Chapter 1
Opening her eyes slowly, Heidi almost instantly felt different. As she sniffed the air, she sensed smells she’d never known before. She smelled the very dust of the air and rich aromatic scents of the flowers and water nearby. She looked around, seeing she was in some kind of room, it puzzled her that she could see no flowers or water anywhere in her confines. She wondered how she could have smelled the scents.
Her ears picked up a tiny scratching sound. Spinning around, she zeroed in on a small beetle, inching its way along a far wall. She looked at it for several moments and gasped. The insect was in a darker corner of the room, yet she could see it as if it were in bright light. She could see in darkness like a cat and she couldn’t understand how.
“What’s happened to me?” she said to herself, her voice shaky and disbelieving, her mind reeling at sensations that threatened to overwhelm her sanity.
She forced herself to calm down, somewhat, and think back. Yes, now she remembered. She’d been on that blind date. She still couldn’t believe she’d actually taken up that creep’s offer to meet; after all, they’d only known each other online. But, she’d been desperate for a date and she was the one who told her students that the Internet was a much better place to meet men and vet out the perverts.
Yet, her blind date had tried to get fresh with her. He had let slip his plans to eat dinner only after they had made a brief stop at a hotel. It served him right for the black eyes she’d given him when he’d tried to cop a feel.
Then she remembered how truly stupid she had been – she’d gotten out of his car on the Main Street Bridge. All she had to do was walk on. She would have been right by the main buildings for the Fort Worth Police and the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office. She would have been safe.
But, no, she’d reverted to stubborn Heidi, the one who let her emotions get the better of her – at the absolute worst times. She ignored the Heidi who taught self-defense classes to women at the Y. Somehow believing that her martial arts prowess would be some kind of shield for her, as she headed down to the river in the middle of the night to clear her head.
She gasped as her memories now raced a mile a minute. She shuddered as, in her mind, she felt strong arms reaching out, pulling her into the shadows. She remembered struggling, breaking the grip, punching and kicking the source of those arms, only to be pulled into the shadows again.
It was those eyes, she told herself. So mesmerizing. She’d felt her resistance melt away; she willingly let herself be taken. She felt ashamed at succumbing so easily.
Suddenly, her memories disappeared, replaced by a searing pain in her mouth. It was as if her gums were on fire. It felt as if her teeth were growing and, indeed, her incisors pushed further out of her gums, curving downward. At the same time, an incredible hunger began to fill her belly. Subconsciously, she licked her lips, feeling the incredibly sharp points of her incisors.
Totally confused, she looked around again and spied a sliver of sunlight, coming from two small windows she hadn’t noticed before. Making her way over to them, she reached up for the warmth of those sunbeams. Her skin sizzled and she screamed in pain. Pulling her hand back quickly, she saw that her hand was very red. The sunlight had hurt her!
She stumbled back to where she’d been sitting before. Collapsing, she now realized what had happened. The stranger – the one who had made her feel so good – had long sharp incisors.
He’d been drinking her blood!
Now, she had fangs and suddenly craved the same thing. She could hear, smell and see things just like an animal. She looked down at her hand – the one she’d stuck in the sunbeams – gasping upon seeing the flesh almost completely healed. My God, she forced herself to realize, I’m like him now.
She wondered how she could ever go back to her old life. She thought of her friends and had horribly wonderful thoughts of sinking her fangs into their throats. She shook her head, trying to force the horror from her mind. She put her head to her knees and stopped resisting the surge of tears behind her eyes.
Outside of the room, Dolores Montoya fretted and sympathized. Just watching Heidi’s horrible transformation, on the monitor of the room’s closed-circuit camera systems, was bad enough. What made it worse were her own memories of someone very close to her suffering through the same ordeal.
Once, she had been a happy stay-at-home mother. That, however, was before fangs and blood ripped her daughter, Evangeline, from her. Now, here she was, watching the change come over another innocent. She could only wonder if she would have to kill this woman, as she and her husband had been forced to kill their Evangeline.
