Darkness Comes This Way

by Pixie Lynn Whitfield

  “No time to sit and read a silly paper. We’re already running late for duty. Let’s just go.” She started to head out without bothering to wait for him to follow. Draven stood and tossed the paper on a nearby table.

  “Zarah, are you okay? Look, I’m sorry about—” he started while they were on their way out to his car. She raised a hand to stop him in mid-sentence.

  “I don’t want to discuss it, Draven.”

  “Zarah!”

  They both heard a female shout as they reached the car, causing them to stop and turn to face the source of the voice. It was Ash, one of the Compound staff members, running to catch up.

  “What’s up?” Zarah asked in confusion.

  “I’m sorry, but I needed to give you a message before you left. Nathanial requests your presence in his office for a meeting after your shift is over,” she said.

  “Alright, tell him that we’ll be there.” She couldn’t help but wonder at the back of her mind what it could be about. Why hadn’t he just paged them? She reached up and double-checked her earpiece. It was on and connected.

  “He would have paged, but he said he had to be somewhere. Told me to catch you, sorry. Not Draven. Just you,” she explained before she walked back toward the Compound entrance, leaving Zarah even more confused and curious than before. She looked over at Draven, who shrugged, and then climbed into his car.

  The night was slow for them as they drove around searching and waiting. For a while, Draven parked the car across the street from the park again, and they sat there in silent hopes that perhaps a Rogue or two would come along for a meeting or something. But there was nothing. Only silence between the two of them and calm, still air outside that didn’t reveal any scents or signs of the Rogues’ presence.

  “You can’t give me the silent treatment all the time, you know,” Draven finally said in frustrated exasperation, looking over at Zarah. His hand landed hard against the steering wheel with a slap to show his annoyance. One look though was enough to make him stare for longer than he should have. Her dark auburn hair and pale skin stood out against the dash lights. She didn’t look like a monster. He always scoffed at the human vampire myths. They assumed their kind had to be pale and corpse-like. Just looking at him or Zarah would prove them wrong. She was lively. He wasn’t ghastly pale.

  “I can do whatever I damn well please,” she replied, staring out the passenger window toward the park, not bothering to meet his gaze. He sighed loudly and shook his head.

  “Fine. Well, it looks like we’re not getting any action tonight, so I think we should just head back to base and you can have your little meeting with Nathanial,” he said, starting the car again. She nodded in agreement, placed the safety back on her guns, and holstered them.

  When they arrived back to the Compound, she didn’t say anything to Draven and simply headed straight to Nathanial’s office. Without even knocking, she barged in and took a seat.

  “You wanted to see me?” Her eyebrows were raised with interest. She looked around briefly at his décor. He always was old-fashioned and loved his expensive, plush, antique furniture and priceless art. Of course, he’d been alive for over a hundred years. He’d have time to collect a lot of the things.

  Nathanial, initially shocked by her sudden appearance, cleared his throat and moved some papers aside from his desk and into a nearby drawer.

  “Oh… Yes, Zarah. I was wondering if everything was okay. You didn’t seem like yourself yesterday morning, and well, I’m concerned.”

  “I know.”

  “You know what?” he asked.

  “About the Bonding Pact,” she said, narrowing her eyes.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Nathanial took a long, jagged breath and leaned back in his chair, staring at her in surprise. He let a few minutes go by as he gathered his thoughts before he could respond to her.

  “I’m sorry, Zarah. I didn’t think it was a good idea to tell you, really. Let’s face it. You and Draven never have gotten along very well exactly,” he started finally, rubbing his eyes with his hands in annoyance.

  “Was there a particular reason why he even told you?” he continued.

  “Yes,” she replied, and then proceeded to tell him about the events of the last couple of days with information that Draven and her had gathered of Rogues having grown intelligent, wanting to hunt her down for the ‘cure’. She left out the part of them working with Thomas though. When she finished, Nathanial stared at her in a mixture of horror and shock.

  Before he could continue the conversation, Ash rushed into the office.

  “There’s an emergency. Mitchell was just dropped in front of the building by some Rogues; he’s been seriously injured. The doctor is wheeling him down to the hospital wing now.” She was panicked, causing them to jump from their chairs and rush from the room behind her when she ran back out.

  When Zarah made it to the hallway of the hospital wing with Nathanial, she saw Draven, along with a few others. They stood around the gurney that held Mitchell, one of the Guardians that had been coming in from his shift, and the doctor was working frantically to get the hospital room ready for him.

  He looked to have been stabbed several times in the chest and stomach, and his head had been bashed horribly. The wounds were from something silver, harmful to all vampires in various ways, and his skin was turning a bluish-gray due to the poison in his system. His injuries were not healing. She slowly approached, walking up beside Draven, and stared down at her colleague in horror. The Rogues had never done such an act before. They either turned a Guardian, or they killed one. Never have they beaten one to the brink of death, and then left him on their doorstep. This was a warning.

  Draven looked over at her with a grim expression and she knew he was thinking the same thing.

