I swallowed, not knowing what to say. For one, the way he’d described what I did made it sound brilliant. And I was damn proud of that. Gerome had taught me well. But he was a Dark One too, and to hear him spill my secrets so easily reminded me that he knew too much. Ghost was dangerous. And he would die as soon as he got back. He had to, for the sake of the station.
He shivered and hugged himself harder, gritting his teeth.
“What’s it like?” I asked quietly.
“Like my mind is glass, and she’s shattering it, piece by piece.” He gave his head a tight shake. “I am irrevocably tied to her. It is the way of all vampires.”
“Why fight her?”
“Because the alternative,” he hissed, “is worse.”
I shouldn’t care.
And I didn’t.
Straightening my legs next to his, I folded my arms and watched him mentally battle the unseen. His suffering should have been cathartic. He surely deserved it. And yet…
“How many people have you killed?” I asked.
His eyes remained closed as he replied, “You keep asking as though you expect the answer to change. The answer never changes. The numbers are countless, and I will kill again, because it is what I am."
“And you’ve never saved anyone? Not a single soul?”
Lashes fluttering, he fixed his gaze on me. “Not until you.”
“We aren’t saved yet, are we. And let’s not pretend you’re saving me for any reason other than to get you into the station.”
His lips lifted at their corners. “I don’t need you to get into the station, Lynher.”
So arrogant. Even weak, he believed the worlds revolved around him. “It won’t give you sanctuary without me.”
Opening his folded arms, he pulled up a sleeve to reveal his wrist. In the dark, his tattoos looked like thorned ropes binding him, and now that I knew about his queen, I wondered if she had put those marks there, like shackles. Apparently, I was supposed to see something in those swirls, so I looked closer. Tilting my head and leaning forward, a different smudge caught my eye, this one hidden beneath the more solid lines of ink. It was faded, barely there at all, but I couldn’t unsee it.
“That’s not possible.” I grabbed his shivering arm, yanked his sleeve higher, and pulled his wrist closer. An embellished x. Just like mine. There was no mistaking it.
“You should know by now, Lynher Aris, anything is possible at the Night Station,” he said, slyly.
He was marked.
He truly didn’t need me to secure sanctuary. He already had it.
My library office had opened for him because he was part of the station too.
The mass-murdering vampire known only as Ghost was under my protection?
“How?” I hissed.
He was closer and looking at me with his half smile, the one I wanted to rip from his lips. That smug smile, the delight in his eyes, he was suffering but loving this moment.
The station hadn’t always saved good people, but it knew what Kensey and I tried to do, how we tried to save people from the likes of Jack, and it had always supported Gerome and our work. Why risk it all by inviting Jack inside?
I dropped his arm and scuttled back, hugging my legs to keep myself as far from his reach as possible. “I don’t believe it.”
“I didn’t think you would,” he whispered, resting back and pulling his coat closed again. “You have your little white lines, Lynher, and gods forbid anything or anyone dare cross them.” His voice trailed off, his mind drifting into sleep, or whatever the vampire equivalent was.
I stared at him, trying to unravel the mystery of Jack, of Ghost, of the overseer with no name who I was supposed to keep safe. I’d never questioned the station before. Now I questioned everything.
* * *
Day
A sheen of perspiration shimmered over Jack’s pale skin, and his eyes had lost their shine. But staying in the shed was not an option. He again told me to leave, even as I scooped him up and lay his arm around my shoulders. Leaving him wasn’t an option either. He knew too much. If his queen found him, or one of the VG did, the entire station would be compromised. Mark be damned, I was fixing this and him.
So we limped along the tracks. The day was clear, sunlight pouring down. Jack sagged more with every step.
The station was close.
We could do this.
Kensey wouldn’t quit. I’d never quit in my life. I wouldn’t start now.
The tracks snaked through the land, and we followed, dipping down into the brush to shelter from the sun. My throat was parched and the blisters on my feet had blisters. None of that would get any better anytime soon. The only way to save us was to keep moving forward, one step at a time.
