Darkest Before Dawn

by Amelia Hutchins

  “Sure,” I said as I as I placed the few things into my bag. I rifled through my closet next, stuffing only a single dress and leather jacket inside. I made my way out of my room and went to the very back of the house to the room that had been closed since the day we’d learned of my mother’s death.

  It was my mother’s home office and it hadn’t been locked, or sealed shut…it just hurt too much for us to go in there and eventually it had just been forgotten. I knew I had to hurry; an hour wasn’t very much time before Addy was going to be back.

  I opened up one of the curtains and watched as dust met the light and created a cascade of motes through the air of the room. There was a fine layer of dust that covered the papers piled on the desk as well, a good sign that no one else had disturbed this place in a while.

  I sat in the old leather chair and picked up one of the many pictures that had been forgotten on the dusty desk. My finger swiped across it, and a single tear slid down my cheek as I looked at the four of us. Me, Grayson, Mom and Dad before our world had been ripped apart. If they were here, they’d know what to do to keep us all safe.

  I tried the desk drawer, and found it locked. Strange; what reason would they have had to lock it? I scooted the chair away from the desk and looked beneath the drawer for the key. My mad normally used magnetic locks that stuck to drawers in the other office, so there was a good chance one would be in here as well.

  My eyes landed on the little key box but as I went to stand, I caught sight of the floorboard. Just like the one in my room, it looked hollowed out. I kneeled back down and knocked on it before I pulled it up and stuck my hand inside and felt carefully around.

  I swallowed as my hand hit something hard. I pulled the large metal box out of the floor and eyed it warily. What could be so important that they’d hide it in the floor? It too needed a key, which when I stuck my hand back inside, I felt around the corners of the hole and found a small desk key hiding against the far recess of it. No key for the box though.

  I lifted the box to the desk and looked at the tree symbol with an uneasiness that made my skin crawl; it was the same tree that was on the pendent I now wore around my neck. My finger absently trailed over the raised symbol. “Beautiful,” I whispered. I set the box away from me and placed one of the many pictures over the top of it. I made quick work of the drawers, unlocking them all.

  Documents had been filed alphabetically in the drawer, and as I looked through the drawer, a recorder caught my eye. I clicked it on, and sat it on the desk while I continued to look through the drawers. It wasn’t until my mother’s voice filled the room that I choked on tears.

  Emma shows restraint, but she’s still young. The Elders have asked that she be brought in to be tested. Her blood showed promise, and yet she’s not like us. As if her father’s DNA has tainted the strain. Dagan wishes to see if she worth saving.

  I’ve already taken steps to prevent them from becoming infected in the event the virus reaches here. I’ve begun preparations to leave; Dagan has suggested that it’s time. I do hate leaving them, but Emma is only a child in her mind, her father has refused to acknowledge what she is and spoils her as if she’s a regular kid.

  Grayson shows no signs of being one of us; he’s slow and even at his tender age, he should show the signs. It is my hope that Emma will become what is needed by the time I return. The virus should harden her. It should force her to adjust and defend her brother. If not, it will be a sign that I have failed us and my directive.

  I stopped the recording with trembling hands. How had my mom known about the virus? She’d been buried over ten years before it had even surfaced. Or had she? My heart was about to burst from my chest as I pushed the recorder into my pocket and pulled open the second drawer and pushed the files out of the way, I found more tapes. I opened my bag and dropped several of them into it, before opening the last drawer.

  Inside of it was info on the bunker and a manila envelope with my name on it in my father’s sloppy handwriting. I looked from the envelope to the bag now full of tapes. I decided to read the letter or whatever was in the thing later. Right now I needed to find the damn layout and everything Dad had done to the shelter.

  I had finished packing my bag when I walked out of the office and into the front room. Jaeden was sitting in a darkened corner; I felt him before I actually saw him. I stopped and looked at him silently. Had he heard the recording? Did he know?

  “Emma,” he whispered as he leaned his long frame into the light. His eyes took me in and narrowed. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” I said but even I could hear how troubled I sounded.

  “Want to talk about it?” he asked as he stood up and moved towards me.

