Shadow Form (Dark Impulse Book 2)

by Edmund Hughes

  “It’s not easy for me either,” snapped Jack. “This is like having you flaunted in front of me. Like getting a glimpse of what could be…”

  “It couldn’t be, Jack,” said Katie. “That’s what you’re missing. I care for Bruce. This… is just so confusing for me.”

  “But not for me though, right?” said Jack. “It’s just straightforward for me, secretly living as a vampire?”

  “Fuck you,” said Katie. “I don’t even know why I bother.”

  “If you’re going to be like this about it, maybe you shouldn’t,” said Jack. He knew he was being petulant, but he couldn’t stop himself. It was hard to recognize that he needed Katie while also knowing how much him feeding on her affected her emotionally.

  “Maybe I won’t,” said Katie.

  They both glared at each other for a few more seconds, the tension on the air striding the line between violent and sexual. Katie exhaled through her nose and finally stomped out of his room. Jack leaned his head back on the bed, feeling annoyed with both her and himself.

  He felt powerless, as though the trajectory of his and Katie’s relationship was completely out of his control. To a certain extent, it was. It was the same with Ryoko. He couldn’t help Ryoko and couldn’t reach her with his words to change anything.

  “Why do I have such dysfunctional relationships with all the women in my life?” he muttered aloud.

  “Because those women aren’t me,” answered Mira, in a soft, sensual tone.

  CHAPTER 12

  As though a switch had been flipped, Jack was somewhere else. He was standing on the roof of a building at night. A tower, judging from the strength of the wind, and the other looming structures nearby. A fantastic mixture of brightly colored window lights and illuminated signs made his surroundings feel like a scene out of a cyberpunk anime. He was sure of only one thing, and it was that he was no longer on Lestaron Island.

  And to top it all off, Mira, Jack’s broodmother, stood mere feet away from him. She was barefoot, and wore a simple white gown made of nearly sheer fabric that fluttered slightly in the wind. Her large breasts made the cloth around the chest pillow outward, and her long blonde hair was twisted into a single, glossy braid that hung down the center of her back.

  “What… am I doing here?” muttered Jack. He shook his head and took a step back. “This is a dream. It must be.”

  It didn’t feel like a dream. Jack was alert, and he could follow the flow of his thoughts. And the way Mira was watching him was too reactive and in the moment. Her facial features were strikingly beautiful, down to her red-flecked blue eyes, and her pouty lips were turned up into a knowing smile.

  “Oh, dearest Jack,” said Mira, in a whisper. “You wouldn’t dream something like this, now would you?”

  He had dreamed about Mira in the past. Of course he had. She’d been responsible for more change within his life than any other event or person that he could think of. She’d tricked him into inviting her into the mansion, seduced him, and used her bite and her blood to turn him into an Aquinian vampire, a blood mage. She’d changed everything, and it was all because of her volatile relationship with Jack’s deceased grandfather.

  “I was in my bed, the last I remember,” said Jack. “I’m going with this being a dream.”

  Mira stepped in closer to him. Jack stood by his declaration, even as she took his hands into her own, and then pulled them onto her breasts. He blinked a couple of times, but kept his surprise from showing on his face. They felt amazing, more than large enough to be fun to play with, almost bordering on unwieldy.

  “Are these a dream too, Jack?” asked Mira. “Would you like to find out how deep the dream goes?”

  “If you’re using convincing erotic details as evidence for this not being a dream, then you really don’t understand how the male mind works,” he said.

  Mira laughed, and the sound of it was sickly sweet. She slid in closer to him and gave him a kiss. Jack didn’t move his lips against hers, but his body reacted to her presence in other ways.

  “If this really isn’t a dream,” Jack said, forcing himself to pull back. “Then where are we right now? Where is this?”

  He gestured to the buildings around them. They were in a city, and a major one, at that. Behind him, he could see stairs leading down to the interior of the tower they were on, but he couldn’t get a sense of much more than that.

