Dark Redemption

by Aja James

  Why Lord Wind was there in the first place was the question.

  Did he somehow know the importance of their target? And if so, why did he bother to counteract their moves? He’d never interfered with the Mistress’s plans before, though he’d ceased to do her bidding a long time ago.

  Except…

  The Creature wondered whether the General’s escape had been aided by Lord Wind.

  But it didn’t make sense, because he also fought against Ryu Takamura and his comrades and gave the Mistress and her minions the resources to kidnap the Dark Assassin’s female, Doctor Ava Monroe. Why would he undo everything in the end by purposely letting them leave with the General, Tal-Telal?

  But the more the Creature thought about it, the more suspicious Lord Wind’s actions became.

  If it was not mistaken, it was Lord Wind’s suggestion to move the General from his last prison to the light tower in Japan several hundred years ago. The Mistress moved her play thing every so often just to make sure he could never be found by those who might be searching for him, and the isolated island of Nippon seemed to be a good choice at the time.

  A series of seemingly disconnected events occurred at long intervals within those hundreds of years.

  Including a Western expedition to Japan returning with valuable goods, a porcelain vase with Akkadian writing that was featured in a newspaper dating back to the eighteen hundreds that the Pure Ones had gotten hold of a year and a half ago. Which ultimately led them to the location of the General in his light tower prison.

  And then there was Lord Wind’s final defection from the Mistress’s army—literally cutting her from his heart, risking death, insanity or worse.

  It had kept an eye on Lord Wind for the Mistress’s sake, in case she asked it about her ex-Blooded Mate’s whereabouts. Although, it wasn’t as if she’d shown any reaction to his desertion.

  With her Dark powers all but vanquished, she relied much more heavily on others to carry out her machinations. And, now, it seemed that her previous right hand might be her greatest liability.

  The Creature must tread carefully.

  “Keep searching,” the Creature finally responded. “Report only to me whatever you find.”

  “What about the target?”

  As long as Lord Wind inserted himself to protect the target, the Creature knew they’d have immense difficulty accomplishing their goals.

  The best warriors in the Mistress’s army had all been eliminated, but for the few remaining with Antonov. Even if the Creature sent a dozen mind-controlled Pure and Dark warriors after Lord Wind—a hundred—it was not confident that Enlil of Anatolia could be defeated.

  “Watch her,” the Creature said. “Perhaps we will locate Lord Wind through her. But employ long range surveillance. Lord Wind will be able to pick up on foreign scents and signatures if he’s near, and we can’t have our prey disappearing again.”

  After that, the Creature did not know.

  But somehow, it had to create an opportunity to interrogate its target, for she held the information to activate a microchip that would fully operationalize the new weapons the Mistress’s unsuspecting human engineers had developed—

  The vampire killers.

  Chapter Five

  “You’re back,” Devlin greeted his comrade-in-arms and best friend, Ryu Takamura, the Dark Ones’ Assassin, and invited the male into the apartment within the Cove that Devlin shared with his Mate, Grace.

  Ryu hesitated before crossing the threshold, given that Devlin never invited anyone, including Ryu, into his private quarters.

  Looked like being a Mated vampire made Devlin slightly more open, more willing to trust others.

  “No missus and baby today?” Devlin inquired as the door slid closed automatically.

  “Ava and Kane are at her parents’,” Ryu replied. “I’ll head over later for dinner. Her mother is making moqueca.”

  “Don’t you mean, mother-in-law?” Devlin teased.

  It always amused him that Ryu was actually married, valid license and all, with a genetically enhanced human, who was neither Pure nor Dark, but could heal herself just like they did and likely live just as long.

  Ryu smiled shyly.

  He absolutely loved Ava’s parents but still resisted calling Ana Lucia Monroe, Ma, as he was encouraged to do. He wasn’t used to being part of a deeply loving family given his past as a human, and having a family of his own with Ava and their son Kane.

  Sometimes, he feared he was dreaming it all. How could anyone ever deserve so much happiness? Especially him?

