Dark of Night_Beautiful Monsters_Ashwood Red

by Jex Lane

  Dark of Night

  Beautiful Monsters: Ashwood Red

  Jex Lane

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental—or used with permission.

  Dark of Night © 2018 by Jex Lane. All rights reserved.

  Beautiful Monsters™ is a trademark of Jex Lane.

  JexLane.com

  Edited by Michelle Rascon

  Cover Design by Ravven

  For my family.

  Thank you for your endless support.

  Description

  All Kat wants is vengeance.

  Kat dreams of one thing: driving a stake through the cold, dead heart of the vampire lord who turned her father and killed her mother. When she’s offered the chance to earn magic-laced tattoos that make her stronger and faster, she jumps at it, even if it means working for monsters. Incubi. Seductive creatures who feed off sexual energy. And one of them wants her. If only she could ignore his ridiculously perfect body with those stupid sexy abs…

  All Darius wants is Kat.

  Lord Darius of House Tarrick has worked hard to earn his title, not to mention money, sex, and power—the incubus has it all. Until some new, wild-haired hunter recruit strolls in like she owns the place, throwing him off balance and igniting an unquenchable fire in him. He wants her. He needs her. And he’ll do anything to have her…

  * * *

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  Contents

  1. Kat

  2. Kat

  3. Darius

  4. Kat

  5. Darius

  6. Kat

  7. Darius

  8. Kat

  9. Darius

  10. Kat

  11. Darius

  12. Kat

  13. Kat

  14. Darius

  15. Kat

  16. Darius

  17. Kat

  18. Kat

  19. Darius

  20. Kat

  21. Darius

  22. Kat

  23. Kat

  24. Kat

  25. Darius

  26. Kat

  27. Epilogue – Lock

  About the Author

  1

  Kat

  Southern California.

  The police officers told Kat that her dad was dead on a Monday night, on Tuesday they told her that his body had gone missing from the morgue, and that Friday? He was standing outside her bedroom window, asking her to invite him in.

  “Kathleen,” Dad said. “Please.”

  This had to be a miracle—Dad is alive.

  Wait.

  No.

  That couldn’t be possible.

  He had died.

  Mom identified the body herself.

  Kat froze in place, her heart slamming against her chest.

  This monster wasn’t her dad. His skin was too pale and tight, his eyes too sunken, and he never, ever called her Kathleen. She wanted so badly to believe he was alive. But whatever stood outside her house wasn’t him.

  “…Peter?”

  Kat turned to see her mom standing in the doorway of her bedroom. Mom’s eyes were wide with shock.

  “Sweetheart,” her dad put his hand on the glass. “I’m hungry. Come to me.”

  Her eyes glazed over and she walked out of Kat’s room.

  “Mom, no! Wait!” Kat grabbed her arm. “It’s not him. Look at him! This is some sort of trick. Dad is gone.”

  Her mom kept moving, ignoring Kat and walking down the hall to the main entryway of the house—a big area that opened to the living room. Kat couldn’t stop her as Mom yanked the front door open and walked into her husband’s arms.

  Helpless, Kat watched as her dad’s irises turned from brown to red, and fingers formed into sharp claws. Moonlight flashed off his terrifying fangs as they sunk deep into her mom’s neck.

  The loud thrumming of her own heartbeat filled Kat’s ears.

  Move.

  But her body didn’t want to work.

  Mom has a gun.

  Side table.

  Go.

  Now.

  She forced her legs to move, one after the other, backing away, then turning and bolting for her parents’ room. She grabbed her mom’s loaded .22 from the side table. Her hand shook so hard she nearly dropped the gun as she dashed back to the entryway. Imposter-Dad stood outside the threshold of the front door, his eyes closed, blood covering his mouth, lost in some sort of bliss. Mom lay crumpled at his feet. Unmoving. Her neck ripped open.

  Kat screamed and unloaded the bullets into her dad’s torso, pulling the trigger until the gun emptied.

  Looking at his chest, the imposter-dad touched the holes seeping blood. He laughed, and the wounds began to close.

  Against the full moon, a swarm of bats descended from the sky and formed into the shape of a man—tall and so ghostly pale he seemed to glow. He wore an old-fashioned suit complete with a cape that shifted around unnaturally when he put a hand on Imposter-Dad’s shoulder.

  “You are doing well, child. It will be over soon,” the Pale Man whispered into his ear. “Compel her to invite you in.”

  “Kathleen,” the imposter-dad said, looking directly into her eyes. “Invite me in.”

  Kat’s thoughts slowed, and darkness pressed in at the edges of her vision. She struggled against the command, but it didn’t matter as she said: “Come in, Dad.”

  The moment the words left her mouth, the haze lifted and reason returned. Along with confusion. What the heck had he done to her? The imposter smiled and stalked towards her, entering the house. Panic turned her insides cold, and she squeezed the trigger on the empty gun one more time. Other than a click nothing happened. Desperate, she ran. The creature followed.

