Crimson Night (Night Series Book 1)

by R. S. Black

  I patted down the fine hairs at the back of my neck and glared at him.

  “Yeah, whatever. Protect him; you’ve gotten real good at that these past few days.” He rolled off the bed, snatched up his boxers, and stomped out the door.

  Shocked, my mouth parted into a tiny O. I watched him go, wondering yet again what was wrong with Luc. He’d never been like this before. If he’d been anyone else, I’d call it jealousy. But Luc wasn’t anyone else, and I knew it to be impossible.

  I touched the scar above my chest. The only mar on my otherwise-perfect skin. The only flaw that would never heal.

  Once long ago, I thought I’d been in love with him. I’d told Luc, confessed my feelings; he’d looked at me as if I were an abomination. A detestable and foul creature. He’d flung me away. I shivered thinking about that night. About the hatred and rage I’d seen grow in his eyes to a malevolent level. He’d twisted into a creature straight out of a kid’s worst nightmare.

  Sometimes—not often, but sometimes—something can happen that triggers our demon to take us over completely. No longer half human, we become the creature.

  I pressed my palm against my chest, feeling the rigid thickness of the scar and trembled remembering what he’d become. A black and shiny thing of scales and claws, long, sharp fangs glistening silver with spittle.

  To this day I still can’t understand why he’d done what he’d done. Or what I’d said that had made him turn. Luc had never harmed me before, or since.

  My memories of that long-ago night in the horse stable are vague and half-formed. The only thing I can recall with any type of clarity is him hovering over me, legs straddling my chest as he’d carved a jagged heart in my flesh with a spelled knife.

  I’d nearly bled out, passing in and out of consciousness. One second there’d be darkness, nothing; the next I’d hear garbled nonsense and feel blood-soaked hands running over my cheeks. A body rocking me back and forth and hot wetness splashing my face.

  Unlike most of our current family, Luc and I hadn’t grown up alone. We’d been born in the same small village ten miles south of what would someday become ancient Babylon. When those around us died, we’d lived on and been together for most of it. We’ve seen the world around us change while we remained the same. We’d learned, lived, and loved together. Or so I’d thought, until the night I’d spilled the secrets of my heart.

  I’d survived, but I’ve never been the same. Something died in me that night, a part of my soul. Because I knew my hero didn’t exist. I was a freak amongst freaks and would forever be an outsider in a world that hated me.

  It’d taken me over a thousand years to even come within earshot of Luc again. But no matter where I ran, he’d found me. He always found me. Those had been the worst years of my life. The bitter loneliness of no one to confide in, to trust in. In the end I’d returned, not because I was desperate for his love—no... he’d killed that—but because there was safety in numbers. Gradually I’d learned to trust Luc, to an extent, but never completely. Never again.

  I’d been so lost to the pain I’m still not sure why I didn’t go through with the suicide attempt. But I’d grown strong, found a place deep inside, locked all the pain away, and went about my life as if it never happened.

  It may not be the best way to deal with things, sweep them under the proverbial rug, but you try seeing half the stuff I’ve seen and tell me you’d do it any differently. Sometimes pretending the monster’s not there is the only way to hang on to your sanity. Ignorance is bliss, as they say. Even the illusion of it.

  I got up and got dressed.

  My knight in shining armor died a long time ago. I accept death and destruction. Do I like it? No. Will I ever grow fond of it? I hope not. But each day I grow more and more jaded.

  I zipped up my corset top, walked out into the living room ignoring a brooding Luc, and grabbed the last two boxes of doughnuts. I slipped on my sandals and then walked out the door.

  Still, for all that, Luc had taught me a valuable lesson that night.

  Love doesn’t exist.

  And I’m not talking about agape love, the love of a parent for a child. I’ve witnessed that. Seen a mother—human or animal—lay down her life in exchange for her offspring’s. But erotic love, the love a man has for his mate. How can imperfect beings grasp such a profound concept as that? Every day I witness hearts getting broken, lies being told by both men and women.

  Is what we call love simply little more than lust disguised? I’ve lived with Lust my entire life. I know what it feels like to need someone to the point that you cannot breathe for want of him. But that is not love. That is obsession masked as something noble.

