Darklight 2: Darkthirst

by Forrest, Bella

  This wasn’t fair. There was no way it was a coincidence. Bravi watched Bryce carefully, her green eyes pained. The rest of us gathered around, silently inspecting, still used to Bryce giving the orders. This time, he didn’t speak. The silence that draped over us seemed unbreakable.

  After a couple minutes, he took a deep breath and stepped toward the desk.

  A single page containing a few lines of neatly written text sat on top. Bryce leaned over it, reading. I already knew what it would say. It was clearly a suicide note. Our former captain read the whole thing several times before closing his eyes in a moment of grief. Then he shook his head, a disgusted curl to his lips.

  “Bryce, I’m so sorry,” I said, not knowing what else to say but needing to break the silence somehow. “Do you think the dark presence… do you think someone from the Bureau did this?”

  “He could just have been depressed,” Louise added in a soft, too-gentle voice. “Living alone in this big house… no family…”

  Bryce’s shoulders shook. At first, I mistook it for crying, but he made no sound. He turned on us with a fierce gaze, finding the strength to speak. “We need to leave,” he said, his voice strained. “This wasn’t a suicide. It’s been staged. Jim had severe carpal tunnel. He could barely sign his own name and typed everything. This is his writing, but it looks like his writing from a decade ago, which, incidentally, is when he worked for the Bureau.”

  He said it with such conviction I didn’t even think to question him. The coincidence was just too unlikely. I pressed my hand across my mouth, staring at Jim’s face. He seemed peaceful in his eternal rest. Had he known what was going to happen to him?

  “He was…” Colin couldn’t finish his sentence.

  He was killed, and somebody tried to cover it up.

  And they were likely to get away with it.

  “He was bloody murdered,” Bryce snapped, the lines in his face making him look twice his age. “And we are most certainly being watched.”

  My back stiffened as a sensation of icy fear slid down my spine. The vampires had said there was a dark presence. Had the darkness left?

  As if on cue, Bravi shifted, the shadows flickering faster across her face. “We’ve got company,” she said, snarling more than speaking, her fangs glinting. I saw Vonn poised with his face turned toward the front door as muffled sounds came from outside the house, accompanied by thundering footsteps from the front hall. One single, blaring siren whoop from outside made us all jump.

  “Police!” someone shouted. “We know you’re here. Come out with your hands in the air, or we will shoot you!”

  Everything about this was wrong, but there was nothing we could do about it right now.

  “Let’s go,” Roxy barked, her voice caustic. “We can take them with the vampires.”

  I stepped forward with a purposeful motion. “No fights. We can’t risk it. Let’s just run while we still can,” I said firmly.

  Roxy gritted her teeth for a moment, let out a frustrated huff, and then nodded, jerking her eyes toward the study’s large window. It would have to do. The rest of the team caught her look and filed forward. As Roxy shook the lock loose and shoved the window open, I cast one last look at Jim slumped in his chair, so different from the sharp attention he’d shown in life. I hadn’t known him well, but he had been kind to Dorian and open to a relationship between humans and vampires. Helpless anger mixed with grief as I wondered whether he would ever get justice, whether his kids would ever know what had really happened to their father.

  I tore myself away as voices grew louder and footsteps pounded down the hall. The police will be on us in a second.

  We moved as quickly as possible. Roxy held open the window, and Bravi and I led the way outside. Grayson swore under his breath as he fell clumsily from the window, followed by Bryce. Roxy came out last. I did a quick headcount. We were missing one.

  Vonn was still inside.

  We waited a moment, expecting to hear the sound of his feet hitting the ground. I could see red and blue lights flashing from around the front of the house, but from the number of footsteps we’d heard, I hoped they’d sent their whole team inside. As though they knew the important thing to cover up in the study. I felt my chest constrict again, first from the injustice that I was being forced to stand by and witness… and also from the realization that we might have bigger problems.

