Fading Darkness (Bloodmarked #1) (37 page)

I rushed out into the blustering winter wind
that whipped my hair around my face once I opened the door, stinging my cheek.
I didn’t care, because I didn’t have to disguise myself, at least not to the
humans, but it didn’t matter in the vampire world. I was pretty sure they
already knew my face by heart. They probably had wanted posters plastered all
over their underground haunts by now. Tonight, I didn’t care. I welcomed their
attacks tonight, because nothing was going to destroy my recent giddiness
spawned by my newly discovered freedom.

The urge to race through the city at full
speed was impossible to resist, and as I did, the towering old structures to
the sides of either sidewalk blurred into a dark tunnel only lit by spots of
light streaming through windows and headlights on the street. The night air was
beginning to produce a wet snow that was slowly turning to ice that pelted my
face like miniscule shards of glass. They shattered on impact immediately
melting against the hot skin of my cheeks, producing droplets of water that
tickled as they rolled back to my hairline against the force of the wind.

It wasn’t long before I found my first vampire
of the night. The eagerness of the kill made it quick, and I was impatient for
more fight. They came easily on a cold night like this with starving vampires
roaming the streets awaiting their next meal to come outside. The problem for
them was that I was one of the only persons outside on a night like this.
Staking vampire after vampire with quick precision began to feel reminiscent of
the earlier days when I was oblivious to the bigger underground world around me
and hunted with a clear one-track mind. I supposed it was only a matter of time
before I would discover the big picture, since, apparently, I happened to be at
the center of it all.

After spending the past hour in dark
alleyways, I decided to get a different perspective on the city by moving to
the rooftops. The freezing rain was unrelenting and soaked through both layers
of clothing sending chills through my body. I refused to let a little shivering
stop me yet.

The rooftop I perched on was a few stories
higher than the adjacent one and looking down from here, the streets below
seemed like a world away with the sheets of rain creating a separation like a
glass barrier. It blocked sound from below, and I felt so far away that I would
not be able to sense any vampires below, so I prepared to leap to the lower
rooftop.

Before I had a chance to jump, the
overwhelming nausea nearly knocked my knees out from under me as I doubled
over. I couldn’t right myself in time to face the vampire that sought me out. I
barely turned my head toward him before a giant fist smashed against the side
of my face, cracking my cheekbone and sending me sliding across the wet, rain
soaked layer of ice on the rooftop.

The vision on the left side of my face was
blurred and the swirling sparks of light began to fade just in time for my head
to make contact with the knee-high concrete ledge surrounding the roof floor. I
saw stars for the second time in in five seconds, and as they morphed into the
real world around me, all I saw was a giant figure standing above me, and I
felt a large hand around my throat dragging me up about three feet higher than
where I usually stood.

In between the choking and gasping for
breath, I looked down into the cold, white face of my attacker. He had long
hair that looked like it might be light brown when it’s dry. He wore a lot of
worn, pieced-together leather, and there was a mean looking sword hanging off
of a leather strap on his hip, as if he was human in a time when wars were
fought with a great deal of hand to hand combat. His black eyes were fixed on
me, and when he spoke, he had an accent that sounded like it might have been
adapted from an old language, but if I wagered a guess, I would say this was an
assassin.

“You are the one we seek,” he said in a
hoarse voice. It wasn’t a statement of fact but a question. There was disbelief
in his voice, and he looked me over as if looking for anything that would make
me special. It appeared that he found me lacking, and he might as well have
just said, “Really?…
Really
?”  His voice sounded dry and crackly, and I
wondered how long they had been looking for me and if these guys were so
disciplined that they might not even feed until they finish their assignments.
Yikes. These guys didn’t mess around.

My fingernails clawed and dug at his large hand
around my neck which was very tight around my larynx at the moment. I couldn’t
budge him. He was too strong, so I used the force of my leg as I swung it back
and then forward right into his groin. This made him loosen his grip just
enough for me to wiggle free and fall to the ground.

I used the distraction to strike quickly and
landed a right hook squarely against his jaw. It barely moved him, so I struck
again with my foot, kicking his lower thigh behind his knee, which made him
stumble forward giving me another opportunity to make contact with his face.
This time, I struck with as much force as I could and it made him stagger back
slightly, just enough for me to reach for the nearest stake in my coat.

