Chaos and Moonlight (Order of the Nines Book 1)

by Marrow, A. D.

  “What do you mean, you didn’t get her?”

  Bane took a deep breath and let out a slow sigh before he started to pace the room. Wherever he walked, he could feel her eyes boring into him.

  “Listen, I got there as fast as I could, swear on us, I did. The reporter told me everything I wanted to know, and I started for the apartment to get her. But by the time I actually got there—” He paused and placed a large hand on the doorjamb just above his head. “By the time I got there, someone else already had her.”

  Morrigan closed her eyes and tilted her head, bracing herself for whatever it was that Bane was stammering about.

  “And just who was this someone else, might I ask?”

  Bane shook his head. “I could feel him. Even when I was out on the street, I knew he was in there. I thought he was dead by now, Morrigan, I swear I did. I had no idea he was still here. I figured he’d have moved on by now, but sure as fucking rain, there he was. By the time I got to them, he already had her out of the place and on the roof. I fired off a couple shots, but he got me good, sliced my leg up with this.”

  Bane reached into his duster and pulled out a blade. With the flick of his wrist, he sent it whipping across the room, end over end, until it embedded itself in the table next to Morrigan’s hip.

  “Got blood on my new boots. Don’t really mind blood so much, as long as it’s not mine.” He paused again, walking over to Morrigan, who was staring intently at the black-handled ceramic blade stuck upright into the table.

  She closed her eyes again and was keenly aware that Bane’s gigantic frame was directly in front of her. She was doing everything to get her pulse under control. She remembered that knife all too well. The things she had done with it were too numerous to list, and some of them too heinous for even the worst horror film. Her fingers wrapped around the handle and drifted down the stained blade. The last time she had seen it, it was still a brilliant white, a unique weapon if ever there was one. Now it was crimson at the tip and had faded to a dark pink at the hilt. What was it used for? Slowly, her fingers traced their way back up to the handle.

  “You mean to tell me that not only is Taris alive, but he has the girl and he saw you?”

  Bane started to answer, but before he could, Morrigan jerked out from under him. With a vicious growl, she was on his back, kicking his legs and sending him to the floor on his knees in front of the table. His chin hit the edge of the table, and the skin instantly split. He had no time to fight back. She completely overpowered him. She dug the spikes of her heels into his calves just above where his precious shit-kicker boots met his skin.

  “If you didn’t kill him,” she whispered down in his ear, “then you didn’t try hard enough.” He could smell the blood seeping out of the wound on his chin. “Give me your hand, Bane.”

  “Piss off, you harpy,” he hissed out from behind his teeth.

  Morrigan dug her heel deeper into his calf muscle.

  “I said give me your hand!”

  Bane smacked his left hand onto the table, his breath raging from him like a bull. He closed his eyes as he saw Morrigan pull the blade loose. He fought back a shiver when he felt the tip touch the center of his hand.

  “I think, my dear, that you have grown too complacent with this relationship.” She slowly pushed the blade into his flesh. His body jerked beneath her, but only for a moment. “You need to always remember that you are my servant first, my husband second.” The knife went deeper into his skin, touching the muscle and eventually hitting bone. “Now that Taris knows you are here, he will do everything he can to protect her, and since he is still alive, I can only imagine that they are still alive, too, in which case,” the blade went deeper until he felt it break through the palm of his hand and embed itself deep into the plyboard table, “we are going to need reinforcements, as well.”

  With a shove against his back, Morrigan regained her footing on the floor and pushed herself away from him, landing against the doorjamb. Despite her exertion, her breath was steady, and she hadn’t broken so much as a single drop of sweat. Bane reached across himself to pull the dagger out of the table and back through the wound in his hand. He wiped the slick blade on his duster.

  “Overreact much?” he hissed. His shoulders shrugged underneath the leather, and he slowly stood up, bracing himself against the table before wiping the blood from his chin with his sleeve.

