Beautiful Danger

by Michele Hauf

  By playing the composition he’d designed in his head for the first time, he’d cemented his need for music in his life once again. And Lark’s approval, her loving acceptance of his art, had only burnished that deeper into his soul.

  She’d said she loved him. Had it been a reaction spurred on by the emotional moment?

  Probably. He wouldn’t ask her about it. If she’d meant it, she would bring it up again.

  “I have to run home,” she said, pausing in the kitchen doorway. Her hair was pulled back into the sleek ponytail he associated with her hunter persona, and the dark, fitted clothing further detailed that kick-ass mode.

  “I thought we agreed you wouldn’t return home.”

  “I know, but I need to claim a few things.”

  “Let me go. I’ll get your violin and stakes and—”

  “No, I, uh...” She waved her cell phone as a means of explanation, before shoving it into her pants pocket. “It’s not something you can pick up for me. Just a, uh...project I need to deal with concerning the Order. I’ll be back soon. Promise.”

  She blew him a kiss and left him waiting for a real kiss, that connection they seemed to achieve so easily. But no, she’d been reserved, closed off for some reason.

  And Domingos wanted to know why, so he grabbed his goggles, pulled on his coat and gloves and set out after the hunter.

  What he witnessed half an hour later brought the bile to his throat.

  Crouched upon a rooftop, the sky still gray after all the rain they’d had, yet the ceramic tiles dry in most spots, Domingos watched as the bald vampire, sporting a centipede of silver hoops along the outer cartilage of both ears, shoved a mortal woman behind a garbage bin and slapped her face, demanding her silence.

  This had been the real reason for Lark’s sudden need to leave, and not allow him to come along to protect her. The project? She’d gotten a call from the Order to dispatch a vampire.

  The urge to leap down and take out the vampire for his cruelty toward the mortal woman stung in Domingos’s veins, but to do so would put him next to Lark and he didn’t want to reveal that he’d followed her.

  Quickly, she approached the vampire, titanium stake ready to plunge into his back. She grabbed the vampire, spun him about and landed a high knee kick in the gut, setting him back against the wall. Without pause, she slammed the stake against his chest.

  The vampire grunted at the painful intrusion. The mortal woman screamed and ran off. And Domingos clutched his chest, feeling as if the stake had just cut through flesh, bone and muscle.

  A murky plume of vampire ash dusted the air about Lark as if hell had just coughed up darkness. She shook off the ash from her arms, holstered the stake and, without a glance skyward, took off down the alleyway. Tugging out her cell phone, she must be calling in the kill.

  “Number seventy-two,” he muttered.

  Domingos lay back on the roof, eyes closed behind the goggle glass. He winced at the tightening in his chest. She had been clean, efficient, like a machine.

  Would she be so when she ultimately staked him?

  * * *

  The knock on her front door was followed by Domingos announcing, “It’s me, Lark.”

  Surprised he hadn’t come up the back way, and curious as to why he was here, Lark opened the door, and her stalker vampire wandered inside.

  He walked right past her.

  Not even a kiss? A curious beginning to his house call.

  He strolled through her living room, hands in his pockets, and veered away from the windows, which were shielded by sheer white fabric and only allowed muted sunlight inside.

  “I told you I’d be back after I took care of some—”

  “You staked him without a care,” Domingos said.

  Staked—ah. So he’d followed her. She hadn’t been as careful as she’d thought. Hadn’t expected him to follow her. Her mind hadn’t been in the right place, seeking only to secure a kill to prove to the Order she was still a damn good hunter.

  “It’s my job,” she said, not wanting to get into an argument about it when she was already feeling conflicted over the staking. Truly, had she gone after the kill just to prove herself to an organization she was now questioning having joined in the first place? That dug at her morals, but only until she got to the part where she had saved a life. “He would have killed that woman.”

  “You can’t know that.”

  “I received a report from my supervisor.”

  “Rook?”

  “Yes. That vampire had been noted twice in the area. Both times he left behind victims, one near death, the other with her throat torn so horribly she’s now on life support at the Hôtel-Dieu. You still think I should have given him a Hail Mary pass?”

  Domingos lifted his head, and his lean frame was silhouetted before the window, an imposing figure of darkness haloed by the pale illumination. “Will you be so quick with me when the time comes?”

  “How dare you ask such a thing? Domingos, you know I would never—”

  “I know, I know. But what if you receive an order from your supervisor?”

  “I’ve been taken off your case. It would never happen.”

  “But if it did? Don’t answer that.” He gripped his fingers back through his hair, then thrust out his hands before him. “Just know, when the time comes that the stake is for me, I hope your hands wield it. It will be the sweetest death.”

  She plunged into his arms, and held him so tightly she knew it must hurt the damaged skin on his back, but she didn’t care, she needed him to understand. “Never, Domingos. I...” Breaths coming lightly, she remembered saying it to him earlier, when she’d been enraptured by his music. And now it felt even more important to say it—and mean it. “I love you.”

  He found her mouth with a wanting, greedy kiss, and she answered with abandon. Wrapping a leg high about his hip, he lifted her and carried her across the room toward the dark side and pressed her against the wall. They tangled within each other, arms, legs, lips and tongues.