I pulled it out, but he was faster. It was
as if he was just humoring me to test my strength and skill. Now, he was
looking at me with that same unimpressed look he gave me earlier mixed with
anger and annoyance. He swatted the stake from my hand before I could react and
kicked me in the stomach sending me skidding across the ice again, like I was
nothing more than a little pest, a bug on the sidewalk he wanted to squish
beneath his boot just for the pleasure of hearing the crunch of my bones.

The pain in my side and the thought of
crunched bones made me realize some of my ribs had cracked and were slowly
mending themselves back together. I stood back up, wincing against the agony of
bruised ribs that weren’t completely healed. I braced them, hugging my side
with my arm. But I didn’t waste any time lashing out at him, swinging my other
arm as fast as I could. It connected with his stomach, but didn’t give me enough
time to block his advances.

He grabbed my throat again, holding me above
him, squeezing tighter than before. The harder I fought back, the faster my
vision blurred, eventually turning into blackness, and the feeling of the
freezing rain numbed me as I slipped closer to unconsciousness.

A pang of guilt sliced through me because I
had not waited for Gavin. He was going to be so pissed at me for getting myself
killed. I just hoped that he was okay and that he would put an end to all this
once and for all. A part of me ached to see his face one more time, to trace
those strong features with my fingertips.

If I was going to die, then it didn’t matter
what I felt. I let all those feelings I denied for so long, however confusing,
wash over me and was almost overwhelmed by the strength of them. I tried to
complete my image of him and carve out my own little piece of heaven before I
was sent to hell, but there was another sensation, a rolling nausea in the pit
of my stomach.

Another vampire would be sharing in my
death. All I thought before blackness came, was
this is it
. Nothing
profound, just the end.

Death was slightly different than what I
imagined. I expected some sort of transcendence on a different plane. But
instead, I heard scuffling noises followed by a loud clang, and I felt myself
falling to the ground, felt my ankle snap under my weight, felt the cold ground
underneath me. It took me another moment for clarity to settle in and make me
realize what an idiot I was.

As the scene around me came back into focus,
I realized that I was in fact, not dead. Possibly on the verge of insanity, but
not death. Once the fit of coughing subsided and I had regained my hearing and
vision, I took caution. Hopping to all fours, I glanced around me, fully alert
to what new danger awaited.

There was nothing, except for the lingering
nausea and the once lost spike, which was now a few feet in front of me surrounded
by wet black ash. I quickly snatched it and turned to leave when a voice came
from around the corner of the roof access door.

“What? Not even a thank you?” the cocky,
slow voice asked.

I spun ready for the attack before letting
out an exasperated sigh at the realization of whom the voice belonged to.

“Shane, what the hell are you hiding back
there for?”

“Sorry, you just seemed scary for a moment
there. You looked like a tiger ready to pounce,” he answered.

That’s when it hit me. “Wait a second. Are
you saying
you
saved me?” I asked suspiciously. “How did you take out an
assassin?” I asked, more in astonishment.

“I kind of had the element of surprise. He
was a little preoccupied with killing you,” he said casually. “I also don’t
think he was expecting an attack from a fellow vampire.”

I honestly couldn’t contemplate the logic in
his explanation at the moment, but it seemed legitimate enough. The assassin
was focusing a lot of his energy on killing me.

I was distracted by the thought of Gavin. I
didn’t know why, but I was suddenly worried about his whereabouts. If the
assassins were here, we might both be in trouble.

“Thanks for saving me. I owe you,” I said,
backing away urgently.

“Not for that you don’t. I don’t want those
fuckers infesting my town,” he called after me.

I was already bounding over the edge of the
roof to the next one, then to the ground below, without bothering to respond.
When I slid down a drain pipe into the darkness below, I blended back into the
normal human world, slowing to a brisk walk, head down shielding my face from
the pelting rain, hands in my now drenched coat pockets. Of course being the
only one not traveling in a car, I was back to being just a crazy human
wondering the streets in possibly the worst weather conditions the town has
seen all winter.

With my slowed pace, I began to notice the
cold seeping through my soaked layers and my teeth chattering wildly behind
numb lips. Even my growing vampire powers couldn’t protect me from the
brutality inflicted by the harsh winter night.

I walked for several blocks, and as the
nearby lights from a tavern on the corner approached, there wasn’t time to even
feel relief before a pair of hands reached out to drag me away from it. My
senses were weakened by my body’s energy working on protecting me from the
cold, so I barely had time to react before I noticed there was no nausea. He
pulled me into the alcove of a doorway to some jewelry shop that offered no
protection from the cold and very little from the sideways slanting rain.

