Dark Heart of the Sun (Dark Destinies Book 1) (21 page)

At street level, Dominic took a moment to collect himself and convince himself yet again that he placed no stock in Serge’s premonitions. This was easier when these promised light and joy, things he knew would never again be a part of his existence. Believing in his own death, on the other hand . . . that was easy. But tonight?

“Impossible,” he muttered and headed for the bar.

He spotted Cassidy before he even entered. A filthy drunk cretin had attached himself to her like a barnacle right there in the middle of the sea of bodies. She struggled, but was unable to chip him off, her rising panic whispering in what remained of the link forged by his poison in her blood. Dominic maintained just enough control not to send people sprawling to the tiles in his rush to get to her—and he had just enough sense to stop in his tracks when another came to her aide.

Melting into the shadows by the restrooms, he became still, all his senses locked on the scene of Cassidy and her rescuer, watching every nuance of their movements and listening to their words. His eyes narrowed as his vision shifted to a higher level. The milling auras of the human crush emerged. Dread whispered through him. Cassidy’s golden life energy rippled with agitation, and the amiable stranger charming her . . . cold white.

Vampire!

Dominic flattened himself to the wall, tense from his toes all the way up to his scalp. He had expected this, of course. Tonight she was like a bowl of peaches and cream amidst a banquet of stale bread and water. No blood-drinker would be able to resist. But what he hadn’t expected—would never even have considered—was a creature like this.

The harder he strained to hear the other’s heart, the deeper the raw fear soaking into his bones. At last he heard a single beat. No ordinary blood-drinker, this was a monster old enough to have a heartbeat slower than anything Dominic encountered before, save his own sire. This incarnation of the beast calling itself Arie was immensely old and powerful—and knew how to apply bronzing lotion with skill.

Instinct told Dominic to retreat and cede the territory. Let this one have the bar, the town, the island, and consider himself lucky for walking away unnoticed.

But Aurelius’s chosen prey was the one human here Dominic could not let him have.

‘
You will sacrifice for her. Everything.’

He swallowed the snarl of fury vibrating in his throat. She lived in his lair and he had fed from her. The beast claimed her as his. And she wouldn’t even be here on this insane pursuit if not for him. In every way, it was his responsibility to keep her safe. No matter what.

‘You will try.’

If not for the wall holding him up, Dominic might have slid to the grimy checker-tiled floor. He closed his eyes, freefalling into helpless rage. Serge was right. Even with his swords, Dominic had little hope of surviving the night.

And Cassidy . . . no hope at all.

A scuffling commotion in the hallway brought him back to the present. He glanced over his shoulder—and froze. Of all the people he might have expected to see trying to appease a foul-mouthed drunk careening out of the men’s room, Jackson Striker was the very last.

Chapter 21

Vertigo

Jackson walked out of the men’s room and came to a hard stop. The figure standing at the end of the narrow hall had his back turned to him, but he would have known that unkempt mop of black hair and the haughty bearing anywhere. And if there was any doubt at all, the black leather jacket, pants, and boots in the eighty-degree night sealed the deal.

Fuck. How does this shit keep happening to me?

Sending him to Key West to check into a string of bodies that didn’t even register on their Grid as possible vampire killings was Garrett’s idea of keeping Jackson occupied while he went after the sure target in South America. A little like sticking him in a playpen and out of immediate trouble.

But once Jackson learned his sister and Cassidy would be there too, he agreed. If Cassidy was enslaved to the vampire roommate, she would go nowhere without his permission or, for that matter, without him—whether she knew it or not. Away from a familiar environment, chances were good that even a supernatural being might trip up and become an easy target for someone who knew what to look for. Jackson had been right on both counts, though he would have preferred not finding out by practically falling over his target outside the bathrooms in the rowdiest tourist trap south of Miami.

Jackson gave himself a mental shake and focused on the business at hand, assessing the situation as he had been trained. The vampire appeared agitated loitering there, watching the crowds, one pale, long-fingered hand pressed flat against the wall, the other fretting and fisting by his side. Jackson’s jaw clenched. So the bastard was hungry and looking for dinner. Nice.

Fingering the strip of sticky trackers in the pocket of his shorts, he tried to calculate his chances of not only escaping the hallway unnoticed, but also planting one of the devices in passing. Making the bloodsucker aware of his presence and losing the element of surprise could be a fatal miscalculation even if he did manage to tag him, but the thought of hiding out in the men’s room galled him.

The decision was made for him by an intoxicated man bursting out of the men’s room and slamming into his back. As they staggered together, the stranger spewed a stream of vomit-flavored obscenities that drew glances from several paces away.

The guy could have thrown up all over him and Jackson wouldn’t have cared. The real problem was the vampire turning toward him and going extraordinarily still. Much as Jackson would have liked to pretend not to be aware of him, at such close quarters he would have looked ludicrous to try.

He sent the unstable patron on his way with an apology and faced the vampire who regarded him with a veiled stare that made his flesh crawl. How anyone could look at that face—even half-obscured behind a sweep of disheveled hair—and not see a viper lying in wait was beyond him.

