Blade of Darkness

by Dianne Duvall

  But Dr. Melanie Lipton and her colleagues had not yet found a way to slow the progressive brain damage the virus wrought in humans or to prevent the madness.

  Vincent and Joe had long since lost their battle with insanity and forfeited their lives.

  Other vampires had sought the network’s help since then. But only Cliff remained of the initial three.

  Aidan took a moment to brush his teeth, then wet his hands and finger-combed his tousled hair, trying to smooth the damned waves and curls.

  Cliff had been transformed by a vampire against his will when he was in college. If one discounted the world-weariness that darkened the young man’s eyes, Aidan thought he looked to be about twenty-five years old. Most vampires only retained their humanity for a couple of years. If they were particularly strong, fought hard, and weren’t subjected to poor living conditions or torture that could exacerbate things, they might last four years before the madness turned them into monsters.

  Cliff’s bright, healthy mind had waged its battle for six years now, valiantly fighting the effects as the virus chiseled and carved away at it. He had astounded all who knew him by remaining honorable all this time, fighting alongside the Immortal Guardians and helping them conquer their enemies. None had dared hope he would last this long.

  But he was beginning to lose the battle.

  Seth knew it because he could read Cliff’s thoughts and saw the mayhem in them. Aidan knew it for the same reason. He suspected Bastien knew it. Cliff was like a brother to him. And Bastien took Cliff vampire hunting with him each night, hoping to give Cliff an outlet for the increasingly strong, violent impulses that struck him.

  Aidan suspected Melanie knew it as well. She toiled for longer and longer hours in the lab, desperately seeking answers and a way to prevent the inevitable.

  She would blame herself when they lost him.

  If they lost him, he mentally corrected, reluctant to give up hope.

  Even if she could cure the virus with some new medication that would kill it, they would still lose Cliff. The first thing the virus did when one transformed was conquer and replace the body’s immune system. So if Melanie found a way to destroy the virus, Cliff and anyone else treated with the cure would be left with no viable immune system and would die.

  And if—by some miracle—Melanie found a way around that, she still had no way of reversing the brain damage, no way to repair the tissue the virus corrupted. Even powerful healers like himself and Seth could not heal some forms of brain damage. The brain was just too complex.

  Leaning out of the bathroom, Aidan snagged his cell phone, then ducked back inside and closed the door.

  Shortly after Cliff, Vincent, and Joe had come to live at the network, Chris Reordon had brought in a construction crew and had every bathroom in the building soundproofed so the vampires would stop complaining about having to listen to employees pee, fart, and shit all day.

  Aidan dialed Chris’s number.

  “Reordon,” Chris answered.

  “It’s Aidan. Can you get to a quiet room?”

  “Just a minute.”

  Aidan waited while Chris ducked into his office bathroom and closed the door so the vampires and immortals in the building wouldn’t hear their conversation.

  Aidan could have saved Chris the trouble by simply speaking to him telepathically, but Chris had reacted so badly to Aidan’s tampering with some of the network guards’ minds a couple of years ago that he thought it best to leave the mortal’s mind alone.

  “Okay. What’s up?” Chris asked.

  “Cliff is struggling.”

  He swore. “How bad is it?”

  “Bad. I’m going to teleport him out and take him hunting to help him work off some of the aggression that’s building.”

  “Is Bastien going with you?”

  “No. I don’t want to trouble him.”

  Chris made a sound of understanding. “When will you be leaving?”

  “In the next five minutes or so.”

  “Okay. I’ll turn the alarm off for ten minutes. Call and give me a heads-up when you’re ready to return and I’ll turn it off again.” Chris’s techno-wizards had installed an alarm that blared anytime someone teleported in or out of a room at network headquarters. Aidan didn’t know how it worked, but it had alerted them the moment Gershom had made an unexpected appearance at the network last year.

  “Will do.” Pocketing his phone, Aidan left the bathroom, then his apartment, and strode down the hallway to Cliff’s door.