  “You’d love to know that, wouldn’t you?” said Mira. “I’m sure it would make your sinister, devious broodmother that much easier to hunt.”

  She kissed him again, and this time, Jack couldn’t stop himself from kissing her back. He’d almost let himself forget about hunting Mira, about breaking the curse over him by finding her and killing her.

  As much as Jack hated to admit it, he was getting used to being a vampire. And even though his last encounter with his broodmother had ended in violence, he didn’t have any lingering animosity for her. Rather, the chaos between them felt like an unfinished storm of emotions, some of which Mira was in the process of pulling out of him with soft kisses against his lips and chin.

  “Would you come for me, if I told you where I was?” whispered Mira.

  “Do you get off on that idea?” Jack reached his hand around and gave one of her buttocks a rough squeeze. “On being chased and captured?”

  “Would you come for me?” Mira’s fingers deftly unzipped his jeans, and she slid her hand down the front of his pants.

  Jack felt a surge of aggressive lust, and he couldn’t stop himself from following up on it. He kissed Mira deeply, letting both sides of the emotions he felt for her feed into the encounter. There was a railing against the building’s edge, and he roughly pushed her up against it, looping one arm around her shoulder and using the other to slide up her gown. She was naked underneath it.

  Was it a trick? Did Mira set up their current strange, mystical encounter with an ulterior motive? Somehow, Jack felt sure that the answer to both questions was no. He also felt her body, the way her breast felt under his palm, and the soft crush of her naked butt against his crotch.

  He took her roughly. Mira let out a delighted moan as he pushed his hard shaft into her. There was something deeply satisfying to Jack about being aggressive and taking her, and the fact that she seemed to be enjoying it along with him only made it that much hotter. He pressed her into the roof’s railing forcefully, one of his hands taking a firm grip on Mira’s ponytail and pulling her head back with it.

  “Such ferocity!” moaned Mira. “Oh!”

  The wind blew through Jack’s hair and sent ripples through the fabric of Mira’s gown. It was a sudden reminder of the fact that they were, assuming that Jack was actually there, outside and in the open. He didn’t slow his thrusts, but he did glance across the windows of all the expensive, downtown apartment buildings surrounding them.

  Mira reacted to each of Jack’s movements in a way that stirred a deep part of his masculine core. She was older than he was and had a way of alternating between leading and submitting to him that kept him in a constant state of peak arousal. He wanted to show her what he was capable of, but even while pushing into her with as much raw strength as he could muster, he felt like she had his number. It was a race between them. A race to see who could make the other drown in pleasure first.

  Mira twisted, laughing as she put in a mild amount of effort to wrestle control back. Jack pulled one of her arms behind her and tightened his grip. Mira let out a quivering sigh and seemed to relent a little, arching her back and leaning into him.

  For several heated, erotic minutes, the two of them chased their mutual ecstasy. Mira let out a high-pitched whimper and collapsed against the railing as she came. Jack continued until he’d found his own release, taking deep enjoyment in the fact that he’d managed to wear her out first. He steadied himself against her as he finished, and Mira slowly turned around to face him, pulling him into a gentle embrace.

  “What is this?” he muttered, as the logical p
art of his brain stirred back to life. “Usually, this is the part where I wake up.”

  “It is as I said, dearest Jack,” whispered Mira. “This isn’t a dream. And I am oh so glad for that fact.”

  She caressed his cheek with her hand, letting one of her fingers briefly pull down his bottom lip before stroking his chin.

  “How are you doing this?” asked Jack.

  “You’re the one doing this,” said Mira. “Not me. Or rather, you’re the one who knocked. I merely answered the door.”

  Jack frowned and shook his head. Mira brought her hand up to his hair, threading her fingers through it.

  “It’s called Blood Sight,” said Mira. “A form of mystic blood magic. I’m surprised and more than a little impressed that you discovered it on your own.”

  “I didn’t do anything,” said Jack. “I was lying down and getting ready for bed.”

