Chaos and Moonlight (Order of the Nines Book 1)

by Marrow, A. D.

  “Oh,” Sarah smiled down into her cup. She could feel her cheeks beginning to flush. “You, uh, saw that?”

  “Hell, yeah, we saw that. We watch ol’ Maven like clockwork, mainly because I spend the entire time thinking of interesting ways to fill her mouth with something other than hot air, but—”

  “Achan!” Zillah turned in her chair. “Don’t be vulgar.”

  “My bad,” Achan shrugged. “Yeah, we saw it. Didn’t put two and two together until T called us about it, though.

  Sarah glanced over at Taris, who was absently peeling the label off his beer bottle.

  “We are delighted to have you here, Dr. Bridgeman.” Judah set his beer down and leaned forward, taking her free hand in his. They were warm and comfortable and Sarah felt instantly safe with him. “We cannot begin to tell you how much it means to us that you are going to try and help.” He smiled at her, and she couldn’t help but smile back. The blue in his eyes was tantalizing, and his smile was devastating. Judah was gorgeous. Just plain gorgeous.

  “You are very welcome,” she said before clearing her throat. “And please, call me Sarah. All of you.” They nodded, and she sipped her coffee again before asking the looming question.

  “But…what if it doesn’t work?”

  A dark pallor cast over the table, and Judah pulled his hand back after giving her a gentle pat.

  “Then we start over,” he said.

  Sarah nodded. Starting over meant more lives lost. More pain for all of them. She couldn’t help but think of Kalin. She remembered the look in her eyes when she had talked about her daughter.

  “I promise you, all of you,” she cast a brief look to Taris, “that I will do everything within my power to fix this. It won’t be easy. I am going to need a massive amount of lab equipment and—”

  “We already have it,” Judah interrupted.

  “You what? But how?”

  “We kind of broke into your hospital, and well, we took it.”

  “You did what?” Sarah stood up, setting her coffee down on the table so hard that it sloshed over the edges of the cup. “You mean you just waltzed into my lab and took all of the equipment out? How did you do that? You know how long it took for me to write the grants for that equipment? I had to—”

  “Sarah.”

  Every head turned to the corner where Taris sat. His legs were stretched out in front of him, his fingers still intently peeling the label from the beer bottle.

  “They followed an order. You needed it here, so we brought it here. End of discussion.”

  “But—”

  “I said that’s the end of it.”

  Sarah narrowed her eyes at him and put her hands on her hips, completely ignoring the fact that they were surrounded by people whose mouths were hanging open because of his outburst.

  “You know,” she said, “I’m here to save your ass. You should give me a little bit more gratitude there, buddy.”

  Taris muttered something under his breath. The only thing she managed to catch out of it was “I’ll give you something.”

  “Enough,” Rhiannon slapped a hand down onto the table, drawing everyone’s attention back to the subject at hand. “We can mince words about who wants to give whom what later. Right now, we need to set up a space for Sarah so she can get to work. And, Taris, what is it now?”

  “Bite me, Rhiannon,” he said as he was fumbling in his front pocket for something. They all heard the dull vibration from within his leather trench that got louder as he pulled out an iPhone.

  “Here,” he slid it across the table to Sarah, who stared at it curiously for a moment before she realized it was hers. “I completely forgot I put it in my pocket.”

  “No worries. I’m glad you had it.” She picked it up and thumbed through the menu screen, trying to access her voice mail. “Just a second,” she held up a finger to the table.

  You have one new message.

  First message: Hey nerd, it’s me. Haven’t heard from you in a few days, but I’ve had my phone turned off. Doing that whole existential reflection bit. Guess you may have heard that the lab was broken into, everything was taken, and Boss is pissed with a capital P. Anyway, give me a call later. We’ll get a drink or something. I have a few things I wanna give you and talk to you about. Love ya.

  Sarah’s face went ghost white, and her hands began to shake. Nick. Oh Lord, Nick was at home. If Taris’ brother managed to find her, he could easily find Nick. He could be on his way there right now. She thumbed back through the screen and looked at the time stamp on Nick’s missed call. Five minutes ago. She breathed a short sigh of relief but still shook with fear.

