A Light in the Dusk
Page 1
Copyright © 2020 by Jessi Elliott and K.J. Sutton
All rights reserved. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
ISBN 978-1-7770066-3-1 (eBook Edition)
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Front cover image by Seventh Star Art
Published in the United States of America
Also by Jessi Elliott
The Twisted Series
Twisted Fate
Twisted Gift
Twisted Desire
Twisted Devotion
Also by K.J. Sutton
The Fortuna Sworn Series
Fortuna Sworn
Restless Slumber
Novellas
Summer in the Elevator
There are darknesses in life and there are lights, and you are one of the lights, the light of all lights.
―Bram Stoker, Dracula
Chapter One
There’s a weeper in Rowan’s.
The music is drowned out by screaming and the creature’s strange, dry sobs. As the three of us listen to the chaos happening just down the hallway, I reach for my sword before I remember it isn’t there… or that I don’t really know how to use it. My skin feels damp, having gone hot to cold in a matter of seconds since Noah left. Distantly, I notice the human he fed on has passed out again.
Nina hovers near the door, peeking through the heavy curtain. To my shame, I realize I’ve retreated so my back is nearly pressed against the wall. “Get ready to run,” she calls over her shoulder to me, keeping her voice low.
I swallow and force myself to draw close to them again. In the other room, someone lets out a shout full of terror and pain. “We aren’t going to fight?” I ask quietly, wondering if I look as pale as I feel.
Holding onto the curtain with a white-knuckled grip, Nina spares me a glance long enough to snap, “Do you want to fight that weeper?”
Fear and hunger feel like a whetstone against my mind as I open my mouth to respond.
“We’re out of our depth here,” Drew says before I can utter a word. His tone is more serious than I’ve ever heard it. I dart a glance toward him, and my annoyance fades when my gaze lands on his face, noticing how his lips are pressed into a tight line instead of his easygoing grin.
From this vantage point, I have a clear view through the curtain and down the hall. I can’t help but look toward the bar where the overhead lights have been turned on—the space is filled with a mess of bodies, everyone trying to push through to the exit.
My pulse moves faster than the rest of me can keep up with, making my chest rise and fall with almost violent movements. “We’re just going to let those people fend for themselves?” I ask.
Nina lets out an anxious, impatient breath. “One, we have no weapons. Two, Sylvia and Noah are still here, and bounty hunters have jurisdiction. Believe me, they’ve got this.”
“There’s a back door, right?” Drew asks his sister.
She gives him a terse nod. “Rowan doesn’t want anyone to know about it, though. He almost tore my head off when he caught me in the back alley with a guy one time.”
In the next breath, Drew grabs my hand and tugs me along until I start walking on my own. The curtains part around us like the dark, heavy cloak my father so often wears.
The instant I step into the hallway, though, I jerk to a halt. Sounds bounce off the walls, more painful than when I first entered this place, but I barely hear them now. The smell of blood makes my fangs slide down from my gums. The delicious, sweet, metallic scent taunts me and makes my stomach churn at the same time. A thousand images race through me. Burying my face into some faceless human’s throat. Tearing through skin, all that annoying skin, only to find that delicious vein, the rushing river, the source of life itself…
Drew finally notices I’ve stopped moving. He says something. My name, probably. When I stay silent, standing there with clenched fists, my eyes glued to the bloodshed happening just a few yards away, I hear his footsteps. “Charlie, we have to…” Drew’s voice trails off.
Something about how he goes quiet yanks me from the blood haze. I turn to Drew, on the verge of apologizing, but his gaze drops to my fangs. Horrified, I slap my hand over my mouth.
Just as I try to apologize a second time, someone else is bitten. I don’t need to hear the man’s bellow of agony—I can smell it, sense the blood splatter, flying through the air with no one to claim or enjoy it. Such a waste, the monster pouts.
“I’m sorry,” I say finally, the words muffled. My stomach sinks as I realize what I’m about to do. “The blood… there’s so much blood. This isn’t my fault, Drew. Please don’t hate me.”
His brows tug together. Before I know what’s happening, before he can try to stop me, my legs are moving, carrying me toward the chaos. I vaguely pick up Nina’s voice as she growls, “Son of a bitch. We don’t have time for this!”
The monster inside of me doesn’t care. She’s clawing her way to the surface as I run into the bar, my gums throbbing, fangs bared.
The smell of blood is so overpowering now that I can’t even sense any others. People run in every direction, some drunk, some blinded by terror. Most are both. As I stand there, a spiky-haired shapeshifter collides with me, stumbling to the side, and I snarl at him before my eyes zero in on the deep gash across his face. Blood covers his cheek and jaw, dripping down his throat and staining the white T-shirt he’s wearing.
Like the animal I am, I grab the shapeshifter and drag him back, seeking a calm corner where I can feed. There’s no worry of him shifting—it’s a time-consuming process that involves breaking bones and ripping skin.
