Dark Desires_A Novel of the Dark Ones

by Aja James

  “You may ask them if you please. But be warned that you may not like my reply.”

  “Who is Medusa?” Ryu asked, getting straight to the point.

  The Master shrugged without moving a muscle.

  “An old acquaintance.”

  “Why are you in league with her?”

  “Why not.”

  Ryu narrowed his eyes. At this rate, he was wasting his breath asking questions. He considered skipping to the death match instead.

  As if hearing his thoughts, the Master said, “Didn’t you bring your friends here to ask a different question? Don’t you want to know about the vase?”

  Ryu held out a hand to signal for Inanna to stop her approach. She had heard the Master’s words and was involuntarily moving closer.

  Ryu waited for the Master to continue. He didn’t ask what he knew was burning on Inanna’s tongue—had the Master seen her father? Did he know where he was held? Was he still alive?

  “He stayed here one night,” the Master mentioned casually, as if taking a slow stroll down memory lane. “The one you are looking for.” His eyes slid toward Inanna for a moment before returning to Ryu.

  “You took the vase he used down the mountain yourself, Ryu, to exchange for a new one.”

  Ryu’s eyes flickered in remembrance.

  “Before daylight, he was taken away again.”

  “Where?” Inanna couldn’t help but demand.

  Ryu shifted closer to her because she was so transfixed on the Master’s words, her guard was down.

  The Master slid his gaze over her again, eyeing Ryu’s movements unblinkingly.

  “By the sea,” he answered. “In an old light tower not far from here.”

  “Why are you telling us?” she asked, even as her face shone with naked hope. “Why should we believe you?”

  The Master shrugged again and looked up at the cherry tree.

  “Believe me or not, it’s not my concern. You asked and I answered what I know.”

  He looked back at them, his expression blank.

  “You may not like what you find, though, so brace yourself, Light-Bringer.”

  Ryu, Inanna and Gabriel all paused at the Master’s words. He knew who Inanna was. There was only a handful of people who knew of the Dark Prophesies.

  But then the Master turned to Ryu, his eyes glinting.

  “My turn to ask a question,” he said quietly. “Will you finish your mission, Assassin, or will you choose to protect your weakness?”

  The hairs on the back of Ryu’s neck prickled with foreboding. Did he mean—

  “Yes,” the Master replied as if he heard the question. “You can choose to fight me now and have your vengeance, or you can run home to your human female who is about to receive an unexpected visitor as we speak.”

  That was when Ryu sensed them, the shadows that swept across the courtyard to surround him and his comrades.

  “Of course,” the Master said off-handedly, “you’ll have to overcome a few obstacles before you can head down the mountain again.”

  Ryu, Inanna and Gabriel drew together back to back and faced at least a dozen foes.

  Show me what you’ve learned, the Master’s voice echoed in Ryu’s head. Show me the Assassin you’ve become.

  “You must anticipate their moves,” Ryu told his comrades, his low voice grim. “Aim for where they will be, not where they are.”

  And with those brief instructions, the bloodbath began.

  *** *** *** ***

  It was only a second or two after Ava spotted the blinking red security lights before the door to the hidden chamber slid open.

  She didn’t have anywhere to hide or retreat as black shadows rolled into the room like a dense fog, solidifying into two males clothed entirely in black with none of their features showing except their eyes. Opaque and unblinking. Rather like the eyes of Shinji and Tōshirō the night of the explosion.

  Well, shit, Ava thought. And she without her nunchucks.

  But then a familiar face emerged as the door opened all the way.

  “Hello Ava, how have you been?” Sōsuke Matsumoto greeted as he stepped inside the chamber.

  “Surprised to see you here,” Ava answered, keeping all three visitors within her sights.

  Inwardly, she recalled Nanao’s last words to her warning her about Sōsuke. Well, now the danger had been confirmed. Her teammate was not the happy-go-lucky friendly scientist she thought he was.

  “Search the room,” Sōsuke told the shadows, and they transformed again into a dense black haze, sweeping across the floors, walls and ceilings.

  “What are you looking for?” Ava asked, though she would put her bet on the samples Ryu might have taken from the labs.

  Despite all the work she’d put into the research, she rather hoped they had been destroyed in the explosion. If what Ryu told her was true about vampires being mass produced in test tubes, her work couldn’t fall into the wrong hands.

  Sōsuke merely smiled at her, ignoring her question. He extended a hand, and Ava eyed it warily.

  Her phone. He was giving her back her phone. She took it without touching him.

  “Your mother called when this was in my possession,” Sōsuke said while the shadows continued to shift slowly along every inch of the room.

  “I thought you might be missing it. But I didn’t know where you were, so she enlightened me about your ‘sweetheart’ and it just so happens that I know someone who knows him and pointed me in the right direction.”

  Ava slipped the phone in her back pocket, not taking her eyes off Sōsuke.

  “How do you know these…” she trailed off, waving her hand at the black stains that slid along the furniture.

  “Shadow assassins?” Sōsuke supplied. “Through an acquaintance of mine,” he said carelessly, as if they were talking of harmless everyday folk.

  “Medusa?” Ava asked, trying to piece the puzzle together in her head.

