Dark Heart of the Sun

by SK Ryder

The boy tightened his hold on Cassidy who had gone still, her round stare riveted on Dominic—the beast—entranced. “You touch me, she dies.”

  Dominic tossed aside the bloody swords; he wouldn’t need them for this. His voice throbbed with the power of his need. “Leave her. You are mine.”

  “N-no,” the boy stammered, but the knife quivered at her throat and slid out of limp fingers. He knew Dominic for what he was. He could see death coming for him.

  The beast grew delirious with anticipation. Know me!

  Staggering to his feet, the boy turned and stumbled through the thicket toward the weed-choked picket fence and the street beyond. He took only two steps before Dominic had him by his skinny neck and slammed him against the ragged trunk of a coconut palm.

  Too easy. He shook with the effort to refrain from ripping out the bobbing throat, from opening wide that sweet, hot fount of blood. This meal had to be prepared with care, the experience savored.

  “Tell me. Did you enjoy seasoning his feeds with your cock? Did they all die moaning for you?” The words were sand grinding in his parched throat.

  A violent shiver ran through the boy, and he lost his bowels, further fouling the moldering air. He stared into the beast’s bottomless gaze as though into the maw of hell itself.

  Dominic leaned closer, letting the prey feel his breath on his face. “Tell. Me.”

  “Y-yes,” the boy sobbed. Spittle smeared his lips, and a rich, guilty fog of fear flowed from him, soaking into Dominic’s senses like the vapors of over proof rum. “I h-helped him catch ‘em. M-made ‘em feel what he w-wanted to t-t-t-taste . . . I’ll help you . . . I’ll b’yours. Anything you want, anything. I’ll do it.”

  “Truly.” Dominic bared his aching fangs. His voice rustled low and dry, the raspy whisper of death itself. “But I do not want just anything from you. I want . . . everything.”

  The boy bawled and convulsed when those teeth found his throat. Dominic silenced the desperate screams by crushing a hand across the mouth. Fists and fingers hammered at his face and shoulders as the beast slithered into the prey’s mind, plundering memories and shattering illusions.

  The boy hadn’t been compelled so much as he had taken genuine delight in raping the women as they died in his master’s arms, and he considered it a special challenge to dispose of them after, often using the bodies again at leisure. Zack was drunk on the imagined power of it all, never aware of his insignificance in the eyes of the ancient one. Dominic made certain that the boy knew it now, just as he knew of his mind being raped and the blood leaving his body. Zack knew why he was dying and how. There was no mystery, no confusion. Only the clearest, most unmitigated experience of terror imaginable. It pulsed into the vampire together with his blood in shuddering, orgasmic explosions of ecstasy.

  Know me . . .

  The feed surpassed Dominic’s every expectation, and he made every effort to draw out the death as long as possible. Still, it wasn’t long before a final tremor juddered the limbs and the heart coughed to a halt. Only then did the beast release him, sated as never before. He stepped back and swayed as the body collapsed to the ground. He closed his eyes and ran his tongue around his lips to catch the last of the blood. He moaned.

  He smelled her.

  She still bled, still reeked of temptation, wreathed in anxiety bordering panic. For the first time it didn’t matter. He was so completely satisfied, nothing could have persuaded him to ruin this exquisite aftertaste by feeding again.

  Cassidy sat on the ground amidst the weeds, disheveled and blood-spattered, drawing shallow, open-mouthed breaths as she surveyed the scene. Uncertain, Dominic remained still, resisting the urge to disappear into the darkness. There was nothing more he could hide from her, no secrets to keep. Nothing at all. His soul lay before her as bare and defenseless as a newborn.

  “Je suis désollé,” he said, his voice not quite steady. “I am truly sorry you had to see this. I hoped you would learn the truth about me differently.”

  It made him ill to think that she would be lost to him now. The dream was over. Despair sucked at him, and everything in him wanted to flee from this moment—and the darker ones he knew were yet to come. But he remained, waiting.

