Dark Desires_A Novel of the Dark Ones

by Aja James

  Sōsuke glared at him.

  The vampire subtly scented the air in a deep inhale.

  “Leukemia, late stage. You have what, a few weeks? A few days? Certainly not months and years.”

  So his blood did stink of disease, Sōsuke thought bitterly.

  “If you know, then why are you wasting my time?”

  Instead of answering, the vampire asked a question in turn.

  “What do you want with my little Ryu?”

  His little Ryu? Sōsuke wondered just what sort of relationship they had.

  “I don’t care about him,” Sōsuke answered, “I don’t even know who he is. I just know Ava Monroe is with him, and she is the one I want.”

  “Ah.” The vampire went back to patiently regarding the cherry tree as if it held the answers to the universe.

  What did that mean? Sōsuke was tired of—

  “Do you love her, Doctor?” the vampire asked suddenly without looking at him.

  “Who? Ava?” Sōsuke shrugged. Though there seemed to be no relevance in the vampire’s question, he was bored enough to answer seriously.

  “I have the utmost admiration for her formidable mind. Physically, she’s not my type,” he liked his women slim and elegant like the deceased Nanao, such a waste, “but she has certain charms to recommend her.”

  “Who is she to Ryu?”

  Sōsuke huffed in exasperation. Why did any of this matter?

  “I gather they are ‘sweethearts,’ according to Ava’s mother anyway. I didn’t even know Ava was dating anyone. She’s only been here a couple of weeks.”

  “Time is irrelevant where love is concerned,” the vampire said.

  Oh for God’s sake, Sōsuke thought, don’t tell me the bloodsucker is a romantic.

  The vampire’s lips tipped in a half-smile as if he heard Sōsuke’s thoughts.

  “Worry not, impatient human,” he said, “the sun is almost setting. Ryu will come by nightfall.”

  Sōsuke looked into the horizon beyond the courtyard. Dusk was coloring the sky in shades of orange, red and purple. Though it was fading, the last burst of sunlight was blinding in its brilliance. The vampire was looking directly into it, his black eyes dancing with flames.

  The raw look of anticipation and longing on the vampire’s face made even Sōsuke feel a pang in the region of his chest.

  Sōsuke realized that throughout the day since the vampire had seemingly materialized out of thin air, he had waited under the cherry tree with Sōsuke. And despite it being a regular day of the week, there had been no tourists coming to visit the shrine. Everything had been silent with portent, as if the vampire had prepared the place in advance for very specific guests.

  Didn’t vampires sleep during the daytime? Sōsuke had never met with any other of Medusa’s minions while there was sunlight. They reminded him of nocturnal predators.

  But the ninja had stayed alert all this time, alternately studying the cherry tree and looking intently into the horizon.

  Who was Ryu Takamura to him, Sōsuke reluctantly wondered, that he would wear such a naked look of yearning in unguarded moments?

  Chapter Fifteen

  Sengoku period, 15th century Edo.

  The moon was a mere sliver of a crescent that night, providing almost no illumination.

  It was a perfect night for completing his mission in the rear wing of Edo castle that faced the woods for a quick entry and escape.

  Ryu threw his kyoketsu-shoge, climbing chain with double-edged blade, over the lowest parapet, the long, extended rope slithering after the hook like a snake, and scaled the outer walls of the castle silently like the shadow he was trained to be.

  But he didn’t flip himself onto the parapet when he gained that height. Instead, he threw his chain out again and again, and moved along the castle walls horizontally on all fours like a spider, using both the chain and his self-fashioned hand claws as leverage.

  When he was close to his destination, he entered the castle through a tall, narrow opening, so stealthily, he passed by the standing guard mere inches away without so much as a whisper or breeze.

  The chambers belonging to Misaki Handa resided down the long hallway to the right. One of those rooms held the papers Ryu was sent here to find and destroy. In so doing, Ryu gathered that both the rebellion and Misaki’s part in it would be erased.

