by Bianca D’Arc
Guardians of the Dark
Night Shade
by
Bianca D’Arc
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
1st Edition
Copyright © 2010 Bianca D’Arc
Published by Kensington Publishing, Inc.
2nd Edition
Copyright © 2018 Bianca D’Arc
Published by Hawk Publishing, LLC
Smashwords Edition June 2018
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
* Note: Previously published under the title “A Darker Shade of Dead”
She holds a terrible secret…
Tapped for a classified military program, Dr. Eileen McCormick has nothing left to lose. Bad enough her genetic experiments were used to turn innocent victims into zombies. Worse still, a ruthless ex-colleague is threatening to expose her unless she joins his sinister research project. Now the only way she can set things right is to develop an antidote under the watchful blue eyes of Commander Matt Sykes.
An uncompromising man…
Matt’s penetrating gaze, unnerves her and attracts her in equal measure. The Navy Commander has a sixth-sense for lies as well as danger. Eileen may be the only person who can eradicate the zombie virus before it reaches epidemic proportions, but he still can’t let her passionate determination affect his steely cool...or keep him from discovering where her true loyalties lie.
She is a target. He’s her protector…
As the clock ticks down, Matt and Eileen’s uneasy trust may be their only way to avert catastrophe - if it doesn’t get them killed first. Eileen is terrified of her former colleagues and drawn to Matt’s compelling kisses. The commander will uncover all her deepest secrets, but can they survive the revelations?
Author’s Note & Dedication
Note: This is the second edition of this story, which first appeared under the title A Darker Shade of Dead. There were several continuity errors in the first edition, which have now—hopefully—been rectified with the assistance of my friend, Peggy McChesney, without whom I’m sure I would’ve missed a lot of inconsistencies, especially with names. I’m really bad at names. LOL
At the time the first editions of these books were being prepared for publication, upheaval seemed to be the name of the game both for me, personally, and for the publishing house. They’d lost a key member of their editorial staff only a month or two after I lost my mother and I guess I should be glad this series made an appearance at all.
Now, however, I have a chance to fix the problems, including the titles, which I never liked. At the time, the publisher demanded that I have the word “dead” in the titles. I’m changing that now and I hope you’ll bear with me and accept my apologies for any confusion this may cause.
The Dedication of the first edition…
This book is dedicated with all my love to my mother, who passed away while this book was being written. She was an educator, researcher, law professor, and the inspiration for my own career aspirations. We went to law school together, took the bar exam together, and worked together briefly.
She was always my greatest adviser, and when I had a decision to make about whether to take a really good job or decline the offer and continue to write, she was the one who surprised me by saying, “Do what you love.” She advised me to turn down the job opportunity and write. I have never regretted that decision, which allowed me to spend time with her and take care of her when she suddenly fell ill with cancer.
I miss her more than I can possibly explain. My life is as a shadow now, and I have no idea when or if it will ever become real to me again. I thank God for the time I had with my dear Mom, and I thank her for always being such an inspiration. I love her with all my heart, and I know that love was returned unconditionally.
So I’d like to dedicate this work in memory of my mother, who left me too soon.
I love you, Mom.
With special thanks to Joy Roach, who helped me when I was in a pickle. Thanks also to Frances Bamford, who celebrated the sale of this novel, and the others in this series, with me over a scoop of ice cream.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Excerpt from Shadow Play
About the Author
Other Books by Bianca D’Arc
Prologue
Quantico, Virginia – Eight Months Ago
“This blows.”
Dr. Eileen McCormick’s voice echoed around the morgue. Well, it wasn’t really a morgue. At least it hadn’t been. The large room had been a perfectly good laboratory until the senior team members had decided to perform tests on cadavers. Now it was a morgue.
The temperature had been lowered to near freezing, and Eileen shivered in her lab coat. She’d donned her heaviest jacket under the lab coat she had borrowed from one of the men on the team who wore a much larger size, but it still wasn’t enough. She was cold, dammit.
Cold, miserable, and all alone on night shift because she was low man on the totem pole. The science team had been together for a few months, working for the military on ways to improve combat performance. Specifically, they’d been trying to come up with substances that, when injected into people, would improve healing and endurance in living tissue. They were at the point now where they’d graduated from in vitro testing in Petri dishes to something a bit more exotic.