  Sōsuke blinked. “You are well informed, Ava. Did this Ryu Takamura tell you about her?”

  “Who is she?” Ava persisted.

  It probably didn’t matter what she found out, because she doubted she’d be allowed to live to tell about it, but she’d rather focus on the mystery Ryu and his comrades were trying to solve than her highly probable, imminent demise.

  Sōsuke shrugged. “It doesn’t matter who she is, so much as what resources she has. Without her, we would never have advanced so far and so fast in our research.”

  “To mass produce vampires? For what purpose?”

  Sōsuke tilted his head a bit to regard her curiously.

  “Is that what you think?” He seemed to consider this. “I suppose it’s a possibility. If that’s her aim, I’m not privy to her reasons. But for me, it’s about finding the cure to all illness and injury with the healing factor.”

  His eyes alighted with intensity.

  “The cure for death.”

  Ava frowned as she unraveled his words.

  “You mean eternal youth. Eternal life?”

  “Eternal health,” Sōsuke added. “No one wants to live forever if he’s not whole and healthy. And, yes, young and full of energy.”

  “You don’t care that our research is being used for destructive purposes?”

  Sōsuke sighed, as if disappointed in her.

  “What do I care what other people do? That’s up to them. Who knows, maybe Medusa is lonely and wants some company. Vampires can’t have children, you know. At least, 99.9% of them can’t as far as I’m aware. Maybe she’s lived a long time and feels bored with the same old, same old. Who am I to stop her?”

  When Ava started to ask more, Sōsuke’s gaze shifted past her to the shadows that had reformed into men again

  “Ah, they’ve found it,” Sōsuke said with elation. “It’s a good thing the embryo wasn’t destroyed. The samples we could easily obtain more of, but the embryo was a miracle in of itself and hard, if not impossible, to replicate.”

  He looked a
t Ava with the same intellectual excitement he always did when they worked together and made great progress on their research.

  “Don’t worry, Ava, I will convince them to leave you alone. I need your help to produce the serum quickly, and I after that, I have a plan to keep you alive. After all, we need your brilliant mind to continue with the research. We’ll be partners.”

  Ava was speechless. He actually thought she would be happy to hear this. He actually thought he was doing her a favor, that she would be a willing participant in whatever schemes Medusa and her minions were concocting.

  She decided to play along. Her usual straightforwardness was not the best tact right now, she was certain.

  “What do we do now?” she asked, as if they were already partners in crime. “Where do we go?”

  “To the light tower,” Sōsuke said. “The shadows know the location. I’ve never been, but I was told there’s a secure lab at the base of it, and we’ll be in close proximity to the source of the Genesis sample. In case we need more than just the sperm. They’ve already set up all the equipment I asked for.”

  The shadow assassins had placed themselves on each side of Ava, ready to “assist” her if she didn’t cooperate.

  Not seeing much of a choice, Ava followed them out of the safe house and into an awaiting SUV. It was better to move on her own steam rather than be bound and gagged or something to that effect. She was sure they would resort to such measures or maybe knock her out and drag her if she didn’t go willingly.

  As she settled into the back seat, Sōsuke on one side, a shadow on the other, she felt her cell phone gauge into her backside.

  Too bad she didn’t even have Ryu’s number. But phones had GPS, right? Maybe she’d get lucky and the police or someone would be looking for her. She doubted it was much use, though, given what she’d seen thus far of what Medusa’s organization was capable of.

  She was on her own.

  Ava braced herself with a slow, deep breath. She wasn’t helpless. She had her science. Maybe she could figure out a way to help Ryu and his comrades win against their enemies. If she was expected to assist with the research, she might be in a position to destroy the embryo and other samples. They probably wouldn’t let her live after that, but at least she would have slowed them down.

  She just wished she could have told Ryu one last time that she loved him.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Go!” Gabriel shouted to Ryu, slashing through another shadow as he did so. “We’ll hold them off! Take care of Ava!”

  Ryu didn’t take the breath to respond, fighting with a single-minded determination through the hordes of shadow assassins that tried to entrap him in their black web.

  He had sustained heavy injuries already, and barely healed from ones on the night of the explosion, but his will and focus gave him strength to cut through his enemies. He didn’t care that the Master had disappeared. He didn’t worry for his comrades behind him.

  All he concentrated on was getting to Ava.

  He broke through the wall of shadows and sped down the mountain in leaps and bounds. Inanna and Gabriel kept the shadows from pursuing him, blocking their advance.

  Ryu reached his Kawasaki Ninja with one last leap and gunned the engine to life, swerving it with a screech of tires in the direction of the safe house, and streaked through the night like a black bullet.

  He took the most direct route, no matter the obstacles, driving into oncoming traffic, leaping over roofs and bridges, riding his motorcycle harder than ever before.

  He made it back to the safe house in half the time, but it was still too late. Even before he arrived, he knew that the security had been breached. He unsheathed his ninjaken and stalked around the perimeter, through the house itself and finally into the inner chamber.

  She was gone.

  And with a quick check, he knew that they had taken the embryo and samples as well.