  A dozen guards, all armed with automatic weapons and tranquilizer guns bearing the only sedative known to affect vampires and immortals, manned the end of the hallway, blocking the sole elevator and stairwell. Only employees with the highest security clearance could enter this floor, the farthest underground. And no vampires could leave without either an immortal escort or an armed escort to ensure they didn’t harm any of the network employees or—should they suffer a psychotic break—escape.

  Aidan nodded to the guards. “Gentlemen.”

  They nodded back. Unlike their boss, all were friendly toward Aidan, but there remained a subtle distance inspired by their awe over his age and power.

  Aidan knocked on Cliff’s door.

  Cliff didn’t answer.

  “It’s Aidan. I’m coming in,” he announced without raising his voice.

  Vampires’ hearing was nearly as acute as that of immortals, so Cliff would hear him even if he whispered.

  Cliff still didn’t answer, but Aidan heard a welcome amidst the vampire’s turbulent thoughts.

  Drawing a keycard out of his pocket, he swiped it, then punched in a security code. Reordon had refused to give him such until Bastien and Melanie had asked him to.

  A metallic clank sounded.

  Aidan pushed the door—as thick and heavy as that of a bank vault—open and stepped inside, closing it behind him.

  Every vampire who had sought the Immortal Guardians’ aid had been given a luxury apartment and pretty much anything he wanted to make it feel like home… except for sharp implements. (The utensils in their kitchens were limited.) The nicely painted walls, however, were reinforced with titanium and several feet of concrete that would keep the vamps from tunneling out and escaping during psychotic breaks.

  Aidan glanced around.

  One might expect a man battling insanity to have a cluttered, chaotic home. But Aidan thought Cliff’s apartment was tidy enough to please even the obsessive-compulsive television detective Adrian Monk.

  Cliff rarely slept more than a couple of hours at a time now and constantly sought activities to keep both his mind and hands busy.

  Maintaining an immaculate living space appeared to be one such activity.

  Today Cliff sat on a cushy sofa, elbows on his knees, head in his hands, his fingers curling into fists and clutching his shoulder-length dreadlocks so tightly that Aidan worried he might pull his hair out.

  Cliff didn’t look up as Aidan approached.

  Aidan sat down beside him.

  The voices were louder this morning, the internal battle the young vampire waged fiercer than ever.

  Aidan listened to those voices and felt his heart sink.

  Though Cliff hated to admit defeat, he was considering asking Bastien to end it for him. To kill him now before he lost the last of his lucidity and became the equivalent of a rabid dog.

  Cliff would end it himself but didn’t want Melanie to find him… or whatever would be left after the virus devoured him from the inside out.

  Aidan rested a hand on Cliff’s shoulder. “Do you trust me?” he asked softly.

  “Yes,” Cliff whispered in a pained voice one might expect to hear emerge from the lips of someone with a pounding migraine.

  “Stand up.”

  Lowering his clenched fists, Cliff did so and raised glowing amber eyes full of anguish.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Aidan murmured, then teleported them to a beautiful vale in Scotland.

  Clif
f cried out as bright afternoon sunlight bathed them.

  Aidan tightened his hold on the vampire’s shoulder to keep him from bolting for the trees. “Don’t.”

  Cliff threw up his hands to shield his face. The violent voices in his head shrieked and wailed, then went silent in the face of the fear that struck him.

  A moment passed.

  Aidan’s hand heated where he touched Cliff as his healing gift went to work.

  When the vampire’s flesh didn’t begin to blister from exposure, Cliff slowly lowered his hands. Squinting against the brightness, he stared down at his exposed arms.

  His smooth brown skin remained healthy. No blisters formed. No pain struck.

  Cliff looked up with wide eyes, his heart beginning to pound. “How is this possible? Am I hallucinating? Is this…? Am I having another psychotic break?”

  “No.” Aidan smiled. “I can heal with my hands and am using my gift to heal the damage the sun is doing in real time.”