Jackson smirked without humor. “Nicky. We have to stop meeting like this.” A daytime appointment would be much better.

“Are you here for her?” the creature challenged. Jackson had to strain to hear him over the clashing music and revelry.

“What if I am? You’re here on a girl’s night out, I take it?”

“You useless piece of shit.”

Jackson only half-pretended to restrain himself from doing violence while in his pocket his fingers peeled one of the three trackers off its strip. At about the size of a small, round Band-Aid, the units were the smallest the Foundation’s private labs could manage. The battery activated when it separated from the strip and died about twelve hours later.

“Sorry to disappoint you. But I have better things to do than stand here and be insulted by you. If you’ll excuse me?” Tracker at the ready, he made to shove past his target and leave.

A vise grip closed around his wrist, shaking the tracker loose. “You don’t even realize she’s here, do you?”

Jackson knew an instant of true terror before he could drown it in an emotional smokescreen of outrage. “Let go of me,” he ground out between clenched teeth.

In the next instant he was yanked up close to the inhuman body. Then his back slammed against the wall. The vampire leaned into him so intimately Jackson wanted to crawl out of his skin for a whole new set of reasons.

“Look,” the vampire whispered at his ear, the words barely filtered past the blood pounding in Jackson’s ears. An alien smell assaulted him, cold and clear like winter and disorienting in the sweat-soaked tropical night. “Out there. At the center bar. Do you see?”

Jackson turned his head enough to scan the milling crowds, only too aware of his exposed neck mere inches away from a set of fangs that could savage him in seconds. He almost didn’t register Cassidy. But there she was, beer in hand, looking alluring in that figure-hugging dress she had purchased especially for him. She wasn’t wearing it for him now, though, and the stocky man whom she engaged in animated conversation looked like he enjoyed the view of her cleavage. Judging by the way her face glowed and ponytail bobbed as she nodded, he was laying it on thick, too.

“Looks like she’s having a great time,” Jackson said, doing his best to sound as though he wasn’t reaching the limits of his capacity for shocking revelations.
What the fuck is she doing here alone?
Last he knew she was sleeping off a migraine.

As though reading his mind, the vampire provided an explanation. “She is researching the local serial killer for a story. She does not realize she has already found him.”

“Right,” Jackson drawled. “I can see what he wants from her all right.” Not that he’d let that happen, of course, but first he had to get some business taken care of. His right hand was back in his pocket and fishing for another tracker. “What’s it to you anyway? Does she know you’re stalking her now?”

The vampire stepped back and slipped deeper into the hallway. “Stop being an ignorant prick and get her out of here before he does. You don’t have much time,” he added, looking past him.

Cassidy and the stranger had slipped off their chairs and headed for one of the many entries. Panicked indecision made Jackson’s brain feel like jelly. Tag the first vampire he had a genuine shot at or save Cassidy from . . . ? No, he could catch up with her in time. Or . . . maybe he wouldn’t have to. The stranger pulled out a chair for her and she sat, producing a notebook and pen from her bag.

Jackson released a long, relieved breath, but now his fingers were sweaty in his pocket, making a mess of the tracker’s sticky surface. He needed a little more time. His nerves hummed with tension. The vampire seemed to vibrate in tandem beside him.

“If you feel that strongly then what are you doing skulking in the shadows? Some
friend
you’re turning out to be, Nicky.” For all that he was stalling for time, it was a genuine question. If the vampire considered Cassidy his property—as he must be at this point—keeping to the sidelines while someone else made moves on her made no sense.

“That man is dangerous to me.”

Jackson sneered. “Don’t make me laugh.”

Two seconds later, he realized what his nervous outburst implied. He glanced at the vampire—and confirmed the unthinkable. The clear, hazel eyes read the truth on his face. Jackson gulped a dry throat. There was a reason the Striker Foundation had been around so long—absolute secrecy. In the vampire world, nothing was aware that there were free, uncompelled humans who even knew of them, much less pursued them with such dedication. Not unless they were about to die at a hunter’s hands. With this single revelation, Jackson had undermined centuries of work. Garrett would rip him a new one if he ever found out about this fiasco.

Assuming Jackson lived that long.

“Don’t look so surprised. It’s not like you’re not obvious or anything,” he said, looking the vampire up and down. Sweat trickled down his forehead. There was a sticky tracker ready to go on his finger at last. Time to plant it and go while the bloodsucker was still off balance.

The vampire arched a neat black brow. “As are you.”

Oh, fuck no,
Jackson thought, fighting to throttle his reactions and keep a clear head.
You don’t know a fucking thing about me.

The vampire leaned in close again, his voice dropping even lower, the French accent honey thick. “Allow me to enlighten you further. That
man
has several
thousand
years over me. If I had
any
illusion about surviving a confrontation with him, I would not ask a useless asshole like you to intervene.”