  He pushed open a fusuma just narrowly enough to slip inside. His eyes had long adjusted to the dark and were now searching the small inner chamber efficiently for where the papers might be kept. A deep, ornate chest in one corner seemed like a good place to start looking.

  But as Ryu moved toward it, a candle was lit in the next room, the soft glow filtering through the shoji screens that separated the two chambers.

  “It is you,” a woman’s voice said on a gasp.

  Misaki’s voice.

  His mother’s voice. That Ryu hadn’t heard in ten years.

  “Why have you come?”

  At first Ryu thought she was speaking to him, for there were no sounds to indicate that there was another person in her bed chamber with her.

  But then he noticed that Misaki’s shadow moved and extended when she had not. Ryu poked two holes in one of the shoji screens outside of the candlelight’s range and looked into Misaki’s room.

  The shadow shifted into the form of a man, clad in loose black robes like Ryu. But his long dark hair was down around his shoulders and back, whereas Ryu’s hair was wrapped in a concealing scarf, likewise for the lower half of his face.

  The man turned slightly so that his profile could be seen.

  It was the Master. And he was smiling at Misaki indulgently, sitting across from her.

  “Have you not longed for me, koishii,” the Master stated rather than asked. “Are we not overdue for a reunion?”

  Misaki was silent for a long time, and while she contemplated her visitor, Ryu spied through the shoji screen at the two of them, completely fixated, somehow knowing that whatever he was witnessing was more important than his mission at the moment.

  “You have not aged in all this time,” she finally said, her tone filled both with wonderment and bitterness.

  “Unlike you,” the Master replied rather cruelly.

  “Have you come here to taunt me with your beauty then?” she spat out, her voice vibrating with venom.

  “Does it matter why I have come?” the Master said, “is it not enough that I am here?”

  Misaki turned fully to face him, showing enough of her visage in the candlelight that Ryu sucked in a breath.

  There was such a look of desperate longing on her face. Despite the Master’s words, she didn’t seem much older than Ryu remembered. Her skin seemed less supple, less glowing but it remained unlined. She was still the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

  “Why did you wait so long?” she asked, her voice vibrating with emotion, “you didn’t even come for—”

  “Why should I?” the Master interrupted. “You are not the first to make such claims. Nor the only one to send unwanted bastards to my door.”

  “He is yours!” she insisted, a strange, almost manic light glowing in her eyes, “yours and mine!”

  The Master simply regarded her silently, a careless tilt on his lips.

  Ryu’s heart pounded so harshly in his chest, he thought they must be able to hear it in the silence that descended.

  Misaki thought his father was the Master? But how was that even possible? The Master looked not much older than Ryu. True, his looks hadn’t changed as long as Ryu had known him, but he must have been little more than a boy when Misaki met him before Ryu was born. Ryu couldn’t make any sense of it.

  “Does it matter that much to you?” the Master said quietly, a slight note of curiosity in his tone.

  Misaki moved closer to him while he remained still, watching her come to him with mild disinterest.

  She was near enough to touch him now, on her knees before him. Her hand reached out to stroke his face, gen
tly smoothing the hair back behind his ear so she could see more of him.

  “I have always loved you,” she whispered, “I kept him because he was part of you, and I loathed him because he was part of me.”

  The Master took her hand from his face and held it.

  “You don’t know what love means,” he said, almost gently, as if he were speaking to a creature who did not, could not, understand.

  “Do you?” she threw back off-handedly, her eyes flaring with anger.

  He was silent for a time, as if seriously considering her question.

  “I have never claimed to know it,” he finally said. And then devastatingly, “With you.”

  “Why have you come?” she asked again, her expression forlorn and resigned.

  He pulled her slowly into his lap, as if allowing her time to escape him. When she made no protest, he enfolded her in his arms.

  “I have come to end your pain, koishii,” he said tenderly, “you have suffered all your life, have you not?”