“Where the hell have you been?” I shot at
him. “Here, I was worried something bad might have happened, but you seem to be
completely unharmed. So what was it, a sleepover with Trixie or another one of
your mistresses of the night?” I may have put more venom in that last part than
I intended.

“Where I was is of no concern to you,” he
gritted.

Ouch. That stung more than I expected. He
was with some tramp all night. “Must be nice to do whatever the hell you want
when there are killer vampires on the loose threatening to take down your
home.”

“Speaking of doing what you want, what
happened to you? Are you hurt?” he asked, looking me over.

“Who said anything happened to me?” How
would he have known about the fight I just had. He wasn’t even around.

He shifted uncomfortably before deflecting.
“You’re freezing. You must have been fighting if you’re energy is drained.”

Nice recovery. I actually hadn’t thought of
that, but there was still something he was hiding. I still thought he was
psychic, and I didn’t care how many times he had said he wasn’t. What else
could it be?

“You shouldn’t be out on the streets right
now. The assassins are here. It’s only a matter of time before they find you.”

“Tell me something I haven’t already figured
out,” I snapped.

Disbelief washed across his stone cold
features. “You encountered one,” he stated astonished, “and you’re alive? How?”

“It’s no concern to you,” I countered. Why
should I share anything with him if he was going to keep things from me?

He read my face and his features softened. “I
couldn’t come back to the loft, because I realized the assassins were tracking
me. I couldn’t lead them back there, back to you, so I had to lose them.”

“Oh,” I said lamely. “So you did stay with Trixie,
didn’t you?”

“Jealous?” His tone took on a smugness that
now matched his piercing gaze.

Anger shot through me, and I mustered enough
strength to throw a pathetic punch that he caught in his hand as he backed me
against the door of the shop. “You’re shaking like a leaf,” he said, and as
much as I wanted to stay mad and push him away, I knew I was madder at myself
for being jealous.

Why should I care who he was with? There may
have been something there between us, but was I ever going to let it manifest
itself? At that very moment, I was just grateful he was with me, because once
he wrapped an arm around my waist, drawing me into his warm body, I was done
resisting. It felt so good to be warm, and I let him guide me into the tavern,
which was, thankfully, serving hot chocolate tonight.

We were the only two seated at a booth along
the side wall. There were only two other patrons seated at the long bar on the
opposite wall. As I stared down into my mug of steaming goodness, my mind began
to drift toward the recent events of the night until I felt his heavy gaze
weighing down on me. It immediately snapped me back to the present. I got the
impression he was waiting for me to look at him. When I did, he was looking at
me with worried sympathetic eyes.

Taking in all his features, I committed
every one of them to memory because I never wanted to feel the way I had
earlier. If tonight was the last time I saw him, I didn’t want to regret
anything, and I really needed to remember that feeling of almost losing him
forever before I gave him such a hard time.

“I’m sorry I don’t have very good news,” he
began.

“No news is good news,” I said absently,
looking back at the couple seated at the bar, noticing how normal they seemed.
“What’s the word?”

“I learned new information about the vampire
drinking the blood of other vampires.”

At this, I perked up waiting to hear what he
found out. He took in my sudden attentiveness with a quick half smile and
continued, “Apparently, at one time drinking vampire blood was a very
controversial subject among my kind. It was once thought that drinking vampire
blood the right way could make you stronger by taking that vampire’s strength
into you. Doing it the wrong way could have fatal consequences.”

“Tell me. What exactly is the right way and
the wrong way to drink undead blood?”

“I haven’t figured that out yet,” he said,
distraught.

“What if the evil in them burns whoever
tries to drink them, like the demon within is too strong, unless you got a
vampire that was closer in age to you? I mean, age does tend to affect
strength. Well, most of the time,” I said, eyeing him pointedly.

He didn’t seem to notice my prodding into
his origins, but instead, looked like he was concentrating on something. He had
stepped out of the conversation.

“What? I didn’t think it was that bad of a
theory. In fact, I think it’s brilliant,” I felt myself getting defensive. “And
if you don’t like it then you can just s-” I cut myself off when I noticed him
looking at me with a wry smile. “What?”

“Nothing. You are brilliant. It makes
perfect sense. Whoever has been draining these vampires dry has been
progressing slowly from the younger ancients to the older ones.”

“So does that mean the vamp was an ancient
to begin with?”