  “Do you think he’s been grabbed?” Roxy asked as we hovered beside the window. Several agonizing seconds ticked by. Every moment we lingered, we could be discovered. My stomach twisted as I grimly thought through the possibilities, everything centering on one. Sure, Vonn could have been shot or captured. But that thought wasn’t what had my nerves ringing with alarm.

  Almost as I thought it, a horrible scream rang out into the night. A series of crashes sounded inside the house, followed by gunshots. Several of my team members jumped, stumbling back, but I turned right back toward the window. My gut reaction to Vonn had been right.

  “He’s decided to feed,” I said furiously. “We have to stop him.” Roxy was closest. “Boost me to the window.” My teammate stooped to use her hands to help me, her face looking as thunderous as mine.

  “Damn it! All of you step back,” Bravi said abruptly, pushing herself between us and the window. “Let me handle this.” She pulled herself back through the window with an expertly fluid movement I couldn’t help but admire. Her boots hit the ground inside, then she disappeared into the house of bloodcurdling screams. I’d heard similar cries from a scene out of a horror movie Zach had forced me to watch once, though I’d spent most of it hiding behind my pillow.

  “We should’ve known this guy was trouble. I wish we could just leave his ass behind,” Roxy growled, a wish I fervently seconded. “Why did he have to linger in the back like that?”

  That idiot was increasing our chances of being found by one group or another with every moment we remained at the scene of the death of one of our known allies.

  I should’ve told Roxy and everyone else to keep an eye on Vonn… but I didn’t want to raise any alarm. The thought rankled me now. “You were next to him,” I said to Roxy, shaking my head at myself. “Did you notice he was gone when you lined up for the window?”

  “I’m not his babysitter,” Roxy bit back grumpily, and I realized how I’d sounded when I’d said it—gruff and irritated.

  Heat flamed in my cheeks. “You know that wasn’t what I meant,” I said defensively. Why did she have to be so reactive when this was a serious matter? We’d been working together fine before. “I just asked a simple—”

  Bryce cut into our argument, his voice harsh and pained. “Enough! Stop behaving like children. We’re not at the Bureau anymore.”

  I snapped my mouth shut, feeling embarrassed and more off-kilter than ever. He was right. He’d had to keep us from quibbling out of our own fear-driven frustration. And he had just seen his murdered friend’s body.

  My hunger and frustration were getting to me. I had to stop being petty. We couldn’t afford to waste any energy. “Sorry,” I mumbled quickly to Roxy.

  An awkward silence passed between us.

  Louise coughed, her eyes looking pointedly elsewhere and her voice loud and obvious. “Why didn’t you follow Bravi, Sike?” she asked, clearly attempting to redirect attention. I was grateful—my nerves were on fire.

  Sike shrugged. “I’ve never been as strong as the other vampires. I was born prematurely,” he said in a low voice. His easy smile that lit up his dark brown eyes belied any pain the admission might’ve caused him. “I had to deal with a lot of teasing when I was a kid, but now I’m just happy to use my get-out-of-fights-free card when I can. I prefer to use my brain.” He tapped the side of his head with one bony hand.

  I’d never really considered it before, but his body was much thinner than the other vampires, ganglier, his motions more awkward than most. Though amongst humans, he wouldn’t have been called scrawny. Even though Sike happily volunteered fo
r most missions that involved flight and stealth, he didn’t seem as keen on fighting. I admired him for managing to journey with Dorian, who seemed to attract situations requiring combat like a magnet. Louise looked a little embarrassed to have made him share personal information, but she also smiled sweetly.

  Roxy rolled her eyes as if to say, Why are we talking about this now, you weirdos?

  Approaching footsteps caught my attention, tearing me away from the conversation with a jolt of energy. As our group dropped instinctively into fighting stances, a policeman rounded the front corner of the house. He ran toward us in a blind panic, one of his legs draggling oddly, his mouth contorted in horror. The whites of his eyes flashed as he cried out, “Please! Help!”

  None of us had the chance to move—either to attack or to help him—before Vonn leapt around the corner, darkness concentrated in his eyes, his face twisted and teeth bared in a bloody grimace. In two steps, he caught up to the limping policeman and leapt onto his back, dragging the man to the ground and sinking his fangs into the officer’s neck.