When Jack fell for the fourth time, we crumpled among an oak’s twisted roots, and this time, Jack wasn’t getting back up. He’d fallen awkwardly on his side, his head resting on an ancient root, eyes open but unseeing. I hated him for his weakness, hated him for everything he’d done to my people, hated him for what he was and for this. And I hated that I was supposed to help him.
“Your queen is a bitch for doing this. Why couldn’t she torture you once we’d gotten back, huh?” I swept his hair back from his cheek to look at his face and see if he’d heard. His lips ticked. “This is stupid. Why do this to you? What good are you to her if you’re a wreck?”
“Survival of the fittest,” he rasped.
She’d rather he die than return weak.
I hated her too. Everyone hated her, but she’d never featured in my life until now. Gerome had told me that she was like a vast breeding machine, constantly birthing new vampires, like a hideous fat ant in her throbbing nest of vampires. Her breeders tended to her every need while her body made more of them. The very idea of her made me want to retch up the nothing in my gut.
I fell against the oak beside Jack and looked up. Leaves fluttered, dappling the sunlight. Normally, I’d have enjoyed the daylight. Before these last few days, I could have counted on one hand the times I’d felt sunlight on my face.
“How long?” I asked, pulling my knees close to my chest.
“Another night, perhaps,” he said. His lips were cracked and white. Vampires didn’t die like normal people. They dried up, turning pale first. Then their skin shrunk around their bones, and eventually, they just stopped before turning to dust. It was a wretched way to go, and one I’d always thought fitting, but as I watched it happen in slow-motion to Jack, I found it inconvenient. If he’d just hurry up and die, I could at least leave him.
I still had my stake.
Taking the weapon from its place against my back, I twirled the point against my finger. It wasn’t as sharp as before. Rakshasi blood stained the point, but it would kill a vampire if struck home, straight through the heart. I just had to punch it in real hard. Right now, Jack didn’t look as though he could fight back.
He pretended to breathe, so he was strong enough for some bullshit. If I staked him correctly, it would be quick. A mercy, really.
I tightened my fingers around the stake, getting a good hold. The angle was awkward, with him on his side and me upright, coming in from his left. Really, for maximum impact, I should strike from the front and hope I didn’t hit a rib.
“We should move on—” He got his hands under him and tried to push up
I had my opening.
A mercy.
Necessary.
For the station and all the lives I protected within it.
I was reaching for his shoulder before I could talk myself out of it. My fingers sank in. I gripped and thrust the stake forward.
Light and heat flared between us. My mark sang, seeking to protect me like it had with the rakshasi, but then a sudden, vicious stab of pain snapped up my arm, snatching control of my body and sending me reeling away.
Fiery agony lashed and hissed.
Gods, what!
It hadn’t been my mark protecting me; it had been his protecting hi
m.
Shock buzzed through me. My ears rang. Then Jack slammed into me, knocking me onto my back. He straddled my thighs, one hand pinned at my waist, the other holding my wrist back, keeping the stake at bay. I saw his eyes then, saw the infinite sea of power behind them, and something else inside, something hungry and dark and full of want and need, like he could swallow the entire world and not be satisfied.
He struck.
Pain flashed and died, killed by the venom infecting my veins. His cracked lips sealed over the bite. His jaw moved, coaxing my blood over his tongue and down his throat. It didn’t hurt. My vision bloomed, all the colors of the day blurring into blues and oranges, and it all felt so perfectly fucking wonderful. I wasn’t hungry anymore. And the sores on my feet had vanished. I could lie right here, in Jack’s arms, and never leave. Inside, I screamed in silence. But his venom had snuffed out my voice too.
He stole my life gulp by gulp.
It was always going to end this way, so why fight it? I had a hold of his shoulder with my free hand and tightened my grip, wanting more of this peaceful bliss, wanting more of him pressed against me. He’d held me in his arms, folded me close to keep me safe, but this was different. This was better. His murderous embrace felt like coming home.