  “No,” I replied, feeling my heart race at his nearness. I hated that he had this effect on my body. “Ever find something that makes you question everything you’ve ever known?” I blurted it out and felt the tears pooling in my eyes.

  “No,” he said smoothly. He watched me as I felt my world crumbling beneath my feet. Just the small bit I’d listened to was disturbing, and I wasn’t sure how to process it. I felt as if my entire life had been turned upside down and torn apart.

  What had she meant by what she’d said about me becoming what is needed? What the hell was needed? Had she known about Rh Viridae or was she referring to a different virus? Worse yet, her words hinted that there was a vaccine to the virus she was talking about. I felt sickened by her words. I wanted to stop thinking about it, but her words seemed to be playing on repeat inside of my head.

  I turned to Jaeden and fought the urge to claim his lips. One kiss, one single kiss from him could end the turmoil playing in my mind. “Kiss me,” I whispered and watched as he stepped closer, but didn’t make a move to kiss me.

  “Emma, are you trying to use me to forget about whatever happened?” he asked and for a brief moment, I thought I caught a flash of pain in his eyes. It was brief, so brief, that I had to have imagined it.

  “And if I was?” I asked, feeling bolder now because the need to empty my mind was immense.

  “You’d regret it, later. I want you, Emma, but not this way. Not to be used because you wish to forget something.”

  I glared at him, and closed the gap between us. His mouth was ready the moment mine touched it. His hands wrapped around me and lifted me up and against him. He pushed me against the wall, and I moaned against his hot, demanding mouth.

  I moved my hips like a slut in a whorehouse who wanted to get paid. His hands held the back of my head as he deepened the kiss. We were so lost in the kiss that we failed to notice when Addy walked in on us, or even when she cleared her throat.

  Jaeden was the first to break the kiss, which pulled a regretful moan from my lips. “Get out, Addy,” I growled, fully intending to finish what I’d started.

  I’d decimate this house. I’d do it in every room, except Grayson’s. I wanted to stop being the responsible one, and just forget what I’d heard, and what my parents may or may not have been involved in or known about.

  “Emma,” she growled right back. “I get the whole want-to-fuck-the-Adonis-looking-male, but there’s sorta a pile of dead bodies in my house!” I turned and took in her wide eyed look of shock.

  I closed my eyes. “There are dead bodies everywhere,” I sighed.

  “These ones are moving!” she snapped. “Get the fuck out of Hussyland and get over whatever the hell is going on with you. You need to come see this shit!”

  “If they’re dead, they can’t move.” Unless they were vampires, like the man I still had my legs wrapped around, with a protruding cock pressed against my happy place.

  “Yeah, I thought the same thing…right up until one asked me to end his pain,” she said.

  Jaeden’s turbulent blue and green eyes smiled at me. As if he wasn’t bothered at all by being interrupted. I
could have screamed, but the knowledge of undead bodies was feeding my curiosity bug.

  “Lead the way, Addy,” I said as I dropped my legs from around Jaeden’s waist. Once she was out of earshot, he growled and pulled me against his tall, hard frame.

  “This isn’t over, Emma; you’ve awoken a beast, and he’s fucking hungry…” He slapped my ass and I barely managed to keep from yelping. “I’m going to fuck you soon, hard, and for hours. By the time you leave my bed, you’ll know who you belong to. You’ll never question it again.” I glanced up in confusion at his curious choice of words.

  “Are you back to that kinky shit again?”

  “Absolutely,” he smirked.

  Chapter 18

  At Addy’s house there wasn’t just a pile of bodies, these people seemed to be between life and death. They had pulses, but barely. Some could talk, while others only moaned and made eerie sounds that raised the hair on the back of my neck. Each body had a single bite mark, which looked infected.

  “Animal bites?” I asked Addy as I examined a girl who didn’t look a day over sixteen. She had dirty blonde hair, and huge brown eyes. She had tears running down her face, as she rocked in a fetal position on the floor of Addy’s bedroom.

  “You remember that one werewolf movie we watched? Mmm, what was it called…An America Werewolf in Paris? It almost looks like those kind of bite marks….or am I just fantasizing at like the worst possible time? Totes, right?”

