Dark Heart of the Sun (Dark Destinies Book 1) (25 page)

“I’m glad you did.”

Unable to agree and unwilling to share his true motives, he remained silent.

Her eyes widened with a sudden memory. “What happened to that guy who helped us? Did he survive?”

Dominic glanced around. No sign of a lurking blood-drinker. “I don’t know.”

“He was a mess last I saw him. We should go check on him.”

Using his shoulder to steady herself, Cassidy stood, galvanized by her need to charge to someone’s rescue. While he waited for her to retrieve her sandals and bag, Dominic wondered if she would still feel this way when she learned that Serge had been the one who left that bruise on her.

Dominic picked up the swords and held out his free hand to her. She took it, allowing him to lead her back into the darkness, back to the house where the nightmare had begun.

Inside, the camp lamp still glowed, lying on its side against a wall. Through the shattered front window, Dominic saw the tiny movements in the rubble at the back of the room. He could also smell the enormous quantities of blood.

“You should stay out here.” Better yet, she should be running again. Serge would be in no condition to make wise feeding choices.

“He’s alive?”

“Barely.” He squeezed Cassidy’s hand before letting go. “You are safe out here. If you so much as hold your breath, I will know.”

She nodded and hugged herself.

Inside, Dominic found the old buccaneer where he last saw him and in no better shape. Serge stopped his futile writhing. A look of pure awe crossed his face. “Blood-child. You are victorious.”

Dominic gripped Serge’s slick wrist and pulled. With an ugly sucking noise, the body came off the thick wooden stake. Pieces of broken ribs and spine were visible in the mangled gut. Even as Serge settled groaning to the floor, the injury began to right itself, vertebrae realigning with small pops, new intestine bulging and fingers of muscle and tendons stretching to contain them. As the healing progressed, other areas of the supernatural body provided what was needed to rebuild the damage. Serge paled and withered by the second.

But his sense of smell remained keen. “I told her to run.”

Dominic settled beside him. “She wasn’t quite fast enough. And she saw far too much.”

“But yet she is here,” he said, sounding as though proclaiming a miracle.

“She worries about you.”

Serge’s eyes snapped open. “She does?”

“The morning sun will restore her common sense,” Dominic muttered. Retrieving, a discarded shirt from the debris field, he got to work cleaning his weapons.

Serge chuckled before breaking into a fit of coughing.

“You wrote me off, old fool,” Dominic said when Serge fell quiet again. “All but declared me dead, and because of that I almost was. Grateful as I am for your meddling, I can’t help but wonder why you came back.”

Serge’s smile was hesitant. He spoke in hushed tones. “Because I saw it. For the first time I saw it. My own light.” Emotion glittered in his hollowing eyes and choked his voice. “I now cast a shadow in time, blood-child. I cast a
shadow
.”

Dominic placed a hand on the bony shoulder and thought he understood. By coming to his aide, Serge had stepped from obscurity into the stream of life. Whether only in his delusions or as a true oracle, didn’t matter. He was no longer only an observer. He mattered—perhaps for the first time in three hundred years.

“
Merci beaucoup
,
mon ami
,” he murmured.

A deep sigh lifted the emaciated chest. “No. Thank you.”

The belly had regenerated, but the skin covering the deep dent was thin and raw. He wouldn’t be able to heal much more without feeding, which at this point meant he would make a corpse. Or three.

“Do you truly think of me as yours?” Dominic wondered.

Serge kept his eyes closed. “Ah, blood-child. You belong to no one but yourself. I’m honored that you tolerate me, that you’ll let me be part of your future.”

Dominic paused in returning the
katana
to its scabbard and raised a brow. But he didn’t argue. Not anymore. Serge truly was the sire he never had. And the father he would never have again. By the time he cleaned and sheathed the
wakizashi
as well, he had come to a decision. Removing his jacket, he set it aside and placed the two swords on top.

Serge heaved himself to the side and gazed longingly out the broken front window from where they could both hear Cassidy’s steady heartbeat. He turned away. “Would you . . . find me someone? And maybe . . . stop me making a mess?”

“Maybe I have something better for you,” Dominic said. When the old one looked up, confused and black-eyed with hunger, he extended his arm, wrist up, the blue vein there prominent. “Know me.”

Chapter 25

Angel of Death

Two thousand years.

Cassidy had discussed a murder investigation with the two thousand year old perpetrator. She almost became his next victim, raped and drained of blood with the casual violence common of those times—two thousand years ago. Her mind turned this wonder over and over. Somehow this felt easier to digest than the fact that she walked along quiet residential streets with her French pain in the ass roommate—vampire.

The fog finally cleared a bit when she caught her reflection in a restroom mirror. A battlefield survivor stared back. Torn and bloody clothes, smears of dirt and blood, debris-studded hair, and scratches across her face and arms. All evidence of the fight of her life. How had she managed to walk past the café patrons outside without someone calling an ambulance or the police?

Oh, right. The vampire told them not to see her.