They weren’t ready to try in vivo testing on living animals or people. Instead, the senior scientists had decided to take this grotesque step, administering the experimental regenerative serum to dead tissue contained in a whole, deceased organism. Personally, she would’ve preferred to start with a dead animal of some kind, but only human cadavers would work for this experiment since the genetic manipulation they were attempting was coded specifically for human tissue. They didn’t want any cross-contamination with animals if they found a substance that actually worked.
As a result, she was stuck in a freezing cold lab in the middle of the night, watching a bunch of dead Marines. It was kind of sad, actually. Every one of these men had been cut down in their prime by either illness or injury. They had all been highly trained and honed specimens of manhood while they were alive. Some of them had been quite handsome, but their beauty had been lost to the pale coldness of death. They were here because they had no next of kin—only their beloved Corps—and their bodies had been donated to science.
The room was dimly lit. Eileen only needed the individual lights over each metal table on which the bodies rested to do her work. She’d holed up at a desk in the far corner of the giant lab space, ent
ering the data she collected hourly for each body into a computer. Her fingers were already numb from the cold, and it had only been three hours. Five more to go before the day shift would release her from this icy prison.
She heard a rustling sound in the distance as she blew on her fingers to try to warm them. Her chair swiveled as she lifted her feet, placing them on the runners of the rolling office chair.
“That better not have been the sound of mice scampering around in here.”
Contrary to most medical researchers, Eileen had never really been comfortable with mice. Little furry rodents still made her jump, and she shied away from any lab work that required her to deal with the critters.
The room was dimly lit. The only illumination came from the computer screen and desk light behind her and the single light over each table. The whole setup gave her the creeps.
Deciding to brave the walk to the bank of light switches on the far side of the room near the door, Eileen stood. If she had to sit here with a bunch of dead bodies all night, the least she could do was put on every light in the damned room. Why she’d ever thought the desk light would be enough, she didn’t know.
She’d gone on shift at midnight and was slated to take readings every hour until 8 a.m. when her day shift counterpart would relieve her. Scientific work sometimes required a person to work odd hours. Experiments didn’t know how to tell time. When the researchers were running something in the lab, she usually got tapped for the late night hours. Normally she didn’t mind. The lab was usually a peaceful, comforting place.
But not now. Not when it had been turned into a morgue. Or maybe it was more like Dr. Frankenstein’s dungeon, only without the bug-eyed servant named Igor. She’d definitely seen that old Mel Brooks movie one too many times in college. Thinking about some of the funnier lines from the comedy classic made her smile as she walked down the aisle of tables toward the door and the light switches.
“It’s alive…” As she walked, chuckling to herself, she did a quiet imitation of Gene Wilder from the scene where he’d given life to his monster.
On either side of her were slabs on which the cadavers rested. A breeze ruffled one of the sheets that had been pulled over the body on her right.
It must’ve been a breeze. The sheet couldn’t move on its own, right? She quickened her step, a creepy feeling shivering down her spine as the smile left her face.
A hand shot out of the dark and grabbed her wrist. She screamed. The fingers were cold. The flesh was gray. But the grip was strong. Too strong.
It pulled her in. Closer and closer to the body she’d checked only forty-five minutes before. He’d been dead at the time. Immobile. Now he was moving and—oh, God—his eyes were open and he was looking at her. His stare was lifeless as he drew her closer.
She did her best to break free, but the dead man was just too strong. She beat against his fingers with her other hand. When that didn’t work, she tried pushing against his cold shoulder. Nothing seemed to help. She hit his face, his chest, anyplace she could reach, but he wouldn’t let go.
He drew her closer until she was leaning across him, her arm over his head. Then he opened his mouth…and bit her. She gasped as his teeth broke through her skin. Blood welled as the icy teeth sank deep. Dull eyes looked through her as the dead man chewed on her forearm.
She went crazy, struggling to break free. She must’ve twisted in the right way because after a moment, she felt herself moving more easily. The next second, she was free.
He sat up, following her progress. She heard noises all around the lab now, echoing off the shadowed walls. She looked around in a panic. Other bodies were rising all around the makeshift morgue.
“How in God’s name…?” She gasped, clutching her bleeding arm to her chest as six tall bodies slid off the laboratory tables to stand in the dim, chilled room. She was so scared, she nearly wet her pants. The fear gave her a spike of clarity. She had to get out of there.
She ran for the door. Hands grabbed at her lab coat. She stumbled but caught herself before she could fall to the cold floor. She let her arms slip backward so the oversized lab coat came off, held in those strong hands that had come at her out of the darkness. She had no idea what had gone wrong with the experiment, but she wasn’t about to stick around to ask questions. These guys were huge. Big Marines who were easily twice her size. And they didn’t seem friendly.