Chapter 20
Night
“Lynher…? Gods… why…?”
An urgent, angry voice dragged me from the warm, quiet place, and as the familiar stranger muttered and swore, blaming me, a tingling spilled life back into muscle and bone. Then the aches returned, and my stomach growled, or maybe that was Jack who’d growled.
He shoved the stake in my face. “I’m taking this!”
Tucking the stake into his coat pocket, he started pacing and running his hands through his messy hair. Considering all the leaves turned over at his feet, he’d been pacing a while. He looked better. I, on the other hand, felt like I’d been turned inside out—again.
I groped at the numb patch on my neck, sweeping away cool, congealing blood. “You… bit me.”
He growled a frustrated sound, striding back and forth, his leg better, thanks to my blood. “You leech.”
I sounded like I’d leaned too hard on the whiskey. But the warm, fuzzy feeling in my head was all Jack’s doing. I should have been angrier. It was there, a ball of hissing, spitting rage, but the venom had dammed it behind the afterglow. His venom was inside me. Once it wore off, I would kill him this time. Properly.
“We need to move,” he snapped, grimacing down at me like this was my fault.
Screw him and this. I rolled onto my side, waited for the forest to stop spinning, and got my knees under me enough to kneel. Standing was next. Just… after the trees stopped swaying.
“You bit me.” I was on my feet, and then Jack was in front of me, a tall and exceedingly handsome barrier I needed to push through. With his tilted lips, all warm and pink, and his hazel eyes, so human and bright and trying to burrow inside and make me feel for him. He looked good, like maybe he could wrap me in his arms again and hold me tight like nobody had in so long. Gods, no. “Get out of my head, vampire!”
His lip curled. “The venom will wear off.”
“Fuck. You.” I tried to shove him, but he neatly stepped aside, almost sending me reeling again. I stumbled into a walk instead and stared forward, hopefully heading in the right direction.
“You tried to kill me,” he said, circling in front to block my path with all his frustratingly delicious maleness.
I pulled up short and huffed through my nose. “No, I didn’t…” Had I? Oh right, I had.
“I told you I’d retaliate. You can’t attack a vampire and expect it not to react. Did Gerome teach you nothing? You’re lucky I’m… I had enough control to stop, else you’d be dead and I’d be well-fucking-fed.” His gaze dropped to my neck, and he swallowed, probably remembering what it had felt like having me crushed beneath him, his fangs in my throat.
Gods, he was hot when he was angry, and now that he’d lost all that half-dead grayness, his snarl made me want to sink my fingers into his hair and rip a kiss from his lips—that was the venom talking.
“You deserve it,” I slurred and reached to grab the stake from him. He swatted my hand away, then, changing his mind, snatched at my fingers and pulled me along.
“We have to move.”
I yanked free again, spluttering, “Grab me again and you’ll discover my knee in your nuts. Maybe then you’ll wish your bitch queen had gelded you.”
I was mostly certain all those words had arrived in the correct order.
“We don’t have time for this!” he snapped back, all fired up on my blood. “I will throw you over my shoulder if I must.”
“You will do no such thing.” I pointed, my finger all I had to threaten him with. “I am done with you. Done! I’m going home to my people, and if there’s any justice in this world, your queen will find you and do whatever it is you’re so afraid of, because it’s all you deserve.” I turned around and stomped ahead, hopefully in the general direction of our destination. It didn’t matter. I couldn’t spend another second in the same space as him.
“Listen to me.”
Nope. Wasn’t doing that.
“Caine marked you.”
I stopped, cleared my throat, felt my heart thudding too fast, still trying to filter out the venom, and turned back. “What?”
He rubbed the back of his neck, his fingers massaging out an ache instead of manhandling me. “Caine knows where you are.”
“Caine?” The horrible one. The one who had eyed me up like his personal piñata. The one who had bitten first and almost killed me.
“Your blood… The taste…” He ran his thumb along his bottom lip. The tip of his tongue traced the same path. “You’re claimed, which means you can’t outrun him or walk away. He’ll find you.”