  “Call it what you want. Someone screws up, they pay the price, and of all people on this maggot-infested earth, you should know that.” She didn’t meet the cold gaze that turned with him as he stood to face her. She examined her pristinely manicured nails. “I trust that even though that will heal,” she pointed to his still lacerated hand, “you will remember it and let it drive you. Next time, I won’t be so lenient.”

  She turned on her heel and reached for the doorknob but stopped short. Craning her neck over her shoulder, she looked at Leo, still slumped over in the corner, the hole in the center of his chest still leaking.

  “Get some heavy guns in here to help you find her. If The Nines are still kicking around, you’ll need all of the help you can get. I want that woman here, and I want Taris dead. Do you hear me? Dead! And I don’t give a flying shit if he is your damned brother! And get that out of here.” She nodded her head toward Leo before she jerked open the door and stormed out.

  Bane sat perfectly still for several minutes, alternating his gaze between the dingy door and his hand. From underneath the sheen of crimson, the wound stared up at him. It was already beginning to heal. He could feel the tingle working its way from the inside out. Instead of licking the wound to seal the outside of his skin, he let it be. If he did nothing to stop it, a scar would form.

  He wanted that scar. It would be another battle scar from his life with Morrigan.

  Chapter 10

  It was nothing more than a minor setback.

  Like hell it was a minor setback! Taris biting Sarah was a screwup of colossal proportions. It was rash and reactionary and completely unexpected. Never in her wildest dreams would Kalin have seen that coming. The nail file had been more than enough. Actually, she had found it disgusting, but she knew his purpose, so she let it ride. But the pole-vaulter impression and the growling? Way too much.

  What was worse was the fact that she had felt like a voyeur during the whole thing. All she could do was sit there and watch as her brother groaned with satisfaction at the taste of Sarah’s blood in his mouth. She raised a hand to her eyes and rubbed, trying to block out the sight of their hips grinding involuntarily. Did either of them realize Sarah had actually wrapped her legs around his waist and buried her fingers in his hair?

  Kalin sat in the chair next to the bed and watched as Sarah began to stir. She had been asleep for going on three hours now and was finally beginning to wake. In that time, Kalin had kept a constant watch on her. Taris was incognito, no doubt fast asleep, as well. With all that blood and booze mixed in his system, she doubted she would see him until the next day, which was completely unfair in her estimation. He should be there, watching over Sarah, not her. She didn’t bite the girl. All things considered however, it was probably best that Kalin was with her. Otherwise, heaven only knew what would happen.

  She had never seen Taris act so rashly, so spontaneously. He was tight and kept a short leash on his reactions. He weighed the consequences of everything. But that? That animal impulsiveness, that strength? She had never seen it from him before.

  A nervous jitter blossomed in Kalin when Sarah turned toward her and opened her eyes. She braced herself for the scream and prepared the lengthy explanation that she knew she would have to give.

  “Hi,” Sarah whispered up to her.

  Kalin looked over her face, at the pink patch of skin above her collarbone. Sarah was calm, peaceful. She was fully awake and not screaming for her life.

  Which was making Kalin really, really nervous.

  “Hi.” Kalin cleared her throat. “I, um, would you like some coffee or
something to drink?”

  “I would love some coffee, thanks.” Sarah sat up and stretched. The brand-new look on her face made Kalin hope she had either forgotten what had happened, or thought it was a dream. Kalin rose and started to walk out of the room. She wanted nothing more than to hit the ground running. No, what she wanted more than anything was to step back in time and stop the whole thing from happening.

  “Am I one of you now?”

  “No.” It was the only word Kalin knew how to say at that moment.

  “I believe you now,” Sarah said, her voice still heavy from sleep. She began to slip out of the bed, slowly putting one foot on the floor and then the other.

  “You have every reason to now, I would think.” Kalin looked down at the floor. “Taris is sleeping. When he wakes, we are taking you to a safe place.”

  Sarah nodded her head as she stepped closer. “I’m sorry about what happened, you know, earlier, calling you freaks and everything.”

