Blade of Darkness

by Dianne Duvall

  Ethan rested a hand on her back. “Yes. But—”

  “We did it like all day that one time!”

  “I know, but—”

  Heather dropped her hands and looked at Seth. “Why did you tell me that?”

  Seth sent her what he hoped was a look of apology. “I was merely trying to reassure Ethan that—”

  “Erase my memory,” she blurted, interrupting him.

  Seth stared at her in surprise. “What?”

  “Erase that from my memory. Quick. Before it does too much damage. I like Zach and want to keep being friends with him and Lisette, but I won’t be able to if every time I see Zach I think about him listening to us humping our brains out.”

  Marcus burst into laughter.

  Ami elbowed him but looked as though she wanted to laugh, too.

  “Honey,” Ethan said, his face full of concern, “erasing that from your memory would cause brain damage.”

  “I’m immortal,” Heather said. “I’ll heal.”

  “We think you’ll heal,” Ethan qualified.

  “You healed when Seth tried to see if you could be mind-controlled and did enough damage to make your ears and nose bleed.”

  “True. But just to be on the safe side, I don’t think we should risk it.”

  Heather met her husband’s earnest gaze. “Ethan, if Seth doesn’t get this out of my head, then every time we make love from this point on, instead of thoroughly enjoying it, I’m going to be fixating on all the sounds Zach heard when we made love at their place.”

  Eyes widening, Ethan swung to Seth. “Do it. Erase it. Melanie said she’d recover, right?”

  Seth laughed. “I can bury it instead. That will cause no lasting damage.”

  Heather smiled with relief. “Thank you.”

  Ami cleared her throat. “Even if you bury the memories, won’t Heather figure it out if she hears Aidan and Dana make love?”

  Heather looked at Ethan. “If I do, just tell me Lisette’s basement bedrooms were soundproofed. I was still mortal then, so I won’t know it isn’t true.”

  Ethan frowned. “I don’t want to lie to you.”

  Heather arched a brow. “The vigorous sex life we’ll enjoy for the rest of eternity is worth one lie, don’t you think?”

  He grinned. “Well, when you put it like that…”

  Heather looked at Seth expectantly.

  Seth delved into her thoughts, found her memories of the past few minutes, and buried them. He looked at Ethan. “It’s done.”

  “What is?” Heather asked.

  Seth smiled at her. “Heather, I’m going to ask Aidan and Dana to stay with you and Ethan until we can get to the bottom of this.”

  She smiled. “Oh. Okay. I’m the youngest immortal around and still fairly new to the game. Maybe I can help ease her into things.”

  The others all shared a glance.

  “Thank you. I would appreciate that.” Seth looked at Ethan, who watched his wife from the corner of his eye, and repeated his instructions for Heather’s benefit.

  As he wrapped up the meeting, Seth fervently hoped such precautions would prove unnecessary. But none of them knew if or when another gifted one might go missing.

  Chapter Nine

  Dana wasn’t sure how long Aidan held her, his arms tight enough to make her wonder if he feared she would run away if he loosened his grip.

  But it helped. It really did.

  He still felt like Aidan to her. Still smelled like Aidan. Still made her laugh like Aidan.

  He was just so much more than she had realized.

  Snuggling against him as she had each time they’d parked their butts on her sofa and watched a movie helped quiet her tumultuous thoughts. He didn’t feel like the stranger the past half hour had made him seem. He felt familiar. Good. Hers.

  He had also held her like this after good-night kisses had spiraled out of control, leading him to run those big hands of his over her body and heat her blood.

  She frowned. “Is all this why you haven’t made love with me yet?” Several times he had kissed her and stroked her until she had orgasmed. But he had never peeled away her clothes, torn off his own, and buried his body in hers the way she had wanted him to.

  No. He had always called a halt to things before she could get naked and straddle him.