  “I love you, too,” he said. “Wasn’t sure if you realized you had said it earlier.”

  “Oh, I knew. Love is not something I take lightly.”

  “I am undeserving.”

  “Don’t say that. And I don’t want you to think I could ever stake you. It is what I am. But you are fast becoming what I am also.”

  “Not anymore. You’ve changed, Lark. You’re not the hunter you were trained to be. You know that.”

  She nodded, wanting to surrender to that easy abandonment of what she had been branded to accomplish, but feeling as if the task she had been given was too immense. Could she ever give up slaying? If she did not protect innocent, unknowing mortals from vampires, then who would?

  Could Lisa have freedom while Lark continued to exist?

  “I don’t know what to do, Domingos. Someone has to keep them safe.”

  “Keeping innocents safe is a noble thing. So long as it’s no longer for revenge.”

  “It isn’t. I swear it to you. I wasn’t even thinking of...him, when I went after that bastard. I think I need this still. The stake. For a while, anyway.”

  She glanced to the couch, where she’d dropped her coat and the stake. Domingos pressed his head to her chest, his hands at her waist, and her legs were wrapped about his hips. He nodded.

  “I can’t ask you to change for me,” he said. “I wouldn’t dream of it. And I agree that innocent mortals need protection from those of my breed who think they’ve the right to take lives. We don’t need that. We can take blood without killing.”

  “I know. But some vampires are wilder than others. Undomesticated.”

  She winced to use that word. It was an awful way to describe those vampires who killed. They were not animals; they were intelligent beings who s
urrendered to their hunger, and the more they took, the darker and more violent they became. It was called the danse macabre, and it infected those who killed. Eventually they lost almost all their control. Almost.

  Domingos took blood daily to survive. Would he grow as dark and evil as those she sought to destroy?

  Not if he never killed. But would the madness someday push him to kill a mortal? He was capable, as she’d witnessed with the werewolf outside the burning building.

  “Don’t ever follow me again,” she said. “Please? Or tell me if you feel the need to keep close. I don’t mind you wanting to be close, to protect me. Makes me feel safe. But when I’m on a job, I need distance from the one good thing in my life.”

  He nodded again against her chest.

  “Can we be okay with that?” she wondered. “Because of what this world has made us, we’ll never completely stand on the same side, but I believe we can honor each other’s very reason for being.”

  “That sounds fair. You’ve given me so much, Lark. I will respect your request not to follow you on a job. Just...tell me when that happens, yes?”

  “Deal.” She sighed. This was some strange and new territory she trod, but she was willing and ready to plunge in. “I need to report the kill to Rook.”

  “Do you want me to leave?”

  “No. Just give me a minute, will you? I’m going to shower, too. There’s wine in the fridge. Why don’t you open it while you’re waiting?”

  “I don’t think we should linger here for long, do you? It could be dangerous—”

  A loud, demanding knock sounded on the door. Lark exchanged glances with Domingos, who mouthed, “Like that,” and stepped aside to allow her to answer.

  She opened the door to reveal a tall blond man spinning a titanium stake about his fingers.

  * * *

  Domingos hung back as Lark immediately took to action. He guessed the guy with the stake was another knight, and while he wanted to lunge forward and sink his fangs into his carotid, he’d let Lark handle this one. One, because he didn’t care to put himself in the way of two stakes, and two, because she’d just asked him for that trust.

  The knight didn’t flinch when Lark lunged toward him, and only when she bent to deliver a roundhouse kick did the man dodge. Lark caught him aside the head with a palm and shoved, sending him staggering toward the sofa.

  Lark grabbed a steel baton that had been tucked behind the television and went after the hunter with such boldness and measured skill that Domingos could only be impressed. She fought one of her own. And the match was incredible. Yet it tugged at his conscience to observe the tussle. Hadn’t he committed the same crimes against his own to save his life while trapped in the cage?

  He banged his head against the wall and clasped his arms across his chest. Something wanted out.

  While the blond had height and bulk over Lark, she possessed smooth efficiency and her petite frame allowed her to dodge punches and kicks as if they were a nuisance. Domingos had been on the receiving end of her skill and wondered how soon before the man would fall.

  Kill them all!

  Domingos grasped his head, wincing as the horrible noise clattered into his skull, this time screaming like the last victim he’d slain while the wolves had looked on. Trapped within the rusted steel cage, the phoenix had bled tears. As they fought for their very lives, their skin had slicked off each other, so coated in each other’s blood they’d been.

  “What the fuck is that?” The hunter slanted a look at Domingos. “Vampire? That’s the insane one! You bitch, you’ve betrayed the Order!”

  “Yes, I suppose.” Lark glanced to Domingos, who gritted his jaw to keep from crying out. “But since when is the Order concerned about werewolves? All of a sudden the wolves tell us to jump, and we do? Something isn’t right. And I need to find out what that something is.”

  “What isn’t right is a knight from the Order of the Stake hanging around with a vampire. Is he fucking you?”

  “Since when are you concerned about my love life, Gunnar?”