  Louise shrieked, and Grayson pressed himself against the wall. Colin jumped, hands straying to his weapons, and Roxy just stood there, her face warping into a mask. Blood spurted from the wound, and the officer howled in pain, his body jerking and twitching.

  “Get off him!” Bryce bellowed furiously, his accent stronger than ever.

  I wasn’t sure what to do. I’d learned the dangers of trying to keep a vampire from feeding when I’d done it with Dorian—somebody I actually cared about, someone I’d trusted deep down not to hurt me too badly. This guy, on the other hand…

  I reeled back for a moment, unsettled despite myself, then leapt forward, furious. Roxy and Bryce both took steps at the same time, all of us rushing toward the scene.

  “Vonn!” I shouted, giving up on hiding our presence as the officer’s screams echoed off the neighborhood fences. “Leave it!”

  Vonn pinned the smaller man down, making horrible growling and gurgling noises, and my shouts did nothing to make the vampire look up from his feast.

  Before I could think of another move, Bravi rounded the corner and charged Vonn. She leapt from nearly six feet away and plowed into his side, easily knocking him from the man. With matching snarls, they rolled across the woodchips of the path and into a bed of succulents. Blood pooled on the ground around the officer, and as soon as the greedy vampire was out of the way, Bryce and Grayson rushed to his side. I could smell the carnage. God, this was a mess.

  Despite her much smaller size, Bravi soon gained the upper hand as she grappled with Vonn, pinning his arms behind him with her fangs bared at his throat. Sike, thinking quickly, tossed her a rope from the gear bag. Bravi secured Vonn’s arms, and the more he pulled, the tighter she bound his hands together. Eventually, he lay still, his chin planted in the ruined little garden bed.

  Followed by Roxy, I made my way over to Bravi to see if I could help, then pulled back when I saw her own fangs extended and shadows swirling across her skin, a natural but chilling response to the situation. As she sat astride Vonn’s back, she shook her head, her pupils dark, controlling herself.

  “He’s bled out.” Grayson’s voice shook as he spoke. “There’s nothing we can do.”

  I turned to see him looking up at us from where he knelt beside the officer’s limp body, his hands bloody, his eyes wide.

  “Of course, there isn’t. Half of his neck is missing,” Bryce snapped, his tone more cynical and harsh than I’d ever heard it.

  “He was full of darkness,” Bravi said, her voice hard, her eyes trained on Vonn’s back. Her mouth twitched irritably. Her gaze swung back toward us humans, and she shook her head as though lamenting the whole situation. “Absolutely filled with it.”

  “It would’ve been a waste to let him die without feeding on him,” Vonn snarled from beneath her. He struggled beneath Bravi’s grip. Bravi only pressed her knee deeper into his back, earning a pained grunt.

  “That doesn’t mean you get a pass,” she spat furiously. “You endangered all of us because you couldn’t control yourself. Don’t talk to me about hunger. I know how it feels. I starved for six weeks in that test facility in the desert that you were too much of a miserable coward to be a part of. You’re way out of line, and you’ve put this mission in serious jeopardy.”

  Louise, coming over from the side of the house, gaped at the display before deliberately shutting her mouth. Colin and Grayson wore similar expressions, though Grayson looked much paler, and I worried he might throw up. Roxy’s mouth curled up into a disgusted sneer. She looked as if she might spit on Vonn.

  We had to leave before the Bureau or anybody worse found us.

  I didn’t wait for Bryce’s lead. “All right, team, we need to focus,” I said, injecting my tone with steel. “The police will have called for backup. We need to move.” Preferably before this nightmare got any worse. I turned to Vonn with a scowl. “Get on the redbill, and we’ll deal with this later.”

  Vonn returned a sleazy, easy smile. As if he hadn’t just murdered a man in front of us and likely left several others in a similar state inside the house. But he didn’t argue. Bravi jerked him up from the ground by his bound hands as the redbills landed in a storm of wingbeats at her silent summons.

