Hunting the Dark

by Karen Mahoney

  I looked up at the very moment that Jason Murdoch arrived.

  He’d stopped walking across the quad and was staring at me. I couldn’t tear my eyes away. He looked . . . different. Although he still wore jeans, his simple black button-down shirt was a change – and it fitted him perfectly (if you know what I mean). He was carrying a gray sweater and his hair was reasonably tidy for once. Jesus, he looked almost preppy.

  Also, hot. Damn him.

  I licked my lips and realized that I suddenly felt very hungry. Crap. My eyes would start glowing and then we’d both be in trouble. I was relying on my glasses and my questionable self-control to keep things under wraps tonight. No matter how many times I tried, I just couldn’t get used to contact lenses. There had to be another way, and I figured that working on controlling the silver glow might be a good place to start.

  Jace, hands in his pockets, and no weapon in sight, strolled toward me.

  ‘Hey,’ he said.

  ‘Hi.’ I shuffled my feet, trying to meet his eyes. ‘You look nice.’

  Nice? Who says ‘nice’?

  His mouth lifted at one corner. ‘Thanks. You scrub up pretty well yourself.’

  I forced myself to hold his gaze. I had to admit, his smile seemed warm and genuine. There was no sign of any of the previous discomfort around me, like there had always been before. Something had shifted. Maybe it was a very subtle shift, just a whisper of change, but it was very definitely there. I’d saved his life the other night, of course. Perhaps that had something to do with it.

  Don’t mess this up, I told myself. Don’t make him hate you again.

  And that particular neurosis was followed just as swiftly by: Be yourself. I didn’t have to be something I wasn’t just to please someone else. Especially not a guy. And especially not when we were here for an actual reason. I forced myself to remember that important fact before I got too carried away.

  Jace held out his arm and gave me one of those rare, crooked smiles. ‘Shall we?’

  I curled my fingers around his bicep and enjoyed the feel of sharply defined muscle beneath his shirt. Knowing I could crush it in my bare hand didn’t exactly make me feel delicate and feminine, but hey . . . you can’t have everything.

  ‘So, which one is she?’ Jace stage-whispered.

  ‘I haven’t seen her yet,’ I whispered back, peeking over the top of my specs. ‘And stop being so obvious.’

  I scanned the room trying not to look out of place or suspicious. We were in the reception area, waiting to be admitted to the auditorium where Dr Stark’s presentation would take place. Later, there would be an opportunity to get our books signed. The more I did this sneaking around stuff, the more I realized that I just wasn’t cut out for it.

  For a start, all the people around us were giving me the jitters. I was beginning to feel stressed and paranoid, afraid that if anyone challenged us for being here I’d fall apart and end up sinking my fangs into them just to shut them up. Not that anyone should be challenging us. We had tickets.

  See? Totally paranoid.

  ‘Relax,’ Jace muttered out of the side of his mouth. ‘You’re making me nervous.’

  ‘Why are you talking like a gangster?’ I hissed.

  ‘Why aren’t you wearing your contacts?’ he countered.

  ‘Because I thought it was cute the way my eyes match my boots.’ I fluttered my lashes at him over the top of my glasses and pointed at my silver DMs.

  He stared at me for a beat. ‘You’re accessorizing . . . with your eyes?’

  ‘No, of course not. That was a joke. I just can’t wear contacts anymore – the stupid things make me feel like my eyes are bleeding.’

  ‘Wow,’ Jace said. ‘You made a joke. Cool.’

  ‘Hey, I’m always making jokes. I’m Miss Levity. If I hadn’t died, maybe I would have been a comedian.’

  ‘Maybe you still can be,’ he replied. ‘You could make it a thing, take it on the road – I could even be your manager. We’d call it . . . Dead Girl Talking.’

  I giggled. ‘Or The Vampire Monologues.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Jace said. He smiled to himself in a way that told me he was thinking inappropriate things.