  In that moment, Mitchell opened his eyes and stared hard at Zarah. With the best breath he could muster, he opened his mouth and let the words fall out in a whisper. His words sounded garbled while blood pooled at the back of his throat but it didn’t matter—she still understood what he was saying. He kept repeating it, going slower each time until the pain finally made him go unconscious.

  “They…they told me to tell you…they’re coming for you…soon.”

  Nine

  “Zarah! Behind you!” Draven shouted as he continued grappling with the Rogue in front of him.

  She turned in time to see two more, a male and a female, running at her, growling and leaping toward her with ease. In one fluid motion, she raised the gun and fired, hitting the male in the stomach that sent him flying backward against the brick wall of an alley building. The female hissed furiously, her eyes widening at Zarah, as they began to struggle with each other.

  When the female punched Zarah, her eyes swam and blood pooled in her mouth. She could hear Draven still struggling nearby with the Rogue that he was fighting. Anger flared within her as she thought of the past few days’ events, and she soon found a grip in the female’s hair, yanking her away from her body, and slammed her into the wall next to the male Rogue. Twenty-four hours had passed since Mitchell had arrived at the Compound seriously injured and left lying up in the hospital wing, and now they were out trying to continue their usual duties. Zarah felt odd. A darkness consumed her as she stared at the two laying on the ground before her, sputtering through the blood. She felt sick. Her emotions were controlling her, but she didn’t care at that point.

  Spitting out more of her blood, she loaded her gun again and aimed it at the male. When she heard the gunshot nearby without looking up, she knew Draven had taken care of the one he’d been fighting. He would go take care of clean-up and be back shortly. She fired her pistol, the shot striking a silver bullet directly into the male’s head, before turning to the female.

  “What’s your name, girl?” Zarah suddenly asked, her eyes dark and fierce. They were burning around the edges. Violet flashes kept coming into the peripheral of her vision. A white-hot ferocity filled her chest, and
a dark, vicious voice was whispering at the back of her mind.

  The Rogue was struggling to move after having been slammed into the wall a few minutes before by her.

  When she looked up at her with her lips curled back in a snarl, not answering, Zarah lifted her boot and brought it down on her leg with a heavy force.

  The impact caused a crunch, echoing loudly around them, and indicated that the bone had just been crushed. The female yelped. It would take a few hours for an injury like that to heal but Zarah wasn’t going to let that chance happen.

  “I asked you what your damn name is. Answer me! I know you can talk!” she shouted at her.

  “Janice,” the Rogue finally said with a pained grunt, reaching forward to grab her leg.

  “Janice. Good girl. Now tell me, Janice… Do you know anything about what happened to my colleague, Mitchell? Or anything that’s going on with this Rogue Army for that matter?” Zarah asked, kneeling down in front of her and pointing the gun at her face.

  Janice looked from the gun to Zarah and then smiled evilly.

  “Like I’m going to tell you anything, Guardian.”

  The rabid spit in her face and let out a high-squealed laugh. As Zarah wiped the saliva away, she clenched her jaw and stared at the creature, unblinking. Without warning, she slammed her fist into Janice’s eye, unsheathed her small, silver dagger from her belt loop, and slashed the blade across the Rogue’s torso. Janice screeched in pain; she had expected Zarah to just simply shoot her in the head and get her death over with quickly, but that didn’t seem to be the case now.

  The Guardian was going to torture her to death.

  “Zarah, what the hell are you doing?” Draven asked behind her suddenly.

  “I’ll meet you back at the car,” she replied darkly.

  Before he could respond, she slashed at Janice again with her knife. The Rogue began to laugh and cry at the same time maniacally. Zarah’s eyes glowed determined and vicious against the darkness.

  Draven couldn’t stand to watch any longer. Shaking his head and loading his gun, he stalked up beside her as she was about to lay into the Rogue again with her knife and shoved her aside. Zarah staggered from his force.

  “Draven!” Zarah screamed at him when he shot Janice in the head with a silver bullet, officially ending it for the creature.

  He turned and faced her. His face was a mix of emotion, mostly fury. His eyes were steel cold. She shrank back. Her own vision cleared.

  “I don’t know what your problem is. You know we don’t play torture games,” he growled.

  “Now let’s get out of here.”

  “Well, if it isn’t my two favorite Guardians,” they heard Thomas say as they exited the alley. Zarah had been walking with her head down, only looking up briefly to meet Thomas’ eyes.

  “Have fun down there?” he asked, motioning toward the alley that they had just come out of.

  “Yeah, a real blast,” Draven replied sarcastically, rolling his eyes, and then stared hard at Zarah. She only shrugged her shoulders. Thomas seemed to ignore their exchange, and started walking with them.

  “I figured the two of you would like to come back to my place for a bit so that we can discuss some things,” he said as they all reached Draven’s car. Zarah looked over at him, meeting his red eyes with slight suspicion before giving him a nod. She could sense that Draven was a little uncomfortable with that idea though.

  He raised his arms up in defense when he sensed it too.

  “I swear no harm is coming. It’s just me and Alyssa there. You can drive, Zarah can sit in the backseat with her gun at my head the whole time if that makes you feel more comfortable. I’m sure my little sister here would love the idea of having a gun at my head anyway.”