  Ryu stood still, his chest heaving with adrenaline, his blood from multiple wounds dripping onto the tatami-covered floor. He willed himself to calmness so he could think, when what his instincts wanted him to do was to scream in fear and frustration.

  They’d taken her. His Ava.

  But that was better than finding her lifeless body on the floor.

  He focused on that thought. Yes, if they wanted her dead, they would have slain her where she stood and not bothered with the disposal. They took her, so that must mean she was still alive.

  They must still need her for the research.

  Ryu’s wrist buzzed.

  “They have Ava and the samples,” he said directly, his voice rough with emotion and pain.

  “We’re done here,” Inanna said through the communication device. She sounded slightly out of breath as well. But apparently, shadow assassins, no matter how skilled, were no match for two of the best Akkadian warriors.

  “Where do you think they took her?”

  Ryu thought quickly.

  “The light house,” he answered, knowing that the Master wouldn’t have mentioned it without intending them to find it.

  “But which? There are many along the coast, are there not?”

  Ryu quickly tapped some keys and pulled up geolocation on the monitors. The Master had said it was close to the shrine. He tried to narrow down the options. There were still over ten possible locations.

  And then he saw the blinking red dot that indicated the location of Ava’s phone. It coincided with one of the light tower locations.

  What were the odds...

  Ryu went with his gut. He didn’t know how she got her phone back. He didn’t even know if she indeed had it or if it was someone else. But whoever had it had to have been involved with the explosion at the labs somehow, and therefore linked to Ava’s captors.

  He sent the coordinates to Inanna and Gabriel and got back out on his Kawasaki.

  He was in pretty bad shape physically, but he knew he still had a few hours of strength left.

  He just hoped it would be enough to save her.

  *** *** *** ***

  “You can set up there,” Sōsuke told Ava after ushering her into a windowless basement of some sort.

  She assumed that they were in the foundation of the light tower. It was still in the middle of the night, and there had been no lights to guide their way. Ava could barely see her hands in front of her as the shadows and Sōsuke escorted her from the SUV to the tower.

  Sōsuke’s words now reminded her of when she’d first joined the research team. He’d told her then in the same tone, friendly and full of anticipation of working together, where her corner of the labs would be.

  Ava looked at the long stainless steel table piled with lab equipment and decided that he must want her to get the machines unwrapped from their plastic covers, plugged in and started.

  “What are we trying to accomplish?” she asked her “partner.”

  She’d been using “we” every time she spoke, so that he would be lulled into thinking she was a willing participant, rather than a prisoner and potential hostage. Besides, she wanted him to tell her everything he knew so that she could figure out the best way to thwart him and his allies.

  “You said that you wanted to make a serum from the embryo’s stem cells,” she reminded him. “To do what with?”

  He gave her a sly sideways glance.

  “That’s mostly for me, partly for Medusa. She wants to turn humans into vampires with science, and I simply want eternal health and vitality, whatever form that may take.”

  Ava recalled his nosebleeds and paleness.

  “What blood disease do you have? Or is it autoimmune?”

  “Late stage leukemia,” Sōsuke answered casually, as if he wasn’t talking about a death sentence.

  “I’ve had it since a young age and gone through many treatments. It’s why I entered the field I’m in—to try to find a cure. The treatments held the cancer at bay but it’s accelerated in the past six months and there’s no stopping it this time. That’s
when GTI contacted me to join this project.”

  Ava listened intently but busied herself with setup. She didn’t want him to think she was hanging on his every word, but rather that she was merely curious and making small talk.

  Sōsuke scoffed as he paused in desterilizing the prep area and took on an expression of reminiscence.

  “At first, I thought she was crazy, talking about the healing factor in the genes of a special creature that she’d somehow discovered. But then she slit her wrist right in front of me, and like magic, the skin knitted back together in seconds.”

  Sōsuke shook his head. “I thought it was a trick. But then she gave the knife to me and told me to cut her anywhere I wanted, cut something else first to make sure it was real. I did it just to play along, but she healed herself again just like before. And the knife was indeed very sharp, because I’d accidentally cut my finger on it and I kept on bleeding long after she stopped, her skin as perfect as ever before.”

  “Is Evergreen connected to her?” Ava asked. She knew that Evergreen was from a male, given the DNA, but perhaps the male was related to Medusa in some way.

  “I don’t know,” Sōsuke answered. “I’ve always wondered about that.”

  Ava made a mental note to try to preserve a sample of Evergreen somehow so that Ryu and his comrades could find it. That was probably why he took it in the first place, along with the embryo and Genesis, rather than destroying them along with the rest of the lab, so that he could identify who the samples came from. Perhaps that would lead him to the elusive Medusa.

  “And Genesis?” Ava queried, making the question seem almost like an afterthought.

  “Oh that’s from the prisoner at the top of the tower, from what I understand,” Sōsuke said readily, “GTI wants us to be close to the source in case we want to take other samples in our work. And in case we can create more viable embryos.”

  Ava wondered who the prisoner could be. Poor soul. Was he kept there just for the experiments, like a lab animal in a cage?

  “How do you plan to test whether or not the serum works? It’s still just a theory that the stem cells could adapt to be compatible with human cells while still retaining the healing factor.”