It had been ten years since that fateful moment, every day since had been nearly as difficult. In a futile gesture, she shook her head, as if to dislodge those painful memories. It was hard enough to bear the loss of a child, but much worse when that loss came at her own hand.
She heard footsteps, looking over her shoulder as Jesus, her husband, approached. A swarthy man, he still resembled the muscular beefcake she’d fallen for almost thirty years earlier. Though his hair was fast becoming salt-and-pepper, he still had the upper body of a man twenty years younger.
She had to admit that he did look exhausted. The eyes that had won her over – and had disappointed all the women in Juarez – had lost some of their shine. Like her, the war was getting to him. They were both nearing fifty and no longer able to handle all the physical and mental aspects of their battle.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, turning to face him.
“Patel’s experiment is what’s wrong,” Jesus snorted. “You-know-who called him, letting him know that he was bringing in another test subject. Patel knows the woman is here and is prepping. Now, we have to commit.”
Dolores didn’t know whether to fret or breathe a sigh of relief. On the one hand, she hadn’t liked what happened to all the other test subjects, who had suffered mightily when Patel’s previous serum incarnations had failed. On the other, she really did not want to see Heidi killed, not if there was a chance to save her. In that instant, she made up her mind.
“Jesus, I need to tell you something,” she said. “I think we should support Patel on this.”
“We should what?” Jesus asked, shocked.
“Look, I know you haven’t liked the past experiments,” she explained. “But, we’re losing the war. Don’t give me that look. Have you seen yourself lately? You’re exhausted. I’m exhausted.”
“That’s why we brought in the others,” Jesus challenged. “Fresh blood, if you’ll pardon the pun.”
“But, it’s not working,” Dolores countered. “We need a new plan – cornering vampires in deserted barns and farm houses doesn’t cut it anymore. Not when men, like Louis Riordan, are running mob-style clans. I doubt he’s even noticed our little nightly patrols. Jesus, if this war is going to begin going our way, we have got to step it up.”
Jesus stepped back and looked long and hard at his wife. She still reminded him of the tomboy, he’d picked over all of the beauty queens in Juarez, Mexico, she was still as stubborn and feisty as ever.
“But, we are organized,” he finally said, though he didn’t really believe his own words. “We communicate with other hunters – through the Internet, we keep tabs by cell phone. We even cobbled together a SWAT-style group to take the fight to men like Riordan.”
“Riordan has Fort Worth in his back pocket,” Dolores shot back. “He has cops on his payroll. Politicians, too. His building is so heavily protected, we’d need an army to break through, and that would only happen if he didn’t call for help from his police cronies.
“The only saving grace for us is that Riordan is a megalomaniac. He doesn’t share power. But, God help us, if he suddenly has an about-face and decides to do just that. There are many rogue clans running around Texas and the Southwest, who would love to be part of Riordan’s empire.”
Dolores waited for her husband to say something. He didn’t. He only looked defeated and she wasn’
t sure that she liked it. She’d never been able to convince him of anything this easily.
“Okay, Jesus, let’s just think on it,” she blurted out, hoping to snap him out of his doldrums. “Let’s see what we can do for Miss Nguyen and move on from there. Then, we can…oh, por el amor de Dios.”
Looking down the hallway, she saw a tall, lanky black man in battle-dress uniform approaching. She took a deep breath as Jesus turned, noticing Cantrell Ryker as well. She knew there was one thing lately, guaranteed, to get Jesus out of his uneasiness and that was Ryker, her newest team member
Despite his reputation as a loose cannon, she’d accepted him into her group. It was true that two other team members had vouched for his entry, but she had ultimately kept Jesus from overriding that vote because the group needed a lot more experience. There were days she regretted her decision. She had never worked with anyone who was so disruptive to team spirit before. If he hadn’t turned into one of the best members of her team, she would have cut him loose long ago.
