Dark Heart of the Sun

by SK Ryder

  The old one paused his erratic gesturing to take careful notice of him. “Are you leaving?” The bike hummed to life. “But you already drank. And you shouldn’t leave her.”

  Dominic couldn’t agree more. “I’m not leaving,” he said, clapping down the visor. “We are.” He struck with lightning speed, twisting around, grabbing Serge by an elbow and hauling him across the back of the bike. Then he sped out of the lane and gunned the engine once the tires touched smooth asphalt.

  His hijacked passenger’s shrieks overpowered the bike’s high-pitched whine. Frenzied, Serge clamped onto Dominic with bone-crunching force and wailed like a siren for a mile before Dominic freed one of his arms enough to slam an elbow into the body barnacled to his back. He felt several ribs snap outright and the crushing hold loosened. By the time he turned into the Publix parking lot ten minutes later, Serge was reduced to quiet trembling.

  “How many centuries have you seen, old fool?”

  Serge held up three fingers.

  “Things have changed, non?”

  With a vigorous nod, Serge staggered off the bike and looked the machine over with a wary eye. It was completely black and aerodynamic, built for high-speed stealth. “Faster than a frigate,” he said, thoughtful. “Drier, too.”

  Dominic popped off his helmet and tried for patience. He knew there were blood-drinkers like this, creatures who stopped keeping up with progress in the human world, their minds as locked in the era of their making as their bodies. But he never thought he’d find himself spending time with one, and he wasn’t sure why he bothered with Serge.

  “Can we do that again?” Serge wondered, an odd excitement sparkling in his eyes.

  “Malheureusement,” Dominic muttered. Unfortunately. They would do this again and again for as long as Serge lived and Dominic needed to leave Cassidy and the cottage to hunt.

  Or shop.

  He eyed the brightly lit store with some trepidation. It was his habit to compel someone to supply him with Perrier water while he waited outside, but tonight’s list was rather more complicated. He would have to enter and blend in. Given his black leathers and pale skin amidst the tanned tourists in summer dress, that would be a challenge. He almost reconsidered his ludicrous offer to the girl.

  Serge hung close by his shoulder. “Easy pickings?”

  “Merde. No pickings. Stay out of sight,” Dominic ordered. “And I need cash,” he tossed over his shoulder. “Find some.” That should keep the nuisance entertained scouring the lot for dropped change.

  Dominic swiped a pair of dark sunglasses from the rack by the door, snapped off the tag and put them on to stop his eyes from watering in the artificial glare. Then he maneuvered a cart through the store with as much haste as might be considered humanly reasonable. He deflected curious glances with dazzling smiles and compelled the cashier—after two attempts and removing the sunglasses—into accepting the pack of gum he handed her as payment in full.

  When he arrived back at the bike in the far corner of the lot, there was no sign of a derelict blood-drinker. He put down the bags, shoved the sunglasses up into his hair and surveyed the area. Nothing. He inhaled. No blood. No blood-drinker. “Merde.”

  He listened. Over the hum of the lot’s lights, he heard the booping of the ATM where a line had formed. The woman just finishing rounded the side of the store. He took several steps to his left to watch her. “Here you go, you poor dear,” she told a huddled figure with a bright cold aura. “Get yourself a warm meal and a clean bed.”

  “God bless you,” replied a familiar voice, teetering on the verge of giggles. “You never saw me.”

  Dominic stood beside him an instant later. “What are you doing?”

  “This is an amazing time, blood-child. So much treasure, so quickly.” He pulled a thick stack of bills from his pocket. “Much money, yes?”

  A thousand dollars at least, and here came the next good Samaritan.

  “God bless you,” said Serge the decrepit panhandler. His head bobbled and eyes sharpened. “You never saw me,” added Serge the blood-drinker, and the benefactor turned on a heel and left, oblivious.

  Serge sighed with contentment. “So much drier than a frigate.”

  Dominic let Serge finish collecting his loot, took it without comment when the old pirate presented it to him—apparently uninterested in anything but gold and blood himself—then shoveled him back onto the bike and hung the grocery bags on his arms.