  “It’s okay. Understandable, really.” Kalin cleared her throat. “You are taking this all very well for someone just attacked by an eight-hundred-year-old.”

  * * *

  Sarah spun on her heel and began to pace the floor. She drew her hand behind her back and stared down at the hardwood. She went to the wall and back, past the doorframe and to the other side of the room, only to do it all over again. She finally stopped, just on the side of the bed where Taris had stood right before the attack.

  “It’s like he said. Seeing is believing.” She ran a hand over the only smooth spot in the comforter. “I did more than see,” she whispered. Straightening herself, she turned toward the door and gave Kalin a half-smile. “So the sooner I know what I am doing here, the sooner I can do it and leave.”

  “Very well,” Kalin nodded. “How about we get that coffee, and then I will explain everything to you.” She went to the closet and grabbed a pair of fleece slippers and a tailored tan duster. She handed them to Sarah.

  “What are these for?” she asked as she took them.

  “We’re going outside. And it’s pretty chilly tonight.”

  While she followed Kalin, Sarah got a good first look at the house in which she was staying. It astonished her. It was the most perfect house she had ever seen. The floors were old hardwood, and the walls were covered in thick, rich-colored paints and wainscoting, with many oil paintings and framed antique documents. The ceilings were vaulted with thick wooden beams that ran parallel to one another. The comforting smell of apple and cinnamon wafted in the air. The Bose sound system implanted into the walls filled the ambient spaces in the house with light classical music. Sarah focused on the music. Beethoven. It was gorgeous.

  The kitchen was even more spectacular than the rest of the house. It looked like something out of an old Mediterranean painting. It was clearly Kalin’s domain. She moved around it effortlessly and with such comfort that she seemed almost like a mother hen preparing dinner for a gigantic brood of children.

  “How do you take your coffee?”

  “Um, black, thank you,” Sarah answered. Kalin poured two huge mugs of coffee and handed one over to Sarah. She pulled her coat tighter around her, and surprisingly, she set her mug down and also tightened Sarah’s collar around her. The gesture surprised her, but Sarah smiled back and nodded a thank-you.

  “Ready to go?”

  Sarah nodded again as she followed Kalin to the French doors in the dining room that led out to the gigantic expanse of red and gold that painted the trees. The moonlight lit just enough of the path that she could make out a narrow strip of gravel. Kalin slowly began making her way through the backyard, past the benches that sat underneath gigantic trees, past a gigantic fountain, and up a slight hill before they reached their destination.

  In the clearing, there were two rows of stones. In each row were seven slabs of thick marble jutting out of the ground. Tombstones. She was looking at tombstones.

  “What is this?” she whispered, her voice jittery. Her stomach flipped in waves of nausea.

  “These,” Kalin looked around, “are your predecessors. All men and women who willingly gave their lives for a cause they saw as greater than themselves.” She turned to face Sarah, who was staring, wide-eyed, at the gravesites.

  “I don’t understand.”

  Kalin walked over to the first row of stones and ran her gloved fingers over the top of one of them. “We’re dying out, Sarah. We told you that. Our bodies, your bodies, have evolved. We can’t increase our numbers because human bodies won’t accept us. A vampire has not been made in almost three hundred fifty years. It’s the rejection, you see?”

  She stepped away from the tombstones and began walking farther up the hill. She was a few paces ahead of Sarah when she turned and motioned for her to follow. Sarah slowly climbed the hill until they reached another burial site, this one dotted with four raised stone crypts. She followed Kalin until they both flanked one of the large boxes.

  Kalin looked down at the stone and began to rub her hands over the top lovingly. Her eyes weren’t on Sarah, but fixed on the top of the stone, and in what little she could see of them, Sarah could tell there was sorrow. A great sadness hid just beneath the surface of Kalin’s beautiful face.

  “Your discovery, Sarah, could be the key to keeping our race alive. There are so few of us left.”