  “You fed more than once today, didn’t you?” asked Mira. “Blood Sight is a limited power, and quite inefficient. It’s a state a blood mage can only enter with a large blood essence reserve. Even then, most Blood Sight visions only last for a few minutes. It’s quite interesting that you’ve managed to remain with me for so long…”

  “That’s all well and good,” said Jack. “But why did it connect me to you?”

  “Blood,” said Mira. “I’ve shared in yours before, and that simple act left a mystic connection between us. Faint, but traceable, under the right conditions, with a spell like Blood Sight.”

  “So I’m not really here right now,” said Jack.

  “Essentially,” said Mira. “And you would normally be invisible to me, if not for my attunement to this form of magic. Blood Sight allows you to peer into the current status of anyone whose blood you shared, be it yours or theirs.”

  “What am I supposed to do with that?” Jack frowned and pulled away from her. He looked out into the city around them, taking note of a building with a neon sign written in an Asian language he didn’t recognize.

  “Whatever you want,” said Mira. “Here, I can show you. As your broodmother, I can feel the faintest echo of your blood connections. Oh, this will be exquisite! Let’s take a field trip together, my dearest Jack.”

  “What?” Jack scowled and shook his head. “What are you talking about?”

  “Tell me about the girl you enthralled today,” whispered Mira.

  The mere mention of Meghan brought her into Jack’s mind’s eye, and he felt his blood magic instantly reacting to the thought. Before he could say anything, Mira had taken his hand into hers and given it a reassuring squeeze. The setting of the city around him was fading, dissolving around him like a sandcastle being washed away by the tide. And another scene was waiting behind it.

  CHAPTER 13

  Jack found himself in a small room, standing over a girl asleep in bed. Not just a girl. Meghan. Mira let go of his hand and crouched down beside the purple-haired motel clerk, running a finger across her lips.

  “Don’t,” said Jack.

  “Relax,” said Mira. “This is your blood vision. She can only feel your touch, and only if you decide for her to be able to.”

  “I don’t know how to control this yet,” said Jack. “And I really don’t feel like I should be here.”

  Mira didn’t seem to hear him. She was entirely focused on Meghan, sizing the girl up like a cat examining a toy mouse.

  “How did you make this one’s acquaintance?” asked Mira. “What led to you deciding to enthrall her? I know how reluctant you still are about such things.”

  “She… works at a motel,” said Jack. “She had information I needed, but… I didn’t mean to enthrall her. It just happened. It was an accident, a lapse of control on my part. A mistake.”

  “My sweet, naïve Jack,” whispered Mira. “Trust me when I say that it was anything but.”

  Jack turned so that he was facing away from Meghan and ran a hand through his hair. Being in her room without her knowledge felt like an invasion of her privacy on top of what he’d already done to her. He felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach that resonated with the knowledge that he was slowly but surely losing his moral grounding.

  “You’ve given yourself a gift,” said Mira. “The sooner you recognize it, the better.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Jack.

  “Look at this girl,” said Mira. She set a hand on his shoulder and forced him to turn around. “Take a real look at her.”

  Jack scowled, feeling annoyed at the way Mira seemed to condescend with every word.

  “Whatever it is you’re getting at, forget it,” he said. “I’m not like you, Mira.”

  “Of course you aren’t,” said Mira. “You haven’t accepted yourself yet. But I can help you if you let me.”

  She moved to stand beside him, wrapping her arms against his chest and pressing her breasts into his shoulder. Jack felt her hand caressing his cheek, and the hair on his neck stood up as her warm breath tickled his ear.

  “She is yours now,” whispered Mira. “She’s a safe source of blood that you can come back to without guilt.”

  “I would feel guilty,” said Jack. “For good reason. It’s wrong.”

  “Is it wrong?” asked Mira. “You’ve already bitten her once. If you only take a sustainable amount, how is it any worse than feeding off Peter’s spoiled apprentice? It would certainly be less dramatic, in the long run.”

  “That’s… not the point,” muttered Jack.

