Nightshade (1)

by Michelle Rowen

  “Are you a diabetic?” I had a friend who injected regularly and had a similar case that she kept her insulin in. However, she’d taken it when she checked her blood sugar levels before meals, not when an alarm went off.

  “No.”

  “Then what’s that for?”

  “It helps me control my hunger.”

  “You’re on a diet?”

  “You could say that.”

  What kind of diet would a hard-muscled assassin be on? Maybe it was steroids to help him pop some biceps, like vintage Arnold. He wasn’t that bulky, though. And he didn’t look like he was a competitive weight lifter. No, Declan’s fat-free body was meant for stealth work—sneaking up behind a victim and slitting his or her throat, then dragging the corpse away to hide it.

  My hand automatically went to my neck as if to protect it from an invisible blade.

  “Look, Declan ... we can work this out between us. Come to some sort of a deal for you to let me go.”

  “There is no deal. You’re carrying something I need. End of story. Consider yourself a reluctant courier.”

  I turned that over in my already crowded brain. “Can your father—whoever he is—help to get this poison out of me?”

  “That would be the ideal solution to this unfortunate situation, wouldn’t it?”

  Why couldn’t he just answer yes or no? I forced myself to look at him. At this angle I only saw the strap of his eye patch. The damage was on the left side of his face. His right side was mostly unmarked. My gaze moved to his hands on the steering wheel. The imprint of my teeth was still on his scarred left forearm, although it didn’t look as bad as I thought it would. However, it still looked as if it had been painful.

  Good. Bastard deserved it.

  He tucked his serum container away.

  “I need to call my coworkers,” I said. “And my roommate. They’re going to be worried. There were witnesses and security cameras.”

  “I don’t care about any of that.”

  “If I can call them, let them know I’m okay—”

  “You’re not okay.” He shifted into drive and the tires screeched as he pulled back onto the road. “That poison’s going to kill you. It’s only a matter of time. What part of that don’t you understand?”

  3

  I WANTED TO START SCREAMING AT HIM, START POUNDING on him. Maybe grab the steering wheel and crash us into the nearest telephone pole. But I didn’t.

  I could still fix this. I clung to that thought like it was the last floatation device on a doomed, sinking ship. I grappled to maintain my grip on it as my growing despair and panic tried to drown me.

  I didn’t want to die.

  I’d had some hard times in the past. I wasn’t Mary Sunshine 24/7. I’d dealt with some depression that, five years ago after my parents died, made me look long and hard at my own continuing existence. But that was then and this was now.

  Knowledge was power. The more I knew about what was happening to me, the better off I’d be. At least, I hoped that was the case.

  Declan hadn’t beaten me unconscious for having a tendency to ramble on and ask incessant questions. That was a good sign. He’d answered most of my questions, although I was still horribly confused.

  Anderson had been developing some sort of poison for Declan’s father. It sounded as if he’d had second thoughts about handing it off and Declan had been sent to take it anyway. What had Anderson said? That it was dangerous. An abomination. Something that could just as easily destroy Declan as the other—

  —had he said bloodsuckers?

  That could mean lots of things. Lawyers and tax collectors came to mind, along with mosquitoes, leeches, and vampires.

  “What did Anderson mean when he said you’re no better than the other bloodsuckers?” As soon as the words left my mouth, Declan glared at me. Great. The first sign of any sort of emotion from him had to be anger.

  Had I insulted him? I forced myself not to turn away and cower.

  “I answered your questions already.”

  “Why would your father be developing a poison meant for these ... bloodsuckers? I don’t understand.”

  “You don’t have to understand. And trust me, you don’t want to.”

  That helped a flare of anger rise up inside of me like a small, pissed-off phoenix. “Of course I don’t want anything to do with this. I’d prefer not to understand. But that was before I got a syringe full of deadly poison injected into my jugular and had a man murdered in front of me. And now you tell me I can’t go to a hospital or that will mean certain death for me. I don’t know how fucking long this drive is, or where exactly you’re taking me, but if you want me to stop asking questions about all this you’re going to have to beat me unconscious and throw me in the trunk.”

  There it was. An open offer for him to pound those meat hooks of his into me and make me stop talking.

  But really, I’d rather have been unconscious than sitting here for God only knew how long, waiting and wondering what was coming next. It was like torture.

  “I don’t hit women,” he said after a long silence passed between us. “Not human ones, anyway.”

  “No, but you’ll kill them if you’re given the order, right?”

  His jaw tensed. “Only if there’s no other choice.”

  I thought about what he’d just said. “Wait. You said you don’t hit human women. Human? Is that something you really need to clarify?”

  “Sometimes.” His attention was back on the road.

  I licked my dry lips, wishing desperately for a bottle of water. “What women aren’t human?”

  “Those bloodsuckers Anderson was referring to.” His lips thinned.

  I gaped at him, and touched my wounded neck, grimacing as I ran my index finger over the lump where the tip of the needle had gone in. “You’re not trying to tell me that they’re—they’re ... vampires? Are you?”

