[Dark Destinies 01.0] Dark Heart of the Sun

by SK Ryder

  He aimed and pulled the trigger.

  By Thursday afternoon, Cassidy had narrowed the possible reasons for Dominic’s unexplained disappearance to one—her safety. Something was threatening her—maybe even his deranged and powerful sire—and he tried to shield her by drawing no attention to her whatsoever. Nothing else made any sense given how well she knew him after spending several hours sharing a mind with him. Nothing else short of him getting killed, and that possibility she refused to even contemplate.

  In search of clues, a feeling, anything, she returned to his sanctuary when she got home from another long, emotionally trying day at work. She had barely set foot inside when every nerve in her body prickled with alarm. Her conscious mind took a bit longer to catch up to her intuition.

  She dropped to the edge of the bed, her eyes fixed on the wall—the empty wall. Only holes remained where the hangers had been. They had disappeared together with the Samurai swords. As had all the electronics. The emptiness sucked her under like a mighty wave.

  Dominic’s most valued possessions had disappeared.

  During the day.

  Cassidy sat, frozen with fear. Someone had been here today, in her house. Were they still here? Suddenly the familiar walls felt more like a trap than a refuge. Her heart thudded hard as she looked around, wide-eyed, listening, not daring to draw a full breath.

  The air conditioner kicked in. The vents whistled. When the door swayed on its hinges, she thought she might faint.

  A shaggy black face peered around the corner.

  Cassidy gasped her relief. “Eddie!”

  The large cat padded in, a question in his tail, relaxed in a way he would never be if there were strangers in the house or if he had been recently traumatized by same. She gave him a vigorous scratch behind the ears. “Am I ever glad to see you, buddy.”

  Eddie head-butted her hand, then stopped to look down the hallway. The tip of his bushy tail twitched, undecided, as something silent and invisible captured his full attention. It was still daylight, though, which ruled out a number of possibilities, both good and bad.

  “More lizards, buddy?”

  He flinched and flattened his ears. Cassidy straightened. Was that a car door?

  Eddie turned in place and disappeared under Dominic’s bed.

  Cassidy made it only halfway down the hall before someone knocked a jaunty rhythm on the front door. When she opened it, she wondered if she wasn’t dreaming again, so improbable was the vision of Garrett Striker standing on her porch, sharply dressed in a blue blazer, polo shirt and jeans. He pulled off his sunglasses before looking her up and down, taking in her slightly wrinkled blouse and skirt.

  “Miss Chandler. I’m so sorry to disturb you.”

  Her eyes widened. A polite Garrett Striker couldn’t possibly be a good thing.

  “I feel we’ve gotten off to a bad start, you and I. What do you say we go for a ride and get to know each other better?”

  “Excuse me?” She couldn’t have heard right. This man had gone out of his way to make her feel inadequate every other time they met. Now he was—what?—propositioning her?

  “You are the girl who has turned my otherwise intelligent and capable nephew into a bungling idiot who can’t stay out of situations that could get him killed.”

  “What?”

  “Since he got home from school, all his troubles seem to begin and end with you, and I intend to find out if we can limit the damage to a forty million dollar airplane or if maybe we’ll all be dead by this time next week.”

  Cassidy stared at him, slack-jawed, before giving herself a mental shake. “I’m sorry, but Jackson and I are no longer together. I thought he told you. Whatever you think is going on has nothing whatsoever to do with me.” She slashed a flattened hand through the space between them, underscoring her statement. Not that she wasn’t concerned for Jackson if he really were in trouble. But she wasn’t about to take his uncle’s word for it.

  “On the contrary. It has everything to do with you, my dear. Or should I say . . . chérie?”

  Apprehension slithered up her back on a million tiny feet. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Come now, Miss Chandler. We all know the sort of company you keep these days.” He flashed a positively wolfish grin. “I think we have a lot to talk about.”

  Cassidy had no idea what he meant and neither did she want to. “You need to leave,” she said with as much force as she could muster and made to slam the door in his face.

  He caught it with one hand high up on the door. “I’m sorry. I should have mentioned that this is not a request.”

  It only took a second. One glance out of the corner of her eye, at the gaping front of his jacket, and Cassidy’s world stopped. Garrett Striker had come packing heat. He didn’t lower his hand, letting the jacket fall back into place, until she had spotted the holstered gun.

  All thoughts of using one of Dominic’s fancy moves to keep Garrett at bay drained away. There was little chance of her tackling a man of his size and training to begin with, but if she wasn’t prepared to get that weapon away from him and—more importantly—use it, her chances hovered well south of zero. Simmering panic or not, she’d need a lot more motivation before she risked her life or was ready to take one.

  “You really know how to impress a girl,” she said, her voice faint.

  “I thought you’d come around.” He stepped aside and gestured toward the huge black SUV hulking in the yard. “Shall we? We’re wasting daylight.”

  Dazed and moving with robotic stiffness, Cassidy retrieved her bag and followed Garrett Striker to his car. Serge’s odd words from the night before rang in her ears. Her destiny had come for her after all.