  “You can do that?” Cliff asked with astonishment.

  Aidan nodded. “I wasn’t sure I could until I tried it with Ethan. I can’t say he was very pleased about being my guinea pig, but he owed me.”

  A little huff of laughter escaped Cliff. “Well, you did transform his wife for him so she’d be superstrong.”

  The Immortal Guardians had come to understand in recent years that, unlike those transformed by vampires, gifted ones who were transformed by immortals tended to become as strong and durable as those who transformed them. So Ethan’s wife Heather was now as fast and strong as Aidan and even had his greater tolerance for daylight, something Ethan couldn’t have given her had he transformed her himself because he had only been immortal for a century or so.

  Cliff closed his eyes and tilted his face up to the sky. “It’s warm,” he murmured. “I’d forgotten how warm sunlight is. And that you can feel it on your skin.”

  “With your heightened senses, you feel it a little more now.”

  Cliff shook his head. When he opened his eyes, tears glistened in them. “I never thought I would feel it again. Not unless…”

  Not unless he decided to end it that way, by walking into the daylight and letting the sun sear the madness—and his life—away.

  Aidan squeezed his shoulder. “Every day you hold out, Cliff, every day you keep fighting, I’ll give you this. I’ll give you the sun.”

  Cliff’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “Doesn’t it hurt you?”

  Aidan shrugged. His skin prickled unpleasantly as he took the damage the sun did to Cliff and absorbed it into his own body, keeping Cliff healthy. The longer they remained, the more it would hurt. “It’s a mild discomfort at most,” he lied.

  But Cliff was a smart man. He knew better. “Why would you do this for me?”

  “Because you’re my friend. My brother. And this is what brothers do for each other.” Aidan knew Cliff would’ve done the same for him. The two had become good friends since Aidan had transferred to North Carolina.

  Cliff nodded. “I would do it for you.”

  Aidan didn’t doubt it. Cliff was an extraordinary man. “You hear that?”

  Cliff cocked his head to one side, listening. “What?”

  Aidan grinned. “I think we shocked the voices into silence.” No cries for violence filled the young vampire’s mind.

  Cliff laughed, his shoulders loosening with relief. “I think you’re right. My mind hasn’t been this quiet in a long time.” He took in the beautiful scenery. “Where are we?”

  “My home in Scotland.”

  “All this land is yours?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wow. You’re a lucky man.” He sent Aidan a sly glance, appearing more at ease than Aidan had seen him in months. “Are you sure you aren’t just trying to keep me alive longer so I can help you find a wife?”

  Aidan laughed. “You’ve caught me. That’s exactly why.”

  Since Cliff had heightened hearing and spent most of his time at the network, he knew a lot about the gifted ones who worked there and had been sharing that information with Aidan in hopes of aiding him in his quest to find love.

  “Any luck yet?” Cliff asked, watching a hawk float above them on the breeze.

  Aidan shrugged. “I met Veronica Becker.”

  “You did? I thought you had crossed her off the list because she’s still mourning her husband.”

  “I did. But she got a flat tire.”

  Cliff gave him a pointed stare.

  “It wasn’t me,” Aidan protested.

  “Sure it wasn’t.”

  Aidan laughed. “It truly wasn’t, but she thought it was.”

  Cliff grinned. “Figured it out, did she?”

  “Yes, and kindly suggested I find another MO.”

  The vampire laughed. “I told you so. North Carolina is like a small town. Word gets around.”

  “Well, when I didn’t show up to change her flat tire, she got out to do it herself and was attacked by vampires.”

  Cliff’s smile vanished. “Is she okay?”

  Aidan nodded, trying to ignore the stinging pain that intensified in his skin. “She’s fine. I escorted her and her son home, then went to see Dana Pembroke.”

  “The psychic?”

  “Yes.”

  “How’d that go?”

  “She had a vision of the two of us making love.”

