Dark Heart of the Sun (Dark Destinies Book 1) (24 page)

Chapter 24

Know Me

The old Roman’s missing arm gave Dominic no advantage. It only leveled the odds. Somewhat.

Possibly Arie would have let him live under their bargain. More likely he would have ended Dominic when the novelty of toying with him wore off, regardless of his apparent respect for Dominic’s sire. The unwritten law by which they lived remained—an unsupervised youngling had no right to exist.

By claiming him as his, Serge had sealed his fate, but he had also bought Dominic one last precious opportunity to save Cassidy’s life—if he could survive long enough for her to make good an escape. When he saw her running through the street, his determination redoubled even as Arie’s rage exploded beyond all measure. He would not let her go, not on account of a mere youngling. Two thousand years of ego forbade it.

Dominic knew well how to use an opponent’s temper and resulting loss of control against him, but the ancient one had discarded his human instincts centuries ago. Even in the haze of fury, he launched every offensive with devastating cunning, countered every attack with crushing power, and never repeated a miscalculation.

Between his youth and the blood lost by being run through with his swords, the brutal pace of battle took its toll on Dominic. His reactions were sluggish, his escapes narrow. He drew every last ounce of strength from the desperate hope that the longer he held on, the better would be Cassidy’s odds of surviving till dawn. Dominic wanted to die believing that she lived, that a last tiny piece of his human soul would survive with her.

But it was not to be.

Cassidy’s scream pierced the night, laced with unspeakable terror. The surge of emotion that slammed into him dropped him to his knees on the side of a pitched roof. She was in mortal danger, and the tenuous bond his poison forged between their minds burst open wide with the raw power of her fear, rendering him near senseless. One-armed Arie flew at him from a banyan tree, seizing the opportunity to deliver the fatal blow.

And so it ends,
he thought. But the relief he had imagined at his imminent demise was a hollow shell crushed by the knowledge of her certain death.

The death he had brought her.

The death that outweighed all others.

The Roman was airborne now, dropping against the star-spattered sky, claw hand outstretched, reaching for his throat, fangs bared. The beast in all its primordial glory.

Blind instinct made Dominic twist aside in the last possible instant, swinging the shorter
wakizashi
sword up from beneath his body
.
Even if Arie saw it, he had no time or means of avoiding his fate at the edge of that blade. Dominic felt the impact shudder into his forearm, the varying resistance as steel slid through muscle then bone then free again, humming out into space—taking the head with it. The body smashed into him. The outstretched claw scraped across his skin, but didn’t tear his throat or snap his spine. They slid together down the metal slope and over the edge in a cascade of blood.

Dominic pushed the dead weight away in mid-fall and crashed into a gathering of toppled garden gnomes. He closed his eyes and marveled at the trembling in his limbs and the nameless thrill of having survived the impossible.

“Get up, you cunt!”

His attention snapped back into focus. He sucked at the air and found it drenched with both vampire and human blood, laced with rage and fear. Instantly on his feet, the beast reasserted itself. He couldn’t have subdued it if he tried.

He found Cassidy on the other side of the house, flailing against Arie’s sadistic little slave. The scent of her free-flowing, terror-spiced blood sent the beast into a frenzy. It wanted them both.

But when the boy caught sight of him, everything changed. The human dissolved in a pungent stink of mortal fear, eclipsing all else, drawing the vampire’s attention completely.

“
You fucking killed him?
”

The beast snarled, hungry for blood, for life, for terror and carnage.
Know me!

The boy tightened his hold on Cassidy who had gone still, her round stare riveted on Dominic—the beast—entranced. “You touch me, she dies.”

Dominic tossed aside the bloody swords; he wouldn’t need them for this. His voice throbbed with the power of his need. “Leave her. You are mine.”

“N-no,” the boy stammered, but the knife quivered at her throat and slid out of limp fingers. He knew Dominic for what he was. He could see death coming for him.

The beast grew delirious with anticipation.
Know me!

Staggering to his feet, the boy turned and stumbled through the thicket toward the weed-choked picket fence and the street beyond. He took only two steps before Dominic had him by his skinny neck and slammed him against the ragged trunk of a coconut palm.

