And then we were in the darkness, lying on a tile floor, breathing hard. It had happened again. I’d dematerialized, and this time I’d taken her with me.
The gun had gone off, I’d heard that much. I didn’t know if it had hit someone.
A stinging pain in my shoulder throbbed violently, and when I put my hand to it, it came away black and slick with blood in the dim light. She’d shot me.
And it was nothing but a normal bullet wound. The silver wasn’t burning my skin. And the bullet hadn’t found a home in Connor’s head.
I pushed myself up from the floor and looked around. The dull thud of dance music travelled through the walls and surrounded us.
Sydney writhed on the floor next to me. She groaned and sat up, putting her hand to her ribs.
“I think you broke something,” she said.
“Sorry.” I didn’t sound very sorry, but she’d been about to shoot my boyfriend.
“Where are we?” she asked. I looked around. My shoulder was hurting something awful, and my left arm had gone numb. The room we were in was empty, and not very big. The carpet was dark with the lack of light. There was a door to my left and two windows to my right. I sucked in a breath, and the world came crashing down on me.
“We’re in his office,” I said finally.
“Who’s?”
“Ruben,” I whispered.
Sydney turned and pulled a face with the effort. If her rib really was broken I could imagine the pain. A broken rib was no joke. The moonlight falling through the window fell on her face, and she looked scared.
“This is where he died,” she said. I nodded, squeezing my eyes shut. My arm was killing me. I felt the back of my shoulder and found another hole. The bullet had entered and exited my body. I would heal up soon, my body healed the way other vampire bodies did. But this was a bad one, and I didn’t know how long it would take. I knew bruises took about two days.
Perks of being a vampire.
“He died over there,” I said, pointing at the door. The carpet was clean, there was no stain of blood on the floor. And there had been a lot of blood.
“How do you know?” Sydney asked. She didn’t look like the heartless killer anymore. She looked sad and lost, and it made me want to cuddle her and tell her it would be alright. But it wasn’t going to be alright. How could it be? Her father had died a gruesome death and he would never come back again.
“I was here,” I said so softly I almost just mouthed the words. But she’d heard me.
“You what?”
“I used to work for him. I was one of the people he kept off paper, part of the illegal stuff he was into.”
Sydney inhaled sharply, and then grunted from the pain. She looked at me, hatred all over her face.
“It was my fault,” I said, and the emotion flooded me. I nearly choked in my grief and guilt, and the tears burned behind my eyes.
“I’d taken a job for him, someone that needed killing. This wasn’t a standard job, where some humans wanted me to take out a vampire. Vampires had ordered it.”
“And you didn’t do it?” she asked and her voice was hard and cold. I shook my head.
“I couldn’t. I fell in love with him. It was Connor.” When I looked up at Sydney her eyes were stretched wide. She was breathing fast and shallow, trying to minimize the pain.
“I didn’t realize how serious it was. My job never was that serious. People died but it was part of the job, and for the first time I felt again after years and years of numbing myself with killing. They threatened to kill my sister, but I still couldn’t do it. I don’t know why they spared Aspen but came after Ruben.
“Carl, you met him, he called me in one day, said something was wrong. When I came here, Ruben was dead. His body was blocking the door. They’d killed him to get me to do what they wanted. I lost three lives in that time.”
I hiccupped, the tears forcing themselves out. I couldn’t fight it anymore. Tears spilled down my cheeks and I felt like my chest was collapsing on itself.
“I didn’t know. He accepted this contract and it ended up costing him his life. I didn’t know. Neither of us did.”
When I looked up at Sydney she was crying too. She’d lain back down on the tiles and her face was streaked with tears.
“Who did it?” she asked.
“Two vampires that had been in business with Connor. They’d taken my sister and her boyfriend. They’d used them as bait. And we’d gone after them, Connor, Carl, Phil and me. And we killed them. Those sons of bitches were fried in the sunlight. They’re dead now.”
Sydney breathed out like a weight was lifted. “So they’re dead now,” she said and it was more of a statement than a question. I nodded.
“It just doesn’t bring him back,” I whispered. “It doesn’t take away the pain. It doesn’t make anything better.”
I couldn’t stop crying. It felt like a dam had broken, and all the pain and guilt I’d held inside for so long came flooding out, filling the room with so much sorrow I was drowning in it. Sydney was crying too. She shuffled to me, dragging herself across the floor until she sat next to me. She put her hand on my good shoulder and I leaned forward, putting my head on her shoulder. My hair hung into my face, hiding me from the world.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. She stroked my back. She didn’t answer me, didn’t say anything at all. We just sat there crying together, surrounded by the dull thud of the music, the crowd under our feet oblivious to the hell that had happened here.
Chapter 7
“I really ought to kill you for this,” Sydney said after my crying had calmed down and I was breathing steadily again. I looked up at her. Her face was dead serious in the dim light. Her eyes looked like deep pools of almost black in the lack of light.
“What?” I asked, sounding pathetic even to myself. Sydney rolled her eyes and shuffled away from me a little. She grimaced every time she moved. I was willing to bet that there was definitely a rib or two broken. I was stronger than normal humans because of my vampire influences – not as strong as the vampires, but at the rate I was evolving, who knew?