  Cliff’s eyebrows flew up as his face brightened with a smile. “That’s awesome!”

  “Aye. And she agreed to go out to dinner with me tonight.”

  “Do you think she’s the one?”

  Aidan shrugged. “I don’t know. But I like her.”

  “And she’s psychic and saw you two naked together. Holy hell, that’s a good sign.”

  Aidan grinned. “I hope so.”

  The hawk’s shadow swept across them as it took off after whatever prey had caught its attention.

  Cliff surveyed the countryside around them. “It’s weird. The things you take for granted. The things you wouldn’t expect to miss much if they were taken away.”

  Most Immortal Guardians could tolerate at least a few minutes of direct sunlight and several more of indirect sunlight. The older the immortal, the more powerful they were and the more sun exposure they could tolerate.

  Aidan was quite old.

  But vampires began to blister as soon as the sun’s rays touched their skin. They couldn’t tolerate any exposure at all.

  “I’ve always been a night owl,” Cliff mused. “So when I realized I couldn’t go out in daylight anymore, I didn’t think I’d miss it.” He continued to drink in the bright light. “But I do. I really do.”

  “Not anymore,” Aidan vowed.

  Minutes passed.

  “Listen,” Cliff began, “there’s something I need you to do.”

  “Name it.”

  “I wouldn’t ask,” he added, his reluctance evident. “I had hoped I wouldn’t have to.” His face turned pensive. “But Bastien can’t teleport and—”

  “What would you have me do?” Aidan interrupted.

  Cliff drew a folded piece of paper from his jeans pocket and held it out. “I need you to go to this address.”

  Aidan took the paper with his free hand. Flipping it open, he read the address.

  Understanding dawned.

  He nodded. “Consider it done.”

  “You know what I’m asking?” Cliff pressed.

  “Yes.”

  “I’d ask Richart, but I don’t really know him well. And Seth…”

  “You’d rather Seth not know, if he doesn’t already.”

  “Yes.”

  “I understand.” Aidan tucked the paper into his back pocket. “Shall I go tonight?”

  “No. It doesn’t have to be tonight. I don’t want you to cut your date short. Just… soon.”

  Aidan smiled but knew it didn’t reach his eyes. “I’ll take care of it.”

  “You don’t have to bring me out in the sun again.”
>
  “I didn’t have to bring you out into the sun today. I did it because I wanted to,” Aidan told him. “And I’ll do it again tomorrow for the same reason. And every day after that as long as you continue to fight.”

  “You’re a good man, Aidan.”

  “So are you, Cliff. Nothing that happens in the future will ever negate that.”

  “You don’t know how much I want that to be true,” Cliff said, his face somber.

  Chapter Three

  Dana gave the mirror one last glance. “You look nervous,” she told herself.

  She felt it, too. When was the last time she had gone on a date?

  A moment’s thought made her grimace. Graham Walsh. Four months ago.

  Ugh. What a jerk. All hands. No brain. Smarmy little bastard.

  Why couldn’t her gift tell her ahead of time which men would suck as companions and which ones wouldn’t?

  She paused. Well, it had, sort of, this time. Hadn’t it?

  Heat coursed through her as she recalled the vision of Aidan touching her bare body.

  Was she crazy to let that vision guide her instead of the other two, which had been so frightening? The man had a violent past.

  What soldier hasn’t? her inner voice countered. Especially if they did tours in the Middle East?

  True. But Aidan had freely admitted that he had a violent present as well.

  Not really, the voice denied. He said he has a dangerous job. Dangerous, not violent.

  She bit her lip. He liked to hack at other men with swords in his free time. That was violent, wasn’t it?

  Isn’t that better than parking his ass on the couch and playing video games all day or drinking with his buddies all night?

  She supposed so. It certainly kept Aidan fit. All those lovely muscles…

  But what about the tarot cards? They had confirmed that something bad was on Aidan’s horizon. Did she really want to start something with him when she knew something awful was coming?