In the Dark

by Melody Taylor

  Weeks ago – even days ago – Sebastian would not have understood. He would have come to the same conclusions, but he would have dismissed the emotions as out of his realm of comprehension.

  Now . . .

  He understood Ian’s position painfully well.

  The silence pervaded the entire trip. Sebastian half-hoped that Ian might talk if he stayed silent, but by the time they had reached the parking garage the weighted silence had not broken.

  When the elevator doors opened on the penthouse, both Amanda and Josephine looked up. Josephine tensed to fight, then dropped the posture when she recognized them. Amanda, with all the markers of a hungry vampire, seemed wary even after she realized who had come in. Nervous.

  Ian paused for a moment. The shame and grief in her posture intensified, and then she fled. Down the hallway to vanish into her borrowed room.

  Amanda stared after her. “What happened?”

  “Ian came close to killing a man.” Sebastian stepped more sedately from the elevator.

  Amanda could not hide her shock. “What? Why?”

  “She is hungry,” Sebastian told her. “Regularly feeding another is draining, and being allowed out only under guard makes it difficult to feed sufficiently.”

  Amanda stared at him, then down the hall after her sister. As if she wanted to go after Ian but couldn’t decide if she should. Sebastian honestly did not know if Amanda’s presence would make Ian feel better or worse. He remained silent.

  Josephine’s brow puckered in sympathy. “Oh, the poor thing. No wonder she looked like that!”

  Sebastian tilted his head in acknowledgment, but made no other move. Josephine noticed after only a moment. She stood from the couch and came to him, put her arms around him. He hugged her back, yearning to stay in her arms for long, long hours. Instead, he kissed her shortly and stepped back. Distracted by long-dead emotions or no, Sebastian needed to end this.

  “I have to go.”

  “Where?” she asked.

  “Hunting.”

  Her mouth tightened, but she only nodded. “I want to come with you. I can fight.”

  “No,” Sebastian said.

  “I can fight,” Josephine repeated, as though he had not heard her.

  “I do not doubt you,” he said, and he did not. Many vampires learned that they must take their defense into their own hands. She had certainly learned the same lesson, as the sword calluses on her hands revealed. “When I kill Specter, the pack will show me honor in respect for the oaths we swore to each other. Until I am labeled traitor myself, they must keep those vows. They will show no such respect to you.”

  Josephine’s face tightened. “I’m not trained to fight fair,” she said, but she lacked conviction. She understood as well as Sebastian that no amount of dishonorable fighting skill would save her if the entire pack descended on her.

  If that happened, Sebastian’s own oaths would prevent him from coming to her aid. He could call challenge in exchange for her life, certainly, but if he did not kill her himself when he won the pack would swarm them both. He could not stand to let that happen.

  “No,” he said again, gently. “Stay here, keep Ian and Amanda safe. I can see to myself.”

  She didn’t like it. But all she said was, “Come home to me.”

  Sebastian flicked an eyebrow up at that. “I was not Specter’s first lieutenant for no reason. I will come home.”

  Josephine nodded, though her face betrayed worry. He kissed her again, wishing he could offer her more than that, wishing they had not come together at such a turbulent time.

  Then again, if none of these events had occurred, they might not have come together at all.

  She touched his cheek as they parted. He boarded the elevator alone.

  He had not been Specter’s first lieutenant for no reason, he had said. It was time to remind him of that.

  IAN

  My feet dragged into the penthouse, my mind still on Gary. I spotted Amanda instantly. Her skin had that hungry whiteness, her eyes as dark as bruises. She needed to feed. She avoided looking at me.

  Everything was falling apart. Everything. Kent, Emily, Amanda; PTSD shakes, a scary new vampire world, the possibility of losing Sebastian. And now I had almost become a murderer. I felt lost. Trapped.

  Amanda would not look at me.

  So I ran. Down the hall to my borrowed bedroom. I shut the door and threw myself on the bed. Hugged my pillow to my face.

  God, Kent, what have you gotten me into?

  Something I couldn’t get out of again.

