. He began to shake. How Kambyses or his compelled minions had found him—much less gotten him back to the yacht—was of no consequence. The only thing that mattered—the only thing that crushed his soul until it cracked like black ice—was that Kambyses had found him.

  There was no escape.

  None but death.

  An opportunity for that route appeared when another youngling proved to be as calculating as Dominic and Kambyses. Gene, a mouse of a human and a weasel of an immortal, realized early on that an ugly game was afoot and he would need every advantage he could muster. This included Dominic’s swords. When Dominic found them missing from their hiding place in his cabin, he understood the next attempt on his life would not be trivial. Hard on the heels of this was the thought that perhaps this could be the opportunity to die he longed for.

  Dominic tried. He truly tried. But when he tracked down his wayward swords deep in the mountain jungles of Tortola, he could not stand still and let himself be cut down. His beast would not allow it. The blades hummed. Without intending to, he slipped out of reach, the deadly edges missing him by millimeters. Then the swords were in his hands, hummed again, and Gene was no more.

  Kambyses’s cloaked figure appeared from the darkness, his broad mouth curved by a minuscule smile. “Bravo, Nico.”

  Dominic peered at his master through damp black hanks of his hair. “Bravo? Is that all you have to say? Bravo? For what? For my skill with the swords? For murdering a monster who should never have been made? Or for surviving one more night of your madness?”