Jackson jerked his head around, gaze swerving to Cassidy’s companion. An ancient! Right there in front of him! The coloring had thrown him off, but now he could see the signs. The guy wasn’t especially handsome, but without obvious flaws, and how he carried himself spoke of a man half his apparent age, strong and sure of himself—and completely oblivious to the fact that a hunter had him in his sights.

But this put Cassidy in mortal danger, and while surreptitiously tagging the vampire should be simple enough, extricating her from the scene meant drawing attention to himself, something to be avoided at all cost. Then again, he already had the full attention of one vampire here. Caution clearly had left the building.

“You’re a fucking coward, Nicky. You’re seriously sending me to settle your personal pissing contest? Get off me.” He shoved the vampire hard in the chest.

The youngling pulled back. His eyes dilated into fathomless black pools, the pretended humanity slipping by the second. Jackson bit off a shiver before it could launch.

“No. I am giving you the opportunity to save the life of someone you claim to care for. And you can maybe do this because that one will not think of you as a threat.”

“Why? Because I’m only human?” he mocked. They’d both be in for a nasty surprise once they got to know him.

“
Oui
,” the vampire agreed flatly. “And insignificant.”

Dominic obscured himself and his telltale aura
as far as possible in shadows as he watched Striker set out on his mission. On the surface, Jackson blended into the scene well with his two-day beard, tan shorts, leather flip-flops, and a white tank top which displayed his impressive biceps as well as an over-sized print of a beer bottle across the chest. But the human’s racing heart and the tension in his body were unmistakable to vampire senses, and Dominic hoped that the other would misinterpret them for the natural reactions of a jealous man.

Sending him was an educated gamble. The chances of a human suitor dissuading Aurelius from his chosen prey were slim at best. But they were still better than those of a youngling challenger without his weapons, even in the middle of a thousand humans well on their way to drunken oblivion. The other blood-drinker could whisk Dominic away and finish him off before anyone even knew he had been there.

Jackson walked up behind Aurelius and clapped him companionably on the shoulder. “Hey, buddy. Thanks for looking after my girl, but I’ll take it from here.”

Fascinated horror welled inside Dominic. The human was either insane or had, all evidence to the contrary, no true knowledge of what he was dealing with. Or maybe he did; he tuned out Aurelius now in favor of Cassidy who looked up from her notepad.

“Jackson? What are you doing here?”

Aurelius watched with quiet interest as the human explained how he saw her leave the hotel and was hoping to find her for a late dinner to talk, maybe work on settling their differences in a new environment. The ease with which he spun his tale gave Dominic pause. Obviously there was more to Jackson than met the eye. Not that he had the luxury of dwelling on this now.

Cassidy wouldn’t budge. “I’m sorry, Jack, but I’ve got a great lead here. I’m going to finish this interview. Go have a beer, and I’ll come find you as soon as I’m done. Okay?”

“No, you won’t,” Aurelius said now, drawing Cassidy’s attention. “He’s going to leave now, aren’t you, young man?”

Jackson still refused to look at the ancient vampire.

Cassidy blinked up at him. “Oh. You’re leaving?”

“With you, yes. You and I are going to go have dinner. Now.” He reached for her notebook, but she grabbed it with both hands and clutched it to her chest.

“I’m working. This is important to me. Why can’t you see that? Why is it always about you?”

“Please, babe. Don’t make a scene,” he implored, taking hold of her arm now. “This is all about
you.
Trust me.”

“Buddy, can’t you take a hint? She’s busy,” Aurelius snapped below his breath.

Jackson held Cassidy’s angry, bewildered look. “And I love her.”

Her mouth opened, but no words emerged. Then she looked back to Aurelius who spoke with venomous tenderness.

“He will tell you anything to ruin your story, sweetheart. He is rude and selfish and cares only that you do what he wants.”

Dominic felt ill with impotent anger when he heard the undertone in the voice modulated to deepen the hook of trust he had already slid into her mind.
No, no, no,
he chanted silently.
Do not listen. Leave with Jackson, ma belle, leave now, je t’implore!
It was a desperate attempt to reach her. But whatever link remained was too weak to break through the other’s enormous influence.

“I know,” she said and twisted out of Jackson’s grip. “Please . . . just go.”

Hearing the disappointment in her voice, Dominic tensed with the effort not to charge into a barehanded attack on the spot, a move guaranteed to get him killed and leave her even more helpless.

Jackson, however, had no such reservations.

“You son of a bitch,” he snarled and spun around to level a massive right hook at Aurelius’s jaw.

The ancient one easily caught the human’s fist in his hand, and when he captured his eyes as well, the air rippled with the power of the compulsion he hissed at Jackson. “Go find your bed and forget you ever saw me. Now!”

Even Dominic had to fight an urge to travel straight home to his lair. The figure of Aurelius grew indistinct and ghostlike for several seconds before snapping back into focus as Dominic shook off the command, able to resist only because he had expected it.
Merde.

But Jackson’s defenses were shattered. All anger and determination drained out of him as he straightened and turned away. Aurelius had ceased to exist for him. “See you in the morning, babe,” he said without looking at Cassidy.