When Darkness Hungers: A Shadow Keepers Novel (Shadow Keepers 5)

by J. K. Beck

  Sara stifled a shiver as she looked down at the body. It looked like something you’d find in a museum, not on a beach. Dried out and shriveled, it gave good old King Tut a run for his money.

  Tucker and Orion stood beside her. All three were watching Doyle, who had his hands on the mummified head. Luke, of course, had remained at Division 6. Unlike Sara, who’d been changed less than two years ago, he could no longer tolerate the sun.

  Three uniformed agents milled about, keeping the humans away, and the forensics team sat on their equipment trunks, waiting for Doyle to finish.

  Sara fought the urge to bite her nails, a habit she’d abandoned years ago. In front of her, Doyle pulled away from the body, then slowly stood. For a moment, his eyes were glassy as he came out of his trance. When they cleared, he looked at her and shook his head.

  “Nothing. Mitre’s thoughts are as dried out as his body.”

  Sara silently cursed. She’d been hoping they’d found the body in time to land a solid lead.

  Beside her, Orion shifted, signaling for the forensics team to begin working the area around the body. “At least the state of the body deterred scavengers,” he said. “Bugs prefer meat of the gooey, fleshy variety.”

  “Any thoughts?” Sara asked the doctor.

  “Sure, but none that qualifies as a theory,” Orion said. “We’ve been assuming that these desiccated bodies were the result of disease, correct?”

  Sara nodded. They’d also tossed out the possibility of poisoning, but until they had toxicological evidence, the deaths weren’t being investigated as homicides.

  “With this body, nothing is different. Nothing, that is, except that,” he said, pointing to the hole in Mitre’s chest. “None of the other bodies showed any sign of injury. Other than being dried out, of course.”

  “So did Mitre have the same sickness and coincidentally piss someone off? Or did whoever punched through his rib cage infect him?”

  “That’s what I want to know,” Orion said.

  Beside them, Doyle looked thoughtful. Tucker, a human with a particularly handy knack for mind control, had slipped away and was now helping the uniformed officers convince unsuspecting humans that they had urgent business elsewhere and should forget all about what they’d seen on the beach today.

  “It’s the timing that interests me,” Doyle said, and Sara nodded, because she’d been thinking along those lines, too.

  “Penny Martinez,” she said.

  “Exactly.” Doyle nodded toward the body. “That hole in his chest means that he was attacked. And the timing suggests the attack was in retribution for killing the Martinez girl.”

  Sara picked up the thread. “Looks like we may have somebody out there hunting rogues. Somebody who knows how to freeze-dry vamps.”

  Doyle and Orion glanced at each other, their expressions grim.

  “Find me answers,” Sara said. “And find me a murderer to go with them.”

  Serge paced in front of the obstructed windows, wishing it were night so that he could pull back the shutters and watch the Pacific crash against the shore. He was squatting in an abandoned beach house—if it could be called squatting when the house was worth several million dollars.

  The place was owned by some celebrity who’d made a fortune on some television show that Serge had never bothered watching. The celebrity had moved to London, and had rented the place to a trust-fund kid who was going to one of the local colleges. Serge hadn’t heard which one, and he didn’t really care. The college kid, being a typical asshole male in his early twenties, had proceeded to trash the place. The put-upon real estate agent had kicked him and his buddies out, and the celebrity had told her not to bother relisting it. He’d return to the States at Christmas, and would move back in then.

  In the meantime, the place was just sitting vacant, which was a huge waste. Which was why Serge had no guilt whatsoever about making use of it.

  He’d used it twice before, and had taken the time to bypass the security system, have a key made, and otherwise arrange for all the comforts of home. He hadn’t stayed long either time, though. The place was too posh, too plush. And he was feeling too damn raw. He’d chosen it only because it was a short walk down the beach from Luke’s Malibu home. And though he’d never told Luke and Sara where he was squatting, their proximity made him feel like he was slowly inching back into the real world.

