Twelve rippers, no, eleven. No, ten. Bane was tearing them down like they were paper dolls. Yes, between the four of us, we could do this. The other two squad members took down two more rippers and we were four to eight. The pack surrounded us, pushing us together. Back to back we circled, our weapons at the ready. And then a howl cut through the silence.
Bane cursed under his breath as another pack of rippers came running at us from down the street. Another fifteen at least.
We were so fucked.
Bane glanced my way, his jaw gritted. “Hold tight. We can do this.”
As the fresh rippers attacked, shadows leapt toward us from the roofs, and rushed out from between the houses.
Ryker, Drayton and their squads were here.
“North side is clear,” Ryker shouted over the snarls and growls. “The others are covered.”
Bane flashed fang. “Let the culling continue.”
My arms ached and my legs screamed for relief, but there was no stopping. They kept coming at us, Rippers and bloodsuckers, as if drawn to us like a hot spot. Cassie, Orin and their squad arrived a moment later, and we spread out between the buildings and spilled into the houses, killing the scourge before they could get to the humans. But even then, death stared back at us more often than not in the sightless eyes of a man, woman, and in one case a child. I’d lost Bane a while back and was hanging with Ryker, and now I was solo, cutting through a back garden in pursuit of a bloodsucker who’d strayed from the herd.
Someone screamed. Shrill and terrified. I leapt the fence to get to the source of the sound. A woman was being dragged down her garden path by her bloody ankle. Behind her, the window to the house was smashed, glass and splinters of wood, which she’d obviously used to board it up, littered the patio.
She caught sight of me. “Help. Help my babies please.” She reached for the house. “It’s inside. Please.” The ripper with a hold of her paused, its yellow eyes locking on to me as if asking, what you gonna do, bitch?
I took a step toward the woman. and a high pitched wail rose up from the house.
“Save my babies!”
Fuck. I ran for the house, leapt through the broken window and barreled up the stairs. That high pitched wail again, this time accompanied by sobs and growls.
It was coming from a room at the end of the hallway with the smashed door. I sprinted toward it, taking in the scene in quick economic bursts. Two kids sat huddled on top of a large antique wardrobe. The mother must have hidden them up there when she’d heard the crash downstairs. They couldn’t be more than four or five, twins by the looks of it.
The ripper turned its huge head to look at me.
I knew those eyes, even with the yellow tinge. “Romeo, is that you?”
The ripper growled low in its throat, but didn’t attack.
“You don’t want to do this. I know you’d never hurt a child.”
Romeo wouldn’t have, but this wasn’t Romeo any longer. The Romeo I’d known had gone under. This was scourge. Still, I kept talking, because the idea of hurting him made me feel sick.
“Look, just go.” I stepped away from the door to clear a path. “Just go, please.” One of the others would probably find him and kill him, and yeah, that was how it would have to be because he was no longer human. It just couldn’t be me.
He lowered his head. Was he going to comply? His haunches bunched. Looked like a no.
Your life must come first
“Who the heck are you?”
Watch out.
Romeo was sailing through the air toward me, and my brain was in freeze frame but my body wasn’t, a tingle ran through me and the daggers took over, bringing my hands up in a defensive slashing motion. Romeo let out a sharp strangled sound and fell to the ground. His body twitched and I stared at my hands.
How did you do that?
But the daggers vanished taking the voice with them.
Boot falls echoed down the corridor toward me.
“Harker, dammit what the—shit, kids.” Ryker stepped over the dead ripper and reached for the children. They clung to him like little monkeys, burying their faces into his shoulder. “Where are the parents?”
Damn. The mother. I legged it out of room, back down the stairs, and into the garden. Of course she’d be gone. What the heck had I expected? But there was a trail of blood, and giving up wasn’t in my nature. Out of the shattered back gate, into the alley beyond, I followed the smears of crimson. She was alive. She had to be. The smears led out of the alley and into a community park thick with a shadowy mist. Shit, it was impossible to see any blood on the grass. Wait, the grass was long enough to find a flattened trail where the ripper had dragged the body. It ended at a strip of turned over dirt ready to be sown with moonflowers no doubt. They were the only flowers that grew in Midnight. The trees were a mystery to everyone. They never shed and continued to flourish which defied everything we’d been taught in school. Midnight should be a barren wasteland unable to grow anything and yet it went against the laws of science, just like this trail ending here did.
Could the ripper have picked her up in his jaw and made off with her? Sure, then why drag her all this way? It made no sense.
“Harker!” Cassie came jogging toward me. “We’re headed back to base.”
I glanced up from the flowerbed. “It’s over?”
“Yeah.” She gave me a tired smile. “Ryker said you saved a couple of kids and then ran off?”
“A ripper dragged their mother this way. But the trail just stops here.”
Cassie crouched and examined the tracks. “Weird.”
“Cassie, Harker, we’re moving out,” Orin called from the other side of the park.
The mother was gone. For some reason the ripper had dragged her here, and what? Picked her up and made off with her? eaten her? No, there would be scraps, as gross at that sounded.