That was definitely very bad and I should have been afraid, but seeing as I was all drugged up, emotions would have to come later. “Then why hasn’t he found us already?”
“Because you’re walking right back to him… at the station.”
“Can’t you just”—I waved a hand—“do your thing and order him to stand down?”
He laughed like I was a damn fool. “My position as overseer has been revoked.”
Oh gods, why did everything have to be so hard? “Caine doesn’t know that.”
“By now, he does. They all do.”
“How?” Was there a VG super-fast telegram I didn’t know about? Did they still have electronic communications?
“It’s… complicated.”
“Then lie,” I said, squaring up to him. “You’re so good at pretending to be something you’re not that he’ll never know.”
His nostrils flared, and the pretty smiles and kind-eyed act fell away, revealing the cold, hard overseer he truly was. “Do you even hear yourself?” he hissed. “You live a lie. With every breath, you believe you’re a human savior, and all you’re doing is delaying the inevitable. You and your brother—you don’t make a difference. You save a few hundred a year. The farms kill that a day. You’re a silly woman in an elaborate dress, playing with predators. You think I’m pretending? Take a look at yourself, Lynher Aris. You have no idea what’s going on around you, but you could… if you’d open your eyes.”
I wanted to hit back, to swear at him, call him a leech again, but his words—so close to my own—had pulled the fight right out of me. Because he was right. It was pointless. I wasn’t even saving them for them; I was saving them for Kensey, because he needed a cause. He needed hope, but I knew it was all lies. I lived in the dark. There was no winning this war. There was no resistance in far-off continents. There was just one station, one beacon in a whole world of darkness, and outside its walls, I was as much a tool as Jack was.
Jack sighed through his nose and lifted his face to the sky, muttering words I didn’t catch. “Lynher… just… come with me.” He held out a hand. The same hand that had pinned me down while he’d fed
on me.
The venom must have been wearing off, because tears swam in my vision, and I hated them too. “You. Bit. Me.”
He swore and dropped his hand. “I didn’t kill you.”
“So I’m supposed to be grateful!”
He grabbed for me, like I was a doll he could throw around. I recoiled and stepped around him, marching ahead. “This way?”
“Yes.” The sound of his steps followed behind.
The tracks soon reappeared through the brush as the sun set, spilling bloodred rays across the sky. I walked on, his venom leaving me colder with every step. Why had the station chosen him? And when? It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. It mocked everything Kensey tried to do. Gerome would have known; he’d have had all the answers by now.
Night stole all the heat from the air, but I was still too angry to care. Jack kept my pace, staying in the corner of my peripheral vision. Was his queen still hunting him, or had my blood made that go away too? I didn’t care. Once we were back at the station, I’d deal with him, like I’d deal with Etienne and anyone else who considered me weak. Screw them all. This little fish was poisonous.
The tracks funneled farther into the dark. I walked and walked and walked, the railroad ties passing beneath my boots in time with my heartbeat, until a band of brilliant twinkling lights blazed in the distance. The Night Station. I sobbed in relief.
Jack’s arm blocked my path, jolting me to a halt. “Look…”
A silhouette darkened the tracks. A shadow, really, but not a phantom. This figure was solid.
Caine. I could feel him, his charm, like a thousand spiders scurrying across my skin, trying to find a way inside.
A burbling growl rumbled through Jack. He handed over the stake—“Please refrain from using it on me”—and walked ahead. The starless night painted him and Caine in shades of black. They didn’t look so different in the dark.
Hopefully, they’d kill each other.
While they worked on that, I’d be back at the station. I dropped down the side of the tracks and cut through the brush, catching glimpses of the pair of vampires through bare branches. Physically, they appeared evenly matched, neither one heavier nor bigger. I almost wished I could stay and watch them throw down, but with sanctuary so close, I wasn’t risking a delay.
Twilight Seeker: Daybreaker #1 Page 16