Yards away, Noah is preoccupied directing everyone through the narrow door without any of them getting crushed… and making sure anyone who may be infected doesn’t leave. Even from my cursory glance, I can see it in Noah’s eyes—the cold calculation. Meanwhile, Sylvia is on the other side of the room, trying to draw the weeper away, probably to get a clear killing shot. If she were to harm any of the slaves here, it could mean a lawsuit from their owners.
All of this goes through my mind in two seconds, then I return my attention to the struggling shapeshifter in my grasp. He’s so weak—I’m a Lavender and he can’t even break free. Better you kill him quickly than leave him to a weeper, the monster coos at me. She’s right. Of course she is. I’d be doing him a kindness…
Holding both of his wrists in one hand, I pull the shapeshifter toward me without a second thought, my gaze on that pulsing vein at his throat. The gash hasn’t stopped bleeding, either, and a red stain seeps into the collar of his shirt now.
“You’re not a monster!”
The words are like a feather along the edge of my subconscious. My heartbeat pounds in my ears as I turn toward the human—Drew, his name is Drew—shouting at me.
He’s walking this way, keeping to the wall, his hands spread in front of him as if to make himself seem less threatening. Not that a human could be much of a threat. My grip tightens on the shapeshifter, and he lets out a whimper as we both feel his bones grinding together.
To his credit, Drew doesn’t move his gaze from my face. “You’re not Charlotte Travesty anymore,” he says, lowering his voice as he draws closer. Closer. “You’re Charlie. I know you don’t
want to hurt him. You care about things. About us.”
The monster doesn’t care. No, she wants me to drain this victim dry.
Unable to resist the call of the blood, much like the song of a water nymph, I bend down and inhale the skin along the curve of my captive’s throat. The movement brings back the memory of my father’s feeding lesson, and as my eyes close, I see him in the darkness. Doing the same thing to one of his victims.
“When you’re feeding, there’s a moment you’ll have to listen for,” he tells me, sitting down on the settee, where a feeder awaits him.
She’s beautiful—more beautiful than my own mother. She sits in a slant of moonlight that makes her golden hair look silver. Her long legs are crossed, which makes her black dress rise off the floor and reveal perfectly sculpted calves.
As I watch, Father brushes a strand of that silken-looking hair over her bare shoulder, effectively exposing her neck. His fangs slowly ease from his gums, much bigger and longer than mine, honed by centuries of tearing through flesh and muscle. The rings on his fingers glitter as he traces her artery.
His voice becomes an absent murmur. “The human’s heart will race for a few beats… and then slow drastically down. That’s when you know it’s time to make a choice—stop feeding, or continue drinking and risk taking its life.”
Remembering the exact details of that day—details I’d conveniently forgotten—brings my sense of self back, just a little. I loosen my hold on the shapeshifter, still fighting the urge to tear into him like a four-course dinner.
The monster may not care, but… I do.
With a growl, I finally shove him away. The poor creature coughs as he runs, fighting through the crowd all trying to get to the exit.
Drew reaches me just as I turn and, through the remaining stragglers still fleeing the room, spot the weeper.
It looks human… but not. The Weeping Virus can affect anything with a pulse, but the result is always the same. Where the creature’s nose should be is just a hole. Even from across the wide room, I can see maggots squirming around in the flesh. One eye is completely gone.
By the blood—it’s rotting from the inside.
As I stare in slack-jawed horror, its dull teeth gnash and sink into a tree nymph’s shoulder, making her cry out in agony. She’d been crawling across the floor, her ankle bent at an unnatural angle. An easy target. An all-you-can-eat buffet.
Then, in a blur of movement, Sylvia is there. She tears the nymph away and shoves her toward Noah, who sighs, cradling the green-skinned creature for a moment or two as black veins lick across her skin. She’s infected—there’s no saving her. Still, I have to press a fist to my mouth when Noah snaps her neck without hesitation. A second later, he lays her still form on the ground and closes her eyes. As he straightens, our gazes catch and hold. Despite the danger, I can’t break free.
The weeper screeches.
Jumping, I swing my head toward it. With another cry, this one more hunger than pain, the weeper swings out at Sylvia. It must’ve been a subspecies in life, because the speed of the strike is preternatural. Its fist connects with the bounty hunter’s cheek, and she stumbles to the side, snarling. She shakes her head like a dog, and once her eyes have cleared, she bares her fangs and hisses. Noah chuckles as he rises from beside the dead nymph.
“Fuck you, Forrest,” Sylvia mutters, trying to get enough distance between her and the weeper to raise her gun again. It moves faster than I expect it to. Apparently faster than Sylvia expects, as well, as she barely dodges in time to avoid the weeper’s swiping fingers.
“Maybe later, friend—we’re a little busy at the moment,” Noah counters. I blink at their exchange, unsure if I’m in awe or too petrified to run. An instant later, Noah moves, and he does something that sends the weeper flying. Wailing, it lands right in the doorway Drew and I had been intending to flee through.
Drew yanks at my arm, but I’m already in motion, and I almost stumble into him.
