Silas trailed a few steps behind me as I followed the walkways and then headed up the stairs to my condo. The complex was three stories high — the bottom level held everyone’s individual garages, and then the units themselves had two stories, with the bedrooms and a loft sitting area on the top floor. Townhouses, really, but it was just easier to call them condos.
I stopped at the door to my place so I could pull my keys out of the inner pocket of my purse where I kept them. Again, Silas stood a few paces away, as if he understood that I didn’t want to be crowded…that I would be able to escape quickly inside if I needed to.
Then I shocked myself by saying, “Do you want to come in?”
Surprise flickered over his features. “Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m not sure,” I retorted. “But…I guess just promise me you aren’t a vampire.”
“I am definitely not a vampire,” he replied. The faintest of smiles touched his lips, as if he knew all too well that I’d invited him in because my desire to know more about this whole crazy situation had overridden my innate caution. “And thank you.”
I shrugged, trying to appear nonchalant. Already I was beginning to question my hasty invitation, but there wasn’t much I could do about that. Yes, I supposed I could take it back, but an entire lifetime of being schooled in what was polite and what wasn’t somehow prevented me from telling him I’d changed my mind.
We stepped inside, and I quickly entered the code for the alarm system to disarm it. Then I closed and locked the door behind me. “Do you want something to drink?” I asked. “I don’t have much, but there’s water, and I think I have a bottle of Perrier shoved in the back of the fridge somewhere — ”
“Regular water is fine,” he said.
Relieved, I poured us both a glass, then handed one of the tumblers to Silas. He was careful as he took it from me, making sure that our fingers didn’t touch.
I was glad of his caution. Or at least, I thought I was. This whole situation was too weird on a multitude of levels, and yet I couldn’t help thinking, as I stole a glance up at him, that he really was good-looking enough to be an actor, or a model. Either possibility seemed plausible enough, considering that we were in Southern California.
Although I didn’t know too many male models who could fight like something out a Bourne movie.
“Do you want to sit down?” I asked.
“Thank you,” Silas said again, and went to the couch and seated himself on the left side, close to the wing chair that was my favorite.
It seemed clear enough that he expected me to take the chair, and so I did. I set my glass down on a coaster and gave him an expectant look. “All right…we’re someplace private. And safe, according to you. So can you please tell me what this is all about?”
For a long moment, he didn’t reply. His gaze moved around the room, taking in the gas fireplace and the flat-screen TV above it, the neutral flat-weave rug that covered the floor in the living room, the hardwood beyond that. The furniture was simple, spare, but I liked it that way. My parents’ house felt fussy to me, with the expensive antiques everywhere and the original oils that crowded the walls. I knew it was partly that way because the house had originally belonged to my paternal grandfather, and the only updating had been to the kitchen and the bathrooms, but I’d still made sure that my own home would be a polar opposite of the house where I’d grown up.
“Telling you what it is all about would take a great deal of time,” Silas said. “Let’s just say, for lack of a better term, that I’ve been assigned to you.”
“‘Assigned’?” I repeated. “By whom?”
“That’s not important. What’s important is that you have a very important gift, Serena Quinn. That gift can’t be allowed to fall into the wrong hands.”
“Let me guess,” I said, not bothering to keep the sarcasm from my tone. “The ‘sort of’ vampires.”
“Not exactly,” he replied, and I raised an eyebrow.
“Then who?”
“The real vampires.”
I wasn’t sure how in the world I was supposed to respond to that little piece of information. To cover my uncertainty and unease, I retrieved my glass of water and took several swallows before I returned it to its coaster. “So there are ‘sort of’ vampires and real vampires?”
“Exactly. That person — that creature — who attacked you on Monday was controlled by the true vampires. Of course, one of them could not attack you in broad daylight.”
“Because vampires burn up in sunlight.” I made the comment as if it was the most natural thing in the world, but something inside me wanted to scream at the utter insanity of the conversation we were having.
“Precisely. I know there are many books and films these days that make it seem as if vampires can walk in the daytime, but that’s simply not the case. They must have agents to carry out their dirty work.”
“So who are these ‘sort of’ vampires?”
Silas’ expression sobered, a frown turning down the corners of his mouth.
Damn it. I probably shouldn’t have been looking at his mouth. It was a lot more distracting than it should be. Actually, all of him was. For the first time I noticed how his biceps strained against the faded black T-shirt he wore, the width of his shoulders. I tried to tell myself that I was only paying attention to these things because it had been a hell of a long time since I’d had a man who wasn’t my neighbors Lewis or Brian here in the condo — and even longer since I’d actually been with a man — but that line of thought was even less productive. I shouldn’t be thinking about Silas as a man at all.
He was…what? My protector? My bodyguard against all things supernatural?
God, that sounded so crazy.
If Silas noticed my distraction…or the way I’d been looking at his shoulders and biceps…he didn’t give any sign of it. Voice grim, he said, “The ‘sort of’ vampires are those we refer to as the ‘semivives.’”