  “Totally, Addy…the word is totally, not totes,” I mumbled distractedly.

  “Emma, those straight-up look like wolf bites, right?” she continued.

  “That’s because that’s exactly what they are,” Lachlan said grimly as he strolled into the room and looked down at the girl.

  “But werewolves don’t exist,” she argued.

  I almost laughed at the irony of her telling a genuine werewolf that he didn’t exist. Would she freak out? I hadn’t, but it still felt more like a dream than reality to me. I could feel the heat of the vampire’s eyes on me, as well as the posturing between the two. I chanced a peek at Jaeden, and then Lachlan.

  Both seemed to be fully aware of my arousal, and the state of wetness in my panties. Could Lachlan smell as well Jaeden, and did he guess at what had gone down between us? Was this really my life? Discovering newly changed werewolves, and then lying by omission about it to my best friend?

  “Lachlan’s a werewolf, and Jaeden’s a vampire,” I blurted it out and smiled as she sighed dreamily. Whelp, that was off my chest.

  “Oh em Gee! You’re Bella!” she screamed excitedly with a disbelieving look in her eyes as she laughed. “Wait, you didn’t like Twilight. Does Jaeden sparkle? Does his dick sparkle? Does Lachlan like doggie style more than any other style?” She laughed some more, until she realized we were all watching her waiting for it to fully sink in. “Oh my God, Emma! You bitch! Wait, you’re not a bitch right? You’re still you, no running around on all fours or sucking down O positive?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Didn’t like Twilight, they needed to buy a clue…I’m not a werewolf, and no, I don’t suck down bags of blood.”

  “Oh fucking hell! You’re all serious!? Is that how you got healed and didn’t die?” She looked floored. It was sinking in, and with it, I knew the way her wheels inside her mind were turning. “You could have fucked a vampire and you didn’t?”

  “It’s not as simple as that,” I said as I leveled her with an irritated look. It was my best shut-the-hell-up look.

  “Why not? I’d jump on it!” she admitted.

  I rolled my eyes at her antics. “It’s kind of a big decision which hasn’t actually come up.”

  “So you want to bone her, but you didn’t make her immortal?” Addy leveled Jaeden with are-you-fucking-serious look.

  “Addy!” I growled.

  “No, don’t you Addy me, Emma. If he can bone you, he can damn well reward you for it.”

  Jaeden shook his head and awarded with me with an is-she-for-fucking-real look. I rolled my eyes, and was almost relieved when the girl who’d gone silent on the floor started up again. Lachlan leaned over her, and spoke in some weird language, and then sat back on his haunches.

  I kneeled down beside her, and placed my palms on her arm…and everything changed.

  I was no longer inside the house with them. Instead, I was transported to a dark alley, filled with corpses. No, they weren’t corpses. They’d all been bitten. I looked around, unable to leave the dark corner where I had hidden. I looked through the throngs of the changed and swiped angrily at the tears on my cheeks.

  My family was in there, my brother, sisters, and my mother. I needed to find them, but how could I? There were so many of them, and each one moaned with pain from what the men had done to them.

  “Two hundred,” one of the stragglers said as he punched numbers into a hand held device. “At least ten percent should live through the change. Jeb got a decent number changed in Seattle. The rest of the west coast is ours.”

  “Braden will be pleased.”

  “And the pack in Newport? Lachlan and his men are there. Jaeden as well; does he have a plan to deal with them?” The man said to the guy still hidden in the shadows.

  “We have a gift for them, one which should level the playing field. We’ve taken Seattle, and now Wenatchee. Soon we will move inland, right to their little stronghold.”

  I stepped back, but my foot caught on a metal pipe. My heart hammered against my ribcage as I turned to run, but before I could even take a few steps, I’m grabbed and held against a hard body. He growled in my ear, right before he shoved me to the ground.

  “Well what do we have here?” he sneered as the man from the shadows stepped out, to look down at me.

  “I get her first,” he said as I took in his cold, empty eyes. He smiled and shoved the other man away, then pushed me down, holding me there. Fangs protruded from his gums. I screamed for help, but only grunts of pain and moans filled the stale, dirty alleyway. He watched as I struggled against him, his eyes ice blue and filled with lust as they took in my helpless state.

