by Michele Hauf
Well, if he thought to string her along until then, and then ask for the stake, she had another story line for him to read.
Surprised he didn’t jump to a roof, Lark followed him at a distance through the thirteenth quarter and eventually they landed in an industrial neighborhood in the fourteenth.
Very near the ring road nestled a quiet neighborhood that looked like a scene out of a Tim Burton movie, dark and brooding, as gothic as could be. She guessed he was leading her to his home. That would put her opponent to the advantage come midnight, but she welcomed the challenge.
Had he prepared for her? Set traps to ensnare the hunter?
“Bring it,” she muttered, and strode through an open wrought-iron gate set in a brick fence.
The vampire led her toward a narrow mansion tucked between other limestone mansions, which might have been built during the 1700s, and edged by high, fragrant hedgerows and a crumbling brick fence. He walked through the front door—painted black with a stained-glass inset depicting a white rose—leaving it open behind him.
Lark marveled that the overgrown vines and plants spilling across the small front courtyard could be nightshade or wolfsbane or some other wildly macabre plant. With what else would a vampire choose to landscape his dread lair of horrors? The leaves touched her boot toes, and she was cautious only until she realized how ridiculous her thoughts had become.
Crushing a white bloom into the cobblestoned walk, she strode up the crumbling steps to stand before the open doorway. She’d never been inside a vampire’s home, and she paused at the threshold. No invitation was necessary for her, a mortal, unless he’d had it warded.
She tested the air before her but was not repulsed, nor did she sense an invisible barrier. She expected a trap, and had been trained to foresee the unexpected. Should a vampire claim a hunter kill, especially a knight of the Order, his fellow vampires would revere him.
Just as you are revered by the knights for your tally? Seventy-one lives destroyed in half a year’s time.
Was that really something to be proud of?
Of course not. Pride was not in her lexicon. Nor could she claim heroics, such as racing into a burning building. She’d even caved and staked her own husband, for Christ’s sake. That made her less than human, and closer to the creatures she stalked.
Lark swallowed and tested the threshold with a boot toe.
You go inside, and forget what the Order taught you, you break every rule Todd had and become something he was not.
“Free,” she whispered, not knowing why that word came to her, but also feeling it in her heart as truth.
Domingos appeared before her and gave her a wondering look—the Mad Hatter sizing up Alice’s moxie—and offered his hand. The edge of that hand was scarred with what looked like a burn patient’s skin. She’d not noticed that before. Had he been out in the sun recently?
Sliding her palm over his and tracing a finger along the scarred skin, she noted that it felt fragile, almost papery. He bent to kiss her hand and then tugged her inside and slammed the door shut.
“Frightened?” he asked as he walked her down the dark hallway toward a room lit by a low-watt lamp.
Lark checked her nerves and kept her calm. “I told you I’m only frightened by falling.”
“You’ve fallen into la maison du vampire,” he teased.
“I entered freely and of my own will.”
Oh, Lark. Did you really just quote Dracula?
She’d read the book in high school and had identified with Renfield for reasons beyond her ken. Lucy and Mina had seemed too flighty and easily led by the menfolk.
Domingos’s chuckle unhinged the first of her nerves. It was so bellowing and deep and shameless. And yet its masculine chord strummed at her innate desire for protection by someone bigger, stronger and male. And curiosity got the better of her as she followed the vampire deeper into Wonderland.
She strolled the gray shadows of the hallway, through the kitchen, where she was surprised to see it looked normal. Gray granite countertops boasted a mica gleam, and black leather bar stools queued neatly before the counter. In the living room, where one wall was completely windows shielded by heavy maroon damask draperies, she ran her fingers along the back of the leather sofa, noting the creases from wear and age.
The furniture was comfortable, the bookshelf filled with dusty hardcovers boasting gilded titles. A small television housed within a laminated vanity screamed 1950s, and assorted rugs and pillows completed the homey look. A cushy, thick rug lay beneath her feet. Were she shoeless, she could sink her toes into it.
Dragging her gaze from the rug, Lark decided there was no sign that a musician lived here, for she’d expect sheet music, a music stand and perhaps an instrument in a case. Nor was there any sign a vampire held residence, save the drapes drawn before the windows. No coffin? A literary trope, she knew, but it felt as though something was missing.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“It’s so...”
“Normal? You expected the Mad Hatter’s tea party?”
She shrugged. “Actually, yes.”
“Well, then, welcome, Alice. Won’t you have some tea? Sorry, I’m out of Earl Grey, but I could do with a spot of the chap’s blood.”
She flashed him a wary glance, and he countered with a jesting smirk.
“Sorry,” she replied, “that was, just... Sorry.”
“Don’t do that, Lark. You never apologize. It’s not in your nature to appease others. I like your honesty. If you think me mad, then say so.”
“I’m not sure what I think of you. I’ve been told you are insane, and have seen an example of what I suspect insanity might look like, and yet you’re also very clear and lucid at times.”