  I thought I didn’t have any more tears. I was wrong. I burrowed my face into my arms and cried.

  I felt so stupid. Stupid enough to let myself get so hungry, stupid enough to give in to some bizarre desire instead of going easy on Gary. Too stupid to know what to do when Kent got killed. Too stupid to save Emily. And stupid enough to let Amanda get brought into this whole mess.

  Was I any better than the people who had killed her?

  I hugged my pillow tighter. That was what I had turned into tonight in that alley. A hungry animal, eating a human being. Just like the vampires who had eaten my sister.

  A soft rap on my door pulled me away from that unpleasant thought. I ignored it. I didn’t want to face anyone right now.

  After a minute, the door opened. Amanda slid in, her face as white as a new piece of paper, her eyes glowing like an animal in headlights.

  I wiped my eyes. “What?” I said, before could get a better question put together.

  She flinched. I quietly fantasized smacking myself.

  “I can’t . . .” she licked her lips. “I’m hungry.”

  The tone of her voice sliced into me. Sad and scared and desperate.

  “Come here.” I sat up on the bed, wiping my face. Amanda flinched when I spoke and didn’t move an inch. She acted like she wished she could melt into the door, she was pressed that hard against it.

  “Amanda?” I said. Her eyes met mine, flying to me and away like frightened birds. I sighed. “Amanda, come here. It’s all right.” That last was a lie. I hoped she didn’t notice.

  She slunk over to the side of the bed, watching me. I held my arm out to her. She was getting a slightly feral look on her face. I didn’t remember that happening to me. Then again, Kent had worked hard to keep me fed my first few weeks, and he hadn’t had a pack of angry vampires trying to kill him while he did it.

  Amanda dropped to her knees beside me. She took hold of my wrist and helped herself without waiting for me to bite for her.

  I gasped as her fangs sank in, suddenly afraid –

  – Emily’s double, holding me down, biting me –

  But this was Amanda, just Amanda, my sister who was hungry as hell.

  She jerked her fangs out of me and drank deeply. It stung, but like every other time I’d been bitten, it felt amazing, too. It took everything I had to sit still and not pull away. I watched the side of her face while she drank, to distract myself from her teeth in me. From my own terrified arousal. She closed her eyes, holding my wrist to her mouth in a grip like a vise. The blood flowed down my arm, tingling, leaving empty space inside me.

  Amanda kept drinking. Her cheeks had filled out some. She looked less gaunt. That was good enough for me.

  “Stop,” I said, harsher than I meant to.

  She let go of my arm like she’d been caught stealing.

  “I can’t give you any more, or I’ll lose it.” I tucked my arm against my chest. The wound stung like a deep, wide paper cut. The intensity of kissing Emily’s double came to mind with the sting, upstaged by the slimy feeling of realizing who he really was. I shuddered and felt that icy panic rising. Tried to hide it.

  Amanda didn’t catch the shudder. She was staring at me like she didn’t recognize me, her eyes faintly glowing in the dim light. Her face looked too slack.

  Very slowly, she reached up a hand and touched it to her mouth. Her fingers came away bloodied, of course. She held them in fr
ont of her face for a long couple of seconds.

  My panic died, distracted by her expression. “’Manda,” I started.

  She jerked as if I’d slapped her.

  She stared at me, no recognition on her face. Then back down at the blood on her fingers. Before I could move or say anything, she scrambled away from me. On the floor again, her back to the wall.

  “Amanda?” I asked, quietly. Her face pulled into a horrible grimace, baring her fangs at me. She shoved herself away from me along the wall, growling like an angry dog. Her eyes never left me, one hand out to ward me off.

  “Amanda?” I said again, shifting to put my feet on the floor. Her growl deepened. That hadn’t come out of her last time. It was creepy.

  I waited for some kind of human reaction, words, recognition, something, anything. All she did was glare at me and keep growling. The message she gave off was clear – stay the hell away. I didn’t know what to do. This seemed more intense than just a panic attack. She was scared, obviously. Probably mostly of me.