“You lied to me.”
“About what?”
I touched my shoulder again. The pain had dulled to a low throb and I knew it was filling up. I didn’t need to see anyone to get it stitched up, my body would take care of itself. If it was alive – that was vital. And with the look on Sydney’s face it was going to be another struggle.
“About being a vampire. You never said anything.”
I shook my head. “I didn’t have to say anything. This has nothing to do with my classes. You didn’t need to know.”
“Why? Why did you hide it from me?” she sounded angry, but underneath all that was hurt. I could feel it in the air.
“Because not a lot of people react well to it, and I didn’t know where you stood. And I was right to do it, too. Would you have been able to leave me alive?”
“I needed you,” Sydney said, and the words somehow suggested that it had been for more than just training. “I needed you to be normal. You were the only constant in my life since my dad died, and I was happy that we could be friends. And now all of that is gone.”
She looked like she was going to cry again, but she didn’t.
“Who I am doesn’t change just because I’m not human. And even that is not entirely accurate. I’m only a half-breed. My mom was human. It’s easier for me to come across human, walk in the sun…” I looked at her gun lying next to her on the floor. She wasn’t holding onto it, but it was close enough to go for if she decided to. “Immune to silver.” I finished the list.
“But you also have a lot of vampire in you,” she said. I nodded. More than I’d thought, but she didn’t have to know that.
“I feel so betrayed,” she finally said. And there was nothing I could do to fix that, because a lot of it had been my fault. Not directly, not because I’d meant it. But I had been involved.
“I know,” I said. “Let’s get out o
f here. I’m hurt and tired, and I think you need someone to look at that.” She’d put her hands over her ribs. She nodded.
I pulled out my phone and noticed the battery had died.
“Do you have your phone?” I asked. She nodded and handed it to me. I dialed Connor’s number. He answered on the first ring.
“It’s me,” I said.
“Oh, Adele, thank god. What happened, where are you?”
“We’re in Ruben’s office. Carl will know. Come get us, Sydney’s hurt and I could do with some loving as well.” Connor snorted, which made feel like things weren’t fixed between us yet. Well, they would be.
Twenty minutes later James, the owner, unlocked the door for us. Connor was with him. I stood up, grimacing with the pain of the effort, and walked to him. He looked at me for just a second before he took my face in his hands and kissed me.
“Never a dull moment,” he said when he finally broke the kiss. I leaned my head against his forehead. “But this time you fixed it by yourself.”
I shrugged, and groaned when it hurt. I did fix it by myself this time. I was getting better at this game. And I felt better after admitting it all to Sydney. For the first time in a long time I felt free. Or at least, freer than before.
I still couldn’t dematerialize at will. I didn’t know how I did it, and the only time it seemed to happen was when something serious was going on. Maybe I would learn how to be more of a vampire one day, but for now being so much of a human was already hard enough.
Sydney had been treated and her broken ribs healed okay. She avoided the academy and didn’t speak to me, but Carl kept contact with her. I didn’t know how he always managed to have everyone on his side.
Connor got the full story between Sonya, Carl and me, and he forgave me because I hadn’t done anything wrong. I was glad about it. In the beginning it had only been Aspen I couldn’t lose. Along the way I’d picked up some more people. Connor, Phil, Carl. And now Sydney, even though I was sure she hated me on at least three different levels.
But everything was going to be okay. Connor kept telling me so, and if I wanted my life to become anything really worth living, I had to believe him.
BOOK 3
VAMPIRE’S SHADE 3
Chapter 1
His arms were extended, locked at the elbow and steady. He sighed down the barrel of the gun, and I watched as his chest fell, all the air leaving it in the last exhale before he pulled the trigger. I breathed with him, felt the air leaving his lungs and the world fall quiet around him. I could feel his concentration, solid around me, impenetrable.
His finger curled around the trigger and he squeezed, steadying the gun with his other hand under the butt of the gun. He wore fingerless gloves, and I heard the gun click, the bullet swoosh out of the chamber.
It was a perfect hit, right in between the eyes. I felt the kick back of the gun, fingers numb, as though it had been my own hands. I felt the satisfaction of a perfect headshot.
I pulled the headphones off my head. The faint smell of gunpowder tickled my nostrils and I breathed in. To me it was home, comforting, the way the smell of freshly baked bread was to someone else. I took two steps back and flicked the switch. The fluorescent lights flickered on one by one, drowning the shooting range in artificial light until everything was lit up and I was reminded where I really was.
“It felt different that time,” Tyrone said. He rolled his shoulders, trying to loosen his body under the bullet-proof vest he wore. The word POLICE stood out in intimidating letters across his chest. Underneath he wore a grey t-shirt, stretched tight across his biceps and shoulders. What I could see of his chest was also pretty built, but the rest of his front was covered by the bullet-proof vest.
“That was right on the mark,” I said. Tyrone looked down at the Glock in his hand. It was a Glock 21 Gen4, standard law enforcement issue. But I knew that it didn’t make a hell of a difference what gun Tyrone used, he would hit his target. He didn’t play games. When he aimed he aimed to kill, and he didn’t pull the trigger until he was sure of his aim.