Cassidy leaned on the little porcelain sink and tried to steady her wobbly nerves and quaking gut. True, all of it true. She had seen it, felt it, heard it . . . dear God, she had even smelled the gore. Dominic wasn’t part of this world, and by having born witness to his reality, she now felt untethered from her own with nothing but quicksand beneath her feet. The only stable point anywhere in sight was . . . Dominic.

The Angel of Death himself.

She cleaned herself up, combed out her hair, and buried the ruined dress she once so carefully selected for Jackson’s benefit in the waste paper bin. The plastic bag Dominic handed her earlier contained a new dress, sapphire-blue with laughing yellow suns. The irony made her cry before it made her laugh.

They walked Duvall Street together, the girl with the cheerful new dress and big bag and the pale, graceful young man in black leather carrying Samurai swords across his back. He had cleaned up, too. His damp, ebony curls framed a clean, flawless face. His black clothing didn’t show the stains, but a faint smell of blood wafted off him.

“And snow,” she murmured. “Is that your natural scent? Winter?”

“
Oui.
It is the mark of the very young.”

Arie had smelled like a pine forest. Also very pleasant. Natural. And an odor of wet moss hovered around the other one who had chosen to go his own way once he recovered from being run through with a two-by-four.

She pushed that memory away. “I saw pictures of you in the sun. Obviously you were . . . not like this until recently.”

“Fourteen months, seven nights, five hours and seventeen minutes.”

“Oh. Not keeping track or anything, I see.”

“Except for the last twenty-one nights, every moment has been a nightmare without end.”

“Why—” She stopped in her tracks when she realized his meaning. Twenty-one nights ago she had moved into his cottage.

The dimples in Dominic’s cheeks deepened with a soft smile. So seductive, so powerful. Immortal . . . haunted.

“How did this happen to you?”

“Very bad luck. Come. You should eat.” He ushered her onto the paved patio of the wine bar she had admired earlier where piano music tried to mute the rambunctious atmosphere of the street. A hostess seated them at a table beneath the canopy of an immense banyan tree. After the waiter departed with Cassidy’s order, she sipped ice water and waited.

The vampire sat with one booted ankle propped on his thigh. Lost in thought, he traced the cast iron patterns of the tabletop with long fingers. “I have not told anyone this story,” he began. “Though I did try to tell you once. The night of the storm.”

“You ended up giving me self-defense lessons.” And God only knew how he managed to not accidentally kill her.

Dominic’s tiny, sad smile scratched at her heart. “I told you about what happened to my little sister, Ana. And what I did to the men who assaulted her. The one man I killed.” She had to strain to hear him over the ambient noise. “Something witnessed this. Something very old, very powerful. And it . . . he decided he wanted me. I never had a chance after that. Every night he found me and fed on my blood, and I never even knew. It takes several feedings before the lethargy starts. A week before you even think about going to see a doctor who will tell you to get more rest when you are really already near death.”

He paused to drink half his water. “That night I was aware of nothing but the need to go outside and stagger like a drunk into the hills behind my family home. Later I learned that I had been silently summoned by this monster. He waited for me there along with another blood-drinker, an Asian woman. I think I knew even then that they were not human.”

For a while, he stared into the street, seeing only the past. The barest hint of emotion flickered across his lean face before he finished his recounting with an air of forced nonchalance. “It was his poison that seethed in me, but he commanded her to feed me her blood, which is what ignited the process and burned me from the inside out until I became what I am now. We were both his creatures. His alone.”

Dominic twisted his mouth into a bitter line as he pushed the sweating glass around on the table. “So this is how the sun became forever lost to me. Eternal night is the price I paid for saving my sister.”

For a while, Cassidy said nothing, trying to comprehend the depths of his despair and the velvet rage in his voice. “You can’t even look at the sun through a window?”

“It tortures me long before dawn. Once it rises, it crushes me into unconsciousness. If I were to be caught in it, I would burn to death.”

She swallowed the knot in her throat. Remembering one of their earliest conversations, she said, “That’s one hell of a ‘sun allergy’ you’ve got there.”

“
Oui.
A slow way to die. I would much prefer decapitation.”

The waiter returned with Cassidy’s cheese basket and wine. In spite of the conversation, she discovered she was famished. Halfway through the first cheese-stuffed roll, she noticed Dominic’s amused scrutiny. “What?”

“I enjoy watching you eat. Especially when I cook,” he added, warm delight surfacing in his hazel eyes.

Feeling herself blush, she finished the roll. “So how did you end up here? Where’s this guy who thinks he owns you?”

“I ran away.” His expression shuttered. “I ran away from his abuse and ended up marked for death by every other blood-drinker I met. I am a youngling without a keeper. That makes me fair game. I live only because of my skill with the swords.”

“What about the other one I saw tonight? He doesn’t seem to have it out for you.”

“Serge,” he said on a sigh and leaned back to look into the tree’s dense lattice of branches. “Serge is a friend. The only one I have.”

She followed his gaze. Nothing up there but deep green shadows. Yet she had the uncanny sense that something was looking back. It was the vampire next to her that stared at her, though. Or rather at her exposed neck. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to”—she tucked in her chin—“tempt you, I guess.”

Dominic laughed. “Ah, Cassidy,
ma petite
, you tempt me whenever I am near you and often when I’m not. In every way,” he added, sobering. “As I know I tempt you.”