  Love is the cruelest myth of all.

  Chapter 14

  It was a typical gray and gloomy day in the Black Hills, though for once no wind. That was almost a minor miracle in this place.

  I was tempted to head back to my trailer, try to take a nap and then maybe call Grace a little later. But honestly, I had no desire to be alone. I didn’t think but headed where my feet guided me, which just so happened to be our version of the chow hall. It was a large, nondescript, army-green tent set several hundred yards behind the carnival proper.

  I walked inside and dropped my cold box of doughnuts onto the nearest bench with a loud thud. Several heads turned in my direction.

  Bubba got up, mug of something in his hand—you never know what it is with him, coffee, cocoa, blood—and nodded at the box. “What’s that?” he asked, voice sleep-roughened yet no less sexy.

  His eyes were blood shot, his skin pinched. He looked ashen; clearly I wasn’t the only one suffering from a case of insomnia. Bubba yawned while scratching the back of his head, looking at me curiously as if wondering why I stared at him so long. I couldn’t help but wonder where he’d been that he should look so bad.

  “Doughnuts. Whoever wants can have,” I finally said with an indifferent shrug.

  He flicked open the box, grabbed two, placed one in his mouth, then grabbed another. I shook my head; we should be the fattest people on Earth.

  I grabbed a foam cup, poured some hot water into it, grabbed a tea bag—all they had left was Earl Gray, not my favorite, but I could force it down when I had to—then I stalked over to one of the empty benches and sat.

  My head was pounding. Felt like someone had taken a blunt object to it and kept pounding away at the base of my skull. I groaned, steeping the tea, and tried to ignore the chatter around me.

  I felt movement beside me. I glanced up to find Vyxyn sitting down.

  “What do you want?” I growled, rubbing a circle at my temple.

  She set a Tupperware bowl down on the table, popped open the plastic seal, and proceeded to pretend like I hadn’t even spoken. In the dim twilight of morning, her hair looked an even more absurd shade, more like a cotton candy pink. She had on no makeup and wore a pair of Hello Kitty flannel pants and sweater top. She began eating.

  I wrinkled my nose when I caught a whiff of the food. My stomach complained violently. “That smells like rotten fish.” I held my cup up to my nose to try to mask the odor with the lemony zest of the tea.

  “It’s called seaweed salad.”

  I eyed the stuff. It was green, slimy, and smelled even worse that it looked. I ushered her away. “Well get it away from me. Makes me feel like I’m gonna yak.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You’re such a baby, Pandora. If anyone’s gonna move, it’s not gonna be me.”

  In that moment I hated her. All I’d wanted was peace and solitude. Why had she come and sat down next to me? To make me more miserable? Actually, now that I thought about it, that was probably why exactly.

  I snarled and scooted to the far end of the bench. All the other tables were taken up, or I’d have moved to a different one completely.

  Vyxyn laughed, curled a long length of slime around her fork, and made a giant show of slowly dropping it into her mouth with a happy sigh as she chewed. “Mmm... mmm,” she said.
“Sure you don’t want some?”

  Bubba, Stryker, and a few others came and sat down on either side of us, sparing me the sudden urge to snap my fangs at the wench.

  “That stuff reeks,” Bubba said a few seconds later and pinched his nose shut. “I think you oughta take it out back and put it out of its misery.”

  I chuckled, raised my brows, and pinned Vyxyn with an I-told-you-so look.

  She twisted her mouth. “I’ll have you know I got this stuff at Neo’s. A five-star restaurant, I might add.” She said it as if we should be envious of her.

  Bubba’s brows gathered. “How much money you pay for that garbage? Why I’ll go to one of our Dumpsters out back and pull out some slop for ya if you’re hard up for turd salad. I’ll only charge half o’ what they do. What you say?” He grinned, and Stryker elbowed him in the rib, laughing as if he’d never heard anything funnier.

  I sipped on my tea, but the biting banter between Vyx and Bubba was only making my headache worse. It had been a bad idea to come here.

  When I left, no one noticed or tried to stop me. I still didn’t want to be alone though. Luc was out of the question. The tent was a no-go. There was only one person I hadn’t seen. Before I left the tent, I checked to see if there were any leftover doughnuts. One. I grabbed it with a napkin, then walked toward Kemen’s place.