“Not necessarily. We’ve only just taken note
of the ancient vampires who have gone missing. Who knows how long this ghost
vampire has been killing ordinary vampires and passing it off as your doing,”
he said, giving me another smile full of wryness.

I leaned forward, my forearms crossed on the
table in front of me, careful not to knock over my tea. I gave him a smile of
my own, “Did you just admit that I was brilliant?”

His upturned lips spread into a full blown
smile. “You are brilliant. Some of the choices you make, however, are not
always so brilliant.” After a moment, his brows cinched together in a quizzical
manner. “How did you manage to escape an assassin on your own?”

I thought for a second before, again,
responding with, “How I managed was not of your concern.” Regret washed through
me when his expression turned icy and those blue eyes searched mine with a
challenge in them that said, “I will find out what you’re hiding from me.”

I wasn’t sure why I felt the need to hide
Shane from him. Maybe it was the way Shane talked about Gavin. He obviously
wasn’t a fan, so there wasn’t much need for the two to meet. Plus, I was still
holding on to at least one secret while I could. Gavin seemed to know all my
other ones and I knew none of his, which was not at all fair.

“You’re just lucky to walk away from them
alive,
again
. You don’t have many lives left.” His eyes melted a little
as he continued, “When I thought something might have happened to you I…” He
left the sentence hanging heavily in the air between us before he opened up and
admitted to any real feelings beneath all that macho male hero act. Not that I
cared about his feelings, or that he had any feelings at all, since he was supposed
to be just another soulless monster like the rest. “I’m glad to see you’re
still… you,” he finished.

“Wait, tell me again how you knew I was even
in danger to begin with,” I demanded.

“Call it a bad feeling,” he dodged. “You can
sense when vampires are near, can you not? So why is it so hard to believe we
could sense things about you?”

He made a good point, but it still wouldn’t
explain how he could sense the trouble I was in, especially if I were nowhere
near him at the time. That whole freaky connection thing between us was getting
freakier every day. “Are you ever going to explain yourself?” I asked in a
hopeless exasperated sigh.

The arrogant smile was plastered on his face
once again as he shook his head back and forth. He tacked on an unnecessary
verbal answer to drive his point home, “Not ready yet.”

“What are you?” I tried again.

He paused a moment before answering with
another one of his cryptic responses, “An impossibility.”

“Just as helpful as always,” I said,
infusing my response with as much sarcasm as I could.

“If you liked that then you’ll really like
what I have to say next,” he said.

“Let me guess. Does it go something like
‘Lock yourself in a room for a week and rest? And don’t even thinking about
leaving to hunt,’” I said in a low mocking tone.

He laughed at that and said, “Something like
that. Maybe I should be the one worried you can read my mind.”

“Hardly. You’re just so damn predictable.
Sometimes,” I added, knowing that other times he had that hot and cold split
personality thing going for him, which was less than predictable. But mostly,
when it came to me at least, it was all about my safety.

Later that night, or morning, when I was
back in the guest room in his loft, I wondered about his intention toward me.
It was always about protection. Did it have something to do with this whole
prophecy thing? Did he want to see it come true? Was he just using me to
fulfill my destiny? That thought sent a sudden unexpected pain shooting through
my chest that threatened to squeeze all the oxygen out of my lungs and stop my
heart for good.

I lied down in bed and pulled the covers up
to my neck with clenched fists hoping that sleep would come soon and rid me of
all this pain. I no longer cared about any of it. I didn’t want it. Suddenly, I
felt like giving up again and handing all responsibility over to Gavin. If
that’s what he wanted he could have it.

Everything was changing so fast. Everything
began to feel like it was closing in on me. The world felt like it was about to
crumble to pieces with just a slight nudge.

As I slipped further toward unconsciousness,
the earth
did
shake and crack under my feet. The world around me shifted
from my room to a very apocalyptic looking world, with barren, ashen earth that
crunched under my feet from the bones of all those I could never save. I
dreamed of my own death, several deaths actually. I had many violent endings
while Gavin stood by pushing me further and further, toward what, I couldn’t
tell. It was always blocked by a bright light. I couldn’t see what I was moving
toward. I woke up, fully aware of my dreams.

If that stupid light was a metaphor for
destiny, I was going to be very pissed off. I rolled over on my back trying to
free my arms from the tangle of sheets. Once free, I threw them off me. Sticky
with sweat from tossing and turning all night, I got out of bed and made my way
to the kitchen. I was starving.