  She nodded as if in a trance, staring back at him unblinkingly.

  “Only with you have I ever known pleasure,” she said.

  “Then you shall have it again,” he murmured, lowering his face to her throat.

  “Now.”

  The Master’s long hair concealed most of his face as he bent over Misaki’s neck. Ryu could only see her gasp suddenly, her body arching in the Master’s arms, her cheeks flushed, her eyes languid. She appeared to be in the throes of euphoria as the Master continued to bury his face in her neck. She clung to his shoulders, trying to bring him closer.

  For a long time, neither of them moved, not a sound was made, except for occasional moans from Misaki. Slowly, the flush on her face began to fade, though she seemed no less impassioned than before. Her skin took on a paleness that made her look more like a ghost than a flesh and blood woman. Her eyelids slid closed and her hands at his shoulders loosened.

  Ryu frowned.

  What was happening? They were not copulating, they were not even moving. And yet, Misaki looked like she was getting increasingly tired, worn out, until she was all but unconscious in the Master’s arms.

  Suddenly, she exhaled so long and deep her whole body seemed to deflate.

  The Master immediately released her, and she crumpled to the floor like a paper doll, her head angled back so that Ryu saw her colorless face and her open, unseeing eyes.

  She was dead.

  He’d killed her.

  Ryu raised wide, horrified eyes to the Master’s face.

  He was staring back, as if he knew Ryu had been there all along. His lips were wet with blood, a trickle of it trailing down his chin. He wiped a hand across his mouth casually. And smiled.

  Revealing two dagger-like fangs.

  Ryu knew he was seeing not a human male but a lethal predator. Before he could make a move, the Master’s voice sounded in his head.

  Finish your mission, Ryu. Destroy the papers as you set out to do. Then come for me when you’re ready. I will be waiting under the cherry tree.

  And then the Master dissolved like air in the blink of an eye, though Ryu saw a black shadow move across the floor toward him. As it passed through the shoji screen Ryu sat behind, he felt an icy chill breeze by, and then it was gone.

  As if in a trance, Ryu stood and pushed aside the partition, entering Misaki’s chamber on numbed legs and feet. He knelt beside her body but did not touch her.

  Her long, white neck was fully exposed in her contorted position on the floor. There were two puncture wounds in her skin, no other mark on her. Her eyes remained open. Staring blankly at nothing.

  Somehow Ryu knew that he was looking at a shell of his mother. She wasn’t just robbed of life, her corpse seemed completely hollow.

  Just like the other concubines the villagers whispered about.

  He knelt there for some time, his mind and emotions a complete blank. There were no tears for the woman who birthed him, used him and abandoned him.

  But he would avenge her death.

  *** *** *** ***

  No matter how hard Ava pleaded, Ryu refused to bring her with him wherever he and his comrades were going.

  She tried to convince Inanna and Gabriel as well, but they merely shook their heads, deferring to Ryu to make the call.

  It was frustrating not to be able to make her own decisions. But she knew that Ryu’s decision to leave her behind at the safe house was for her own good. Ava did not think for a second that she would be of any use against shadow assassins and the like. Worse, she could become a liability just like she’d been when he rescued her from the labs.

  She just didn’t want to be separated from him. Wherever he was going, whatever he intended to do, she knew it would be extremely dangerous, if the last few days were any indication.

  It was nonsensical, but she felt as if as long as she could keep an eye on him, he’d stay safe and whole.

  “It shouldn’t take us long,” Inanna said when she noticed Ava’s worried look.

  Ryu, on the other hand, hadn’t spoken to her directly since his friends arrived. For the last few minutes, he’d been strapping all kinds of weapons to his person, outfitted again in form-fitting black leather.

  Ava moved to stand before him, trying to gain his attention, but he simply maneuvered around her, busying himself with securing the perimeter and locking down the safe house.

  She chased him to the door as he was leaving and blocked his exit just as Inanna and Gabriel slipped out before him.