  It was one of those silver-bullet-looking trailers, a little rusted around the undercarriage. He rarely got up the energy to keep up with the maintenance. I knocked on the door. No response.

  I peeked inside. “Kemen,” I called. “You here?”

  I heard a faucet running.

  It was dark inside. He’d hung several thick blankets over the windows to keep out almost any trace of light. I swatted at the flying dust motes when I stepped inside. His living room was a sea of clothes; it cluttered the floor so you could barely make out the tan carpet. His table might as well have been a giant waste bin. It was riddled with empty pizza boxes and cans of beer.

  By the lack of smell, I knew the laundry was clean, just not folded. He’d thrown away any food before it had a chance to rot and stink up the place. But that was the extent of his cleaning. My lips twitched. Poor thing. Maybe I’d help him organize before I left.

  I took a deep breath, already feeling some of the tension creep out of my body. There was something about being around Kemen that soothed me. He wasn’t like the other demons, and it was a nice change of pace.

  The faucet turned off, then Kemen stepped out of the bathroom. “Pandora.” He sounded startled. He ran his hand through his hair in a nervous gesture. “What are you doing here?”

  I kicked a pile of clothes to the side, cutting a path to the couch. “I...” I frowned. “Well, I’m not sure. First I was at Luc’s, then I went to the mess hall, and now...” I shrugged. “I’m here.”

  “You can’t sleep, can you?” he asked, knowledge evident in his liquid amber gaze.

  My shoulders slumped. “Guilty as charged.”

  He smiled, eyeing the bundle in my hand. “What’s that?”

  I held it up before me. “Peace offering?”

  He ushered me toward him. “C’mon.” Then he headed into the bedroom, which again, aside from the bed itself, was a veritable pig sty.

  I handed him the doughnut. He polished it off in three bites. I crawled onto the bed, glancing at the floor around me. Instead of clothes, it was books that littered the carpet.

  Things like: Journey of Souls. Tackling the Afterlife. So You’re Dead—Now What? Gods and Mythology. Major Gods of the Ancient World.

  I frowned, picked up a thick book, never realizing Kemen liked to read and also a little wigged out by the titles. “What’s all this, Kemen?” I asked, waving a copy of The Study of Hubris as It Relates to Gods, under his nose. “I never knew you to be a religious sorta guy.”

  He took the book from my hand and tossed it back to the floor. “Don’t you ever wonder about that stuff? What happens after we kick the big one?”

  I hugged my arms to my chest, rubbing my hands up and down. “I try never to think about it.” I looked at him and saw in his face the raw truth of the pain we all grappled with. Could a thing who’d never had a choice to be good or evil someday find peace? I shook my head. “No, I never think about it. I never want to know.”

  He swallowed hard and closed his eyes. I wasn’t going to ask him if he’d ever contemplated suicide. We all have at some point. Life isn’t fair, it isn’t perfect, but it’s all that’s guaranteed. I’d respect Kemen’s decision to decide for himself, but it would never mean I’d stop caring. I grabbed his hand and gave it a gentle squeeze.

  He looked at me, then gave a lopsided, halfhearted grin and shook his head. “Of course, Pandora, I know that. I just wonder.”

  He stared at the wall over my head, and I couldn’t stand it. Not from him. “Would you like me to grab my guitar?”

  I don’t know why—I don’t think I’m a particularly good singer—but he’d always loved listening to me. Especially when mired in an existential crises.

  “That’d be nice,” he said.

  I nodded, ported back to my house, grabbed my guitar, and rejoined him a second later. I grabbed the chair from under his computer desk, sat down, and started to tune it. “Any requests?” I asked around the pick in my mouth.

  “How about ‘3 Libras’?”

  “Ahh, yes.” I nodded, taking the guitar pick out of my mouth and giving him a wide grin. “The depressing angst of A Perfect Circle, just what we need to hear on this fine morning.”

  He snorted and I started playing. The song wasn’t really designed for an acoustic, but I made it work.