  For her.

  For his fate.

  The entire world collapsed into this one place and time. Their lives—their ‘shadows’—twined. Changed.

  “He—” she began, then stopped and tried again. “He was going to . . .” She gasped. “And the other one . . . Arie . . .” She clapped a hand across her mouth and squeezed her eyes shut. Horrified revulsion shook her and washed into his mind across the thread of their mental link. She bent to the side and retched.

  It was the reaction Dominic had expected. Except it also wasn’t.

  Before he knew what he was doing, he crouched by her side, but stopped himself from placing a bloodstained hand on her back in a gesture of reassurance. Her fingers curled in the dirt. A labored wheeze escaped her as she rounded into herself.

  “Cassidy,” he said.

  Her breathing accelerated along with her heartbeat, the panic attack breaking over her in earnest now.

  Again his hand reached for her. Again he didn’t touch her. “Cassidy, look at me,” he commanded instead. She only panted harder. “Listen to me, Cassidy,” he tried, softening his tone to a comforting murmur. “You are safe now. You can breathe. Slowly. Slooowly.”

  A shudder ran through her as she tried to comply.

  “In through the nose. Out through the mouth. Breathe deep.”

  She uncurled a bit and sucked at the blood-laden air, expelling it in explosive gasps.

  “Slowly,” he said again and held out his cleaner hand to her where she could see it. “You are safe. Neither one of them will ever touch you again. This I promise.”

  Cassidy glanced at his offered hand. Her heart’s frantic hammering subsided a little. With a deep, almost even breath, she reached for his hand. With her fingers wrapping around his as though grasping a lifeline, she closed her eyes and concentrated on her breathing. Over the next couple of minutes, it slowly steadied. “I know,” she whispered, opening her eyes again. “Thank you.”

  Dominic looked at their joined hands, caked in filth, and felt his heart swell in his chest with gratitude.

  Blood dripped from the cut in her arm. Though no major arteries were breached, the wound was deep and would require cleaning and stitches, and soon. Or not. He turned her hand so the wound faced up. “Will you let me help you?”

  She laughed, a touch of hysteria in the humorless sound. “Now he asks. What happened to just charging in?”

  “This is different. You might misunderstand.”

  She wiped her mouth with the back of her free hand, smudging dirt and blood across her face. “I know you won’t hurt me, Dominic.”

  Her wide, blue eyes met his, the trust in them complete. He could almost believe it was true, if only because he would do everything in his power not to betray this misplaced faith in him. She gasped when he brought the wound to his mouth and licked along the cut, cleaning it of her lime and chocolate infused blood. She flinched when he probed deeper with his tongue, but then relaxed as the poison in his saliva performed its function of neutralizing the pain and starting the healing process. Progress was slow, however. At this rate, the cut would take an hour to mend.

  “You sure you’re not just looking for dessert?” she whispered, and Dominic allowed himself a tiny smile. Why she accepted this with such calm, he couldn’t guess, but he was grateful she did.

  Picking up the discarded knife, he wiped it on his thigh before pulling the edge hard through his palm. A crimson ribbon of blood flowed from his hand and across her wound. She sucked at the air with a hiss but didn’t otherwise move. He closed his sliced hand over her arm and thrilled to the feel of her fl
esh knitting together.

  When the crawling sensation stopped, both wounds were gone, his completely and hers faded to a thin, pink line. He licked the blood off her warm skin, abandoning himself to the taste of their mingled essence, perhaps the last intimacy she would ever grant him.

  Cassidy turned her hand and brushed her fingertips against his cheek. He pressed her palm to his face to better feel her magnificent heat.

  “None of this is a dream, is it?” she said, her voice hushed. “You . . . really are . . . a vampire.”

  “Oui. I am,” he whispered. “A monster.” He became very still, perhaps even supernaturally still. The last time this admission had left his lips, it had cost a life precious to him.