“At times are the key words in that statement. I am much more lucid around you, I’ve noticed.” He brazenly took in her attire from head to toe. “Do you wonder why that is?”
“No,” she said quickly, because it felt too intimate to agree.
“Go ahead and look around. I know how women like to snoop. And a hunter in a vampire’s home? You’ve hit the mother lode.”
“I could say the same about you. A vampire who has lured an Order knight into his lair. Will your vampire buddies cheer you on when you bring them my head?”
“I don’t kill mortals,” he said. “That’s abominable.”
“Even a hunter?”
He shrugged. “Never a pretty one.”
Domingos slid off the dark jacket he wore and tossed it across the back of the couch. Beneath, a black shirt was unbuttoned to reveal taut abs, and at the waist above his leather pants the shadow of dark hairs.
So normal, Lark again thought. Yet he only ever seemed to manage the one button. Weird. And...sexy.
“The woman I hire to clean is short,” he noted, unaware that her eyes had fixed on his abs. “She never can dust higher than the tops of the pictures.”
“Huh? Oh.” Forcing her gaze from the hard landscape of his tight muscles, Lark looked about and did indeed notice the dust that sat heavily on a picture frame, but only the top part. And then she noticed the decorations on the far wall. “Seriously?”
She strolled over to inspect the wall that could only be labeled a mini arsenal. A Kalashnikov, and a few pistols, and a melting stove where she examined silver bullets.
“This is my workshop-slash-living room,” he explained.
Tapping a silver bullet, she recalled her lessons on weaponry and defense. “You know the trajectory on silver bullets is piss-poor,” she commented. “They’re too soft.”
“You use them.”
“That we do, but only to dissuade.”
“I add an ash-wood core. Firms up the design.”
“Impressive. So you have much slaying to do?”
“I do have more than half a pack left to dispose.”
She lifted her chin to meet him directly in the eye. “I understand.”
“You do.” She followed his glance to a dusty clock on the wall near a machine gun: eleven forty-five. He leaned against the wall, crossed an ankle over the other and watched her survey the rest of the room. “We are more alike than you care to admit.”
“We both want to destroy that which brought irrevocable damage to our lives. I can agree we are alike in that respect,” she offered, gliding her fingers over a brass sculpture of a skull riddled with Celtic ribbons. Appropriately gothic, but she suspected it was more for looks than something he actually admired.
“I admire you,” he said.
Letting her fingers fall from the skull, Lark bowed her head, unwilling to meet his gaze. She did not deserve his admiration, nor did she want it.
“You have it,” he said, as if reading her thoughts. “Why do you punish yourself for something you could not prevent?”
“I don’t understand.”
“I get the need for revenge. But what I don’t get is why you put yourself at the bottom, the one who must pay for everyone else’s sins. Unworthy of standing your own ground, being your own person.”
“You don’t know me, vampire.”
He sighed and nodded. “Not as much as I’d like to.” Again he glanced at the clock. “Soon enough, eh? Come with me. This is not where I feel most comfortable. If I’m to die...”
Domingos strolled out of the room and Lark mocked his parting words. He didn’t expect to die tonight. Who was putting himself at the bottom now? He mocked her by toying with the bargain, their agreement to trust.
She followed him into a long, empty room framed on one end by a massive paned window that was curved along the top and fitted with a circle window, divided by six panes around the circumference. No color in the glass, but the beveled edge of each pane caught the moonlight as if lined with diamonds.
The moon was nearing fullness, and its silver shine bathed the vast floor with paned shadows. Domingos shrugged off his shirt, tossing it aside, and stood before the window, his back to it. Preparing for his death?
Nope. Just putting on an elaborate show, for reasons that she could only guess were explained through madness.
“I like to think the moonlight softens the pain,” he said.
Lark walked carefully toward the window, around behind him. She gasped at the sight of his back. The skin was wrinkled and tormented, as on his hands, yet looked fragile and paper-thin, as if to touch it would flake it away.
She wanted to touch it but knew the move would be too bold, and part of her was afraid. Yes, afraid, not of the creature, but of the pain she might cause him, and of the pain she didn’t want to connect with again. It would be worse than falling, because this fall would plunge her into her own pain.
“It’s from UV lights,” he said quietly. As he spoke the moon flashed silver in his hematite hair. “The wolves kept them on most of the time. My little cell had six light fixtures in it. They were caged with fine mesh so I couldn’t break the bulbs, though I did try. Difficult to hide from so much light.”
Lark caught a swallow at the back of her throat and splayed her palm before the horrible sight, but still did not touch. To do so would connect her to all things past. “Just your back?”
“Backs of my arms, hands and legs.”
Yes, she saw it on his arms now.
“I used to cower under the lights, trying to coil my body into as small a target as possible, protecting my belly and face. They’d stripped me to my skivvies, so I had to choose something to protect and the rest of me to sacrifice.”
The mind concocts the worst about torture, and Lark had gone beyond worst and into chaos imagining the things her husband might have experienced during his year and a day of captivity.