  “Sarah,” Judah whispered. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nick,” Taris replied. Sarah stared at him for a moment, wondering how in the hell he could have known, but then she nodded.

  “There’s something else, too,” Zillah chimed in. “There is something you are not telling us. What is it?”

  Sarah cleared her throat and looked at Taris before she looked back to Zillah. He knew what was wrong.

  “We need to go get her research partner,” he said.

  “Okay,” Zillah said. “Why?”

  “Because of that guy. If he found me, he can find Nick,” Sarah blurted out, her voice a frenzied panic.

  “Wait, wait,” Achan held up a hand. “What guy are we talking about?”

  Taris ran a hand through his hair and narrowed his eyes at Rhiannon. She shook her head and turned to say something to Achan and Judah when Taris spoke up.

  “When I went to go get Sarah, we had a bit of a run-in with Bane.”

  Chapter 14

  A collective curse rang out in the room as chairs were thrust backward and bodies began to pace the floor. Voices layered on top of one another, and curses in various different languages flew through the air. The only one of them who stood perfectly still was Judah. His handsome face was marred by an underlying something that would have sent even the devil crying for the safety of his bed. With the exception of Zillah, everyone turned to him, watching the murder seethe behind his eyes.

  “What are we doing, maestro? Your call.” Achan looked at Judah, who turned his head to stare at Zillah. She was still pacing the room, hurling French invectives into the cosmos.

  “Suit up,” he said. “We leave in fifteen minutes.”

  He stormed out of the room, Achan and Rhiannon following closely on his heels.

  Taris turned to Sarah. “Be ready to leave in fifteen minutes. I am going up to the house to tell Kalin what’s up.” He turned to Zillah. “Can she stay with you until I get back?”

  “It would be my pleasure,” Zillah replied as she gently laid a hand on Sarah’s shoulder. “We will save your friend.” She paused to smile. “Maybe we’ll get to have a bit of fun, too.”

  “I know that Bane is Taris’ brother, but what is going on? I feel like I’m missing something,” Sarah asked.

  “I will tell you while I dress. There is a great deal of history between all of us.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Zillah smiled again as she punched a number into a keypad just outside of a six-paneled door. “Guess how old I am? Go on, guess.”

  Sarah looked at her smooth skin, her lavender eyes, and her lean, muscled body. On her right shoulder, peeking out from underneath her short-sleeved baby-doll tee, she could see several thick scars.

  “I give up.”

  She laughed, patting Sarah on the shoulder before ushering her into an almost bare bedroom. Save for the black walls and the red coverlet on the bed, there was no color. Sarah clicked the door shut as she watched Zillah strip off her shirt and her jeans. Her body was lean and perfect, just like Rhiannon’s, only Zillah was a little bit narrower in the hips and the chest. She wasn’t flat, but she wasn’t extremely curvy, either. Sarah felt a little odd that this woman who had threatened her life not a few moments before was now stripped down to nothing but her underwear in front of her.

  Zillah pull
ed a pair of leather pants from out of another box underneath her bed. She turned to shimmy them on, and when she did, Sarah drew in a shocked breath. On her back was a network of scars, scars that looked like latticework. The extensions to three of those scars were what she had seen earlier on her arm. They covered from the base of her neck to the small of her back and disappeared underneath the waist of her low-rise leathers.

  She didn’t turn around when she heard Sarah catch her breath. She reached her hands around to her back and unlatched her bra before leaning down to pick up some sort of shirt out of the metal box. She slid the halter around her neck and pulled two folds around her back, latching them with buckles. It was only after she was completely strapped into it that Sarah realized it was a vest. A halter top, bulletproof vest, complete with several loops along the front to conceal the throwing stars Zillah was tucking into them. Two holsters rested right at her hips, into which she placed two extremely large guns, guns that could have quite possibly weighed more than she did. She smoothed out her ponytail, making sure it was nice and tight before she tugged on a pair of menacing boots and grabbed a leather trench from the edge of her bed.

  “Ready?” she asked as she walked toward the door.