  Sarah watched her linger over the inscription on the stone. In an effort to ease the shake within her, she took a giant gulp from her coffee cup. She accepted the fact that she was in a house with vampires. It was futile to argue or resist it now, and she was being let in on something more than just the fact that they existed. She was being brought into their world, and it was not as a spectator.

  “You can’t have children, can you?” she blurted. Kalin’s head dipped lower to the stone, her cheek almost resting on the cool marble. In the moonlight, she looked like a picture, a painting of an angel hovering over the dead to usher them on to the other world.

  “The oldest among us are related and therefore cannot mate to reproduce. The youngest among us are of mixed blood, so even if a child is conceived, the female’s body will reject it.” She lifted her head to look at Sarah. “There has not been a child born to our race for hundreds of years, just as there has been no one ushered in. We cannot do it.”

  She rose from the stone, and Sarah couldn’t help but lean over to look at the inscription Kalin had been laying on. She couldn’t read it, but she could hazard a guess that his person had been special. Her heart pounded in her chest, and a heat spread through her to the very core. Sarah’s eyes grew wide as she forced her gaze away from the stone to stare at Kalin.

  “She was not of my blood,” Kalin whispered, wrapping her arms around herself, the empty coffee cup swinging at her back. “I loved her as my own, and she gave her life to save mine. To save ours.”

  Sarah felt her stomach flip and sink. The look on her face, the pain in Kalin’s eyes. Had she not felt Taris’ teeth in her skin, not seen him cut and heal himself, the look on Kalin’s face would have been enough to convince her they needed to help.

  “Your research could help us prosper, could help us become that strong, proud race we once were. The rejection is what is killing us, don’t you see? If you could keep it from happening, then I could have a child of my own, one who would be like me.” Kalin ran a hand over the stone again. “One who would survive.”

  “Why didn’t you have one when you could?” Sarah leaned into the stone and placed her hands lightly on the lip of it, staring down at the etching.

  “I always thought I would have time,” Kalin whispered.

  Sarah squeezed her eyes shut and tried to hide back the blurry well that was threatening to spring. This agony could not be ignored. She couldn’t set it aside, couldn’t shake it. More than that, now, she couldn’t walk away. Her research had produced amazing results, true, so why couldn’t she try it out for them? Worst case scenario, there would be no change in their situation. She had to try. If
for nothing else, she had to do it for Kalin.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll do it.” She reached over the stone and took Kalin’s hands in hers. “I’ll help. For you.”

  Kalin nodded and mouthed the words “thank you.”

  Sarah could feel Taris there, watching. She didn’t want to look at him, didn’t want to break away from the bonding, solitary moment she and Kalin were now in, but she couldn’t help herself. Her neck craned ever so slightly to the right, and when her eyes made contact with his, her heart began to beat in that smacking, erratic rhythm all over again.

  He stood at the very top of the hill, teetering on the edge, that leather trench of his flapping in the October night wind. His hair was loose and whipping behind him. There was a slight reflection at the sides of his face, and Sarah noticed his ears were pierced, sporting thick gauge rings. Why hadn’t she noticed them before? His eyes were hard and fixed, but not on her. Not this time. They stared straight at the stone box that stood between her and Kalin. If he stared any harder, he would have bored holes into it. There was something about his face as he began to draw closer to them that almost made her forget the searing heat of his tongue, the sharp tingle of his teeth, and the subsequent well-hidden anger that welled up inside of her from the moment she opened her eyes. It was pain, the very same pain that she saw in Kalin.

  When he finally reached the base of the box, Kalin looked up at him, her eyes heavy with unshed tears. She didn’t pull her hands away from Sarah, only shook them back and forth as she gave Taris a weak smile.

  “She’s going to help,” she whispered.

  Taris nodded. “I know. I heard.” With his eyes still beating into the box, he took one hand out of his jeans pocket and splayed it on the lid. It was the hand he had driven the nail file through. There was not a mark on it, just smooth, golden skin. “Thank you,” he said. Sarah couldn’t tell if it was for her, but she replied anyway.