  At the cottage, he let Serge wait with the bike while he stashed the perishables in the refrigerator and ghosted up the stairs to check on Cassidy. She was still in her bed where he had deposited her earlier, but the bunched sheets bore mute testimony to restless sleep. Even the cat seemed to want nothing to do with her thrashing limbs. It perched on top of the dresser, watching him with wide, worried eyes.

  Dominic arranged the money for her to find in the morning, complete with a brief note of explanation. When he looked up, Serge’s bearded face stared from the other side of the curtains draping across the open window. He growled a warning. Serge pointed to his feet, which, being on top of the porch roof, were technically outside the house.

  “Nick? What’s wrong?” Cassidy still sprawled across her sheets, her eyes closed, dreaming. Of him. Brows creased in consternation. “Oh, right,” she mumbled. “Everything.”

  No doubt of that. And there was nothing he could do about most of those wrongs. Most but not all, he decided as Serge poked his head past the window frame to see the girl, his feet still outside as ordered. Dominic almost went for his swords, but the look of awe on Serge’s unkempt face stopped him. Unhinged he may be, but Serge was as enchanted by Cassidy as Dominic, and he wouldn’t hold it against the old one what he couldn’t conquer within himself.

  Pushing Serge back, he slipped out the window with him and dropped them both off the edge of the roof. “Another ride?”

  Serge’s eyes lit up like a child’s on Christmas morning.

  Dominic did not disappoint. As they streaked up I-95, ribboning around traffic and construction, his passenger’s initial shrieks of surprise soon gave way to yelps of delight. By the time they reached Jacksonville, Serge had taken to riding the bike surfboard style by standing on his tiny seat, swaying with the movement, his laughter uproarious.

  When he tried to climb over Dominic to stand on the handlebars, Dominic deemed the moment right. He swerved the bike hard toward a semi, throwing Serge off balance. But instead of spilling under the churning wheels, Serge leapt, jabbed his fingers into the aluminum side of the trailer, and clung like a demented bat. Dominic would have preferred him incapacitated, but this would do as well. The imbecile was off his bike and two hundred miles away from his lair. Mission accomplished.

  Riding low, Dominic shot past the truck and aimed for the next exit ramp when the bike lurched beneath him.

  “Blood-child, this is glorious,” Serge shouted as he dropped on top of him from the semi’s cab. The truck’s brakes squealed, the driver panicked by the acrobatics unfolding in his headlights. “Again.”

  Dominic nearly took the bike off the road with the frustration roaring through him. Remoras suckered onto the underside of sharks were easier to dislodge than this putain idiote. He veered toward another truck. Serge sailed off on his own, blurring across the trailer’s roof and launching himself into space off the cab at the perfect instant to slam back on top of Dominic. He howled with glee. The bike would go no faster, could not outrun the lunatic as he surfed three more trucks, whooping and laughing.

  Dominic aimed for the back of the next semi and lost his passenger the second he came within range. But this time, instead of trying to pass the truck quicker than the old blood-drinker could move, he slowed and dropped out of sight behind a service van heading onto an exit ramp.

  Two minutes later he was moving again, the high
way blurring beneath his tires, going south this time, going home, and he allowed himself a sigh of relief. The fool could go get lost in the city now. He might even forget all about Dominic and Cassidy. With any luck at all, Dominic had seen the last of Serge, he who sees nonsense.

  He tried not to recall that as of late luck was rarely on his side.

  Chapter 10

  In Vino Veritas

  Cassidy knew she was dreaming, and yet she could not wake. In her dream, the heat of the sun rising beyond her bedroom windows morphed into bone-gripping cold, and the sheets became drifts of snow shifting beneath her hands and feet. The babbling radio alarm was drowned out by the howl of wind sweeping down from craggy peaks.

  She had to find him.

  The air was thin and brittle up in the mountains, and the sky so deep and blue it bordered on black. Nothing survived here but the wind. Snow slithered as she staggered.