Ryker’s past history guaranteed Dolores’ distrust, especially where an organization called Moonrise, Inc., was concerned. There wasn’t a member of her team, who hadn’t known someone in that organization and felt the loss of their friends intimately. It had been extremely tough for them to accept Ryker, the only surviving member of Moonrise. And that didn’t even take into account his murky legal status.
“I’ll handle this,” she heard Jesus say. “Don’t worry. I won’t kill him. Yet.”
Jesus truly loved Dolores. She meant the world to him and didn’t know what he would do if he lost her. That made it all the more difficult to work with her against vampires. Yet they had endured a decade, in an underground business that sent many a man and woman to prison, to an asylum, or to the grave. Or worse.
He knew she was right about needing to be more organized. For her sake, he’d listened, putting aside even his trademark stubbornness to assuage her. That said, he had very little patience left over for the man fast approaching him. He really didn’t know what it was about Ryker that upset him so. Maybe it was the fact that the man only followed the orders that suited him or his irritating aloofness during tense situations, like he was merely a bystander at a sporting event.
“Oh, Jesus,” Ryker said as the pair met halfway down the hallway. “I was just coming to see if Miss Nguyen was ready.”
“Have you always been cruel, Ryker, or is this a new thing you picked up in the last few years?” Jesus asked. “You know, while you were hiding from every law enforcement agency under the sun.”
“What?”
“Do you get some thrill watching people change into vampires?” Jesus queried. “Jessie told me you took great pleasure in finishing off that vampire tonight. Did it get you off? Are your trips to Korean massage parlors not working anymore?”
“You know where you can go with that sh…” Ryker caught himself just in time. “Why the hell would you take Jessie’s word for anything? She couldn’t even finish the guy off. That’s a freakin’ liability in my book.”
“Well, it’s a good thing we’re not playing by your book. You’re supposed to be playing by ours,” Jesus snapped.
“Look, the girl – Miss Nguyen – she was well into the turn, okay?” Ryker explained. “Doc said we had no choice but to let the change take place.”
“And you would know, since you called Patel first, not myself or Dolores, like anyone else in this outfit would,” Jesus snorted. “Maybe we could have made the determination about Miss Nguyen’s suitability. Maybe we could have even put her out of her misery, ended her suffering. But now, we’ll never know, will we?”
“I’m not a sadist, Jesus,” Ryker replied, fuming. “I just don’t think we can win the war like we’ve been fighting it. We need something better. Anything. Like the serum. Or don’t you want it to work?”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean, muchacho?”
“Don’t tell me you like rousting vampires out of hay lofts or raiding graveyards?” Ryker asked. “If that’s the case, why don’t we all just pack up and get the hell out of here? Go back to Nowhere, Texas and tell distraught parents how their former beauty queen daughter ended up just like Evang…”
“Don’t go there, amigo!” Jesus roared, causing the usually distant Ryker to take a step back. “I have had just about enough of your shit!”
Jesus could feel his blood pressure rise. Catching himself, he took a deep breath and turned away from Ryker. Seeing the horrified look on Dolores’ face, he made himself calm down.
“Just listen to me, Cantrell,” Jesus warned, turning back around. “They may have put up with your ‘loose cannon’ crap at Moonrise – and, for the life of me, I don’t see how – but it doesn’t fly here. Here, we work together and watch each other’s backs. If you don’t like it, you can pack your things. Your entry into this group wasn’t unanimous, compadre, not by any stretch of the imagination. So don’t go biting the hand that feeds you. That’s the end of this discussion. Comprendez?”
Jesus waited for Ryker to say something. But, the man said nothing. Just nodded once and walked off. Jesus took a moment to compose himself, then went back to his wife.
“Madre Dios, I don’t understand that guy. I swear I don’t,” Jesus said, heatedly. “I’m beginning to think he’s the reason why we’re so tired.”
“Don’t go having a heart attack on me, my husband,” Dolores warned, planting a feel-good kiss on his lips. “Maybe try putting some of that anger toward Riordan.”