  Sarah nodded and followed her out into the hallway.

  “So, seriously, how old are you?”

  Zillah stopped and turned to face her. “I will be five hundred years old this December. Five centuries old, and I only remember two of them.”

  The concept of being that old didn’t even faze Sarah anymore, but the cryptic response made her raise an eyebrow. “Why only two?”

  She started walking again, and Sarah had to struggle to keep up with her.

  “Does it have anything to do with the scars on your back?” Sarah panted.

  “Yes,” Zillah said. And then she was quiet. Despite Sarah flooding her with thousands of questions, Zillah remained silent.

  “And I’m guessing it has something to do with Bane?”

  “Yes,” Zilliah muttered, “it does. I do not remember what happened or three hundred years of my life because of him. Everyone says it is a blessing that I do not know what he did, but they still have to live with it. That alone is worth killing him for.”

  Rhiannon met them in the hallway, and like Zillah, she was outfitted with what appeared to be a Kevlar corset, expertly buckled over the top of a high-collared yet deep-dipping, V-necked, skintight leather shirt. The major difference between the arsenal Zillah carried and the one Rhiannon had was that Rhiannon’s was more steel-based. Strapped to her back, she had what Sarah could only describe as a sword—a very intricately carved, menacing-looking sword. Her auburn mane was pulled back from her face, which made her look all the more deadly. It confirmed Sarah’s suspicions that while Rhiannon was soft and kind, she could also be brutal and lethal.

  “Are we all here?” Achan asked. The entire crew must have bought stock in a leather company because that seemed to be the material of choice for ass-kicking vampires in that house. Both Achan and Judah were both clad in leather pants, military-style, black steel-toed boots, and had a Kevlar similar to what Zillah carried but packed with blades and hand cannons. Achan wore only a muscle T-shirt under his, whereas Judah wore a black, short-sleeved shirt.

  “I think we are still waiting on Taris,” Judah said as he loaded a clip into a gun. He tucked it into his holster. “He had to run up to the main house to tell Kalin what we were doing.”

  “He’s not going with you, is he?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  The booming voice came from the doorway. They all turned to see Taris walking—or more apropos, storming—into the room, and each one of them had a different reaction. Achan smiled, Judah narrowed his eyes, Zillah was indifferent, and Rhiannon shook her head adamantly.

  Sarah simply stopped breathing.

  Standing before her was a warrior, cool, reserved, and deadly. Though his attire mirrored that of Achan’s, there was something about him that was different. The muscles under the strange wording on his upper arm twitched with anticipation. His eyes were sharp and ready. Shaggy, dark locks draped around his face, and the combination of his rugged bone structure, piercing gaze, and the dark metal gauge rings in his ears made him look like certain death on two legs. She was speechless.

  “Damn, killer! Where’ve you been?”

  Achan approached him and gripped his hand, pulling him in for a strange shoulder-to-shoulder hug.

  “You ready?” Taris turned to Sarah.

  The question helped her find her breath again. “What? Me? Why, why am I going?”

  “Leverage, love,” Rhiannon spoke up. “He’s your friend. You can talk him into coming with us. I mean, he wouldn’t come with us willingly, would he? Hell, I wouldn’t come with us.”

  A chorus of chuckles resonated through the foyer.

  “Okay, ladies, no time like the present. Let’s move.” Judah barked the order as he slipped his leather trench over his wide shoulders. One by one, they all moved out of the foyer and into the courtyard, where Achan climbed into the driver’s seat of a large black van. Rhiannon, Zillah, and Judah all piled in the back. Sarah was hesitant but grabbed the side rail and was almost about to lift herself off the ground when she felt a hand on her shoulder gently pull her back down. She turned and stared up at Taris. Despite his menacing appearance, his face was soft, his eyes full of yet another new emotion, one that she would almost swear was some kind of affection.

  “I won’t let anything happen to you,” he whispered down to her, drawing his face closer to her ear. “I promise my life on it. I will protect you.” He leaned in closer, his lips barely touching her ear. “Trust me.”