  Chapter 33

  Foundation Business

  When Garrett closed the passenger door, sealing her into the Cadillac’s rich leather interior, every cell in Cassidy’s body wanted to tear it open and run. Except that if he caught her, he might truss her up like a parcel. And if he didn’t catch her, he’d probably shoot her.

  She stayed put.

  Dropping the charm act, Garrett remained silent as he eased down the narrow lane. The sound of blood rushing in her ears overpowered the soft classical playing on the satellite radio.

  Think, Chandler, she admonished herself. If an opportunity came along, it wouldn’t do to miss taking advantage because panic paralyzed her. Besides, she didn’t have all the facts, and Garrett had so far done nothing beyond being creepy. Maybe he really did only want to talk.

  The late afternoon sun blazed in a cloudless sky, and Cassidy retrieved her sunglasses, pushing them onto her nose. Then she finger combed her hair and worked it into a braid. The action relaxed her, sharpened her focus. It would also keep her hair out of the way during whatever was to come.

  When they stopped at a red light, she again considered making a run for it, but ruled it out when she realized how closely Garrett watched her. He’d have her wrist in a vise grip as soon as she reached for her seat belt release. Judging by the look on his face, he was already three steps ahead of her.

  Cassidy rallied her nerves and pulled her face into a gullible smile. “Gelato.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “If you want to take me somewhere so we can talk about whatever it is you want to talk about, well, I love gelato. I hear there’s a new place downtown that serves it. I’ve been dying to try it. Just couldn’t afford to.”

  No reaction. At all.

  “Light’s green,” she pointed out. “Gelato to the right?”

  They went straight.

  “Why don’t you tell me how much you know about our family,” he prompted.

  She shrugged. “Movers and shakers in global financial markets and more money than God. Oh, and issues with their women having careers beyond c
harity events and procreating. That about sum it up?”

  The fingertips of Garrett’s left hand rubbed together in thought. “Do you know anything about the Striker Foundation?”

  “I . . . I guess Jackson might have mentioned it,” she hedged, not sure how much to reveal of the little she recalled. “It has something to do with . . . um . . . vampires.”

  “God damn stupid kid,” Garrett muttered, knuckles going white on the steering wheel.

  “It’s not like I don’t know about them.”

  “Exactly, Miss Chandler. That’s the problem right there.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Unfortunately for all of us, at some point you will.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Did Jack also tell you how we lost his brother?”

  This abrupt change of topic gave her pause. “Grizzly bear.”

  “Interesting. As much of a fuss as he makes about you, I would have sworn he told you the truth.”

  “Not a bear?” she wondered, skin crawling. That was all Jackson had ever told her to explain his scars and Justin’s death during a hiking trip with Uncle Garrett. He never gave details, and she never asked, seeing the remembered horror still reflected in his eyes.

  Garrett shook his head. “Vampire.”

  She blinked, stunned. Just like that everything clicked into place—Jackson’s reaction to Dominic, his fervent warnings and determination to get her away from the cottage, even following her to Key West. “That . . . explains a few things.”

  “It explains Jackson. Not much else.”

  Cassidy said nothing more, mentally reeling. Several minutes went by before she realized they were traveling on an obscure access road and approaching a back entrance for the local airport. Garrett triggered the unmanned gate to open via remote control and drove right up to a sizeable, bright white hangar. On its side, SCI’s swooping green and gold logo glowed in the evening light.

  “Are we going somewhere?”

  “On the contrary. We’ve arrived.”

  Garrett ushered Cassidy inside the hangar where a single jet gleamed in a pool of utility lights. Her steps faltered when she noticed a seat protruding from the shattered cockpit window. Wires coiled from the walls and ceiling inside. She stopped. No, not just the cockpit window. Every window was either veined with cracks, splintered, or gone completely. A jumble of bulky things lurked in the darkened interior.

  “Forty million dollars,” Garrett said behind her on a heavy sigh.

  “What happened?”

  “Jack turned stupid into an art form. Probably because he can’t stop thinking with his dick where you’re concerned.”

  She glanced at him, wary. “Jackson did this? Why?” She looked back at the gutted plane. “How?” The damage looked far and away beyond anything a single man could do. A single vampire however . . . For reasons she couldn’t put a finger on, that thought made her catch her breath.

  “Don’t worry, Miss Chandler. All I need from you is a moment of your time and we’ll call it even, shall we? Over here, please.”

  Garrett directed her toward a back corner. He stayed behind her until he had to key the code for a door. “After you.”

  The space inside felt cramped by a desk and two tall racks full of humming equipment, complete with a sea of schizophrenic indicator lights and rivers of cable pouring out of the ceiling. “Security systems,” Garrett explained. “My specialty.”

  “A lot of good it did your plane.”

  “The least of my concerns. This way.” He propelled her through another door, which boomed shut behind them with the weighty finality of steel, sealing them into an echoing gloom. The only light came from several desk lamps scattered on a row of workstations along a wall, which left details in the rest of the space shrouded in obscurity. In the center of the room squatted a large dull metal box. Her eyes strayed to the darkness inside it, drawn by a deep, cold silence.