  There was not even a hint of apprehension in her scent, her mind, or her heart. “You saved my life, Dominic. In the only way you could.”

  He looked at the slumped body three paces away. The dead eyes stared at nothing. He could almost hear Serge’s rebuke at this waste, this travesty of justice. He should have compelled this boy into a living hell lasting decades, not release him to death.

  “That I did not need to do. That I wanted to do.”

  Her eyes glistened. “I did, too.”

  Or perhaps it was the beast’s need for blood she felt through their bond. The thought both comforted and disturbed him.

  At a loss for words, he placed a kiss in her palm.

  She carefully retrieved her hand and folded it with the other. “So what are you going to do with . . . him?”

  “Nothing,” Dominic decided even as he said it. He would never hunt here again, and once in a while, leaving a mystery was acceptable. Or, in this case, a clue. “The DNA evidence will link him to the dead women. Which may be what his master intended all along when he was ready to move on.”

  “And Arie has? Moved on?”

  “The sunrise will take what is left of him.”

  Thoughtful, she gathered her loose hair and confined it back in its tie. “He was a lot stronger than you.”

  “Oui. By about two thousand years.” He saw her hesitate, heard her swallow. “I should not have survived.”

  “I’m glad you did.”

  Unable to agree and unwilling to share his true motives, he remained silent.

  Her eyes widened with a sudden memory. “What happened to that guy who helped us? Did he survive?”

  Dominic glanced around. No sign of a lurking blood-drinker. “I don’t know.”

  “He was a mess last I saw him. We should go check on him.”

  Using his shoulder to steady herself, Cassidy stood, galvanized by her need to charge to someone’s rescue. While he waited for her to retrieve her sandals and bag, Dominic wondered if she would still feel this way when she learned that Serge had been the one who left that bruise on her.

  Dominic picked up the swords and held out his free hand to her. She took it, allowing him to lead her back into the darkness, back to the house where the nightmare had begun.

  Inside, the camp lamp still glowed, lying on its side against a wall. Through the shattered front window, Dominic saw the tiny movements in the rubble at the back of the room. He could also smell the enormous quantities of blood.

  “You should stay out here.” Better yet, she should be running again. Serge would be in no condition to make wise feeding choices.

  “He’s alive?”

  “Barely.” He squeezed Cassidy’s hand before letting go. “You are safe out here. If you so much as hold your breath, I will know.”

  She nodded and hugged herself.

  Inside, Dominic found the old buccaneer where he last saw him and in no better shape. Serge stopped his futile writhing. A look of pure awe crossed his face. “Blood-child. You are victorious.”

  Dominic gripped Serge’s slick wrist and pulled. With an ugly sucking noise, the body came off the thick wooden stake. Pieces of broken ribs and spine were visible in the mangled gut. Even as Serge settled groaning to the floor, the injury began to right itself, vertebrae realigning with small pops, new intestine bulging and fingers of muscle and tendons stretching to contain them. As the healing progressed, other areas of the supernatural body provided what was needed to rebuild the damage. Serge paled and withered by the second.

  But his sense of smell remained keen. “I told her to run.”

  Dominic settled beside him. “She wasn’t quite fast enough. And she saw far too much.”

  “But yet she is here,” he said, sounding as though proclaiming a miracle.

  “She worries about you.”

  Serge’s eyes snapped open. “She does?”

  “The morning sun will restore her common sense,” Dominic muttered. Retrieving, a discarded shirt from the debris field, he got to work cleaning his weapons.

  Serge chuckled before breaking into a fit of coughing.

  “You wrote me off, old fool,” Dominic said when Serge fell quiet again. “All but declared me dead, and because of that I almost was. Grateful as I am for your meddling, I can’t help but wonder why you came back.”

  Serge’s smile was hesitant. He spoke in hushed tones. “Because I saw it. For the first time I saw it. My own light.” Emotion glittered in his hollowing eyes and choked his voice. “I now cast a shadow in time, blood-child. I cast a shadow.”