  It had been on my list of potential bloodsuckers.

  He nodded once. “Most humans don’t know of their true existence. They’ve kept to themselves for a very long time.”

  I could really use some of that water right about now. “Vampires are just fiction.”

  He gave me another one of those humorless twists of his lips. “Sorry to be the one to break it to you then, but they’re real.”

  I waited for the punch line. But, of course, it didn’t come. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Doesn’t really matter whether or not you believe me. I don’t give a shit either way.”

  My stomach turned. “Well, that’s good, because it’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “Is that right?”

  “If vampires were real, everybody would know about them. It would be all over the news.”

  “I guess you have it all figured out, don’t you?”

  There was that sarcasm again. I was used to sarcasm with a large helping of humor when dealing with some of my friends—as well as my own liberal use of it. Declan’s wasn’t that pleasant. It was more mocking. Cruel.

  I watched his attention shift to the rearview mirror, and whatever borderline amusement I thought I’d seen vanished from his expression.

  “Most vampires choose to stay underground. There are a few rogues who come to the surface and enter larger cities and murder whomever they choose. But they’re dealt with.”

  “Dealt with,” I repeated.

  “Usually hand-to-hand combat since they’re hard to kill otherwise. Regular bullets don’t work that well. Hunters tend to get a bit beaten up. Most don’t have a long life expectancy, if you know what I mean.”

  Declan’s scars. The ones that covered the left side of his face. That laced over his arms and the backs of his hands. The big one on his stomach.

  “You’re one of these hunters?” I asked, incredulously.

  “Gee, how’d you guess?”

  “Because you look like you’ve been through a meat grinder a couple of times.”

  “It was a rhetoric
al question.” He touched his eye patch. “I’ve taken down my share of rogues. Unfortunately, while my wounds heal fast, I scar up even worse than a human would.”

  That was a strange way to put it—worse than a human. “You’re ... not human?”

  There was a wry twist to his mouth as he answered me. “Not entirely.”

  Okay, I’d been poisoned and kidnapped and witness to a murder, but I knew ridiculous from nonridiculous. I wasn’t in the mood for Declan to yank my chain and give me half-assed answers when my life was hanging in the balance.

  “Let me guess: You’re a vampire?”

  “If I was a vampire, I wouldn’t come out during the day like this. It’s one of the reasons most of them choose to live underground.”

  “Because sunlight turns them into dust.”

  “No. Because the sun fries the eyes right out of their heads, which would make them much easier to kill. They have a problem with that so they stay hidden during daylight hours. The smart ones stay hidden all the time.”

  The midday sun was high in the sky at the moment, glaring in through the window. Perspiration slid down my spine from the heat. Despite this, a shiver danced across my skin. “So, what are you?”

  His jaw was tense and there was no humor in what little expression I could read on his scarred face. “It doesn’t matter what I am.”

  “What are you?” I asked again. He was either lying about everything or he was completely and dangerously delusional. I was leaning toward the latter. “You said you’re not human. Not entirely human.”

  He didn’t reply. It only made me angrier.

  “I didn’t ask for this. If you want me to behave myself so you can take me to this undisclosed location to see your father so he can get this poison out of my veins, then you need to talk to me.”

  That earned me a look. “I should have gagged you and tied you up when I had the chance.”

  “Then why didn’t you?”

  “I’m not used to dealing with conscious human cargo.” He glanced at the rearview mirror, then reached up and adjusted it a little. “We’ve still got a long way to go today.”

  That wasn’t exactly answering my question. “How long?”

  “Five hours.”

  I looked at the clock on the dashboard. If it was correct, it meant I’d been unconscious for about an hour. A six-hour drive from San Diego. That could mean a lot of places.

  “So, are you going to tell me what you are or not?” Could I be annoying enough to make him lose his composure, his concentration? His blank-slate expression seemed to be his default. Maybe waving my hand in a lion’s face would get it bitten off, but maybe it would be distraction enough to gain me the chance to escape. I’d managed to hurt him a little bit earlier. He wasn’t a machine, that much I knew. I didn’t know how I’d get away from him and get to a telephone, but I was going with my gut. And my gut told me to keep at him.

  He said he didn’t hit human women. I did hope he’d been telling the truth.

  “Well?” I said.

  He was silent for a moment. “I’m not usually the one answering the questions.”

  “You’re usually the one demanding the answers, with a gun pressed to your victim’s head?”

  “Insightful.”

  “You’re not a vampire and you’re not entirely human. So what are you?”

  “I’m a dhampyr,” was his answer, which came a full minute later. He said it so quietly I had to strain to make it out.

  “A damn peer?” I shook my head. “What’s that?”

  “Dhampyr,” he repeated. “My mother was human but my father ... my real father ...” There was a tightness around his mouth. “He was a vampire.”

  I blinked. “So you’re half-vampire.”

  The road ahead held Declan’s entire attention again. “Yes.”

  There was silence in the car for a few heavy minutes.

  My mouth felt very dry. “You don’t have fangs.”