  We mounted the redbills in a rush. Bravi placed Vonn on her bill, which meant a few humans would have to ride solo with her controlling the flock from afar—another inconvenience created by Vonn. Bryce climbed onto a waiting redbill by himself, his eyes blank. I hesitated, then silently got on behind him, not wanting him to ride alone. Louise unsteadily followed Sike to his bill, and I watched him gesture as though to help her mount, then pull his hand back as she single-mindedly climbed on by herself. Her face was almost green in the house’s floodlights. I hoped she wouldn’t throw up on the redbill. Roxy and Colin shared a ride. Grayson, after a moment of hesitation, stiffly climbed onto a redbill on his own.

  My stomach still churned with acidic disgust, and I refused to look at Vonn. He seemed utterly unbothered by the mess he’d created, some of which trailed from his mouth and stained his clothing. Bravi scowled and stared forward on the flight. She needed to feed too, but she’d never been this callous toward humans.

  I balled my hands into fists, promising myself things would be dealt with when we arrived back at the hideout.

  The trip was silent, thick with unanswered questions.

  Could we trust these vampires while running for our lives? I was no longer sure of the answer.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I came out swinging as soon as we landed in the tunnels. I’d held my tongue long enough.

  Vampires hunted the innate darkness in humans. I knew that. I’d known from the beginning. But this was different. Vonn had acted completely out of turn. He had broken the carefully arranged moral compromise the humans and vampires had established. He hadn’t been thinking about anybody but himself.

  “Vonn compromised everything,” I said hotly as our group marched into the main cavern.

  Bravi had been shepherding our miscreant, who was now untied, by holding his hands loosely behind his back, but she released him. The other vampires swung their heads in our direction, clearly alarmed.

  Vonn said nothing and sauntered toward the group of newer vampires. I wanted to punch his lights out. God, I wished I had Dorian’s strength.

  “You made a big mistake,” Bravi said. She folded her arms with a disapproving scowl. “You can’t be trusted.”

  “What happened?” Dorian asked warily. He stood farther down the tunnels and slowly began making his way toward the group, as though assessing the situation.

  Everything bad that could have happened, a part of me wanted to reply. Jim was dead, and a whole team of officers had been left in our violent wake, the clear victim of a vampire attack.

  “Vonn killed a whole team of police officers!” Roxy cried.

  Upon hearing that accusation, some of the new vampires furrowed their bro
ws in confusion, as if they didn’t understand what the fuss was about.

  As he drew closer in the firelit shadows, I could see that Dorian’s icy eyes shone with health. The burns from the soul scourger were gone. A charismatic power emanated from him once again, his presence commanding as his gaze traveled over our splintered group.

  His stare found mine, and he didn’t bother to hide the relief that sparked in his eyes. I stepped forward to greet him, my heart warming to see him better despite everything, and he mirrored my movement as though to meet me halfway.

  The pain struck me with a poisonous vengeance, and I gasped. It had faded before, but now it was raw and hot like fire over my heart. Unable to hide it, I winced and stumbled to one knee. No, please don’t let this happen again. I couldn’t deal with this right now. We didn’t have time to contend with my physical pain. I needed to be strong for my team, especially now with Bryce hurting. I needed to be strong, and I wanted to be close to Dorian while we dealt with the Vonn issue.

  As my eyes watered, I kept them on Dorian, who jerked backward as though his touch could cut me. His face betrayed his thoughts as the wideness of surprise hardened into upset. He looked even more pained than I felt about the return of the burning ache in my chest. I could almost see the shadow of guilt falling over him. It made me want to comfort him, even through my pain. It wasn’t fair. He wasn’t trying to do this to me.

  We had been so close with our friendship plan… yet, right now, I couldn’t hide that I was grateful to see him. Did my sudden spark of emotions upon seeing him cause this? I hated that I had no control over my body. Others of the group were gathering around us now, curious or worried. Gina came up out of the tunnels and crouched by my shoulder, her touch lost amid the struggle going on within my body.