  “Cass? What are you doing here?”

  Jackson’s voice was the only thing recognizable about the man-shaped bundle of winter gear, its face obscured by a hood, goggles, and mask. She shook her head, her hair whipping about her face. Her lips moved, but no sound came out.

  He couldn’t help; she had to find him on her own.

  “You’re going the wrong way, Cass,” Jackson called as she trudged towards the barren cliffs. “There’s nothing up there.” His voice faded, shredded by the landscape, eaten by the sky.

  Damn it, I don’t have time for this. Where are you? What do you want from me?

  Her bare foot slipped on something buried in the snow. She bent to dig down, exposing a body. She brushed the snow off the prominent cheeks and forehead and out of the hollows around the eyes. Then she sat back and stared. What are you doing here?

  Dominic opened his eyes. The pupils constricted to invisible pinpoints in the glaring light, and gold flecks glittered in his hazel irises. His smile dimpled his cheeks. Then he laughed into the sky. The sound echoed off the mountains before fading away, vanishing the way his body vanished, melting into the snow without a trace.

  She reached for him. No!

  With a shuddering gasp, Cassidy came awake. Her heart raced, and her body felt sluggish and sore as though she had climbed the mountain for real. Sweat trickled down her sides. Morning sunlight stabbed to the back of her eyeballs and into her brain. Clasping both hands over her face, she groaned and rolled to her side.

  She had spent an entire night in the same bizarre lucid dream. Every time had been a little different, but each time she found him, he vanished. Dominic. Why the hell wasn’t she dreaming of looking for Jackson? Or hiding from Jackson?

  Eddie mewed where he sat at her feet, his thick tail wrapped around neatly placed paws and green eyes huge with inquiry. She stole a glance at the radio clock. Seven-thirty-four. She should be halfway to work by now. “Shit.”

  A stack of bills beside the radio caught her eye. Several hundreds and fifties and a pile of twenties and tens half obscured a note of exquisite handwriting. For AC repair. D.

  “About freaking time.” Though she’d have to talk to him about coming into her room . . .

  The air rushed out of her. Misery-soaked memories rushed in. She pressed a hand to her forehead, mercifully free of pain after a long night dreaming in a bed she didn’t recall getting into. But it took no imagination at all to fill in the blanks.

  She flopped back into her pillows. “Holy shit.”

  Cassidy knew the cook was up when the music changed. The soulful country tunes drifting up the stairs like cool mountain air disappeared, replaced by a sophisticated, languorous cosmopolitan beat that sounded more Europe than Caribbean.

  “Good bye Radio Denver, hello Radio St. Barth.” She sighed and combed out her damp hair.

  Her stomach growled. Deciding to take him by his word when she found the fridge stocked to capacity this morning, she hadn’t eaten when she got home. But if he was going to make dinner, why couldn’t he get up at a decent hour?

  Not that she was in any great hurry to see him tonight. He had held her hair while she lost her lunch and then carried her passed out body to bed, where he thankfully refrained from undressing her. Not what she would have expected of him after more than a week of bickering. Of course, neither would she have imagined him cooking dinner, and judging by the sounds coming from the kitchen, that was what he was doing. Perhaps she had misjudged him?

  Eddie hustled into the room, his ears back, shaggy body low to the ground, and disappeared under the bed without so much as a glance in her direction. Definitely not a Nick fan. “Well, I didn’t ask you.”

  Shorts and tank top felt too casual for a presumably French-themed dinner, so she studied her three options. An off-the-shoulder eggplant gown Jackson’s mother had helped her pick out for the engagement party? Overkill. The sleeveless, dusty blue dress that made her eyes pop off her face? Two inches shorter than her comfort zone. Which left a slinky blue and green knit she had bought because she hoped Jackson would appreciate it for its clingy profile. Not that he had noticed the first and last time she wore it for him at that disastrous family dinner.