  He’d come tonight, though, because he had the girl with him, and he didn’t want her to awaken in a dank sewer or a dark basement. He’d told Alexis that he’d save her, and he wished that he knew whether he truly had. Instead, he was racked with doubts, wondering if he should have simply let her slip away.

  But that hadn’t been possible. He’d seen that innocent face, and he’d known that he couldn’t let her go. He’d be her salvation—and he only hoped that he wasn’t condemning her in the process.

  Now she was lying still on the sofa. He’d drained her to the point of death, then urged her to drink deeply from him. She hadn’t hesitated. Instead, she’d looked at him with wide, trusting eyes, and he’d felt like a hero. Maybe it was an illusion, but he’d liked the way it felt, especially after having been a monster for far too long.

  With a soft moan, she stirred, and Serge hurried to her side. He knelt beside the couch, her hand enveloped in his.

  She blinked, her eyes slowly adjusting, her face an absolute blank.

  “It’s okay,” he said, afraid she’d scream in fear or curse him for changing her. Afraid, he realized, of what he’d done. “You’re safe.”

  The blank expression remained, and he felt his gut twist in remorse. Then she slowly sat up and looked around. When her eyes came back to him, she smiled, and his fear fizzled away.

  “You’re the one,” she said. “On the beach. I was dying, and you’re the one who saved me.”

  “I am.” He shifted position so he could look her straight in the eye. “Do you know how?”

  “You turned me into a vampire.” The words were flat. And then, to Serge’s surprise and relief, the girl smiled again. “That’s so freaking cool.”

  He laughed, feeling as though a weight had been lifted off his chest. The truth was, he wasn’t entirely sure that she was a vampire. Certainly he wasn’t. Not anymore. But he’d been one when he’d turned the girl—something he couldn’t have accomplished if he’d been any other creature.

  Hopefully that meant she was one, too.

  He looked at her, noting the filthy hair she’d woven into a braid down her back, and the tiny bit of eyeliner that remained on her lids. “I’m glad you think it’s cool,” he said, “but there are things you need to know. Things you have to understand.” She stared at him, as if waiting for him to spew forth wisdom, and the real weight of what he’d done hit him with full force. He’d changed her, a teenager. Old enough so that the change didn’t violate the Covenant, but still young enough that she needed guidance.

  “For one,” he began, “you can’t go home.” Technically, she could. Since young vampires weren’t sensitive to the sun, they could actually step back into their human lives, at least for a short time. They had to hide their hunger for blood, of course. And as time passed and they failed to age, it became necessary to move on, often faking death in order to gain the freedom to move fully into the shadow world. He wouldn’t deny her the chance to say good-bye if she pressed the issue, but he knew from painful experience that it would be better to simply walk away.

  “I don’t have a home,” she said flatly, and he caught the scent of both truth and strength. A runaway, he realized, and he wondered what it was that she’d been running from.

  “You do,” he said. “You have a home in my world.”

  She looked around the house. “Not bad.”

  “And not ours.” He realized as he spoke that he would have to do something about that. He’d done this—changed her—without thinking. But he was in no position to take care of her. Hell, he was barely managing to take care of himself.

>   He pushed the thought away, forcing himself to focus on what she needed. “You’re hungry?”

  She nodded.

  “That’s the second thing you need to know. Feeding. We don’t feed off humans.” He went to the refrigerator and returned with one of the bags of blood he’d stocked there. “Not only is that just wrong, but it would also get the police looking in our direction. And trust me when I say that you want to live under the radar now.”

  “I get that,” she said. “I’ve been under the radar for over a week.”

  She had spunk, this kid, and he smiled as he nodded. “I might as well tell you now so you don’t find out from someone else, but there are some humans that it’s legal to feed from. They’re called licensed faunts. People who’ve found out we exist, and they trade their blood for either money or a taste of ours.” He forced himself to speak dispassionately, keeping his tone level and steady despite the onslaught of vile memories brought on by the talk of such humans.