“Come on, there’s nothing more we can do here.” Cassie steered me toward the street.
With a final look at the bloody grass, I followed.
Chapter 25
It was an after-run tradition, Cassie had said. A cleanse and perfect ritual—facials and manicures—and so here we were, cross legged on my bed with all her beauty treatments laid out before us.
She handed me the hand cream. “Use this to soften your hands. It smells awesome too.”
I squirted and rubbed the melon fragrance into my palms. “Are the kids okay?”
“They’re fine. Bane made sure they got to their grandparents.”
I twisted my hair up into a knot. “Good.”
Cassie lathered her face with a creamy mask. “So, you and Drayton...”
“There is no me and Drayton, and you know why.”
She nodded curtly “Just checking, but right answer.”
“I’m not an idiot. I have a strong sense of self preservation.” Why did it sound like I was trying to convince myself? His face came to mind now. His warm brown eyes and that teasing smile. I blinked it away.
“Just...” She gnawed on her lip. “Just be wary. Drayton’s incubus is strong. He commands it well, and they are usually in accordance with each other, but sometimes things happen to put everything out of whack. Remember, I told you that incubi can’t fall in love?”
How could I forget? “Yes.”
“That isn’t strictly true. The problem is they can, and when they do the incubus can take over. The feelings, the intense emotions, act like a magnet to the incubus and it makes it harder for Drayton to remain in control.”
Is that what had happened the night Lilith had come? Had it been Lilith’s presence that had made him lose control in his bedroom, or something else? No, I was reading too much into it.
“I’ll be careful. I haven’t fed off him either. Rivers offered instead.”
Her brows shot up. “Shut up! Rod up his arse Rivers let you siphon off him?”
I nodded slowly, taking in her horrified expression. “Is that a big deal?”
“Hell, ye
ah! Rivers is like the most closed off person I know.”
I shrugged. “He seems to be warming to me.”
She caught her bottom lip between her teeth, and looked away.
I knew that look. It was the shall-I-tell-them-shit look. “What? You’re hiding something? Just spill it.”
She picked at her cuticles. “I really shouldn’t.”
She so wanted to. “Please...” I pleaded.
She rolled he eyes. “Okay, but you cannot tell Ryker I said anything,”
“Ryker? I thought we were talking about Rivers?”
“It’s kinda all connected, and it happened before I joined the Protectorate, so no idea how much is true, but Orin filled me in when you joined us.”
Okay, I was so confused.
“I got all huffy with him that day in the kitchen when he was paying you loads of attention, and then we had an argument and he told me why he’d been so focused.”
“And?”
“It’s because you look a lot like Ryker’s sister.”
I stared at her. “Ryker has a sister?”
“Had. He had a sister. She died a few years ago. She used to be Rivers’s patrol partner, but Orin hinted that she was also a different kind of partner, if you know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I got you. So I look like Ryker’s dead sister.”
Cassie shrugged. “Apparently, she died horrifically, like sooo badly, but Orin wouldn’t go into details. He did say that Rivers had been with her at the time, and things between him and Ryker have been strained ever since.”
I sat back against the headboard. The picture on his bedside table...her hair had been the same shade as mine, but the face was a mystery. It would certainly explain why Ryker was so protective over me and why Rivers had been so weird around me to start with.
Cassie picked up the nail polish and unscrewed the lid. “Yep, this place is filled with secrets and pain, what with Ryker and Rivers and Dray—” She snapped her mouth closed.
“It’s okay, I know about Viola. We met at the cemetery.”
Her eyes widened. “He told you what happened?”
Oh man, this was the perfect opportunity to find out the truth, but damn my dicky moral compass. I blew out a breath. “No. He didn’t.”
She made an ‘o’ with her mouth. “And you could so easily have tricked me into telling you.” She shook her head. “Man, you are really something else.”
I gave her my best cheesy grin. “Now that I’ve been so honest, any chance you’ll tell me anyway?”
She snorted. “No way. If I had spilled the beans and Dray found out.” She made a slashing motion across her throat with her index finger.
That bad huh? My curiosity would have to remain unsatisfied. “What about you and Orin? I’m glad to see you sorted things out.”
She shrugged, her eyes on her hands as she painted her neat finger nails. “Orin knows the score. We’re not exclusive, even though he chooses to be.”
“Do you love him?”
She glanced up sharply. “For now.” She went back to painting her nails. “And he loves me. But love doesn’t last. Best not to get too hung up.”
Between me and my aversion to relationships but my desire for love, and her and her aversion to love but desire for relationships, we made one fucked up pair.
“Pass me the purple one, will you.”
She picked it up. “Oooh, look it’s almost the same shade as Bane’s eyes.”
Was that a sly look she slid my way? But then she was blowing on her nails to dry them. Once again, my imagination was getting the better of me, but she was right, the purple was almost the same shade of violet as Bane’s eyes.