  Ryu nodded to Grace, and she stared unblinkingly back at him.

  It was a typical response from her.

  No gushing welcomes from Grace Darling, cyber genius. She seldom showed emotions on her face, was extremely introverted and socially awkward because of her condition. But everyone at the Cove had taken to her immediately, because everyone could see how happy she made Devlin.

  Ryu wished he had Ava with him, because he had a feeling the two women would get along famously. They were both brainiacs, passionate about their field of expertise and had insatiable curiosity about many other topics. Ava was also a bit awkward, though compared to Grace, Ava was a veritable social butterfly.

  “Is this just a friendly visit or did you get briefed by Max on what’s going on?” Devlin asked, sitting on a loveseat beside his Mate, while Ryu grabbed a chair opposite.

  “I got briefed,” Ryu answered with a frown.

  “Yes, I’m afraid it’s that bad,” Devlin agreed. “Grace is trying to pin down the location and time of the next trade, likely between the Russians and the Chinese.”

  “They must have a new cyber tech working for them,” Grace interjected. “Since we blew up their mainframes in London, they’ve quickly gotten their backups online and changed all the coding architecture. Whoever they have now is very good.”

  “As good as you are?” Ryu asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Damn.”

  “My sentiments exactly,” Devlin said.

  “Are we going after Antonov?” Ryu inquired.

  “Ana is en route,” Devlin answered. “She’ll meet up with a member of the Elite warriors in St. Petersburg. Antonov was last heard to be headed there from Moscow.”

  “It should be me hunting Antonov,” Ryu muttered.

  As the Dark Ones’ Assassin, Jade Cicada, their Queen, always sent Ryu on the stealth missions. But A, Jade hadn’t been very active in her queenly role lately, leaving the ruling and policing of their kind mostly to the Chosen, and B, Ryu’s comrades purposely took things off his plate because of his new family.

  He had human in-laws, for Dark Goddess’s sake. Wouldn’t do to make them aware that their new son was a vampire assassin.

  “You can help me follow up on the fight clubs,” Devlin said smoothly. “They’re still alive and kicking—literally. A couple more cities in the U.S. and Canada have shown activity recently, as well as other places internationally. Good news is, we still have a guy on the inside, the human Chevalier who helped us before. He’s currently infiltrating the clubs in Buenos Aires.”

  Ryu nodded. His shinobi network had informed him the same in Asia.

  “How was your trip to Boston?” Devlin asked, changing subjects. “You stayed longer than planned. Everything all right?”

  Ryu sighed heavily.

  “Long story. But, yes, everything is all right now.”

  “Sounds like we need to catch up over some sake,” Devlin said with a lopsided smile.

  “It’s Angel’s mother,” Ryu explained. “We found her, or rather, she found us. And she reunited with Inanna’s father. Ava, Kane and I stayed for the Mating ceremony. Ava was instrumental to saving the General’s life. That’s about as much as I know, not being privy to all the details.”

  Devlin whistled low.

  “That’s plenty, Senpai. How’s Inanna taking it all in?”

  “She’s so happy to have both her parents for the
first time in her life that she can’t stop smiling,” Ryu replied, smiling vicariously himself.

  “Her father still needs time to heal, having gone through some pretty serious shit over the millennia of his imprisonment and especially during the past few days. But I have a feeling he’s going to be just fine. He has his Mate and his daughter and their whole family to help him through it.”

  “Well, given that he’s the General of the Pure Ones who brought down the entire vampire empire thousands of years ago, I think you’re right,” Devlin said, impressed even now by Tal-Telal, though he’d never had the honor of meeting the warrior.

  “I thought you vampires—I mean, we vampires—are at war with humans and Pure Ones,” Grace put in. “Why are you admiring and caring about one another? Or did I misinterpret the emotion behind what you said?”

  Devlin reached for her hand and squeezed.

  “You didn’t misinterpret a thing, darling. It’s…complicated.”