  “When will you be back?”

  He wouldn’t look at her. Instead, his eyes skittered to the left and focused on the door latch.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Will you be back?” she asked, trying to tamp down the panic that was steadily building in her blood.

  He didn’t answer.

  “You’re going to do something dangerous aren’t you? You’re going after the bad guys.”

  That signature half-smile tilted his lips. But still he didn’t look at her.

  “How do you know I’m not the bad guy?”

  “You’re not,” Ava said with full conviction. “Please promise me you’ll come back.”

  “Don’t worry,” he said, his tone careless, “you’ll be well taken care of regardless. I’ve already made plans. You’ll be safe.”

  Frustration overrode Ava’s panic. With both hands, she pushed him on the chest as hard as she could.

  He didn’t budge, but he did look at her finally in surprise.

  “I want you to be back not to take care of me, but because I want you,” she told him heatedly. “And don’t even think about making some snarky remark about how it’s just your body I want. I love you.”

  She punctuated her words by thumping her fist on the center of his chest, where his heart beat beneath his breastbone.

  “I don’t want you to be hurt again,” she said, her eyes welling with tears. “Why can’t you take me with you? If you get injured, at least I’ll be on hand to give you blood.”

  Ryu inhaled and closed his eyes. A muscle ticked in his clenched jaw.

  Ava thought she’d exasperated him again with her persistence, but suddenly he had her crushed in his arms in a tight hug.

  It was only for an instant, but she was warmed by his heat in every molecule of her being.

  Before she could react, he’d dissolved into a black shadow that moved through her and through the seams of the door.

  He was gone.

  *** *** *** ***

  It took an hour to get from the center of the city to their destination on the outskirts of Tokyo. Ryu couldn’t ride the Kawasaki at top speed since Inanna and Gabriel followed him in their rental car. The entire way he ground his back molars with impatience.

  He wanted to finish this so he could return to Ava as soon as possible.

  Even though he didn’t belong with her. Even though he didn’t deserve her.

  At least he could protect her from harm. He didn’t trus
t anyone else with her safety.

  They parked at the foot of the small mountain just as night fell. Ryu hesitated only momentarily before leading the way up the steep steps. As they neared the top, all three drew their weapons, Inanna her chained whip, Gabriel his steel rod that extended into a double-pointed spear, Ryu his ninjaken.

  Ryu had briefed them about the shadow assassins he’d dispatched as they departed the safe house. They did not anticipate a friendly welcome when they came upon the shrine.

  Dark clouds hid a wan moon and fading stars. Though it was only a couple of hours after sundown, the sky was already an inky black. The good news was that there wasn’t enough light to cast shadows.

  The bad news was that everything was shadow.

  Ryu crested the top of the hill first, advancing silently into the courtyard, the blackened blade and handle of his sword an extension of his body. Inanna and Gabriel protected his back on each side, scanning the compound for the slightest movements and sounds.

  Ryu could feel him, the Master, even though he couldn’t see him. The very air vibrated with power and portent.

  And then he made himself known, taking corporeal form underneath the cherry tree, whose few remaining blossoms glowed red in the heavy night.

  “You’ve returned,” the Master said quietly, drawing their attention, but he looked only at Ryu.

  “Have you come to take up your challenge?”

  He looked exactly the same as the last time Ryu had seen him several hundred years ago. Long dark hair a straight cascade down his back, pale, aristocratic face that was neither oriental nor Caucasian, but something more exotic, timeless in its masculine beauty.

  The same black, double-lidded eyes so similar to Ryu’s own. The difference was that they were opaque and fathomless like bottomless wells.

  Ryu drew closer as Inanna and Gabriel spread out. They all sensed that something was off. Although only the Master made an appearance, they could feel the presence of others on the periphery.

  “After you answer my questions,” Ryu said without inflection, as if they were discussing the weather, not contemplating a duel to the death.

  A sardonic smile tipped the Master’s lips.