  “Yes.” He loosened his hold enough for her to lean back and look at him. “I thought it would be wrong to make love with you before you knew what I am. I thought you should know all of it”—he shrugged—“before you knew all of me.”

  And she really wanted to know all of him.

  But she supposed she would’ve felt betrayed if he had made love with her first, then told her, as if he were trying to trick her into accepting him or something. “You didn’t tell me how you went from being a gifted one to becoming immortal.”

  He shifted her on his lap, inadvertently making her aware of his erection.

  Glancing down, she arched a brow.

  “Sorry about that,” he said with a sheepish smile. “It’s just what you do to me. I’ve been walking around in a state of near-constant arousal ever since you put your hands on me during that first reading.”

  She had, too, but didn’t admit it.

  He gave her a cautious look. “Let me just preface this by saying that I never planned to drop this on you all at once. I was going to ease you into things a little bit at a time.”

  “How exactly were you going to do that?” she asked skeptically.

  “I hadn’t figured that part out yet but obsessed over it constantly.” He smiled. “When I wasn’t fantasizing about making love with you, that is.”

  Yes, he was still her Aidan. So likable she just couldn’t stay mad at him. “I’m guessing that—since you had to preface it—you think the way you became immortal is going to freak me out?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right. Let’s hear it.” How bad could it be, considering everything else she had learned tonight?

  He drew in a deep breath. “I became immortal after a vampire bit me and infected me with the vampiric virus.”

  Dana stared at him as long minutes ticked past.

  “Dana?” he asked finally.

  “I’m sorry. I was trying to find a nice way to tell you how utterly ridiculous that sounds but couldn’t come up with anything that isn’t insulting.”

  He smiled. “I understand. I know it sounds fantastical, but… don’t be afraid.”

  “I’m not.” It was too ridiculous to scare her.

  “No. I mean, don’t be afraid of this.” He parted his lips enough for her to see the tips of his straight white teeth.

  As she watched, two fangs descended from the gums above his canines.

  Two long fangs.

  Aidan’s heart sank as Dana leapt off his lap and backed all the way to the doorway, gripping the frame on either side with white-knuckled fists.

  He held up both hands. “It’s okay,” he assured her. “It’s okay. I’m still Aidan. I still suck at dating. I just have weird teeth on top of everything else.”

  He could hear her heart pounding in her breast.

  “You’re a vampire?” she demanded incredulously.

  “No,” he swiftly denied. “I’m not a vampire. I’m an immortal.”

  “But you just said a vampire bit you and now you have fangs and you don’t age and I can’t believe I’m actually saying this as if vampires are real, because that’s insane.”

  “They are real.”

  She shook her head. “Vampires are fictional. And even if they weren’t, they’re dead. Or undead. You aren’t. You breathe. You have a heartbeat. You eat. You drink. You can go out in daylight. I’ve seen you in daylight. You aren’t all gross like the vampires in From Dusk till Dawn. And you don’t sparkle in sunlight like you’re wearing glitter makeup.”

  He rose but didn’t approach her. “I don’t know anything about your last two references. But I can tell you that vampires and immortals are both ver
y much alive. Vampires are humans who have been infected with the virus. Immortals are gifted ones who are infected with it.”

  Fear entered her pretty features. “How contagious is this virus?”

  “You can’t get it from kissing or making love,” he reassured her, assuming that was direction her thoughts had taken. “You can only become infected through one of two means. If a vampire feeds from you—”

  “Feeds from me? As in drinks my blood?”

  He clamped his lips together. Judging by her appalled expression, she wasn’t going to take his requiring periodic blood infusions well at all. “I’ll get to that in a moment,” he promised. “When you’re exposed to the virus through a bite, your body can’t create memory B cells to grant you immunity from it if you’re exposed to it again in the future.” At least, he thought that was how Melanie had explained it. “So when a vampire feeds from you, the virus compromises your immune system a bit. If you’re not bitten again, you recover, like you would from a cold. But if the vampire bites you again in a short enough period of time, then does it again and again, the virus will eventually cripple your immune system enough to gain a foothold and replace it entirely. Then you will transform and become an immortal.”