  “No.” From what I’d seen when he spoke, he had straight white teeth. Totally normal and not any sharper than a regular human’s.

  “You’re out during the day. You’re not even wearing sunglasses.”

  “The injection I took helps dampen any vampire traits I might have, including hunger and out-of-control emotions. My father had it developed for me when I was young—”

  “Your father, the vampire.”

  His jaw tensed even more. “No. My human father who raised me. He found my mother after she’d been raped and drained of blood nearly to the point of death. She was in a coma until I was born. They had to cut me out of her. She died shortly afterward.”

  My chest tightened at hearing that short, unpleasant story. “She was raped.”

  “Vampires are monsters with appetites for many unsavory things—sex, blood, death. And I have half of that monster inside of me. My father—my adoptive father— had the serum developed for me. It allows me to go out during the day. It also holds back my hunger for blood ... and other things that could hurt others.”

  I crossed my arms to stop them from trembling. “You’re trying to tell me that you drink blood?”

  “No. I eat and drink as a human does. As long as I take my injections, every part of the vampire that is inside of me will be controlled. I take an injection every three hours to dampen that behavior. My father’s been developing another serum that will last a lot longer, but for now I have to deal with what I have.”

  Stop taking his serum and he’d turn into one of the monsters. Kind of ironic, since I already thought he was one.

  “My father raised me to fight and kill vampires,” Declan continued grimly. “And I do it to help save the humans who don’t even know about the danger that surrounds them. That’s why that poison was developed—something that can kill them easier than any other weapon.”

  “That’s what the poison is?” I touched my neck and tried to will my heart to stop pounding so fast. Just the thought of it pushing the poison quicker through my veins made me feel sick.

  “The means to destroy vampires once and for all was in that syringe. Do you see why it’s so important that I get you to my father before it’s too late? Why you can’t go to a regular hospital? As soon as they find out that’s what you’re injected with they’ll want to destroy it. Destroy you.”

  Before I died from that poison, he meant.

  He eyed me. “You don’t believe me.”

  I shook my head. “No. I don’t.”

  “Then why am I wasting my fucking breath explaining all of this to you?” He glanced again at the rearview mirror. “There they are. I wondered how long it would take them to catch up to us.”

  I looked over my shoulder, through the dirty back window of the car. There was another car behind us—far behind—in a silver sedan.

  “Who?”

  “The proof that everything I’ve told you is the truth.”

  I cast another look over my shoulder. “I don’t understand.”

  “That’s painfully obvious.” He shook his head and then spoke under his breath. “I’m used to killing things, not protecting them. This should be interesting.”

  “Protecting? Who are they? What are you protecting?”

  “I’m protecting that formula you have inside of you right now. And since I’m protecting the formula, that means I’m protecting you, too.”

  I glared at him. “The only thing I need protection from is you.”

  “Then you’re about to add a few people to the list.” He whipped out his cell phone, pressed a button, and held it to his ear. After a moment, he said, “They’re on us.” He went silent, listening to whomever was on the other end of the line. “Two of them. Maybe three. I can’t see. I just took an injection so my vision’s not as sharp as it was earlier. I’ll try to lose them, but if I can’t, I’ll have to eliminate them.”

  Whatever reply he received was enough for him; without another word he ended the call and tucked it back into the pocket of his jeans. I took note of its
location. If I could get my hands on that cell phone long enough to make a call, then—

  Declan took the next exit so abruptly that I slammed into him. I wasn’t wearing a seat belt. I pushed away from him as quickly as I could and got back on my safer, dhampyr-free side of the car.

  “What are you doing?” I demanded.

  “Double-checking if my instincts are right.”

  “Who are they?” I put my seat belt on. I’d prefer not to go headfirst through the windshield if I could avoid it.

  “Blood servants. Humans who work for vampires in various capacities. I already knew they were tipped off about what we’ve been working on. Anderson was going to sell the vampires the formula so they could destroy it. That’s why I was sent to intervene.”

  “Sell it to vampires? Why would he do that?”

  “Money. Carl Anderson could talk about the greater good all he wanted, but his greater good was focused on his bottom line. Stupid, though. If it hadn’t been my bullet that got him, he would have become a vampire’s breakfast.”

  “Why are they after us?”

  “They must know I have the formula. So that means they also know Anderson’s dead. This should be interesting.”

  “Why did you get off the highway?”

  “Easier to lose them on the back roads.”

  “And if you can’t lose them?” I asked, thinking of what he’d said on the phone. What he asked permission to do. “You’re going to kill them?”

  “That’s the general idea.”

  I didn’t want anyone else to get hurt today. It could be just a few people in a car minding their own business, but if Declan thought they were the enemy, then they’d end up dead. I’d already seen him kill. He hadn’t hesitated. He hadn’t listened to begging.

  He didn’t have to be half-vampire to be a cold-blooded murderer.

  Off the highway now, Declan kept driving, even faster than before. A glance over my shoulder confirmed the silver sedan continued to follow us.

  Declan looked at me and must have seen the strained look on my face. “Not your average Tuesday for a city girl like you, is it?”