  “Alright, fine. We’ll go,” Draven agreed, glancing down at Zarah.

  The drive was as Thomas had suggested it could be. Draven was driving with Thomas in the passenger seat, and Zarah in the center of the backseat. And as exactly as expected, to keep Draven comfortable since they still weren’t entirely sure on Thomas’ trust level just yet, Zarah had her gun out and pointing it at his head. He directed Draven where to go, leading him to a nice area of town where some of the extravagant apartments were, before pulling them to a stop in front of one of the buildings.

  When they arrived inside, Zarah looked around at her brother’s apartment and snorted. She shouldn’t have been surprised. He had been so much like her when he was a Guardian. His tastes hadn’t changed too much as a Rogue. Everything was immaculately clean and organized. His walls in the main room were lined with bookshelves, filled with books old and new. His floors were polished and dark hardwood, and he had black leather couches and glass tables. The apartment wasn’t very large, but it was big enough for Alyssa and him—providing a main sitting room, kitchen, one bathroom and one bedroom.

  “What?” Thomas asked with a smirk.

  “Just clean,” she replied, forcing a smile. He laughed and motioned for them to sit down.

  “You know me. And you’re the same way,” he teased back.

  “So, what’s going on?” Draven asked, taking a seat near Zarah on the couch. He was clearly uncomfortable, but trying to be polite. About that time, Alyssa walked in from the bedroom and nodded a greeting at the two of them, and they waved a casual hello to her in return.

  Thomas strolled over and sat next to his mate, placing an arm around her shoulder. Zarah offered her a small, welcoming smile. She remembered Alyssa—a vibrant blonde who’d once had bright green eyes, and was very tall and slender like a ballerina. Thomas and she had started dating shortly after they took their residency at the Compound, about a year before he was changed.

  “The army definitely wants Zarah. They seem to think if they bring her in and extract her blood, they can create some vaccine to give to our kind, to reverse us back from the Rogue status. After you left the other night, when they discovered me in the bushes, I had to pull a lie out of my ass and say that I was there because I was walking by and became curious but didn’t want to interrupt,” he explained.

  “Well, there has to be something else they’re planning other than just this. Yesterday morning, they left a tortured Guardian on the Compound doorstep,” Zarah said.

  Thomas narrowed his eyes. “That’s never been done before.”

  “I know.”

  “You think hacking up and torturing that Rogue was going to change anything?” Draven asked then, turning to Zarah. She spun toward him and bared her fangs.

  “I was doing my job, Draven.”

  “No, you were being Jill the Ripper back there.”

  Thomas’ looked between the two Guardians, finally landing his eyes on Zarah.

  “So, you in turn tortured a Rogue back in that alley?” he asked. She lowered her eyes and didn’t respond. He laughed loudly when he sensed what she had done.

  “Way to go, little sis.”

  “Don’t encourage her, Thomas,” Draven criticized with a frown.

  “Let’s drop it already,” she snapped. What she really didn’t want to get into was what had caused her to turn into that. That hadn’t been her. Something just snapped.

  “Look, can you just find out what the hell is really going on behind all of this or not, Thomas?” she added, looking over at him with a pleading look in her eyes.

  “Of course,” he said with a smile.

  Ten

  The ride back to the Compound was silent. The hum of the car engine drowned Zarah’s thoughts and she didn’t want to look at Draven’s face. She could already sense he was still angry over the night’s earlier events. Hell, she didn’t even know what had been going through her head or why she’d acted out like that. Something had overcome her senses. The tension between them both was clear. When he pulled into the garage and parked, she took the opportunity to steal an awkward glance at him.

  He was already staring at her.

  With his periwinkle gaze and his jaw set firmly, the lights of the dash illumina
ted his features making him look much more powerful in that confined space. She couldn’t help but find a deeper respect for him.

  “Are you alright?” His tone held a rough edge. The Irish accent rolled out in a gorgeous rhythm, but she swallowed back the admiration. There wasn’t a hint of concern in his voice, only question of her sanity in his eyes.

  She nodded and reached for the door.

  “If something is wrong, or going wrong, you need to address it. Even if it’s not with me. And if you ever pull a torture stunt like that again unnecessarily, I’ll have to report you,” he added as they climbed from the car and made their way into the Compound elevator. Once again, she only nodded. From there, not another word was passed between the two of them, but she felt like she was going to explode. Her emotions flared again, differently this time, not like the malevolent ones she’d had in that alley with the Rogue. No, these involved Draven…she had disappointed him, and it hurt her to know that—she couldn’t understand the building pain in her chest.

  He glanced at her from the corner of his eye as they made the trip down in the elevator. She was staring straight ahead at the closed metal doors with her mouth clenched tightly shut, her body rigid. His own hard expression softened as he clearly saw the tears she fought.

  “Zarah, please, I know we haven’t always been on the best of terms, we can change that. We can really try to be friends…more than just partners working together,” he said softly, reaching forward to pull her back when the doors opened and she made a move to step out. She turned and stared at him in silence, her eyes still brimming with tears. Her bottom lip quivered. This time, she wasn’t faking like she had the first night with the car.