And right now her mind was kicking her for passing over the vampire’s threshold, and at the same time, shoving her toward the question. The question she’d always and never wanted answered.
What rabbit hole had she fallen into? This was not Lark, who ruthlessly staked vampires. This was...Lisa Cooper. The woman who had survived a year and a day in a madness of her own.
It’s a ploy! He’s trying to get under your skin, connect with your soft, forgiving side. A side you’ve buried. Don’t let him do it.
Yet he’d not lied to her since she’d met him, so why suspect a trick now?
“Tell me about it?” Heavy exhales hushed quickly from her mouth. “I need to know,” Lisa said without regard for Lark’s inner warnings.
“Because of your husband?” He tilted his head to look over his shoulder at her, but he did not meet her eyes. Instead he continued to bathe in the moonlight’s silver glow.
She nodded, fighting desperately to contain tears. She would not cry. She could not. Tears had stained every inch of her apartment floor. Now she walked upon her pain daily, yet would she ever be able to trample it to oblivion?
Domingos stepped away, leaving her palms to cool, and her wishing she had dared touch him, to offer some solace, or maybe just feel another person’s pain. He wandered to the center of the room where the moonlight barely lit the dull hardwood floor and squatted, wrapping his arms about his shoulders in a position of desolation.
“They strip away your soul,” he said quietly.
Lark sucked in her breath and closed her eyes. Stop him before he opens wide the wound on your heart.
It’s already open. Tearing it wider can’t do much worse, can it?
“It seems so effortless really. To reduce a man to madness.” His soft chuckle rippled across her heart, then clenched the aching muscle as if with a lasso of barbed wire. “They take away your clothes, your comforts, your means to identity. Naked. Alone. Shivering. You have nothing to anchor yourself to. No life raft.
“The pain of a weapon and the excruciating hunger for blood becomes your breath. The UV lights that burned into my skin? My air.”
Lark gasped, fighting the need to run out of the room. She trembled. Her skin felt warmer, uncomfortable. His experience could be similar to Todd’s. She’d never guessed they would strip him bare and humiliate him with such horrors.
“You become a child,” Domingos said softly. “And all that child desires is reassurance.”
He began to rock back and forth. A child who had learned to comfort himself because of the evils inflicted upon him.
She looked away. Had Todd done much the same? Had he been left alone in a small room after hours of torture, with no one to hold and comfort him?
“To be held...” His words cut through her wire-wrapped heart. “A foolish wish,” he said, his voice sharpening. “You will never have it. You will be denied! But it is what keeps that small spark glowing deep within. A minute flash that prays for release. Freedom.”
Freedom. That was what she’d felt when stepping across his threshold. How odd. They both wanted the same thing. And yet she hadn’t identified what her freedom looked and felt like.
Lark stepped forward softly, wanting to touch him, but sensing he was not finished speaking. And for a split second he became her husband, a man she had dreamed about holding to chase away the nightmare. But truthfully, she had not the strength then, and might have let him down if she had been allowed the contact.
“My spark has gone out.” He chuckled again. “Of course, you know that. Just look at my eyes. One is completely lacking in light.”
“There’s something in your eyes,” she offered. “Don’t give up, Domingos.”
“Madness is not so pretty, but it is what keeps me alive. Had I not the mad revenge stalking my soul, I would have nothing to live for. Although...”
“Yes, what else? There must be more than revenge that keeps you going. Do you have hope? You can, yo
u know.”
Lifting his head, still facing away from her, he said clearly, “My hope is a pretty little hunter. She speaks to my soul. She taunts it with music and a promise of death, but in her kiss I taste desire and need, and know we are the same.”
He was right. She did desire him. Against her better judgment she desired this damned creature. But the need he tasted was so much darker. Yes, they were the same; she could not argue with that.
Coiled forward into himself, Domingos rocked, his head tucked against his knees. And she wanted to have been there. For her husband. And for Domingos. To wrap his child in her arms and make it all better.
Lark dropped to her knees and wrapped her arms about Domingos’s shoulders. He did not resist but continued to rock, which made it difficult for her to maintain hold. But she persisted.
He cried out. A shattering sound that reminded her of broken animals, such as birds with tattered wings. She hugged him tighter, knowing it must pain his tortured flesh, but not knowing how to release him—because she needed this connection.
He did not ask her to stop. Matching his slowing rhythm, she held on to him as she had never held on to a person before. His muscles flexed against her body and he shivered and moaned, but she did not relent. With him wrapped within her arms, she could keep him safe, above water. And he, unknowingly, lured her toward a secret dark safety she knew would never harm her.
It was what he needed. It was what she could give him. And in turn, she took.
Chapter 10
An hour after she’d coiled Domingos into an embrace, Lark realized they lay on the floor, entangled in a loose clasp. And he slept.
From where she lay, she could see into the living room and the far wall where the weapons hung. The clock hands had moved beyond midnight.
Her leg tingled with sleep, and she tried to stretch it out with a twist of her foot. Domingos startled, yet she sensed his disorientation, so she carefully disentangled her arms from his and sat up.