  “Amanda, calm down,” I said, lowering my voice – my stressed breathing sort of interfered with talking, but the lowered tone didn’t make her growl at me. “Amanda, everything’s going to be fine, okay? Just listen to me, listen to my voice, calm down, take it easy, I won’t hurt you, I won’t hurt you . . .” I kept murmuring the same sort of nonsense over and over, like I used on Gypsy when she freaked out. People said cats didn’t understand your words, but they could get your tone. Maybe Amanda would, too.

  I kept babbling. Slowly, she started to relax. Well, not really relax so much as tense up less, but it still seemed like an improvement. Her growl gradually quieted. Not stopped, just quieted. Still talking, I put my feet on the floor again. She flinched and the growl kicked up for a second, but it faded again.

  “’Manda, I’m gonna come on the floor with you, okay? I’m really worried about you and I want to make sure you’re okay, is that all right? I won’t touch you if you don’t want me to, but I want to get down here so I can see you’re all right, okay, don’t be scared . . .” I slid off the bed, still blithering. The string of nonsense had done one thing, anyway: I managed to stop panting. I was still breathing, but it was less hard and pronounced.

  Amanda watched me slide onto the floor. She didn’t lunge or even growl a little louder. Just watched. I inched across the floor, talking, talking, until I was only a few feet away from her.

  By then her eyes had lost almost all their glow. She’d stopped growling, though she was still tense and pushed up against the wall. I sat where I was, talking, then slowly let the string of blather die out, just sitting, looking at her. Waiting to see what happened next.

  She watched me back. Waiting for the same thing, I thought. After a few minutes of sitting there staring at each other, she blinked. A long, slow blink.

  “Jen?” she said, her voice shaky and soft.

  Well, no. I was Ian, but somehow I thought this might be a bad time to correct her. “Yeah, ’Manda, it’s me,” I said.

  She burst into tears.

  I wanted to go to her, comfort her. Didn’t want to scare her. So I sat, waiting. When she kept crying, I scooted closer, then opened my arms without actually touching her. She fell into them. My own tears welled up in my eyes as she settled into my hug. I stroked her hair and held her, rocking softly back and forth and letting her cry blood all over me.

  “I’m scared,” she murmured.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  I couldn’t really say anything else.

  We sat like that on the floor of my room for a while, neither of us saying anything. I just kept smoothing her hair away from her face, rocking her, holding her.

  I didn’t know how much time had passed when she moved to sit up. I let her. She stood and crossed the room, rubbing at reddened eyes and not meeting my gaze. At the door she paused and looked over her shoulder at me. I waited, silent.

  She just looked at me. She seemed confused and scared.

  After a few seconds, she left, pulling the door shut behind her.

  My stomach sank.

  I thought about going out to Josephine, talking to her. Instead I decided to spend the rest of the evening wallowing in self pity and worrying about Sebastian and Amanda.

  It wasn’t hard.

  STREETS

  The Vector waited in the parking ramp exactly as he’d left it. He disarmed it, unlocked it, and started it from the remote. When nothing happened as the engine roared to life, he came close enough to open the doors. His sword went behind the front seats, hilt facing his side. He got in as rain broke loose and spattered the city, echoing through the parking ramp. Another storm. Sebastian pulled out into it, and found himself suddenly thinking how Sarah had always loved the rain. Perhaps the reason this place had drawn him to begin with.

  He shook his head uneasily. He needed to focus, keep his wits about him. At the same time, he had not thought of Sarah in far too long – not since he joined the pack. Whenever her face had come to mind he had pushed it out, hoping he could push out the pain with it. That was, he knew, why he had forgotten so much. He did not want to remember only to push her out again.

  Remembering was torture. Her absence had not hurt him so much in centuries. But he wanted the memories, wanted more moments of her, even if he could only have her in his own mind. He craved them more than blood. So he thought of her while he drove, what he could recall. Her shining eyes, her quick wit, the way she cared for the lambs as if she had borne them herself . . . When he reached the Pike-Pine corridor, he had to pause to blot his eyes on his sleeve.