  I elbowed him, just to keep him in line, then continued scanning the room for Dr Stark. There was no way I’d live this down if I’d gone to all this trouble only to find out she wasn’t going to show. Or, worse, I’d somehow walked into the wrong event. Maybe even on the wrong day. That seemed like the sort of thing I’d do.

  While we were waiting for the guest of honor to arrive, I took careful note of all the exits – trying to figure out where would be the most likely place for a ‘green room’. You know, the room where they make guests and celebrities sit while waiting to be interviewed. Or before they go on stage. The college must have somewhere here that would serve the same sort of purpose. There was a cloakroom, but I couldn’t imagine an award-winning scientist sitting with all the coats and bags.

  Apart from the door we’d entered through – which led to an entrance passage, the little cloakroom, and some bathrooms – and the grand entrance to the main auditorium, there was only one other interesting-looking door. It was barred, a bit like a fire exit, but the sign on it said: Restricted Access. Authorized Personnel Only.

  As soon as the lecture started, I could check it out. Well, Jace would be coming with me. I glanced over at him, chugging back more champagne, and frowned. I might have to carry him at the rate he was getting through the complimentary booze.

  The crowd parted and I finally got my first real-life glimpse of Helena Stark; I recognized her from the photo I’d seen online, although she was a little older now. Tall, middle-aged, and smartly dressed in a navy pantsuit, her auburn hair was cut into a neat bob that framed her rather angular face. She was surrounded by a small entourage as she headed through the reception, and she looked flustered.

  I knew the feeling. I grimaced as I hitched up my leggings for the hundredth time; the elastic was loose and it was driving me crazy. I really should have worn jeans.

  ‘Sorry I’m late,’ I heard Dr Stark say to a tall, soberly-dressed older man who was wearing surprisingly funky glasses. They were a bit like mine, which made me feel more like I fitted in with all the science-y types.

  The man bent his head towards Stark. ‘Anything wrong?’

  ‘Slight problem at the Facility.’

  Vampire hearing had its uses and my ears pricked up. Don’t ask me how I knew that she said ‘facility’ with a capital-F, I just did. You know how you can sometimes hear the All-Caps-of-Doom in someone’s voice? Yeah. That.

  Funky Glasses turned his body so they were speaking only to each other in hushed tones. ‘Subject Ten again?’

  Dr Stark pursed her lips and nodded.

  Subject Ten? Whoa, this was perfect timing. It was about time we caught a break. As the pair walked beyond us, I gripped Jace’s arm and stood on tiptoe to whisper-shout directly into his ear, ‘They’re talking about Subject Ten!’

  ‘What? I can’t hear you because of that dramatic hissing in my ear.’ He looked down at me. ‘Oh, it’s just you.’

  I ignored him and continued to insist on his attention, this time by shaking his arm violently. ‘I’m not kidding around. I knew we had to come here.’

  Jace made a half-hearted attempt to disengage my fingers from his arm. ‘Great, now we can foil her dastardly plans. There’ll be a huge chase, an anti-climactic fight, and everything will end when she says, “If it wasn’t for you pesky kids . . .”’

  I elbowed him. ‘This is serious.’

  ‘I’m totally serious about this,’ he said.

  Just to prove how ‘serious’ he was, Jace grabbed another glass of champagne from a passing waiter. He smiled extra widely when he realized that the female server he’d picked was a super-tall brunette with the longest legs I’d ever seen. Nobody seemed to care that he was underage, but that probably had a lot to do with the fact that he looked older than nineteen – and he always
carried fake ID.

  The crowd began filing into the auditorium. Finally!

  I grabbed Jace’s arm. ‘Stop drinking and follow me.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  Instead of replying, I just pulled him in the direction of the door I’d been checking out earlier. The supposedly ‘restricted’ one.

  I had to break the door to get it open, but I was super-subtle about it so there was nothing to worry about. That’s me: Queen of Subtlety. Then we sneaked around ‘backstage’, found some amazing information that would totally incriminate Dr Stark in Nicole’s death, while also finding out everything there was to know about Subject Ten. Theo would be so proud of me!