  “We change them into vampires?” she asked.

  He shook his head. The idea of one of the messed-up, addicted faunts he’d encountered as a full-fledged vamp filled him with dread. “No. They just want a taste. It gives them a kick. Strength, healing power. That kind of thing.”

  She nodded, and he continued.

  “But even though the faunts are willing, you don’t want to go there. Drinking human blood from living flesh helps your daemon come out. And that’s one part of you that you want to keep suppressed always. If you can.”

  “My daemon?”

  She sounded genuinely clueless, and he searched her face, realizing that he’d been expecting it from the first moment he turned her. Usually the daemon hit and hit hard not long after a vampire made the transition.

  “What do you mean by ‘my daemon’?”

  He couldn’t avoid telling her, even if it might scare her. “It lives in all humans. Dark and horrible. And it’s ripped loose during the vampiric transformation.”

  Her mouth tightened with worry. “Ripped loose? Is mine out? How do I tell?”

  “Hunger,” he said, and saw the way she tossed down the bag of blood, scooting back from it as if it were poison. “No, not that kind. Rabid hunger. Not just for nourishment, but for pain. For other people’s pain. And a wild fury that you can only control through the force of will.”

  “I’m strong,” she said, lifting her chin with bravado. “I’m very, very strong.”

  “I know you are,” he said, and he was being totally honest. He’d seen the strength in her. More than that, he’d tasted it. “But the daemon’s much stronger than the will of most new vampires.” She looked nervous, so he hurried on. “But don’t worry. We’ve got that covered. The ancient vampires created a ritual called the Holding. And during the ritual, you call upon a spirit guide to help you battle back the daemon and keep it locked inside.”

  Her brows rose. “Sounds new-agey.”

  “Trust me. It’s very old-agey.”

  She nodded and went back to sucking on the bag of blood, apparently unconcerned by the possibility of a growing malevolence inside her.

  With luck, she would have reason to be unconcerned. Most vamps who lived in the shadow world had managed to lock their daemon deep inside. In some, like Luke, the daemon lived close to the surface, and it was a constant battle to keep it suppressed. In others, the daemon ran free, controlling the vampire instead of bending to the vampire’s control. Those vampires were rogue. They killed humans. And now Serge killed them.

  As for Serge, his daemon had lived close to the surface throughout all of his long years, and on more occasions than he liked to think about it had burst free, taking control, pulling Serge into a dark, hellish existence where only blood and death mattered. It had taken all of Serge’s strength to battle it back, and the fact that he hadn’t always succeeded tormented him, the humans who’d died at his hand haunting him.

  Now his daemon cowered against the power of the beast that lived locked within him. A monster that would burst free if he didn’t feed. He was paying the price for his earlier sins by hunting and killing rogues, and he calmed the beast in the process.

  And Alexis and the girl? They were evidence. Tangible proof that he could do something good. That he could save instead of destroy.

  He examined her face as the girl stood up, but there was no sign that her daemon might be rising. She’d emptied the blood bag neatly, not ravenously, and now she watched him, curiosity filling her features.

  “Is there something wrong with me?”

  “Why? Do you feel like something’s wrong with you?”

  She shook her head slowly. “No, but you’re looking at me. Like … like I’m a bomb or something.”

  “No,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with you. I’m just …” He trailed off, looking for the words, wondering how much of the truth to tell her. Maybe she was a vampire, and maybe she wasn’t.

  Yes, she might be like him, with a hunger that had to be satisfied in order to quell a ravenous beast. But if she was, there would be time to contend with that later. Right now, all that mattered was taking care of her. “I’m just very glad you’re here,” he said, realizing as he spoke how true his words were.

  “Really?” She looked up at him, as if no one had ever been glad to be near her before. It had been a long time since Serge had felt his heart break a little, and he hadn’t killed a human in a long time, either. But right then he wanted to head out into the world and drain every ounce of life from whatever humans had sucked the confidence from this girl.

  “Really,” he said firmly. “I’m Serge, by the way.”