Her face burned with the sensual insinuations. Being tempted and believing there was no reciprocating interest was one thing. This was quite another. Literally another, she was sure, but she opted to go with the safer option when she said, “So you do like women, then.”

“
Oui.
Very much.” The look he gave her all but undressed her on the spot. More than her face warmed with it. She remembered all too well the dream of lying in his arms and tasting his kiss.

She reached for her wine, trying to distract herself, then put the glass back down before tasting the contents, recalling the last time she indulged in alcohol in Dominic’s presence. Maybe this hadn’t been the safer topic after all. “And . . . you want my blood, of course.” She cleared the frog out of her throat. “But you never—”

The way he tilted his head and the mischief sparking in those gold-flecked eyes told her everything and more.

Cassidy touched her throat, the faded, mottled bruise. “You did? But . . . but this bruise . . . I had that before I met . . .” She looked at him sharply, her mental gears tripping into place. “This is a vampire bite, isn’t it? That’s why I don’t remember how it happened?”

Dominic nodded, his expression souring.

“Was this you?”

“No,” he said, looking scandalized.

“Okay then.”

Several leaves fluttered from the tree above. Dominic watched them land on their table.

“But do you know who it was?”

“Someone who should know better than to leave such a mark. Someone who will not touch you again while you are under my protection.” The ragged edge in his voice wasn’t quite human and didn’t encourage follow-up questions. Not that she needed any. She’d seen tonight in living color what it meant to be under Dominic Marchant’s protection in the supernatural world, and that was more than good enough for her.

He finished his water and softened his tone before speaking again. “I did not leave a mark. And you remember more than you should.”

Her brows gathered. “I do?”

“The night of the storm,” he offered with obvious reluctance.

“The storm . . . oh, the kiss. Not just a kiss, was it?”

“
Non.
Not all of it. My bite is painless if I want it to be. And it heals quickly. The way your arm did.”

“I had a dream . . . a vision.” She hesitated. “Was that part of it?”

He gave her a long, unhappy look. “
Oui.
That doesn’t usually happen. It surprised me. I almost killed you because of it.”

She reached for a fortifying sip of wine. “No. You didn’t.”

“
Sotte,
” Dominic said and shoved his disheveled hair back with an angry stab of his hand. “Little fool. Why didn’t you run the night you met me? Why are you even still speaking to me now after all you have learned?”

She had no answer to his first question, at least not one she could put into words, but the second was surprisingly easy. “You’re my friend, aren’t you? Or was all that as fake as you pretending to be—”

“Human,” he finished, shaking his head. “
Non
, Cassidy. What I feel for you is real. And the truth I concealed from you, I withheld because I knew you were not ready to hear it. For reasons I do not understand, I cannot make you do or believe anything you do not wish to do or believe. The way Aurelius did.” The memory of how easily that ancient vampire had fogged her mind into accepting the impossible sent a shiver racing across her shoulders. Dominic’s tone softened. “You can choose to ignore my compulsions. So I had no way to blunt this news for you. You would have been terrified, and I would have been powerless against my need to consume that fear. And your life.” He leaned closer, his voice turning as liquid dark as his gaze. “But here is a truth you must hear now,
ma amie.
At sunrise tomorrow, you must forget this night and all you know of me. You can never be truly safe in my presence. No mortal can. Friend or not.”

A sensible suggestion, given the night’s harrowing events. In light of the last three weeks, however, pointless. If telling her would have gotten her killed, then not telling her had saved her life right from the beginning—and every night since. He meant her no harm, and he never had.

“I won’t do that, Dominic. I’m not afraid of you. And you need more than one friend.”

“Stubborn girl.” He sighed, his lips twitching with bemused resignation. He would understand if she changed her mind, his expression said. Perhaps he even expected her to.

Cassidy raised a hand, aching to soothe that cynicism with a touch but stopped when he sat back. Instead, she reached into her purse and retrieved a pink plastic bag which featured the logo of a Key Largo gift shop. “This is for you.”

“Ah,
chérie
, you shouldn’t have,” he drawled, but his face registered reluctant interest as he took the bag from her, then fell into shocked surprise when he unfolded the black T-shirt inside. A pirate skull grinned back. ‘Bad to the Bone’ read the caption.

“I had one like this.”

“I know. I threw it out the first day when I cleaned. It had something sticky—” She shook the inevitable conclusion out of her head. “It was pretty filthy. I thought I ought to replace it. And to apologize for all the grief I’ve caused you. Which was clearly more than I imagined.”

The corners of his mouth turned up a little. “
Merci.
”

“You’re welcome.” She watched him study the print. “Is that how you see yourself?”

“It is what I am.”

“Well, I think you’re wrong about that, my friend. You’re not ‘bad to the bone’.”

He arched a quizzical brow. “Did you forget so soon?”

“No. I will never forget what you showed me tonight. But as I see it, your bones are the only things bad about you. The rest of you is just plain old pain in the ass.”

“Mmm,
non, ma petite
,” he purred, his smile as mysterious as it was wicked. “The rest of me is French.”