  Focus. Hunting. He must search out Specter’s lair, find its weaknesses, and destroy his former leader. Sebastian stepped out of the Vector and withdrew his sword, strapping it on quickly. Now was not the time for memories. He set out to hunt, setting up a circuit of the area, keeping to shadows and alleys, the tops of buildings.

  The search, he soon learned, would be to no avail. The human spies he had set up reported nothing, except for one, She told him she had seen a vampire, but when she tried to follow, the vampire had simply vanished in a crowd of people. It had not been Specter, and she had not seen any immortals again. Sebastian told them all to go back to their posts and continue watching.

  The late hours of the night found him pacing, jaw clenched, sword still sheathed. The dark, damp streets remained inhabited, mortals walking past in pairs or small groups, very few of them affording Sebastian more than a passing glance. He walked on, continuing the circuit he had set up with long, quick steps. And still saw no one.

  Specter had not had the advantage of a fortune teller when Sebastian last ran with the pack, but then, he had not had a shape-changer, either. Perhaps he knew Sebastian had meant to return, meant to track him down and destroy him secretly from the shadows. Known and retreated.

  Which made no sense. Traitors were dealt with harshly. If Specter had any hint that Sebastian meant to murder him, he should have been setting up to do the same to him, thus leaving clues to his own whereabouts. At the very least, Sebastian should have been able to find evidence of the pack spies.

  Perhaps they retreated when they learned of my coming for them, and Specter destroyed them all for their cowardice.

  Unlikely. Sebastian entertained the notion not for the sake of its truth, but for the moment of amusement it offered. More likely his quarry had orders to watch only Ian, not himself. With no sign of Ian, they went about their business and did not bother showing themselves to him.

  Except Sebastian had found no sign of them at all. No lingering smell of blood hanging in the air, no dark shadows watching him from protected crevices. The only unease he sensed about the mortals he passed certainly came from his own presence, and upon asking, they told him just that. He had spent the last several hours searching thoroughly, with no reward for his efforts.

  He paused in an alley, watching the mortals pass, allowing himself to lean one shoulder against the brick wall. It was an easy stance he had t
aken many times, but tonight the position triggered another memory.

  There had been a rainy evening like this once, and he had frowned in this exact way, vexed, in the same position he held now. Looking up to see –

  She stood before him.

  Sarah.

  Sebastian waited for the memory to back away, to leave him in the world he knew, alone once more. It did not. She stood, watching him, her arms folded around herself. Her hair spun away from her in the wind, strands plastered to her face with rain. He blinked, and still she stood there – there, on the grassy hill beside their home – in the dress he remembered her wearing.

  “Sarah?” he said aloud. For a moment, he dared to believe she had somehow survived, dared to think she might have found him after so long – or that perhaps Sebastian Cain had only been a horrible nightmare from which he could now awaken –

  Only for a moment. He remembered the truth too clearly. He had watched Sarah die. She had not moved for nights, until decay had set in and he had fled watching her crumble before his eyes. And become Cain.

  This was only a vision. A memory.

  The memory raised a hand to him, smiling. The familiarity of her smile hit him like a blow to the chest, making him gasp. She raised that hand, a farewell gesture – one he had never seen her make toward him, not in the brief time they had had together. So this was not a memory – or, not quite. And despite being unsure what he saw, he could not help responding to her. “Don’t go,” he said, quietly, knowing that nothing he said would stop her.

  As suddenly as it had come, the vision disappeared.

  The sounds of the street surrounded him. Traffic, rain, music from the buildings around him. The only people on the street were mortal, and solid, and not Sarah at all.

  “I am cursed,” Sebastian murmured under his breath. He looked around, but the street remained. No hint that a young wife had stood there, waving goodbye to her husband.

  Sebastian shook his head once, wiping at moistened eyes.

  The decision to give up and go home for the evening had barely formed in his mind when the faint scent of blood wafted by on the breeze. Sebastian stilled himself, ears open, estimating their numbers by the smell of them. Only one. So far.