I respected that. People who could work with guns made it far with me.
“I think that’s it for today. I still need to get back and tackle that paperwork,” he said. He was on the Westham Police Force. He told me he was usually assigned to petty crimes, car thieves, drugstore hold-ups, that kind of thing. I didn’t believe him. The way he trained, the fact that he wanted more, told me that he was more. But I didn’t ask question and he didn’t volunteer answers.
He pulled off a glove and ran his fingers through his dark hair. When his eyes met mine he smiled a dazzling smile and I turned away. I didn’t do police as a rule, but Tyrone was an exception. He’d come to the academy looking for more training. He’d said he needed more than the station offered by way of training. Phil took him for combat lessons and I taught him shooting.
I was relieved I didn’t have to do both. Being a half-breed vampire I was stronger than him – it was my vampire blood showing through – but I wasn’t about to show him that. There was only one thing worse than a man with an ego the size of Tyrone’s – getting it bruised.
Besides that, he was charming as hell and it unsettled me. Connor and I were happy together. We’d been dating for a year and a half and things couldn’t be better for us. I didn’t want some self-assured police officer to get in between us with arrogant remarks. And Tyrone just had that way about him.
“I’ll see you again toward the end of the week,” he said to me, holstering his gun and packing his bag that stood on the floor in front of the counter.
“Bright and early,” I answered and he half-waved at me before walking out of the door. That was the other thing. Bright and early. I never wanted to face him in hand-to-hand combat because I didn’t want him to know what I was. I was a lot better at accepting the fact that I was at least half vampire. There was a time when I wasn’t okay with it – after my father, a vampire, had gone rogue, he’d killed my human mother and crippled my sister. I hadn’t wanted anything to do with vampires then and I’d made it my job to kill them instead.
It had taken my boyfriend Connor, a vampire, and a couple of my human friends to teach me that who I was wasn’t wrong. But I tried to keep it quiet. My human blood allowed me to walk in the sun, and I had a fairly normal routine. I didn’t need a police officer to mess that up for me.
“He’s coming along nicely,” Phil said in the door. He had his arms crossed over his chest and his one foot over the other, balancing it on the toe.
“He’s always been good. I don’t know what he’s doing here,” I said. “He definitely doesn’t need a lot of pointers from me. I think I’ve told him two things in the four months he’s been here.”
Phil shrugged. “He’s willing to pay and it’s always good to have a contact on the force. Why complain?”
I shrugged and made a comment in the side margin of the book I kept on my students.
“Maybe it’s because he makes you uncomfortable,” he said. I shook my head.
“Dazzling smile like that, handsome and well-built, he’s everything any man would want to be,” Phil said.
“Everything a man would want?” I asked. I wanted to make a quip about how he didn’t have everything every man would want because he didn’t have me, but before the words left my mouth I realized how bad it would sound. I kept quiet but a blush crept up from my collar and flushed my cheeks.
“Are you blushing?” Phil asked. I shook my head. I wasn’t blushing like an idiot. I didn’t blush. But Phil chuckled.
“You always find new ways to surprise me, Adele. Every time I think I’ve seen it all, you whip something new out of the bag. Usually it’s big and tough and vampire-kissed. But this time it’s girly and cute.”
It just made me blush more. I would have given anything for him to leave.
“Connor and I are happy,” I said, and it just sounded like I was defending myself.
“Of course you are,” Phil said, but a s
mile played on his lips. I shook my head and pushed past him. It was my last class of the day, and I was tired. I wanted to go home. I wanted to shower away all the sweat and strain of a training, and I wanted to spend time with my boyfriend – the man I loved.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Phil,” I said, lifting my hand in the air and waving without looking at him. I heard him chuckle behind me. I walked into the dim light of the setting sun and took my helmet off the handle of my motorbike. I pulled it over my head and threw my leg over the bike, straddling it.
When I turned the key in the ignition the bike roared into the pending night and I smiled. These were the small pleasures in my life. My guns, my bike, my leathers – which I only wore on special occasions – my fighting ability. These were the things that made me, me. Things that I could hold onto the time everything else in my life went crazy. Like the first time, when I’d still been an under-the-radar vampire assassin. Or when Ruben’s daughter had come back to avenge his death and I’d nearly drowned in guilt.
I drove the couple of blocks home. The absence of sunlight left the world tainted in shades of grey. I took a deep breath and the air vents in my helmet carried the smells of jasmine and wisteria to me, smells of the night. I could walk in the day, but nighttime still spoke to me.
The shutters were still closed when I pulled into the driveway. They had a sensor that detected sunlight, and kept them closed until true dark. Connor was a purebred vampire and he needed darkness to survive. Our house was kitted out with shutters that automatically slid into place to protect him, and I was the only one that could come in through the garage when the system was on lockdown.
I pulled into the garage and waited for the door to roll down behind me again. I got off the bike, got rid of my helmet, and when the door was completely closed I opened the door that led into the kitchen.
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