  Before he made it to her, green flashes of light filled the entryway. The air sizzled, and a strong hand grabbed Kat’s shoulder, pushing her to the floor. Chaos erupted. Six people had appeared out of nowhere, wearing leather armor and holding swords and crossbows.

  Their heavy boots stomped all over the living room carpet, getting dirt everywhere. Mom would hate that.

  The imposter-dad tried to run, but with a green flash of light, a female materialized in front of him, blocking his exit. She plunged a wooden stake into Imposter-Dad’s chest. The monster dropped to the ground.

  An ear-splitting screech came from the doorway. The Pale Man slammed against some invisible force at the front door, trying to get into the house. Full of rage, he looked down at Kat. “Invite m—” he started to say, but a gloved leather hand covered her eyes, preventing that thing from messing with her head.

  The Pale Man shrieked again. Kat heard a scuffle. Fighting. Then everything went still, and several moments passed before the gloved hand finally released her.

  Out the open door, Kat watched a cloud of hundreds of bats flee across the night sky.

  “Hell’s fire. Y’all get after him,” the man who had covered her eyes said. His voice had a slight drawl. A green glow surrounded the other five, and they vanished into thin air. She looked at the man crouched beside her, his hand still on her shoulder.

  Like the others, he wore leather, except he looked like something out of the Old West, with a black duster, cowboy boots with silver spurs, and a Stetson. There were two guns holstered at his hips…or maybe not. When Kat looked a little closer she noticed their bulk—it took her a moment to realize they were crossbows that looked like six-shooters. On his belt were wooden stakes
and small glass vials filled with different colored liquids.

  “Dispatch,” he said, raising his wrist to his mouth, “this is Lock. My team’s tracking a vamp lord. South OC. Residential. We have the lord’s fledgling staked. Send a team to bag him.”

  Kat looked at her mom’s unmoving body stretched on the front porch. “Mom.”

  She surged forward, trying to get to her mom but the firm hand tightened on her shoulder, not letting her stand.

  “I’m real sorry, darlin’, she’s gone. You don’t need to see it up close right now.”

  She stopped struggling, and her brain went blank.

  Lock glanced over his shoulder at the staked creature, then looked to the gun Kat held. “Can you tell me why you shot it?” Still in shock and unable to take her eyes off her mom, Kat said nothing. “Honey, look at me.” Lock carefully tilted her head up. He was younger than her dad, maybe in his late thirties, but his eyes seemed old somehow. “Can you tell me why you shot your father?”

  She looked over at the creature. “That thing is not my dad.”

  “You knew the moment you saw it, didn’t ya? That’s why you fought it?”

  She nodded. “They’re both dead now, aren’t they?”

  Lock squeezed her shoulder. “How old are you, darlin’?”

  “Fifteen.”

  A flicker of concern crossed his face then disappeared.

  Kat swallowed hard. “My dad…he was turned into a vampire?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They’re real? Not just stories?”

  “They’re real.”

  “And you’re a vampire hunter?”

  “I am.”

  “And my mom is dead for sure?”

  “She is. I’m sorry.” He squeezed her shoulder again.

  Hot tears ran down her face. The two of them sat in silence, Lock’s touch like a life preserver that kept her from drowning. He seemed to be in no rush.

  Finally, she spoke. “I lost them both this week.”

  “Do you have extended family? Preferably on the East Coast.”

  “My grandma. She lives here in SoCal. That pale creature…he did that to my dad? Killed him? Turned him? Or however it works.”

  “Yes.”

  Her heart flooded with pain, confusion, and anger. She sobbed, and her muscles shook. “I want to kill him.”

  The corners of Lock’s mouth threatened to turn upwards as if pleased by her words. “I know you do, darlin’.”

  The hunter-cowboy wrapped his arms around her and pulled her into his shoulder. She cried and cried until he retrieved a glass vial from his belt. “Drink this. It’ll help.”

  Kat downed the blue liquid he offered, not even questioning it. A warm sensation pooled in her belly and spread across her limbs. Her body became heavy; tired. The world around her faded until she could feel nothing.

  Lock’s deep voice was the last thing she heard before darkness engulfed her: “I’m sorry, kid, but I can’t let you remember any of this.”

  2

  Kat

  Three Years Later. Southern California.

  Kat tore through the quiet suburban side street chasing after the fleeing bloodsucker. He, or rather it—Kat didn’t want to humanize the creature—moved fast. As far as she could tell, all vampires were faster than humans, but this one wasn’t faster than her Prius. She accelerated.

  Unable to outrun her, the vamp cut between two Mediterranean-style stucco homes, leaping fences in a single bound.

  She smiled.

  Predictable.

  She made a u-ey and two sharp rights. The vamp had run exactly where she expected it to and now stood in the middle of the road looking back at the direction it thought she’d come from. It turned around as her car slammed into it.