  “What the hell is this place?”

  “The Foundation,” Garrett said, smiling. In the peculiar light, he looked like the devil incarnate. She could almost smell smoke. And she became uncomfortably aware that she was alone with him.

  He indicated a plastic chair beside one of the desks. “Sit.”

  As she lowered her butt into it, he grabbed her right arm and applied a pair of handcuffs that seemed to appear from nowhere. Next thing she knew, she was shackled to the desk.

  Panic gripped her. Would anyone be able to hear her scream in here? She yanked at the restraint. “What the—”

  “A precaution. In case you don’t like needles.”

  “In case I don’t what?”

  From a drawer, Garrett produced a pair of latex gloves and various steri-sealed supplies.

  “Oh, my, God. You’re even crazier than I thought.”

  “I prefer ‘dedicated’.” He shed his blazer and tossed it across a desk. The gun he left in the shoulder holster, a not-so-subtle warning. “I won’t need much,” he promised as he pulled up another chair. He arranged the desk light to illuminate her arm before snapping on the gloves and going to work.

  “Do you even know what the hell you’re doing, Mr. Director of Security?”

  He applied the rubber tourniquet as though bundling firewood. His face betrayed no emotion, certainly not compassion. The large bore needle he jammed into her popping vein looked thick enough to break an elephant’s skin. Cassidy squirmed in her seat, sucking air through clenched teeth, fighting the urge to scream her lungs out. She refused to give him the satisfaction. The tears of pain, however, she couldn’t stop.

  “If there were an easier way to do this, I would,” Garrett said as he snapped a vial in place. When it started filling with her blood, he released the tourniquet. “I’m a little out of practice, so bear with me.”

  “Is that actually an apology, you sick bastard?” she burst out.

  “If I’m wrong, I’ll apologize later.” He searched her face. “But I doubt it.”

  “Wrong about what? What the hell do you think I am?”

  “We’ll know in a couple of minutes.” He wiggled the needle in her arm, fishing for a better angle. “The last time I doubted my instincts, eight people died. If that happens again, this family is finished. So I hope you can appreciate my caution.”

  “No. I have no freaking idea what you’re talking about,” she panted. That damn needle felt like a razor blade going straight through her elbow joint.

  When the vial was full, Garrett stuck a cotton ball on the injury and told her to bandage herself up with the supplies he pushed toward her. He moved two desks away, popped the cap off the vial and transferred the blood into a large test tube. Then he added drops of solutions from various little bottles.

  “It’s a simple test. We give it to everyone the Foundation comes in contact with.” He set the test tube in a rack, pushed a button on his watch, and sat back, studying her. “We’d hate to have another Rafael on our hands.”

  Cassidy flexed her arm to test the Band-Aid. A sizeable bruise already bloomed in the crease. “Who?”

  “Someone who spent more time with vampires than he should. Like you. But we didn’t know that about him before we hired him to be a driver for the family.” His smile was so tight it approached sneer. “He was at the wheel when my brother’s first wife and their four children died. He drove them into oncoming traffic. By the time the fires were out, eight people were charred beyond recognition, Rafael included. We didn’t know until we went through his personal things that he’d done this on purpose.”

  Cassidy went still. She knew about the accident that had killed Warren’s first family before he married Jackson’s mother, but no one had ever hinted at this horrifying twist.

  “Why?”

  “A difference of opinion regardi
ng his vampire mistress.”

  “I see,” she said, mystified. “And what does all that have to do with me? I have no intention of killing anyone. I promise you.”

  “Not yet.” His watch beeped and he picked up another bottle, unscrewing the top. “This test will tell me how likely you are to go postal on us should we have the same difference of opinion. You see, the more a vampire’s serum is concentrated in a human’s blood, the more effective, not to mention persistent, that vampire’s compulsions become. Sometimes for long after the serum has dissipated.”

  Cassidy curled a clammy hand around the table leg she was shackled to as she watched Garrett lift the bottle and count several drops into her blood. She felt again the sharp pinch of Dominic’s teeth in her wrist, remembered the euphoric effect of his poison—serum—in her blood, the blood Garrett now swirled under one of the halogen desk lamps. The blood that changed colors, first turning purple and then blue. A beautiful electric-blue that reminded her of the sky above the meadow where her soul had first touched Dominic’s.

  She didn’t realize she was smiling until she caught Garrett watching her and sobered.

  “Doesn’t look like I’ll be apologizing, Miss Chandler.”

  Chapter 34

  The Only Thing

  Cassidy’s mind tumbled. Her confusion deepened at the pity on Garrett’s face. “What difference does it make? So I was bitten. What of it?”

  “You’re loaded with his serum, which means you’re under his influence far more than through a simple compulsion. Your mind is no longer your own. If I were you, I’d put a gun to my head and pull the trigger.”

  No, not pity she realized. Disgust. Loathing even. He turned away to sit in front of a screen at the next desk and began typing.