  Gunnar. The one she’d said had been assigned to replace her as his killer. Domingos fisted his hands at his sides. The cacophony exploded in his head, and he twisted it down sharply, bending and crouching against the wall to fend it off.

  The hunter, noting his inner struggle, marched to the window and drew open the curtains. Brilliant sunlight hit Domingos squarely in the eyes. The whiteness was instantaneous and piercing. He screamed and dropped to his knees, clutching for his goggles, though it was too late. The light had blinded him, chasing away the noise. Instead of dark, only white filled his vision, a white so painful it felt like blades piercing his pupils.

  He heard Lark swear at the man and a fist connected with flesh and bone. “You’re not going to take him out in my home,” she said. “Get out of here, Gunnar.”

  “Not until the vampire is dust. You think you can use that stake on me? You are a stupid little girl. I never understood why they let you in the Order. And now look how you represent us, by screwing the enemy!”

  The hollow echo of a steel bar connecting hard with jawbone ended the hunter’s tirade. Domingos’s body took the brunt as the man fell onto him and rolled onto the floor.

  “Come on.” Lark grabbed Domingos’s hand. “Let’s get out of here before he comes to.”

  “I can’t see.”

  “Put your goggles on. It’ll get better, yes?”

  “Yes, but not for a while.” His fingers coiled against his chest. “The pain is excruciating. You go without me.”

  “Don’t be stupid. Come on. I’ll be your eyes for you.”

  Sensing she was in some sort of hunter action mode, Domingos followed her insistent tugs and stumbled after her, using a hand splayed out before him as she led him toward the stairs and directed him to step down.

  “That steel bar to the side of his head should have taken him out,” he said as they landed on the main floor and he could feel the cool darkness of the afternoon shade in the marble exterior. “What, does he have a steel plate in his head?”

  “Worse. Scandinavian stubbornness. We’ll go out through the car park below the building. It’s dark, and there’s an exit to the Metro.”

  She kissed him, and it was an unexpected moment. Blind to the world, Domingos slid his hands about her back, melting into the sanctity of this hard, dangerous woman who protected him as much as he wished he could protect her. And the pain slipped away, screaming for a hold even as her softness chased it to oblivion.

  “Love you,” he whispered into her mouth.

  “Love you back.”

  * * *

  They emerged from the Metro after the sun had set. Domingos could see again, though his eyes were sore and itchy, as if he’d swum in a highly chlorinated pool for hours. He still wore the goggles, and had felt like a freak sitting next to Lark on the bench on the Metro platform, but he figured he fit right in with the rest of the freaks he saw walking around.

  She held his hand, his knuckles pressed to her mouth, both hands clasped about his as if to let go would send him reeling and she’d never get him back.

  “We need to avoid Gunnar and find out exactly how pack Levallois is involved with the Order,” she said. “This doesn’t feel right. Something is off, and I suspect Rook isn’t at all aware of it. How are you feeling, lover? Eyes better?”

  She hugged up alongside him, imbuing his senses with her brightness and lemon scent.

  “I can see now. That damned sun will never take me out completely.”

  “Why is that? Most vamps can endure the daylight for long periods of time. And yet some vamps can’t walk in the sun at all. It’ll burn them to a crisp and reduce them to ash. How are you able to keep coming back injury after injury?”

  “I think it’s the phoenix blood in me
. Takes a licking and keeps me ticking, burn after burn after bloody painful burn.”

  “How did you get phoenix blood in you? Isn’t that a vampire who has consumed witch’s blood? Something about a protection spell, but I can’t recall the whole history of it.”

  “Witches once conjured a great protection spell against vampires, because supposedly back in medieval times vamps were all about enslaving witches and stealing their magic. So the spell was enacted that made all witches’ blood poisonous to vampires. The rare vampire was able to consume witch’s blood and survive, yet not without literally dying first and coming back from the ashes. Thus, he became a phoenix vampire.”

  “I think I heard about one who exists in the States. Can’t recall his name, though.”

  “Nikolaus Drake,” Domingos said. Truvin Stone had mentioned him. “It wasn’t until recently the protection spell was dropped, and vampires had no longer to fear witch’s blood. The last vampire I was forced to fight in the cage was a phoenix.”

  “I’m so sorry.” She kissed his knuckles and then pressed his hand to her heart. “But how could you defeat a phoenix? If they are unkillable?”

  “Apparently you can kill one if you rip out his veins, and— I don’t want to detail this, Lark.”

  “You don’t have to. I understand you were forced to fight for your life. And the madness, it must have pushed you to desperate measures.”

  Domingos sighed heavily. That she accepted him, even knowing the horrible things he had done, was amazing. So it was easy for him to forgive the fact that she had to do horrible things to other vampires to protect those in need of protection.

  “I think I might know someone who could get us some answers about pack Levallois,” he said. “Danni Weber was in tribe Zmaj along with me. She’s a good kid. Was transformed against her will by an asshole in the tribe who thought she could do things for him.”

  “How would she have info about the pack?”

  “She’s dating Christian Hart. He used to be in pack Levallois. In fact, he was the wolf who tossed me in the cage for my first death match.”