Too easy. He shook with the effort to refrain from ripping out the bobbing throat, from opening wide that sweet, hot fount of blood. This meal had to be prepared with care, the experience savored.

“Tell me. Did you enjoy seasoning his feeds with your cock? Did they all die moaning for you?” The words were sand grinding in his parched throat.

A violent shiver ran through the boy, and he lost his bowels, further fouling the moldering air. He stared into the beast’s bottomless gaze as though into the maw of hell itself.

Dominic leaned closer, letting the prey feel his breath on his face. “Tell. Me.”

“Y-yes,” the boy sobbed. Spittle smeared his lips, and a rich, guilty fog of fear flowed from him, soaking into Dominic’s senses like the vapors of over proof rum. “I h-helped him catch ‘em. M-made ‘em feel what he w-wanted to t-t-t-taste . . . I’ll help you . . . I’ll b’yours. Anything you want, anything. I’ll do it.”

“Truly.” Dominic bared his aching fangs. His voice rustled low and dry, the raspy whisper of death itself. “But I do not want just anything from you. I want . . . everything.”

The boy bawled and convulsed when those teeth found his throat. Dominic silenced the desperate screams by crushing a hand across the mouth. Fists and fingers hammered at his face and shoulders as the beast slithered into the prey’s mind, plundering memories and shattering illusions.

The boy hadn’t been compelled so much as he had taken genuine delight in raping the women as they died in his master’s arms, and he considered it a special challenge to dispose of them after, often using the bodies again at leisure. Zack was drunk on the imagined power of it all, never aware of his insignificance in the eyes of the ancient one. Dominic made certain that the boy knew it now, just as he knew of his mind being raped and the blood leaving his body. Zack knew why he was dying and how. There was no mystery, no confusion. Only the clearest, most unmitigated experience of terror imaginable. It pulsed into the vampire together with his blood in shuddering, orgasmic explosions of ecstasy.

Know me . . .

The feed surpassed Dominic’s every expectation, and he made every effort to draw out the death as long as possible. Still, it wasn’t long before a final tremor juddered the limbs and the heart coughed to a halt. Only then did the beast release him, sated as never before. He stepped back and swayed as the body collapsed to the ground. He closed his eyes and ran his tongue around his lips to catch the last of the blood. He moaned.

He smelled her.

She still bled, still reeked of temptation, wreathed in anxiety bordering panic. For the first time it didn’t matter. He was so completely satisfied, nothing could have persuaded him to ruin this exquisite aftertaste by feeding again.

Cassidy sat on the ground amidst the weeds, disheveled and blood-spattered, drawing shallow, open-mouthed breaths as she surveyed the scene. Uncertain, Dominic remained still, resisting the urge to disappear into the darkness. There was nothing more he could hide from her, no secrets to keep. Nothing at all. His soul lay before her as bare and defenseless as a newborn.

“
Je suis désollé,”
he said, his voice not quite steady. “I am truly sorry you had to see this. I hoped you would learn the truth about me differently.”

It made him ill to think that she would be lost to him now. The dream was over. Despair sucked at him, and everything in him wanted to flee from this moment—and the darker ones he knew were yet to come. But he remained, waiting.

For her.

For his fate.

The entire world collapsed into this one place and time. Their lives—their ‘shadows’—twined. Changed.

“He—” she began, then stopped and tried again. “He was going to . . .” She gasped. “And the other one . . . Arie . . .” She clapped a hand across her mouth and squeezed her eyes shut. Horrified revulsion shook her and washed into his mind across the thread of their mental link. She bent to the side and retched.

It was the reaction Dominic had expected. Except it also wasn’t.

Before he knew what he was doing, he crouched by her side, but stopped himself from placing a bloodstained hand on her back in a gesture of reassurance. Her fingers curled in the dirt. A labored wheeze escaped her as she rounded into herself.

“Cassidy,” he said.

Her breathing accelerated along with her heartbeat, the panic attack breaking over her in earnest now.

