Destined Darkness

by Tessa Cole

  The guy raced across the building’s uneven parking lot and onto the street. This neighborhood had been old and tired before the war and had yet to see any revitalization money. Only half of the streetlights worked, making footing on the crumbling sidewalk dangerous, and the farther we went down the street, the fewer buildings had lighted vestibules or front doors that weren’t boarded up.

  I pumped my arms, trying to keep up with the guy. He ran with bursts of wild speed that came and went, making him jerk and stumble, but not enough to let me catch him.

  Hank’s footsteps pounded behind me, getting farther away. He was starting to trail, but I knew he wouldn’t give up. He might not have the physique of any of the guys on Gideon’s JP team, but he wasn’t completely out of shape, either.

  The guy stumbled, his arms windmilling to keep his balance, and he skidded into the narrow alley beside a seven-story building with a boarded front entrance.

  My nerves thrummed stronger, more fear than adrenaline. The last time I’d run blindly into an alley, I’d gotten the shit beaten out of me and been branded by a serial killing archnephilim.

  I gritted my teeth and pushed on. I couldn’t let this guy get away. He’d already tried to kill his girlfriend, still had his weapon, and was in the middle of coming down from a magically induced high. He was a danger to others and himself, and I was pretty sure the violence-inducing hallucinations hadn’t started yet.

  The alley was narrow, not even wide enough for two people to walk side by side, and smelled of stale urine. A flashlight beam hit my shoulder and spilled against the alley walls on either side of me. If Hank had brought his light out, the alley was too dark for him to see properly, which meant it was supposed to be too dark for me.

  Shit. I was supposed to be hiding my enhanced abilities. I could only pray that with the heat of the fight and the crazy zip addict with a gun, Hank wouldn’t think much about my running down the alley without light.

  Hank’s light rose a little higher and caught the back of the guy we were chasing. The guy reached the end of the alley, crossed the street, and ran to a boarded-up entrance. With a roar, he ripped off one of the boards and darted inside.

  I barreled out of the alley. Ahead of me stood a three-story partially-standing condemned school. The guy’s footsteps pounded inside, drawing farther away. If he thought enough to slow down and hide, he might be able to slip past us while we searched the school.

  I pulled out my flashlight, even though I didn’t need it, waited a beat for Hank to get closer, and rushed inside. This had been a side entrance to the building and it opened into a gymnasium, the space vast and empty, smelling of mold, dust, and decay as if an animal, or more than one animal, had died there. The sound of the guy’s footsteps headed straight away from me but didn’t echo, so he was already through the door and into the hall across from me.

  Then his steps changed to the rapid patter of going down a set of stairs.

  “He’s in the basement,” I told Hank, and put on a burst of speed.

  I ran into a hall lined with metal lockers, their doors a mix of closed, opened, and missing, all tagged with graffiti on top of graffiti, while electrical and lighting boxes hung precariously from the walls and ceiling, their wiring scavenged for reuse. The smell of dead animal had thickened and a heavy layer of dust, marked with dozens of different footprints, coated the floor.

  I hurried down the stairs into a dark corridor running right and left and stopped, nearly choking on the reek, the smell of death clinging to my nose and the back of my throat. More footprints trailed in both directions, and I couldn’t tell if any of them were fresh.

  Crap.

  I really didn’t want to lose this guy.

  Hank reached the top of the stairs and clattered down, but I ignored him and drew a steadying breath. If the guy was still running I should be able to hear him.

  Nothing.

  Hank stepped close, his nose crinkled in disgust, his sidearm raised, and his flashlight sweeping into the hall behind me.

  “Did you see which way he went?” he asked.

  “No idea.” I squeezed my eyes shut, focusing on slowing my pounding heart and hearing past the rush of blood in my ears. Hank’s breath came fast, and I could hear the faint thu-thump of his pulse.

  Protocol said in a situation like this we had to stick together, even if that meant losing the perp. If the guy had been normal— or rather, if he’d seemed normal, we could have made a judgment call and separated, but no Union City officer faced anyone or anything magical alone. Ever. That was a policy only the dumbest or most desperate cops broke. And I was neither dumb nor desperate… not any more.