  OK, I just made all that up. This is how it really went down:

  It’s true that I broke the restricted access door, but there were still too many servers and University staff milling around for me to do it with even a modicum of subtlety. The bookstore staff also started setting up an area to sell Dr Stark’s masterpiece. In short, we weren’t going to be going anywhere without being seen. I figured the only way around the problem was to use my not-particularly-effective vampire gaze on the people nearest us, thinking that maybe I could get them to turn away for a few seconds. Sort of like Obi Wan Kenobi using The Force, in Star Wars. (‘This is not the vampire you’re looking for.’)

  Jace said, ‘No need to pull out the vampire mojo. Leave this to me.’

  I had to admit to being a little nervous about this confident declaration. Jace seemed to have been drinking quite a lot, but he assured me that he could handle the situation, so I said, ‘Sure.’

  Silly me.

  Everything went well to start with. Jace was busy working his charms on two lady servers hovering too close to our exit, while I was supposed to break the lock and just walk through.

  ‘Style it out,’ Jace had said. ‘Don’t hesitate, and look as though you’re supposed to be there.’

  I had to admit that it helped with me looking like a stereotypical geeky student-type, maybe someone working as a volunteer at the high-profile book launch. It actually seemed like we might be able to pull this off. Maybe we both got cocky; I’m willing to admit it wasn’t all just Jace and his stupid champagne talking.

  I’d slipped through the door, using my elegant cardigan to block the door just slightly open. I knew it would come in useful! Jace would be able to follow me as soon as he had the chance.

  As I’d suspected, the door took me to a space that must run alongside the auditorium. A regular, well-lit corridor ran the length of it, with several rooms spaced along the right-hand wall. Only one of the doors was locked, so that was the one I decided to go for. If you had something to hide, you’d lock it away – that was the logic I’d applied to the situation. I thought I was being totally reasonable. And Jace would be joining me any minute; we could snoop around together.

  I snapped the handle off the door, but that didn’t do anything other than give me nothing to grab hold of – it was still locked.

  Hmm . . . Not to worry, I thought. I’ll just kick it down.

  I don’t know why I decided to do that while an academic presentation was going on not so very far away, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. I think I’d just decided that I was going to find something to tell me what Stark’s connection was with Subject Ten, and I wasn’t going to stop until I did.

  Jace still hadn’t arrived by this point.

  I shrugged, pushing down the sudden fluttering of nerves. This would be fine. (I just have to point out that I hadn’t thought about the fact that the door might be locked from the inside. Just so we’re clear on why everything started to go wrong at this point in the evening.)

  I was winding up to kick the door in when Jace finally arrived. He jogged towards me with a look of alarm on his face. ‘Stop!’ he whisper-shouted.

  ‘What kept you so long?’ I said crossly, giving the door a good hard kick with my shiny silver boot.

  The door sprung open in a cloud of cheap glitter, and Jace pushed me out the way as a crossbow bolt zipped past my right ear and thunked into the wall behind us.

  We landed on the floor in a heap, and I wasn’t surprised to see a tall blond girl walk into the corridor with a crossbow resting casually against her shoulder. Subject Ten.

  ‘Don’t you ever learn?’ she said, voice trembling with anger. ‘I told you to stay out of this.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  Interesting. Sort of.

  I scrambled to my feet, pulling Jace with me. He’d just saved my ass and I wouldn’t forget it. Probably, knowing Jason Murdoch’s ego, he wouldn’t be letting me forget it anytime soon, either.

  He glanced from Ten and back to me again. ‘Is this the one who killed Quinn?’

  I nodded, not taking my eyes off her. She didn’t seem to be in a hurry to reload the crossbow, but who knew what other weapons she had stashed away.

  ‘I could take her,’ Jace snarled. ‘You didn’t tell me she was just a kid.’

  ‘I did tell you that,’ I said. ‘Apparently, you weren’t listening.’

  The girl, who was already becoming my own personal nemesis (ha!), still held the crossbow down at her side. ‘I didn’t come here for you,’ she said.

  ‘That’s nice to know,’ Jace replied.