Again his hand reached for her. Again he didn’t touch her. “Cassidy, look at me,” he commanded instead. She only panted harder. “Listen to me, Cassidy,” he tried, softening his tone to a comforting murmur. “You are safe now. You can breathe. Slowly. Slooowly.”

A shudder ran through her as she tried to comply.

“In through the nose. Out through the mouth. Breathe deep.”

She uncurled a bit and sucked at the blood-laden air, expelling it in explosive gasps.

“Slowly,” he said again and held out his cleaner hand to her where she could see it. “You are safe. Neither one of them will ever touch you again. This I promise.”

Cassidy glanced at his offered hand. Her heart’s frantic hammering subsided a little. With a deep, almost even breath, she reached for his hand. With her fingers wrapping around his as though grasping a lifeline, she closed her eyes and concentrated on her breathing. Over the next couple of minutes, it slowly steadied. “I know,” she whispered, opening her eyes again. “Thank you.”

Dominic looked at their joined hands, caked in filth, and felt his heart swell in his chest with gratitude.

Blood dripped from the cut in her arm. Though no major arteries were breached, the wound was deep and would require cleaning and stitches, and soon. Or not. He turned her hand so the wound faced up. “Will you let me help you?”

She laughed, a touch of hysteria in the humorless sound. “Now he asks. What happened to just charging in?”

“This is different. You might misunderstand.”

She wiped her mouth with the back of her free hand, smudging dirt and blood across her face. “I know you won’t hurt me, Dominic.”

Her wide, blue eyes met his, the trust in them complete. He could almost believe it was true, if only because he would do everything in his power not to betray this misplaced faith in him. She gasped when he brought the wound to his mouth and licked along the cut, cleaning it of her lime and chocolate infused blood. She flinched when he probed deeper with his tongue, but then relaxed as the poison in his saliva performed its function of neutralizing the pain and starting the healing process. Progress was slow, however. At this rate, the cut would take an hour to mend.

“You sure you’re not just looking for dessert?” she whispered, and Dominic allowed himself a tiny smile. Why she accepted this with such calm, he couldn’t guess, but he was grateful she did.

Picking up the discarded knife, he wiped it on his thigh before pulling the edge hard through his palm. A crimson ribbon of blood flowed from his hand and across her wound. She sucked at the air with a hiss but didn’t otherwise move. He closed his sliced hand over her arm and thrilled to the feel of her flesh knitting together.

When the crawling sensation stopped, both wounds were gone, his completely and hers faded to a thin, pink line. He licked the blood off her warm skin, abandoning himself to the taste of their mingled essence, perhaps the last intimacy she would ever grant him.

Cassidy turned her hand and brushed her fingertips against his cheek. He pressed her palm to his face to better feel her magnificent heat.

“None of this is a dream, is it?” she said, her voice hushed. “You . . . really are . . . a vampire.”

“
Oui.
I am,” he whispered. “A monster.” He became very still, perhaps even supernaturally still. The last time this admission had left his lips, it had cost a life precious to him.

There was not even a hint of apprehension in her scent, her mind, or her heart. “You saved my life, Dominic. In the only way you could.”

He looked at the slumped body three paces away. The dead eyes stared at nothing. He could almost hear Serge’s rebuke at this waste, this travesty of justice. He should have compelled this boy into a living hell lasting decades, not release him to death.

“That I did not need to do. That I wanted to do.”

Her eyes glistened. “I did, too.”

Or perhaps it was the beast’s need for blood she felt through their bond. The thought both comforted and disturbed him.

At a loss for words, he placed a kiss in her palm.

She carefully retrieved her hand and folded it with the other. “So what are you going to do with . . . him?”

“Nothing,” Dominic decided even as he said it. He would never hunt here again, and once in a while, leaving a mystery was acceptable. Or, in this case, a clue. “The DNA evidence will link him to the dead women. Which may be what his master intended all along when he was ready to move on.”

“And Arie has? Moved on?”

“The sunrise will take what is left of him.”

Thoughtful, she gathered her loose hair and confined it back in its tie. “He was a lot stronger than you.”

“
Oui.
By about two thousand years.” He saw her hesitate, heard her swallow. “I should not have survived.”