  Ryu watched with fascination as the coldly logical machine of a female visibly melted when Devlin called her “darling.”

  He shared a look of amusement with Devlin, who looked back with unabashed pride and joy.

  True love certainly had that effect on both males. They couldn’t complain.

  Life was fucking awesome.

  *** *** *** ***

  Life was pretty awesome for Clara and Annie, as well.

  They’d rubbed along famously for two weeks already, each adjusting to the other’s routine like peanut butter and jelly, chicken wings and buffalo sauce, ice-cream and hot fudge…

  Guess she was hungry, Clara thought with a wry smile, setting out the plates for their dinner.

  She’d been smiling a lot over the past two weeks. In fact, she couldn’t seem to stop smiling. Having Annie in her life was such an unexpected blessing. A more sensitive, sweet, well-behaved (and very quiet) little girl could not be found.

  What’s more, Annie loved art and expressed herself through her drawings, just like Clara did. It seemed as if they had always been a family.

  Life carried on as usual during the two weeks. Clara held art classes at her studio. Annie usually sat in on most of them, trying to follow along or hard at work on her own creations.

  There were no out-of-the-ordinary surprises. No shadow assassins. No beautiful, princely stalkers. No blood sucking and mind-blowing penetration.

  It was as if Clara had dreamed it all. But the vivid drawings she made of Eli downstairs in her studio after Annie was asleep at night told a different story.

  Eli was very real, and Clara would never forget him.

  When she wasn’t dreaming about Eli, Clara focused all of her free time on Annie.

  She had made an appointment with a highly-rated pediatrician a few blocks away to get Annie checked out. Just the usual yearly physical, but also to take a look at her vocal cords and that whole area. Maybe the pediatrician could then recommend a specialist to understand better why Annie didn’t or couldn’t speak.

  Clara was very much looking forward to hearing Annie’s voice, especially her laughter.

  The little girl smiled a lot more since leaving the orphanage, and she sometimes broke out into silent chuckles, but she hadn’t had a full-bellied laugh yet. And Clara was simply dying to hear it.

  After dinner and bath, Clara played a few favorite songs from her iPhone playlist through some rockin’ Sony speakers and they danced together in the upstairs loft until both were giggling helplessly.

  To settle down, Clara read a couple of books she’d stocked up for Annie, including the entire collection by Dr. Seuss.

  “Goodnight, sweetheart,” Clara whispered, pressing a lingering kiss onto Annie’s forehead.

  Goodnight, Mommy, Annie mouthed.

  Music to Clara’s eyes. If only she could hear the beautiful words too.

  Annie fell asleep as quickly as Clara could, and she, too, slept soundly. The lamplight in their shared open-space loft didn’t bother her. When it was time to sleep, Annie slept.

  Clara went to her beat-up old desk in front of the window that faced the courtyard below, which she’d rescued from the side of the street a couple of years back and refurbished, sat down in her Ikea swivel chair and perused the next day’s lesson plans.

  Her simple arts and crafts classes at the orphanage were very easy to plan, but the much more pricey lessons she had downstairs in her studio for seniors and youths followed a rigorous outline, from sketching to painting with various media; from wood, glass, and metal works to sculpting with clay.

  Tomorrow, for her seniors class in the evening, she wanted them to sketch a man in the nude, focusing on bone structure, musculature and the shadows that various angles of light cast.

  But her model had quit on her last minute, sending her a text that he was going to an audition as an extra in some movie that was being filmed nearby.

  Clara looked out her window as she ran through the possible lessons to do instead in her mind.

  And noticed a familiar shape on the bench in the small park that abutted her apartment.

  Could it be?

  She stood up and pressed her face closer to the window to get a better look, just to make sure she wasn’t imagining things.

  She’d imagined and dreamed and wished aplenty in the past couple of weeks that a certain male would miraculously appear before her. She’d alternately worried herself sick that he hadn’t recovered from his wound and was lying in a ditch somewhere, or was depressed that he’d gotten what he wanted from her and moved on to the next human to stalk for blood.