In a terrifyingly bird-like movement, the weeper’s attention jerks toward us. “Fuck,” Drew breathes, darting for something on the floor—a shard of broken glass. As he steps in front of me, the lines of his body tensing into a fighting stance, I press my back against the wall again. The weeper starts running toward us, panting and crying, and I almost vomit from the surge of terror.
Once again, Noah intervenes. His eyes look black as he delivers a booted kick to the weeper’s gut. It flies backward and crashes into the wall, splintering wood and breaking pipes. A burst of water fills the air. In an instant, Noah blurs across the room and yanks the weeper free, only to toss it into another wall. He moves with such lithe, deadly strides, that watching him feels magnetic. As if I don’t have the choice of looking away.
Seeing our chance, Drew begins pulling me toward the exit again. I catch a glimpse of Nina, who would never leave her brother behind, her lavender eyes peering furiously around the doorway. Drew and I climb over upturned furniture and the mass of bodies. The bar has nearly emptied by now, save for the writhing and bloodied, everyone who wasn’t fast enough to make it out before the weeper got to them—the virus takes at least a day to complete its grisly work.
“Stop playing with it,” Sylvia calls in a monotone. Does she even care that people died today? I glance back at her over my shoulder and realize, as she prepares to decapitate a vampire with her sword, that Sylvia is busy killing anyone who was bitten.
I look back at Noah as that glinting blade comes down. He ignores Sylvia, and the muscles in his arms flex as he surges forward. The weeper’s screams fill the room as he punches it in the jaw, and in that instant, I have the terrible realization that these things can feel pain. The weeper’s face contorts as maggots spill out of its mouth. I swallow a gag, but Noah doesn’t even flinch. He reaches for his own pistol, aims, and fires without hesitation.
It’s the perfect shot.
The creature’s wails are cut short as its face explodes. A bizarre sound tears from my throat, making Noah turn. When his gaze lands on me, it narrows. Dark weeper blood is splattered across his cheek and down the front of his shirt, but I can’t tear my gaze away from those piercing green eyes, blazing with desire. As though killing things puts him in the mood to fuck.
Swearing, Nina charges forward and grabs my wrist, digging her nails into my skin until I suck in a breath and start moving. “We have to go,” she hisses in my ear.
Though my stomach tightens with unease, knowing anyone still alive in this room is going to meet an end of pain and steel, I follow Drew and Nina down the hallway at a run.
The three of us finally make it to the back door. Nina shoves it open and we follow her into an alley behind the building. The sickly glow of a streetlight makes darkness stand out even more. The door slams shut behind us, and the smell of blood is quickly replaced by the toxic mixture of whatever is in the Dumpster beside us. My stomach heaves.
“Are you okay?” Drew asks.
His grip is the tightest thing I’ve ever known, and I give it a grateful, unthinking squeeze. “Not really. Let’s get out of here.”
“What a fucking brilliant idea,” Nina hisses.
Drew laughs, but the sound is strange, desperate, and I remember his words to me after I’d gotten my slave marks. In a place like this, Charlie, you usually won’t be in the mood to laugh. That’s why you have to force yourself to find the humor, at least once every day.
The sun is coming up now, creating a deceptively serene mood. Any second, it will spill from the horizon, spreading over rooftops and into the streets like melted butter. And as someone still in Rowan’s starts to scream, the sound bouncing off the alley walls, I try to think of the humor in this situation. I can’t seem to find any.
Then, we run.
When I wake on Sunday evening, there’s a palpable shift in the air. Despite what just happened in the sewers, voices downstairs are lighter, happier. There’s even something brighter about the moonlight pouring onto the crooked floorboards.
My eyes sting and blur. I blink rapidly, clear my throat, and hurry to stand. As I gather my toiletries—gifted to me by my new housemates—I catch sight of the city on the other side of that grimy window. The sun is a deep orange hue, and the horizon looks as if it’s bleeding.
At this thought, my gums begin to throb. I avert my gaze from the sunset and hurry on. Drew is just coming out of the bathroom as I reach the end of the hall. Steam billows all around him. He’s only wearing a towel, knotted loosely at his narrow waist.
My first instinct is to stand there and take a good, long look. My second instinct—which is the one I go with—is to push past him, mumble something about needing to use the bathroom, and hurriedly close the door in Drew’s face.
A moment later, his voice drifts through the wood. “Hey, Nina is going shopping tonight, and I said I’d go with her. Want to come?”
Is the attraction entirely in my head? Or is it just that easy for him to pretend it’s not there? Feeling reckless, irritable, and maybe a bit sexually frustrated, I quickly strip my clothes off. I snatch up my towel and hold it against my front, leaving bare skin along my hips and thighs visible. Then, I open the door.
“Sure, that sounds great,” I say sweetly, letting the towel drop just a little more. Drew’s bright eyes drop, and whatever he’d been about to say, he forgets it. Silence hovers around us. Drew audibly swallows, and still, he doesn’t drag his gaze back to mine. Trying not to smile, I close the door again, this time in his dazed face.