***
The sun beat down on my face, its heat a gentle caress. The world was bathed in vibrant greens, deep earthy browns, and an azure sky hung overhead to cap it all off. Cotton wool clouds peeked at me from between the slender branches of the trees above. The forest opened out into a clearing dominated by a sparkling lake. The grass beneath my bare feet was soft as down between my toes.
I needed to see what was under the water.
There was something beneath the serene surface, tugging me forward. My knees kissed the fragrant earth at the lakes edge, and I leaned forward to stare into the clear depths of the pool. My reflection blinked back at me, bewildered and mussed, as if I’d just got out of bed.
Bed.
Wait, I was sleeping.
Dreaming
What was the swirling black stuff in my reflection? It was getting bigger. I wanted to pull away, but my body was frozen.
Don’t be afraid. This is what is meant to be.
The darkness wanted out. It wanted to be free.
Don’t fight it, child. This is salvation.
Not salvation, this was destruction. I couldn’t, I wouldn’t let it take me.
With every ounce of strength I had, I strained against the invisible bonds holding me by the lake.
Stubborn, willful, child.
The darkness surged outward ready to obscure my reflection, and I fell back onto the grass. The sky stared back at me, peaceful and tranquil and at complete odds with the galloping of my heart. Knock, knock, knock.
Was that my pulse?
Knock. knock.
“Harker. Harker, you there?”
I sat up in bed, the dream still clinging to my mind like sticky ribbons. “What? Who is it?”
“It’s Ryker.”
I rubbed sleep from my eyes. “Come in.”
Ryker popped his head round the door. “Hey, sleepy head. There’s a call for you in the study.”
A call? For me? Who’d be calling...Jesse! I was out of bed and through the door before Ryker could say anymore. The stone steps were cold against my bare feet, but I barely felt the chill. There was a phone call for me. She’d found a way to get in touch.
The study door was open, and I rushed in and picked up the receiver. “Hello, Jesse?”
“Harker?”
My heart sank. “Nolan. Hi.”
Not Jesse then. But Nolan may have news about her.
“Harker. It’s good to hear your voice.” He sounded gruff, his voice hoarser than usual.
“Are you all right? You sound odd. How are things? How’s Jesse?”
He cleared his throat. “I’ve been sick. Got taken down by this bug that’s been doing the rounds. Was out of it for over a week.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” But how the hell is Jesse?
“I’m only just back on my feet, and I called in to check on Jesse...she’s gone, Harker.”
Gone? My mind went blank for a moment. “What? What do you mean she’s gone?”
“She’s no longer in Sunset. I did some checking. She voluntary moved to Midnight a week ago.”
The ocean roared in my ears.
“Harker? Harker? Can you hear me?”
Jesse was in Midnight? Had been for a week? What had happened to her? Anything could have happened to her.
“I’m sorry, I was sick. I dropped the ball, I—”
“Have you any idea where she was headed? Any clues.”
“I’m sorry, no.”
I hung up.
“Serenity, are you all right?” Ryker said from the doorway.
I turned to him, hands clasped together to stop them trembling. “My sister is in Midnight. Please, help me find her.”
His frown deepened and he bridged the gap between us and cupped my shoulders. “Hey. It’s all right. If she’s in the district we will find her. Just let me make a few calls. She’d have come through district immigration, and they’ll have a record of where they housed her.”
“Why didn’t she come find me?” I rubbed my temples. Pull it together, Harker. This was salvageable. We’d locate her and everything would be fine. “She should have come straight here.”
He winced. “She may have tried but our base location isn’t common knowledge, not to mention the wards we have around the place to deter humans.” He led me to the
seat behind the desk. “Sit and let me find her for you.”
He picked up the phone and dialed, and I did my best not to wring my hands. What had possessed her to do such a thing? She should have known better. God, what the hell had possessed her! The shock was replaced by anger—at my sister, at myself, at the whole damned fucked up situation, and the fact that I loved her so damn much that my chest felt as if it was being squeezed in a vise and my heart would burst at any moment.
Ryker’s voice was a soothing rumble in the background. A click followed as he hung up the phone.
“Get dressed, we have an address.”
Chapter 26
Drayton caught us as we were on our way out the door. “Where are you two off to?”
I paused with my hand on the door handle. “My sister is in Midnight. I need to see her.”
Drayton’s brows shot up. “Damn. Go. If I hear anything on the warrant, I’ll let you know.”
The warrant? Of course, we had a case and a warrant, and I had a job to do. I’d been so excited about that, but it seemed insignificant now. I smiled and nodded though, feigning enthusiasm.
“Any news on the toxin?” Ryker asked Drayton.
Could we just go already?
Drayton shook his head. “No news yet. I’d chase Tristan if I wasn’t afraid of getting my head bitten off. He’ll call when he has something. He always does.”
“We should go,” Ryker said.
Thank you! I flung open the door and stepped out into the night, which was actually the morning, but heck, it was too much of a mind boggle to dwell on. We took the Range Rover with the big wheels, and Ryker drove quickly through the streets. The world was still waking up, lights coming on in the stores we passed.
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