  “And the other way?”

  “If a vampire drains almost all your blood, then returns it to you after it’s mingled with his own, you’ll be infected on a massive scale and transform within days. That’s the shorter way of doing it. And I can personally attest to the fact that it’s less hard on you than the longer way.” He shrugged. “At least the longer way was harder on me. But the vampire who infected me also tortured me a good long while, so that may have only made it seem worse.”

  She stared at him.

  “Blink,” he ordered.

  She blinked. “I keep forgetting to do that.”

  “It’s understandable.”

  “This is so unreal.”

  “I’m sorry to say it’s very real indeed.”

  That didn’t appear to make her feel better. “So the big difference between immortals and vampires is that immortals have gifts and vampires don’t?”

  “It’s one of the differences. The other big one is that the virus causes progressive brain damage in humans who transform, so they rapidly descend into madness and prey upon innocents. But the advanced DNA in gifted ones shields us from the more corrosive aspects of the virus, so immortals don’t.”

  Her grip on the doorframe didn’t loosen. “You aren’t in the private security business, are you?”

  “No. I and my brethren hunt and slay vampires for a living. We call ourselves Immortal Guardians.”

  She offered no reply, just kept staring at him. And his teeth.

  He shifted, uncomfortable beneath her regard. “I didn’t think it a lie since we do ensure the safety of humans by slaying the vampires who would otherwise prey upon them. So it’s a kind of private security business.”

  Again she said nothing.

  “Dana?” he asked, wishing he could read her thoughts, but he didn’t want to make things even worse by abusing her trust.

  “Don’t you think everyone would know if vampires really existed?” she asked him. “Wouldn’t the vampires’ victims—the ones who weren’t killed—come forward?”

  He shook his head. “When vampires and immortals transform, glands form above our fangs that release a chemical similar to GHB under the pressure of a bite. So those who are bitten retain no memory of it.”

  She frowned. “Even so, this is the information age. With the internet and cell phones that can record video and upload it instantly, don’t you think everyone would know? I mean, someone had to have seen something by now and caught it on camera.”

  He didn’t begrudge her the doubt. He hadn’t wanted to believe it in the beginning either. “We’ve worked hard to ensure knowledge of vampires’ existence—as well as knowledge of our own—never reaches the public.”

  “Why? I mean, if vampires are real, don’t you think people should know? Forewarned is forearmed and all that.”

  He shook his head. “Do you remember my telling you that I lost two brothers not long ago because knowledge of us was leaked to the wrong ears?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, they were slain when a mercenary group learned of the virus and decided they’d use it to create an army of supersoldiers they could hire out to the highest bidder.”

  “Oh, crap,” she whispered. “That’s just what they’d do, isn’t it?”

  “It’s what they did,” he corrected. “They had already transformed dozens of their mercenaries, uncaring that the virus would drive the soldiers insane, and were all set to rake in billions of dollars when we discovered the truth. The two brothers I lost fell in battle when we descended upon the mercenaries’ compound.”

  Her brow puckered. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  He nodded. “We had to destroy the group to prevent them from unleashing their vampire mercenaries on the world. And, too, because they were intent on capturing immortals so they could study and dissect us and figure out how to keep their army from going insane so they wouldn’t have to kill all the soldiers after a year and start over with a fresh batch.”

  “Seriously? They were just going to kill them all and rotate in new ones?” she asked in disbelief.

  “Yes. A mad army is an uncontrollable one. So, of necessity, they would have to replace it every year unless they could get their hands on one of us immortals and figure out why we don’t go insane like the vampires do.”

  “All in the name of money.”

  “Yes. They knew they would earn billions.”

  “At the very least.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, crap,” she said. “Now it all actually sounds believable.”