  She swallowed and nodded her head, pulling herself away enough so that she could look up at him again. He meant it. She could feel it. Regardless of the fact that they had spent the better part of their acquaintance snapping at each other, she knew she was safe with him. He gently took her hand in his and spun her around, helping her into the van before shutting the panel door and climbing up to the passenger seat.

  “Let’s hit it, Achan,” he muttered under his breath. “If we’re lucky, he’ll still be there, and in one piece.”

  Chapter 15

  Kalin sat in the center of Taris’ floor. Cool, pink tiles that held so many memories of so many lives lost surrounded her. She ran her delicate fingers over the grout where two large pieces of formerly white marble met. The thin lines were darker than the stone, standing out at a deep burgundy against the pale pink.

  She felt helpless. Completely and totally helpless. She’d begged Taris not to go.

  “I refuse to sit idly by and let my battles be fought for me anymore,” he’d said.

  So she begged him to leave Sarah with her.

  “She is the only person who can lead us to him and convince him to come back with us.”

  And so she had kept her composure until he slammed the front door shut. Then she’d slumped down onto the floor. She’d warned him that she felt death. She knew it was coming. To whom, she couldn’t be sure, but she felt its hot presence, and the thought of losing everything now that they were so close to redemption was more than she could bear. So she’d gone to Taris’ room, to be in the one place where she knew—despite the death that had taken place in there—that there would be some semblance of life left. Hayley’s spirit still lingered. It was with her every day, tingling at the back of her neck, coursing through her skin.

  Somewhere, deep inside Kalin, a spark had ignited. It didn’t billow into a raging fire, but grew until it was a smooth, steady lick of flame. She was tired of living, tired of going day to day, hoping that things would change. For the better part of her existence, she had toed the family line, acting the part of a strong, albeit silent, female model for the rest of her society. Women looked to her as an example, a paragon of all that was feminine and vampire. No more, she thought. No more.

  Though Kalin loved her brother dearly, she was tired of living under his w
atchful eye. Despite his attempts to do everything in his power for her benefit, she was tired of being the one thing that held him back. Kalin knew it was her fault he wasn’t happily married by now. She knew it was ultimately because of her and her desire to be a mother, a true mother, that he was risking the lives of not only himself and Sarah but of the others, as well.

  She tried to shake the feeling, but Death was never one to let down its guard or leave solely upon a will for it to do so.

  Kalin resigned herself to what had to be done, to what needed to be done. For her own peace of mind. It was better for them to die off quickly than to spend eons of life waiting for a miracle that would never come.

  Calmly, she left the room and returned shortly with a hammer. With a determined inhale and a slow exhale, she knelt down to the floor and began pounding at the edges of the pink-tinged tile. She managed to make it come up in large pieces, pieces that would be easy to put back together. One by one, she stacked them until there was an almost perfect square missing out of the floor. Around the tan-looking subflooring, there were pristine, white marble tiles. She scooped them up and carried them off to her room. She didn’t even bother to turn off the light.

  * * *

  The neighborhood in which Dr. Nicholas Patton lived looked like something out of a Thomas Kincaid painting. The trees that lined the narrow country road were colored with all manners of red, gold, and yellow. The mountain that hovered directly over the quiet street looked as if the Almighty had dotted it with a gigantic bowl of Fruity Pebbles. The houses were all nice, neat little cottages that had the same stone chimneys, the same front porches with nice little porch swings, and the same perfectly manicured front lawns.

  It made Morrigan want to puke.

  “Let’s hurry up and get this over with. I feel like if I stay here any longer, I’ll turn into Donna Reed.”

  “And what’s so bad about Donna Reed?” Bane muttered from beside her.

  Morrigan glanced up at Bane, who was systematically sealing and reopening the gash on the left side of his mouth. He would run his pierced tongue over the wound, wait for it to close up, and then pierce it back open with the tip of his fang. The look on his face screamed malicious intent, and she knew it was directed completely and totally toward her. She’d not only given him that busted lip, but had instructed him to keep it open as a reminder of the extreme irritation she felt with him when she discovered there was another doctor—and a male one at that—who could help them. Upon learning this, she promptly tied Bane down and gave him a kiss via the butt of a pistol.