  Dominic placed a hand on the bony shoulder and thought he understood. By coming to his aide, Serge had stepped from obscurity into the stream of life. Whether only in his delusions or as a true oracle, didn’t matter. He was no longer only an observer. He mattered—perhaps for the first time in three hundred years.

  “Merci beaucoup, mon ami,” he murmured.

  A deep sigh lifted the emaciated chest. “No. Thank you.”

  The belly had regenerated, but the skin covering the deep dent was thin and raw. He wouldn’t be able to heal much more without feeding, which at this point meant he would make a corpse. Or three.

  “Do you truly think of me as yours?” Dominic wondered.

  Serge kept his eyes closed. “Ah, blood-child. You belong to no one but yourself. I’m honored that you tolerate me, that you’ll let me be part of your future.”

  Dominic paused in returning the katana to its scabbard and raised a brow. But he didn’t argue. Not anymore. Serge truly was the sire he never had. And the father he would never have again. By the time he cleaned and sheathed the wakizashi as well, he had come to a decision. Removing his jacket, he set it aside and placed the two swords on top.

  Serge heaved himself to the side and gazed longingly out the broken front window from where they could both hear Cassidy’s steady heartbeat. He turned away. “Would you . . . find me someone? And maybe . . . stop me making a mess?”

  “Maybe I have something better for you,” Dominic said. When the old one looked up, confused and black-eyed with hunger, he extended his arm, wrist up, the blue vein there prominent. “Know me.”

  Chapter 25

  Angel of Death

  Two thousand years.

  Cassidy had discussed a murder investigation with the two thousand year old perpetrator. She almost became his next victim, raped and drained of blood with the casual violence common of those times—two thousand years ago. Her mind turned this wonder over and over. Somehow this felt easier to digest than the fact that she walked along quiet residential streets with her French pain in the ass roommate—vampire.

  The fog finally cleared a bit when she caught her reflection in a restroom mirror. A battlefield survivor stared back. Torn and bloody clothes, smears of dirt and blood, debris-studded hair, and scratches across her face and arms. All evidence of the fight of her life. How had she managed to walk past the café patrons outside without someone calling an ambulance or the police?

  Oh, right. The vampire told them not to see her.

&nbs
p; Cassidy leaned on the little porcelain sink and tried to steady her wobbly nerves and quaking gut. True, all of it true. She had seen it, felt it, heard it . . . dear God, she had even smelled the gore. Dominic wasn’t part of this world, and by having born witness to his reality, she now felt untethered from her own with nothing but quicksand beneath her feet. The only stable point anywhere in sight was . . . Dominic.

  The Angel of Death himself.

  She cleaned herself up, combed out her hair, and buried the ruined dress she once so carefully selected for Jackson’s benefit in the waste paper bin. The plastic bag Dominic handed her earlier contained a new dress, sapphire-blue with laughing yellow suns. The irony made her cry before it made her laugh.

  They walked Duvall Street together, the girl with the cheerful new dress and big bag and the pale, graceful young man in black leather carrying Samurai swords across his back. He had cleaned up, too. His damp, ebony curls framed a clean, flawless face. His black clothing didn’t show the stains, but a faint smell of blood wafted off him.

  “And snow,” she murmured. “Is that your natural scent? Winter?”

  “Oui. It is the mark of the very young.”

  Arie had smelled like a pine forest. Also very pleasant. Natural. And an odor of wet moss hovered around the other one who had chosen to go his own way once he recovered from being run through with a two-by-four.

  She pushed that memory away. “I saw pictures of you in the sun. Obviously you were . . . not like this until recently.”

  “Fourteen months, seven nights, five hours and seventeen minutes.”

  “Oh. Not keeping track or anything, I see.”

  “Except for the last twenty-one nights, every moment has been a nightmare without end.”

  “Why—” She stopped in her tracks when she realized his meaning. Twenty-one nights ago she had moved into his cottage.