  Aidan didn’t know what to say to that. “I’m sorry?” he offered lamely.

  She nodded. “Vampires are real.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you are one. Sort of.”

  Aidan knew what she meant, so he didn’t deny it. “Is it too much?” he asked softly, dreading her answer.

  She sighed. “I’d be lying if I said, No, not at all, because my mind is just all over the place right now, Aidan.”

  He almost wished she had lied to him.

  His phone rang.

  Taking it out, he saw it was Seth calling. “I’m sorry. I have to take this.”

  Dana nodded.

  “Yes?” he answered.

  “I take it by the grim inflection in your voice that things are not going well,” Seth said.

  “Correct.”

  A long sigh. “Well, I believe I’ve succeeded in pulling Chris’s head out of his ass and have asked him to look for anything he can find that will clear you.”

  “I appreciate that.” But he still wanted to kick Reordon’s arse.

  “I’ll deal with Roland as well.”

  Aidan didn’t blame Roland for his anger. Roland had merely feared for the life of one of his descendants. But Aidan wished like hell Roland had not confronted him in front of Dana.

  “Until we have all this sorted out,” Seth continued, “I want you and Dana to stay with Ethan and Heather.”

  Aidan glanced at Dana. “Why?”

  “Because Ethan is impervious to mind control and we need him to help clear your name.”

  That gave him some hope. At least Seth didn’t believe Aidan was guilty.

  “I would offer to bury Dana’s memories of tonight,” Seth said, his voice gentling, “but you were going to have to tell her everything anyway. And she needs to know why the two of you will be staying with Ethan and Heather. She needs to know she’s in danger.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “All right. Wrap things up as quickly as you can, then hie yourselves over to Ethan and Heather’s house. They’re expecting you.”

  “I will.” Aidan ended the call.

  So on top of everything else he had just dumped on Dana, he now had to tell her that on
e of the men he worked with thought Aidan was guilty of kidnapping six female gifted ones and that the only way to clear Aidan’s name was to temporarily move in with two Immortal Guardians.

  And he had to tell Dana that she was in danger because apparently women of his acquaintance were being targeted by someone who could pass for his identical twin.

  Aidan stared at Dana, noted the new wariness in her gaze, and just didn’t think he was up for that tonight.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked. “You look like you just got some bad news.”

  Shaking his head, he returned his attention to his cell phone and dialed Ethan’s number.

  “Yeah?” Ethan answered.

  “Are you with Seth?”

  “No. Heather and I are on our way home. Did Seth tell you he wants you and Dana to stay with us?”

  “Yes.” Aidan stared down at his big blood-speckled boots. “I’ve a boon to ask of you.”

  “Ask it,” Ethan immediately responded.

  Aidan had expected as much. Ethan was a real stand-up guy. “I need some time,” he confessed.

  Only the quiet rumble of a well-tuned car engine came over the line as Aidan imagined Ethan visually consulting his wife.

  “Can we cover for him?” he heard Heather ask softly.

  Since Heather was the only mortal Aidan had ever transformed, he had come to think of her a bit like a daughter and was touched by her desire to help him in this.

  “As long as no more gifted ones go missing,” Ethan returned, equally soft, “I don’t think we’ll have to.”

  That was Aidan’s hope. “You know the risks. If you aren’t comfortable with it—”

  “Take what time you need,” Ethan interrupted, his voice firm. “Chris may still have his doubts, but I don’t. I know that wasn’t you in the videos. So take your time, Aidan. We’ll be here if you need us.”

  “Thank you.” Aidan ended the call.

  Weariness assailed him. He had lost quite a bit of blood, thanks to Roland.

  Dana lowered her arms and leaned against the doorframe. “You look tired.”

  Was that concern he heard in her voice?

  He rubbed his eyes. “I am.”

  “Do you need blood?” she asked tentatively. “It looked like you lost a lot earlier.” And her expressive face revealed her unease with the notion of his drinking her own.