  Her brows lifted, and she laughed. He grinned, waiting for her to stop, but the laughs just kept on coming. “Surge,” she said. “Like a surge protector. And you are. A protector, I mean.”

  He rolled his eyes and decided he’d clarify his name later. “And who are you?”

  “CeeCee,” she said firmly. “It’s short for Cecelia.” She made a face. “My stepfather hates that nickname.”

  “He the one you’re running from?”

  She tilted her head. “How did you know I was running?”

  “Lucky guess.”

  She hesitated, then shrugged. “Yeah. Him mostly. And my mom. But don’t worry. Neither one of them’s gonna come looking for me. I only just ran away, but I’ve been on my own for a long time.”

  “Well, CeeCee,” he said, noting the way her eyes widened with pleasure at the name, “you’re not on your own anymore.”

  Rough hands stroked her, skin against skin, the friction generating heat.

  The heat reflected in those slate-gray eyes. Sergius. As the world had been fading around her, she’d heard someone say that his name was Sergius.

  She moaned and reached for him, fingers outstretched. Seeking. Longing.

  But she found only air, and the loss of him closed a fist tight around her, squeezing her heart, forcing out her breath.

  “Please.”

  It was her own voice, but it was so full of need she barely recognized it.

  She was moving then, her feet carrying her to some unknown destination. A thick mist swirled around her, and she squinted, calling out for him, her heart tripping when she saw flashes of him in the dense fog.

  His hair, his eyes, a hint of tattoo, links of chain circling his bicep, flexing as he moved, the links strong enough to pull her toward him.

  They were bound, she thought. Bound together.

  “Please,” she said again, and this time, he was there. Touching her. Stroking her.

  And then, so softly she almost couldn’t hear, he whispered her name.

  Alexis …

  Alexis …

  She opened her eyes, disappointed to realize she was in her own bed and no one was whispering her name. With her head filled with fuzz, she sat up, trying to get her bearings as she pulled on a clean shirt. She remembered calling Leena and Edgar last night and telling them that everything was okay before she’d slid
under the covers to sleep for a thousand hours. She hadn’t told them the whole story, though she had told them that the vampire was dead. Of course, she’d neglected to mention the fact that she’d been injured, too, and that another vampire had stepped in to kill the one she was hunting. And, oh yeah, he’d made her suck his blood, too.

  No, that would have been some serious over-sharing. Maybe she’d tell them both eventually. Then again, maybe she never would.

  She shivered, but whether out of disgust or something far more complicated, she didn’t know. The vampire had worked his way into her dreams, after all. More than that, he was in her blood.

  She knew she should be disgusted by the thought. Disgusted at herself for letting such a creature into her mind, even if he’d forced his way in against her will.

  Except, of course, it hadn’t been entirely against her will. He’d saved her life, and she damn well knew it. And he’d saved that poor teenager.

  At least, he’d said he would. But had he? The vampire had saved her, so why would he lie about the girl?

  Alexis didn’t know. All she knew was that she didn’t trust vamps, and this weird … connection … she felt for some mysterious vampire who’d shown up in the dark wasn’t safe. She knew better. Vamps were hard, cold killers, and this one was probably a psychotic freak who knew how to play her to get what he wanted.

  Damn.

  With the curse still on her lips, she tugged on her boots, frustrated by her mind’s fuzziness. She needed to check the scene. Make sure the girl was really gone. See what had become of the vampire she’d been chasing.

  She hadn’t been able to see the fight between him and Sergius, but she knew enough to know that if that bad vamp had been defeated, he was a pile of dust now.

  Once she found the dust, she’d feel a lot better about what was going on. Not that she necessarily would find dust. When a vampire was staked, it left a pile of greenish gray dust—about enough to fill a shoe box. The trouble, of course, was that dust could be dispersed by the wind. And this vampire’s dust might have been washed out with the tide or trampled by beachgoers. Still, she wouldn’t feel right until she’d looked.