  “Dispatch, two Charlie eleven in pursuit at Washington Park High School on Glendower,” Hank said into his radio, his voice soft. “Requesting backup.”

  The radio crackled and clicked. “Ten-four two Charlie eleven, backup is on its way.”

  “Do we honestly think backup will arrive in time to trap him in the school?” I asked, still straining to hear the guy’s footsteps.

  “No, but at least there’ll be more of us in the area to answer a call when he loses it on someone.” Hank glanced the other way down the hall, his expression grim. “So which way?”

  “It’s fifty-fifty. How about—”

  The temperature plunged and a scream ripped through the air. My pulse, not even back to normal, shot back into a rapid beat.

  “Left,” Hank said, passing me to take point.

  We hurried down the hall. The guy screamed again, a desperate, wild sound that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

  A door jerked open, and I could see the guy racing to get back out into the hall. But something yanked him back, pulling the door partially closed after him. Cold stung my hands and cheeks, the guy’s fear a sudden, deep-winter freeze.

  Oh, shit. This is bad. The memory of running into the alley and finding the archnephilim flashed through my mind’s eye. Please let it be a hallucination making him terrified of whoever is in that room.

  “Second door down,” I said. “Someone else is in there.”

  “I see it.” Hank hurried to the entrance, but the crack wasn’t big enough to see inside.

  The guy screamed again, followed by a low growl, crunching, and the sound of something wet.

  Shit shit shit. That really didn’t sound human.

  I opened my mouth to warn Hank, but he shoved the door open and rushed inside to make way for me in the doorway.

  I jerked into the opening to cover him and my thoughts stuttered. Time froze and all I could do was stare at the horror in front of me and wish to God I couldn’t see in the dark.

  The room was large, with no windows, and filled with massive pieces of equipment. Large pipes ran along the low ceiling and up the walls, snaking deeper into the room and beyond my ability to see in the gloom even with my enhanced vision.

  The temperature had snapped back to normal, and I knew our perp was dead or awfully damn close to it. Hank’s flashlight shone on him, his throat ripped out, his body limp and held in the arms of a pale, almost translucent-skinned woman. Blood covered her face around her mouth and her lips were drawn back in a feral sneer, revealing vampire fangs. Her eyes were all black, but didn’t hold any of the intensity I’d come to recognize as pure vampire. All I could see was animalistic fervor and hunger. Desperate, consuming hunger.

  Behind them, piled in the corner between two big pieces of machinery, were more bodies. All were mangled in some way, missing limbs, throats ripped out, faces smashed, and all in various stages of decomposition, the worst at the bottom of the pile. So many bodies. I could count at least two dozen, but with the size of the pile there had to be a lot more.

  Bile burned my throat and I couldn’t make my mind fully accept the horror. Vampire dens like this, with piles of discarded bodies, only existed in horror movies. They weren’t real. Even before supernatural beings had come out of hiding to save themselves from Michael’s war, vampires had had laws
governing their behavior. Sure, some disobeyed those laws, but vampire society had been swift in controlling them. They were swifter now since humans knew about them, and there were enough interested in becoming blood bunnies that they didn’t have to kill anyone to keep their secret.

  But this was more than just killing to keep a secret. This was primal, feral, inhuman in ways not even vampires or demons were inhuman.

  The temperature plunged, this time with Hank’s fear. Blood spurted from our perp’s neck with his heart’s last desperate beats to keep him alive. The viscous liquid oozed over the woman’s arms and splattered to the concrete floor.

  She hissed at us, her fangs extended and eyes filled with a wild hunger, and leaped at Hank.

  TAP HERE TO KEEP READING DESTINED BLOOD

  Want a FREE copy of Destined Shadows, a prequel story to the Nephilim’s Destiny series that tells the tale of how Marcus became a werewolf?

  Subscribe to my newsletter! You’ll also get updates on my writing, sneak peeks, deals, and new release notices. Tap here to sign up: www.tessacole.com/newsletter

  Other Books By Tessa Cole

  THE NEPHILIM’S DESTINY SERIES

  Destined Shadows, prequel story

  Destined Darkness, book 1

  Destined Blood, book 2

  Destined Fire, book 3

  Destined Storm, book 4

  coming February 2019

  Destined Radiance, book 5

  coming March 2019