  “You say she works at a motel?” asked Mira. “Do you understand how convenient it would be to have her as a source of information? You could be instantly alerted to any strange presence on the island that decided to seek refuge at her place of employment. You needn’t even visit her in person, now that you’ve discovered your Blood Sight.”

  “Forget it,” said Jack. “You aren’t going to tempt me over to the dark side.”

  Despite his objection, Jack found himself intrigued by her suggestion. How useful would it be to have Meghan watching and waiting, in case Khumar or Monty decided to stay at the motel again? If he did decide to use her like that, he could even set a trap for them. Getting revenge for what they’d done to Ryoko would only be a matter of waiting for the right moment. He wouldn’t have to worry about Katie finding out, either.

  The scene around Jack flickered, with pieces of reality falling out of place like torn shreds of paper. He blinked, realizing at the same time as Mira that he’d just triggered a new blood vision with his thoughts.

  “Curious,” said Mira. “And this girl isn’t the only one? It’s faint, but it’s there. Focus your thoughts, my sweet Jack.”

  Jack gritted his teeth. He tried to think of anything but Katie, but it had the opposite effect. Meghan’s room finished crumbling out of existence, and behind it stood Ryoko’s bedchamber, back at the mansion.

  The room was pitch-black, but its occupants weren’t asleep. Jack could hear Ryoko’s half-stifled crying. Katie was there, too, gently comforting her with soft shushes and quiet words.

  “She won’t know we’re here unless you touch her,” said Mira. “We can talk as we normally would.”

  “How… is this even possible?” asked Jack. “I’ve bitten Katie, but she isn’t enthralled.”

  “She is, though only on a minor level,” said Mira. “Enough for her to be available to your Blood Sight, though observing her will come at a much greater drain to you. But not enough for her to be completely loyal, as you’ve probably noticed.”

  Jack shook his head, not wanting to hear, or at least believe, what she was telling him.

  “Shh, it’s okay, Ryoko,” whispered Katie. “It’s okay to cry. Just let it all out.”

  “It’s my fault,” said Ryoko.

  “No,” said Katie. “Ryoko, it is not your fault!”

  “He called twice. My uncle…”

  The room was silent for a couple of seconds, aside from Ryoko’s fractured breathing.

  “The first time he called,
I didn’t answer,” said Ryoko. “I didn’t care enough. I didn’t want to be bothered, and I… I had no idea the danger he was in. That it would be the last I’d ever…”

  “Shh,” said Katie. “It’s okay.”

  “It’s not okay!” cried Ryoko. “If I’d just picked up the phone, he might still be alive… and those men.”

  She shuddered, and Jack felt a piece of his heart die a little.

  “Because I showed up at the restaurant late,” whispered Ryoko. “It was already over. He was dead. And I was there, like some kind of bonus prize for those… those…”

  “It wouldn’t have gone any differently,” said Katie.

  “I deserve to suffer,” whispered Ryoko. “It’s all… my fault.”

  Ryoko’s breathing became rough as her tears really began to flow. Jack could only listen as she sobbed, with Katie gently comforting her to the best of her ability. Ryoko blamed herself. But he was the one who’d been hungover and asleep that morning, leaving her in the position to leave the mansion on her own.

  He couldn’t handle eavesdropping on the room any longer. Jack pictured the rooftop where he’d first encountered Mira in the vision, and willed them back to it.

  It felt colder than it had before, though that might have just been his imagination. Mira stood to Jack’s side with her arms crossed and a pensive expression on her face.

  “You let harm come to your servant,” said Mira. “That surprises me.”

  Jack scowled, annoyed at how his first reaction was to deny it, and try to minimize his own responsibility.

  “I fucked up,” he said. “She thinks it’s her fault, when really it’s probably mine. Mine, and those two sadistic men.”

  He clenched his hands into fists. He was more resolved than ever to hunt down and punish Khumar and Monty. They would pay twice over for every tear they’d made Ryoko shed.

  “Does it matter to you that you couldn’t protect her?” asked Mira.