  “No! No, stop. Please, I just want my family!” I shouted, but no one would hear me, they’d all been bitten. My skirt is hiked up, and the panties are ripped off harshly. I’ll never save my family like this. Never. I had to be strong, had to get away. I had to live through this and kill them.

  He pushed into me, and pain ripped through my entire body. I screamed, and screamed though there’s no one left alive to help me.

  “Emma!” I was back in Addy’s room, on the floor and wrapped in Jaeden’s arms, my eyes locked with the innocent girl who’d survived that hell.

  “They are changing us into monsters,” I whispered brokenly as Jaeden and Lachlan both watched me.

  “What the fuck was that?” Jaeden demanded.

  “I…uh…I was her. I was there. She was searching for her family,” I replied. Had that just really happened? “How did you do that?” I asked her, but she had closed her eyes. “I was her! She was…” I stopped. I wouldn’t tell them what had happened to her. That was her story. “Save her.”

  “It doesna work like that, lass,” Lachlan said grimly.

  “Make it!” I snapped. I wanted her to live, so she could have her revenge. I felt it to my bones, as if it had happened to me. More so, I needed to know what the hell she’d done to make me see her past.

  “Emma,” Jaeden whispered.

  “Turn her, do something!” I demanded but neither of them moved. Addy sat huddled in the corner, sobbing as she watched me. Why was she upset? She hadn’t seen what I had, hadn’t had to mentally feel a rape that hadn’t actually happened to her. It had felt real, the pain had been staggering, but now, back inside of myself, I felt no pain. I only felt the need to give her revenge.

  “Emma, s
he’s dead,” Lachlan said as he reached up and closed her eyes. “They were all left here tae die. None of them were strong enough tae survive the change.”

  “Then why turn them?” I asked as a single tear slid down my cheek.

  “What they are doing is a bit like trial and error. Only some humans can survive it, and live through the wolf attaching tae their soul. The rogues have been trying tae increase their numbers by biting as many people as they can. Because of what the rogues are, less survive their bites than if they had been bitten by a werewolf that was born tae it.”

  “They know we’re in Newport,” I said brokenly. “There’s a vampire with the wolves, working with them. He said they have a plan for us, for you,” I said as I lifted my eyes to Jaeden’s.

  “We know about the plan,” Jaeden said. “Raphael is with them. He’s been scouting the pack for months and has reported on the traitor.”

  “You guys could stop this, so why haven’t you?” I asked.

  “You explain the facts of life, Jaeden. I have more tae put down,” he growled as he straightened up to leave.

  I watched as Lachlan walked out, but Jaeden was staring at me as if I was an alien. He narrowed his eyes and lifted his hand to mine. Was he serious? Were they serious? The world was seriously nucking futs!

  “Emma, I will not discuss this in front of the human.”

  “Anything you have to say to me, you can say in front of her.”

  “I want to fuck you,” he said as the cocky smile slid into place.

  “I need air, Emma. You have it out with Adonis while I go toss my cookies in the closest bush,” Addy said as she slid up the wall on wobbly legs.

  “Addy—”

  “No, Emma. I can only process so much shit in one day. If I have to learn anything else today, my head is going to explode.”

  Jaeden waited until she was gone before he began speaking. “Lachlan knows more about this than I do, but I will tell you as much as I can. I do know that when a human is bitten, they begin to change immediately, but it takes a while for it move through their body and complete the transformation. It is extremely painful for most during the first change. Some can live through it and handle the virus that is carried in the werewolves’ bites. The wolf spirit that attaches to the human DNA is a type of bacterial infection. Most of the humans who survived the flu were AB negative. We think this flu may have been introduced by a pack of rogues to get rid of those least likely to survive the change. These rogues started out by accident. We were told that it started a few centuries ago with a human who was legitimately changed by a born werewolf. A love match we understand and the pack alpha agreed to the change against his better judgment,” Jaeden said carefully before he adjusted his position and leaned his back against Addy’s bed, pulling me close to his chest.