If she could just get to the door. She ran, dodging and weaving around the tables and the reaching arms. They tried to grab the jacket she’d worn under the oversized lab coat, but they had a hard time getting hold of the slippery nylon fabric, thank goodness.
She crashed through the door, running for her life. She had to get help. She had to rouse the entire team. She had to get the MPs, the Marines, and, hell, the National Guard if she could, to stop these guys.
She turned to look over her shoulder just once as she ran into the fringe of trees on the heavily wooded outskirts of the base. What she saw chilled her to the bone. In the dark of the night, she could see the dim, yellow, rectangular glow of the open doorway. Outlined there were the hulking shapes of dead men. The dead Marines were following her path outdoors at a slow, steady, lurching pace.
Chapter One
North Carolina – The Present
“Idiot!”
Eileen swore as another driver zoomed up behind her car at what seemed like light speed. It was some kind of off-road vehicle or giant SUV because its headlights were at the perfect blinding height in her rearview mirror. The jerk had his brights on. She felt like she was under an interrogation lamp as he rode her bumper.
“Why don’t you just pass me, you moron?” she muttered, annoyed to no end by the inconsiderate driver behind her.
It hadn’t been a tough decision to decline the military’s offer of transport by air. First, she would’ve had to leave Long Island immediately, allowing some faceless military personnel to do the job of packing her private things. No, thank you. She didn’t like the idea of some stranger going through her personal stuff.
Second, Eileen wasn’t good in airplanes. She avoided them, preferring to drive whenever she had to go anywhere, if at all possible. Her father had died in a plane crash. Since then, she had been unable to face the long tin tubes of death.
Third, her beloved car would’ve been left behind. The old Caddy was the only thing she had left of her father, the late Dr. Dillon McCormick. He had loved it almost more than he’d loved her, lavishing attention on it every weekend with long hours spent washing and waxing the thing by hand. She kept up the tradition in his honor, though she probably didn’t spend quite as much time as he had on the old car.
This gas guzzler was her last link to her dad. It was a land yacht, so long road trips really weren’t that uncomfortable. She could sleep happily on the sumptuous padded leather of the seats and had room for almost anything she wanted to bring with her. They didn’t make cars like this anymore, her father had often said. He’d loved the giant car and she did, too.
But the vehicle behind her could go straight to hell as far as she was concerned. What was the guy thinking? He’d zoomed up out of nowhere on the dark, deserted stretch of highway and instead of passing her, he’d been riding her tail pipe for the past ten minutes.
“Finally.” She felt a stab of relief when the car pulled out from behind her to the passing lane. But he didn’t pass. He crept up on her side, matching her speed and veering unsteadily into her lane.
“What is your problem?” she shouted even as she took evasive action. The giant SUV was going to hit her!
A panicked look out her window told her the SUV driver knew exactly what he was doing. She’d seen two male faces in the front of the giant vehicle. The driver and another man who was staring at her out the passenger side window. She knew him. She’d worked with him months ago.
Rodriguez. He may have a Ph.D. in molecular biology, but the man had always struck her as a pig. He thought he was some kind of smooth Latin lover. In re
ality, he was gross. A disgusting specimen of a man who thought he was super macho but was really a fool.
“What the hell is he doing?” she shouted aloud, talking to herself as the SUV came closer.
She chanced another look. It was definitely Rodriguez. He was pointing to the side of the road. He wanted her to pull over, and it looked like if she didn’t comply willingly, his driver would be happy to force her off the highway.
It was the middle of the night on a deserted road. No way was she going to pull over like some lamb to the slaughter. She gunned the engine. The Caddy responded like an old tiger being let out of its cage. The big engine roared and she pulled ahead of the SUV.
But not for long. The giant black beast had quite a few horses under its hood as well. It kept pace with her around the next long turn of the highway and began to pull even with her again. She kept a panicked eye on it in her mirrors. She thought she saw the rear passenger window slide downward. A split-second later, she saw what looked like a handgun emerge from the blackened square of the backseat window.
The Caddy shuddered and jumped as the left rear tire blew. Eileen screamed. The steering wheel shook in her hands as she slammed on the brakes and tried to control the car. The bastard had shot her tire!
Her whole body shaking in fear, she moved the Caddy off to the shoulder. But first she hit a little button she’d had installed for just such emergencies. Thankfully, the SUV hung back as her call connected. She spoke aloud, confident the small microphone in the passenger compartment would pick up her words.