“It’s like he wants to run rogue one minute, then be a team player the next,” Jesus continued, as if he hadn’t heard his wife. “I wish we’d had more time to vet him.”
“War makes strange bedfellows,” Dolores replied, resisting the urge to roll her eyes at Jesus’ obstinacy. “I don’t like it either but we can’t ignore his accomplishments. He has the uncanny knack to know which vampires to pick off and which to squeeze for information. We wouldn’t be this close to Riordan if it hadn’t been for him. And, if we really are to take that next step in this war, we’re going to need him far more than he needs us.”
“I don’t know if I fully trust him,” Jesus admitted.
“Don’t forget that there are people out there who might say the same about us,” Dolores reminded her husband.
Jesus remembered. Evangeline had inherited a lot of money from Jesus’ only brother, who had doted on her as if she were his own child. The money changed Evangeline. Leading her down a path that ended in a dark alleyway, where a promise of the latest designer drug turned out to be fangs. Though Dolores and Jesus had freed their daughter of her curse, not many people bought the carefully crafted explanation of Evangeline’s demise.
Making matters worse, was the fact that that money had gone into helping Jesus and Dolores set up their loose-knit organization. That money was sorely needed by people accustomed to living hand-to-mouth, in pursuit of Hominus Nocturna. Yet, since 99 percent of the world did not believe in vampires, it was impossible for the Montoyas to reveal how they were using the money. Charity had carried on as an excuse for where the money was going for a while. But even that chestnut was getting stale, especially in light of the recent purchases of abandoned property in Fort Worth, for the group’s newest base of operations.
The use of said money, invited at least a dozen inquiries from the Texas attorney general. Though none bore fruit, at least a few people in the AG’s office thought the Montoyas murdered their daughter for financial gain and were determined to bring them down. In fact, a new election for attorney general was coming up, and both incumbent and challenger had vowed to get to the truth behind Dolores’ and Jesus’ dealings.
“So, it’s the devil in the dark, I guess,” Jesus commented, with a weak smile.
“Let’s not bring him into this,” Dolores joked. “Let’s just worry about our guest, okay?”
Jesus had always loved his wife’s common sense and her ability to keep him grounded. It had been a sorely n
eeded quality these past ten years, putting their group together. There had been many trials and tribulations that threatened to tear the group apart. Yet, Dolores had been the rock upon which they’d all built their foundations. She had remained solid and he loved her all the more for it.
“It looks like the change is complete,” Jesus noted, sadly, viewing the television monitor again. “I still have serious qualms, but, at this point, we can only hope the good doctor succeeds this time. Come on. We’ve got a debriefing to run.”
Jesus walked down the hall, but Dolores lingered a moment. She stared at the screen and watched the woman sobbing. Reminding her of when her daughter had first turned – the horror she’d felt when Evangeline had turned up at the family farm. It also reminded her of her daughter’s first kill and she didn’t want that fate put upon this young woman. She turned and quickly walked after her husband.
Detective Aurelia Hernandez hated missing person cases with a passion. She’d see the desperate families clinging to any shred of hope as days passed and the chances of finding the missing declined dramatically. It was like watching a heroin addict slowly poison himself.
Hernandez glanced around the office at her fellow detectives on the Fort Worth police department payroll, wondering what they were thinking. They had a lot on their plate these days. Murders had hit an all-time high in the Fort Worth/Dallas Metroplex and the mayors were crying for something drastic to be done.
She didn’t want to say that their efforts were wasted. She knew the murder cycles came and went like clockwork. Still, she felt pressure from the police chief to reassure the general population. So, reluctantly, she picked up her cell phone and punched in a few numbers.
“This is Aurelia,” she said in a low voice. “We need to talk. Same place. An hour before sunset.”
She ended the connection and shoved the phone back into her jacket pocket. She glanced around quickly to see if anyone had been looking. She then went back to the paperwork on her desk.
Dark Tidings: Volumes I & II Page 10