  But hopefully not “other things.”

  Clara was unreasonably possessive of her stalker.

  She couldn’t see the figure on the bench very well but she thought she detected long, dark hair.

  Without pausing to think, she grabbed her keys and dashed out of the apartment.

  As she approached the bench, Clara slowed.

  If it wasn’t Eli lying there, but a homeless man, or worse, someone dangerous, it probably wasn’t the brightest idea to accost him in the dark of night, in a relatively deserted park, armed with a set of keys, in her nightshirt and bare feet.

  Carefully, she edged closer to the bench and the dark masculine shape sprawled on top of it.

  When she was close enough, she couldn’t see the face, but she recognized the long, luxurious hair wrapped like a blanket around Eli’s form.

  She quickly went around to crouch down beside the bench in front. She smoothed his matted, tangled hair away from his face and saw that his eyes were closed. He didn’t even seem to be breathing.

  “Eli?” she whispered, worry in her voice. “It’s me, Clara. Are you all right?”

  No response from him. No indication that he heard her.

  She tamped her panic down when she recalled what he’d said before. If he was still in physical form, it meant that he was okay.

  But why wouldn’t he respond to her?

  She leaned in closer and stroked his cheek, trying to both gain his attention and comfort him, as much as comfort herself, with her touch.

  But when her thumb rubbed across his full lips, her wrist was suddenly and painfully seized in an unrelenting grip. A deep growl reverberated from the back of Eli’s throat as his eyes opened and his lips bared to reveal two long fangs.

  For a moment, Clara was afraid. The two completely black eyes that stared back at her made Eli look like a stranger, a predator.

  A wild animal.

  As if he smelled or saw her fear, he released her wrist abruptly and struggled to a sitting position, hunching his shoulders and turning away from her.

  “Get away from me,” he rasped. “You’re not safe here.”

  “But you’re here to protect me,” she said, coming around to face him again. “Everything is all right when you’re—”

  “You’re not safe with me,” he hissed as he bared his fangs again and pierced her with that glittering black stare.

  But this was Eli,
Clara told herself. He wouldn’t hurt her.

  Somehow, she knew it in her bones. And sure enough, the initial apprehension disappeared, replaced by concern.

  “Do you need blood again?” she asked quietly. “How is your wound?”

  “Leave,” he ordered in a voice that vibrated with pain.

  “Why did you come here, then, if you didn’t want my help?” Clara asked stubbornly, refusing to budge an inch.

  He didn’t answer, but he tried to turn away again.

  “Eli,” she said, reaching out to stroke his cheek with her palm, gently turning him back to her, “Let me help you. What’s happened? Why are you so…”

  She searched for the right word, something that wouldn’t offend his sensibilities, but she couldn’t sugar coat the truth.

  “You’re a mess, Eli. And you stink to high heaven.”

  His hair was caked with grime, his face streaked with dirt. His clothes were soiled and coated with…well, it was better Clara didn’t know what it was coated with.

  Eli looked and smelled like a drowned rat who’d just dragged itself out of the sewers.

  A very large, pale-skinned, bewitching rat.

  Clara shook herself mentally.

  Really? She was attracted to him even now? Something was definitely wrong with her.

  “Come on,” she said, the determination in her voice irrefutable. “Let’s get you inside, washed up and fed. You’re free to wander the streets to your heart’s delight afterwards. But right now, I’m going to take care of you.”

  He stared silently at her as she tried unsuccessfully to pull him up off the bench. He wasn’t going to move unless he wanted to.

  “Why?” he asked so low she almost didn’t hear him.

  She could tell him that it was because he’d saved her and Annie’s life. She’d always be in his debt. But that wasn’t the entire reason.

  Not even most of it.

  She answered truthfully, “Because I want to.”

  After some more silent consideration, he finally rose from the bench on his own strength and followed slowly as she led the way into her small apartment, up the narrow, curving flight of stairs to her bedroom loft above the art studio.