  Kemen laced his fingers behind his head and closed his eyes, a semiformed smile on his lips. His chest rose and fell, his breathing grew longer and more steady. Sloth began to work its magick on me. I had to fight to finish the song, my eyelids felt so heavy, my eyes full of grit and painful to blink.

  I’m sure my voice warbled at the end, but somehow I managed to finish. I set the guitar aside and hung my head, pretty sure I could fall asleep right there on the chair.

  Kemen cracked an eye open, then patted the bed. “I got room,” he said.

  I smiled because I knew with him this wouldn’t turn into an invitation for more. Kemen understood me in a way others couldn’t. I crawled onto the bed; we shifted around for a bit until we got comfortable.

  I laid my head on his big chest, soothed by the sound of his beating heart and slow and steady breathing. He played lazily with my hair, and I smiled, snuggling in deeper and inhaling the masculine cool scent of his body.

  “Sandman,” I whispered, almost too tired to speak, “I think I love you.”

  My cheek vibrated with the rumble of his laughter. “Sleep now, Pandora. I’ll keep you safe.”

  I sighed and tucked myself deeper into his body. My foot played along the length of his calf.

  He pressed a gentle kiss on the crown of my head, and I slept.

  Chapter 15

  I woke up to the sound of revelers and the roar of rides. It was darker than a mausoleum, and it took me a second to remember where I was. I blinked, turned to look at the clock beside the strange bed. The red number nine blinked back at me almost mockingly.

  “Friggin’ hell,” I growled, shot up off the bed, and ported to my room. I hadn’t meant to sleep this long. I’d needed to call Grace and ask for entry into the library. Now that would have to wait until tomorrow.

  Ugh! I hated oversleeping, it always made me feel one step behind and completely unsettled. I grabbed my most eye-catching dress. It was a black, gauzy silk with silver threading throughout. It almost looked like winking diamonds in the right lighting. I pulled the dress on, loving the way it hugged my curves in just the right places. It had spaghetti straps and was cut low in both the front and the back, but the skirt flared out at around mid-calf. I liked to call it high-class hoochie. I raced to my closet, pulled out my favorite pair of midnight-indigo stilettos with
four-inch heels, and slipped them on.

  When I’d seen them in the store, I knew I had to have them. They were made of felt and covered in baby skulls, so cute, and a perfect match for the black and purple streaks of my hair.

  I walked to the mirror, ran the brush through my hair until it was a glossy sheen of perfection, and then made my way toward my ride. When I got there, I found Kemen covering for me.

  “You’re awake,” he said. Then his eyes grew wide, and he gave a wolf howl.

  I snorted and patted his hand. “You should have woken me up.”

  “You looked too peaceful, Pandora. You push yourself too hard. Good to rest sometimes.”

  “So says the sloth.” I winked and grinned to show him I meant nothing by it. He meant well, no point in quibbling over it.

  “So where you goin’ anyway?” He gestured toward my dress. “I know you’re not wearing that just to run this ride.” He paused, then his eyes lit with devilish glee. “Don’t tell me it’s for me. I’m flattered.”

  Chuckling, I shook my head. “You wish, Casanova.”

  “Can’t fault a man for trying.”

  I smiled, took ticket stubs from several pairs of hands, and reveled in the attention of both men and women. Ignoring the catcalls from a band of teenage boys, I leaned against my booth after I started the ride.

  “I’m headed downtown. Got some errands to run.”

  Errands meaning Sanguinary. I needed to find out what was going on, and it seemed like the logical place to start.

  He yawned, covered his mouth with his fist. “Want company?” he finally asked.

  “Baby, no insult, but I doubt you could hang with me tonight.” I blew him an air kiss.

  “You’re probably right.” He grinned. “I’ve got stuff of my own to do anyway.”

  “Wow, Kemen is actually gonna do stuff and not sleep. Will wonders never cease?”

  “I might be Sloth, but I’ve got a life too.”

  “Yeah, where you going?”

  He frowned. The happy mood immediately gone, his eyes grew haunted and distant. Whatever he was thinking, it wasn’t pleasant. Remembering those books in his trailer, I grabbed his hand and gave it a firm squeeze. “Kemen, if you ever, ever need to talk, I’m here for you, babe.”