  She turned on him and raised her weapon, fury leaking out of her so that I could practically feel it. She slid a fresh bolt home. ‘I wasn’t talking to you.’

  Jace raised his hands. At least he had the sense not to say anything. A crossbow shot at close range might not be the most effective weapon, but it would still cause someone as human as Jace a lot of pain.

  I tried to distract her. ‘Why are you sneaking around back here? I’m the only vampire at this party.’

  ‘What makes you so ready to assume that I hunt vampires tonight?’

  Huh. That shut me up.

  But apparently not for long. ‘Then what are you doing?’

  ‘Vampires are not the only monsters,’ she said.

  Jace and I looked at each other, but before we could continue this confusing conversation, I heard a door open and two sets of footsteps. They were pretty far away, but moving quickly in our direction.

  We all ran back to the ‘restricted access’ door. I was careful to make sure the sort-of-maybe dhampir went ahead with her crossbow. I had no idea how she was going to hide it from anyone still in the lobby, but I’d let her worry about that. As long as I got Jace out with me, I didn’t care about anything else.

  Of course, Jace had moved my cardigan from where it had been holding the door open, and it was now shut. And stuck fast.

  I turned accusing eyes on him. ‘What did you do that for?’

  ‘So that nobody could follow us.’

  ‘Great idea, Einstein.’

  Ten watched us with apparent fascination, but before she could say anything – or before one of us could offer to tear the door off its hinges – two security guys ran toward us from the far end of the corridor. They wore unusual uniforms, not the regular sort of security get-up you’d expect in a place like this. More like black army fatigues.

  ‘Hey! What are you kids doing back here?’

  Panicking, I gripped the edge of the door with my fingertips and pulled. Adrenaline gave me even more strength, and I peeled the whole thing back like it was the lid on a tin of sardines.

  The guards were almost on us.

  I pushed Jace through the door, no longer worrying about what was on the other side. ‘Go! Just go!’ I turned to Subject Ten.

  She grabbed my arm and shoved me through the gap. ‘Run.’

  I put on the brakes, trying to get a look at her face. What was she doing? Why was she helping me?

  She reached into her jeans pocket and stuffed a piece of tightly folded paper into my hand. ‘Take this, and just go.’

  The men had reached her, but I was on the other side of the door now with Jace trying to pull me away. ‘Moth, what are you doing? People are staring. Come
on!’

  With a final look behind me, I grabbed Jace’s arm and ran.

  A few minutes later, we were hiding in the cloakroom just off the main lobby. Sounds filtered through the wall; I could hear the crowd of people moving from the auditorium and back into the reception area, which at least made me feel less nervous about being caught back here. The book signing would probably be starting soon.

  I wondered whether Ten had escaped and who the heck those two guys were. No way they were University security. What would Dr Stark be going with people like that around her? Were they her bodyguards?

  ‘Let’s see it then,’ Jace said, breaking into my thoughts.

  I handed him the crumpled paper and he unfolded it, laying it out across our laps. We stared at it for a long time, trying to figure out what Ten had wanted to tell us. Or to tell me. She’d given the note to me, after all, and hadn’t seemed terribly enamored when it came to Jace.

  It was just a standard letter-sized sheet of paper: a printout of a short email dated January 2001.

  Jace pointed at the date. ‘Did they even have email back then?’

  ‘Of course they did.’ I rolled my eyes, but my brain was already whirring. I flashed back to Subject Ten’s dog tags; the numbers on that had been 01-2001. Coincidence? Not likely. The email’s subject line was: Re: The Weapon is the Cure.

  It was clearly part of an ongoing conversation, but we only had this very small part of it. What did that title mean? What weapon? Something about those words made my stomach churn with anxiety, although I had no idea why. Just intuition, I guess; a bodily sense of wrongness.

  Jace frowned. ‘A cure for what?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘But I have a feeling that maybe I don’t want to know.’

  ‘Did you see the signature?’

  I gave him a look. Of course I’d seen the signature. That was why I was sitting here trying to recover from shock – while also feeling new pieces of the puzzle slot neatly into place:

  Helena,