  With a sigh, Cassidy shrugged into the knit dress and tucked the plunging neckline into respectability. She didn’t bother with shoes, but applied some eyeliner and lip-gloss and a dusting of powder over the bruise on her neck. Her sunburned reflection still looked chagrined. Damn it, her face didn’t hide much. Every ounce of awkwardness she felt about the dress—and last night—radiated in spades. Resigned, she summoned a smile, squared her shoulders, and descended the stairs.

  In the kitchen, the rattling of pots and pans competed with the French pop music. The chef was his usual somber self in the black workout pants and V-neck T-shirt, but a pair of flip-flops and a red and white checkered apron completed his look tonight. A thin leather strap confined his hair, emphasizing the striking planes and angles of his face.

  She stood and watched him lay into a pile of vegetables with a serious-looking knife, which he wielded with the casual ease of long practice.

  “Bonsoir, Cassidy,” he said without looking up. “Are you feeling better tonight?”

  She closed her eyes for a moment as embarrassment scalded her. “Much. Thank you.”

  He glanced at her over his shoulder, and his cheeks dimpled with a smile. “I’m glad.”

  The plate of French bread suddenly looked very interesting. She perched on one of the bar chairs at the counter, retrieved a slice, and spread it with a thick green paste that smelled enticingly of olives and spices. She chewed slowly, enjoying the flavor while Dominic retrieved a bottle of wine and a glass.

  “Dressed, dry, and civil,” she said. “I’m not sure I know who you are anymore.”

  He slanted her a look of spine-tingling mischief. “Madame, you have no idea who I am.”

  And there he was, the Dominic she knew so well, sharpening his tongue for an attack. Much better. “Oh, I know you’re a pain in the ass, insufferably full of yourself, and have zero respect for privacy.”

  He paused in the application of corkscrew to bottle, baffled.

  “I could have found the money on the kitchen table. There was no need to leave it in my room.”

  “Ah.” A final twist and pull uncorked the wine. “I was there anyway, chère, to make sure you were all right.”

  “Well, it makes me uncomfortable. Don’t do it again.”

  A tiny frown furrowed his forehead as he splashed some wine into the glass. “As you wish, Cassidy. Paix.”

  She stared at him, disoriented by the argument that wasn’t, and his expression brightened again.

  “Peace?”

  “Peace,” she repeated. No, she didn’t know him. Not at all.

  He pushed the glass toward her. “Tell me what you think.”

  Grateful for the change of
subject, she sipped. Flavors of fruit and earth washed over her tongue in a pleasant swirl. She licked her lips. “Mmm. What is it?”

  Unrestrained pleasure lit his face. “French.”

  “Of course.” She scoffed, but couldn’t help smiling. “Silly me.” He filled her glass. “And you? Where’s yours?”

  “None for me,” he said with a rueful little noise. “I am driving the skillet.” And with that, he turned back to the stove where things began to sputter and bubble.

  Cassidy drank more of the wine, feeling the mellow alcohol settle in her bloodstream. Considering his words, she added ‘recovering alcoholic’ to her mental list of observations. Well, at least he had the willpower to stay on the wagon. Her opinion of him ticked up a smidgeon.

  She watched him cook. Every movement was sure and precise. Lean muscles flexed in his bare arms. Strong, capable arms. Arms that had carried her to bed . . . Damn. Time for another slice of bread.

  “About last night . . . thank you. But . . . you didn’t have to do that. I could have managed.”

  “An old habit,” he said, sounding a little distracted as he uncovered the marinade pan and moved several fillets around in the sauce with a pair of kitchen tongs.

  “Really? You carry unconscious women to bed on a regular basis?”

  “I did a little more than that, non?” One of the fillets landed in the skillet and sizzled forcefully.

  “Yes. You did. None of which you had to do.” Or required discussion while preparing dinner.

  “An old habit,” he said again, working the fish in the pan, his expression unfocused. “You make me remember so many.”

  “And . . . is that a good thing?” He didn’t sound convinced.

  “Peut-être. We will see.” He nodded toward a paper lying on the kitchen table. “I see you got a quote for the air conditioner.”