“The what?” The word sounded Latin to me, or maybe French. I’d taken Spanish in high school and college, though, and so couldn’t make sense of the term.
“The half dead. Half living. They were once ordinary people, those who were taken by the vampires to be their servants.” He lifted one finger to his neck and touched it to the tanned skin there. “They bite their victims, as you would expect, but they don’t actually share their blood, not in the way that they would to turn someone into a full vampire. Instead, they inject enough of the vampire antibodies from their blood into their victims, making them their slaves.”
I tried not to shiver. “So the man who attacked me — was he that strange-looking because of the vampire virus, for lack of a better word — in his bloodstream?”
“No,” Silas said. He reached for his glass and sipped, then put the tumbler back on its coaster. “The ‘virus’ does not change a person’s appearance. The whole point is to have servants…slaves…who look the same as everyone else. In fact, it often takes weeks or even months for loved ones to begin to notice something strange about a semivive. Which means your attacker must always have been a rather odd-looking fellow.”
“Wow,” I said, trying to absorb what Silas had just told me. “That is…so not reassuring.”
“I didn’t intend it to be reassuring. But also know that we track the semivives as carefully as we can. Your family is safe, as are your friends.”
All three of them, I thought. There aren’t too many “friends” to keep track of. Of course I didn’t voice those words aloud. They sounded self-pitying enough within the echo chamber of my mind. Instead, I drank some more water, then said, “Okay. But…why now? I’ve been dealing with these visions for more than three years. If they’re valuable to the vampires, why did they wait so long to come after me?”
His jaw clenched, and I noticed the way his brows drew together, as if he was wrestling with how to respond. Eventually, though, his shoulders lifted in a helpless sort of shrug. “We really don’t know. Something has chang
ed, but we can’t determine exactly what. But we’ve watched over you for some time, ever since you began working with Detective Ortiz.”
That remark sparked so many more questions, I wasn’t sure which one I wanted to ask first. But I supposed I should start with the fundamentals and work from there. “And who is ‘we’?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
Of course he couldn’t. Anger began to boil within me, although I tried to force it back as best I could. Losing my temper wouldn’t do me any good. I couldn’t say that I knew Silas at all, but even in our brief interactions, I’d gotten the distinct impression that he wasn’t the sort of person who would respond well to being provoked. Better to be as calm and in control as I could, and see if he might let something important slip. “So what can you tell me?”
“That your gift is a singular one. While we can’t always predict what the vampires will do next, we do know that they always try to press their advantage whenever possible. Which means that someone like you could be very valuable to them. That would shift the balance of power to their side, which could be very damaging to your world.”
“‘To my world’?” I echoed. “Isn’t it your world, too?”
“Yes, of course,” he replied — a little too quickly. “All I meant was that many people would suffer if the vampires ever got the sort of power they desire.”
Vampires. I still was having a really tough time wrapping my head around that concept. Because it felt beyond weird to sit there and discuss vampires so calmly, as if we were talking about the weather, or the latest Star Wars movie.
My mind in turmoil, I got up from my chair and went to the window. Because it was a sunny day, I’d left the curtains drawn back so my houseplants could get enough light. Right then, however, I felt too exposed, even though I tried to tell myself that no one could actually see inside my condo. At eye level were only the units directly across from my building, after all, and I knew the people who lived there by sight if not by name. And anyone standing on ground level wouldn’t really be able to see anything at all, thanks to the angle. Maybe at night, if the lights were on and someone was standing in exactly the right spot….
I found I didn’t like that line of thought much at all.
The sofa creaked slightly. I turned from the window to see Silas getting up from his seat so he could approach me. Not too close, though; he stopped a little more than a foot away, as if he was all too aware of how much distance needed to be maintained between us.
“I know this must be unsettling,” he said. “It can be difficult to absorb this kind of information, to realize that another world has existed alongside the one you thought you knew.”
“So how do you know about the vampires? Are you part of an ancient order of vampire hunters or something?”
“Not exactly.” His gaze moved to the bright, sunny day outside the window and back to me. Those dark eyes were calm, assessing, and I hoped to hell my cheeks hadn’t chosen that moment to flush bright red. At least, because I knew I was meeting Candace for lunch, I’d put on some makeup and used a waver on my hair, and wore a long skirt and boots and a nicely fitted wrap top. Not like those times when I hung around the condo in yoga pants and an oversized T-shirt and no makeup, since I wasn’t planning to go anywhere.
Then I tried to tell myself it was really stupid to be thinking about my appearance. I hadn’t caught the slightest hint of interest from Silas…not that I’d ever been terribly great when it came to picking up those sorts of subtle signals. Men practically had to inform me beforehand that they were flirting before I got the hint — unless they skipped the flirting altogether and went straight for asking me out, as had happened at the grocery store more times than I would have liked.
Some psychic I was. But no, I wasn’t actually a psychic at all. I still didn’t know what I was, except brain-damaged in a particularly spectacular way.
“It’s not our place to engage, unless we’re given no choice,” Silas went on, still in that calm, unruffled manner. “We observe, and only step in when we must. The vampires have their constraints, which help to keep them in check. But in the past they’ve tried to gain an advantage by binding psychics to them, so they might use those powers for their own gain.”
“What is it they want?”
This time he smiled slightly, but it was a grim smile, one that didn’t reach his eyes. “Power, of course. The power to influence the world, to make it their plaything. By necessity, they’ve kept to the shadows. But they’re always looking for that one tipping point, the one thing that will give them the upper hand.”
I shivered, even though the temperature in the house was comfortable enough. “I assume they haven’t found it.”
“No,” he replied. “Not yet, anyway. But because we know psychics can be vulnerable — true psychics, not those who use simple tricks to dupe their customers — we do our best to keep an eye on them. Which is why you came to our attention.”
“I don’t see how,” I protested. “Detective Ortiz has never outed me. No one else in the department knows that he works with a psychic. He hasn’t even told his partner about me.”
“Yes, Raoul Ortiz has kept his promise to you that your involvement in his investigations would remain hidden. But that doesn’t mean we weren’t able to find out on our own.”
“What, you have spies in the Pasadena P.D.?”
“‘Spies’ is an ugly word. Those who watch, yes. Because vigilance is everything.”
All right, so Detective Ortiz hadn’t betrayed me. The knowledge reassured me somewhat, because I liked the man, knew him to be honest and possessed of a sort of understated courage. However, that didn’t mean I wasn’t still upset that my secret wasn’t quite as secret as I’d hoped. I’d been loath to approach Raoul Ortiz at all that first time, not just because I didn’t want to get laughed out of his office, but also because I’d promised my parents that I wouldn’t tell anyone about my visions. They’d been kind about it, had couched their request that I keep quiet on the subject based on what they claimed was a concern for my welfare, but I knew better. What they really wanted was for me not to embarrass them any more than I already had, no matter how much I needed them to accept what had happened to me, to let me know that they still loved me despite everything.
But all that was uncomfortable family history…and we weren’t the sort of family that aired its dirty laundry in public. No, on the surface, we were all pretty much perfect — Jackson, the golden boy senator, Vanessa, the successful clothing designer, and Serena…well, poor little Serena really didn’t do all that much, to be fair, although my mother often spoke in arch tones about my editing work, trying to make it sound as if I was on the masthead at the New Yorker, instead of a freelancer who scraped a pittance out of editing for people who were trying to self-publish their novels or who needed their websites proofread. I knew that some people did really well at that sort of work, but since I didn’t use any kind of advertising and had the most basic of web presences, most of my jobs came to me through word of mouth.
I didn’t sigh…mostly because I didn’t want Silas to think I was being overly dramatic. At the same time, though, I couldn’t help thinking that life had dumped more than its fair share of crap on me. As if getting hit by a car and going into a coma and waking up three days later with a new and entirely unwelcome talent for having visions wasn’t bad enough. Now I suddenly had vampires to deal with.
He seemed to understand, though, because he said, “I know it’s a great deal to take in. But you must remind yourself that you’re not alone. I’ll make sure that nothing happens to you.”
As he’d already proven on Monday. Once again I saw my attacker dissolving into a pool of pale, slimy ooze. I had a feeling that particular memory would play out in my mind far more often than I would like. But, thinking of the events of that morning and of everything Silas had just told me, I couldn’t help experiencing a tremor of unease. “That semivive….”
“Yes?”
“You said that the semivives are people the vampires have enslaved. Wasn’t there any way to, I don’t know, turn that guy back into a regular human instead of…?” I trailed off then, since I didn’t want to put into spoken words the horrible scene I’d witnessed. It already felt far too real.
At once Silas shook his head. “In that case, no. I could tell by his strength that he had been enslaved for a long time. Occasionally, we have been able to intervene when someone is newly infected, reverse the vampire virus, but when it has lived within the bloodstream of a semivive for years and years, it’s impossible to remove.” He stopped there and watched me carefully. “I had no choice, Serena. You must not feel guilty about what happened. In fact, dispatching those creatures is the best way to do right by them. At least in death their souls are free.”
Souls. Vampires. Half-human creatures who couldn’t call their minds their own. Right then I wished that I might open my eyes, roll over in bed, and realize this had all been a terrible dream. But unfortunately, it was far too real. I couldn’t wish it away.
“What did you use on him?”
Silas didn’t pretend to misunderstand the question. “A solution of silver…and other things.”
“I thought silver was for fighting werewolves.”
“It works against vampires and their semivives. We don’t know exactly why.”
Fair enough. After all, modern medical science still didn’t understand the precise mechanics of why aspirin worked. “What am I supposed to do now?” I asked, and wished my voice didn’t sound so weak.
So afraid.
“Only what you can,” he said. This time Silas’ tone was gentle. Probably too gentle, the voice of a man who was trying to keep someone from bursting into tears. “Just as you have been. The way you have set up your life, you are safer than someone whose work requires them to be in the world all the time. But….” He paused there and pulled a white business card out of his pocket, then handed it to me.
Falling Dark Page 4