  Its body flew through the air before it hit the asphalt hard; tumbling then sliding to a stop. Kat put the car in park, grabbed her wooden stake, and approached the wounded vamp. A sad whine escaped its throat, and she couldn’t blame the creature. Half its face had been left behind on the road. She didn’t feel bad for it though. If she didn’t do this, it’d kill more people. Innocent people. And if she didn’t end this quick, it’d heal.

  She kicked its shoulder with her heavy boot, flipping the leech onto its back, then drove the stake into its heart.

  That wouldn’t kill it, but it’d shut down its body, giving her all the time in the world to deal the final blow.

  Learning about vampires hadn’t been an easy process for her.

  A few months after her parents died, fuzzy memories had started returning—including the shocking vampires are real discovery. And once she knew that, she started spotting them everywhere.

  It surprised her how often she’d catch one shadowing a blissfully unaware human. Stalking its prey.

  Killing the first one had been a disaster. Angry and still reeling from the loss of her parents, Kat had snuck out of her grandmother’s house—not a hard feat considering Grandma was nearly blind and deaf—and found a vamp feeding on a human. She stabbed it with her homemade stake but missed the heart. Turns out ribcages aren’t all that easy to pierce.

  The vampire ran. It seemed to fear her. She hadn’t known why. Maybe it was the stake in her hand. Maybe it had assumed Kat was a hunter like the ones who had saved her. She trailed it to a house and waited until daytime. When she broke in, it lay dead on a mattress. Not dead, really. More like…shut off.

  Her heart raced all the same. In the end, her fear had been for nothing. She poked and prodded at it, but it never woke. Not even when she threw back the curtain to let the sunlight in, and it burned to a pile of ash.

  Doing so also caught the entire house on fire, and, being the dry season, the flames spread to the neighboring homes. Oops. Thankfully no one died—except the bloodsucker—and she had gotten away unseen.

  The past few years she’d learned what she could about vampires. They were stronger and faster than humans but by how much seemed to drastically vary by each one. Religious symbols had no effect on them—neither did garlic—but silver weakened and burned them. They could walk over water just fine, and she could see their reflection in mirrors. She had never seen another vampire shapeshift or fly…only the one.

  The Pale Man.

  Well. Most vampires were pretty pasty. But the Pale Man—the one who could turn into a swarm of bats—burned at her soul.

  And one day, she would kill him.

  But right now, she had a job to do. The staked road-kill vampire wasn’t going to kill itself. She pulled out a silver knife—purchased online—from her belt, and placed it against the vampire’s neck. The silver burned its skin with a sizzle.

  “Ya know,” a man with a slight drawl said from behind her, “swords are a little better than daggers at removing heads.”

  Recognizing the voice, Kat smiled before she looked over her shoulder. There he was. The cowboy-hunter from that night three years ago. He stood under a streetlamp, looking out of place among the manicured lawns and palm trees behind him. His arms were crossed, but he seemed more amused than angry. Though it was hard to tell with the way his hat cast heavy shadows over his rugged face.

  Lock. The one who had tried to erase her memories and left Kat with her grandmother. A grandmother who had since passed away, leaving Kat with no one.

  “Yeah?” she asked. “Got one handy?”

  From under his duster, Lock drew a sword and tossed it to her. Kat caught it by the hilt and took off the vampire’s head with a single heavy swing.

  The body began to decay but not quickly. A younger vampire.

  Kat tossed the sword back. “That stuff you gave me didn’t take my memories away.”

  “Gathered that.” He tipped his head at the vampire. “You do this often?”

  “Often enough.”

  “How many?”

  “He’s number five.” Kat took a step towards Lock, but there was still a sizable stretch of road between them. “How do you do that disappearing and reappearing thing?�
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  Lock paused for a moment, then unbuttoned his shirt revealing the top of his chest. Covering it was silver tattoos, that reminded her of Norse symbols. “Each rune is inscribed with a spell, put on me by witches.”

  She watched as one of the tattoos—two twisting lines inside of a circle—glowed bright green and Lock teleported a few feet forward.

  Kat bit back a gasp. “You have a lot of tattoos. What else do they do?”

  “Depends. I’ve been at this a long time. I’ve got some extra ones most hunters don’t, but the basic runes make a person faster, stronger, let me hide from vamps, that sort of thing.”

  That’s what Kat wanted—to be faster and stronger so she could go after the vampire who killed her family. The Pale Man. “What do I need to do to get a set of those?”

  “They come with a hefty price tag.” Lock rested his hands on his hips. “This is a war you’ve stepped into, and the only way to get the runes is to join the fight.”

  “A war? Between vampires and hunters?”

  “Somethin’ like that.”

  “A war no one has heard about?”

  “We’re real good at hiding.”

  Kat raised an eyebrow. “No way, everyone has a camera on their phone.”

  Lock dug into a pouch on his belt and took out a metal stick only a few inches long and flicked it on the ground in front of her.

  “What are you—” she started to ask but fell silent when Lock vanished. Kat looked around. No cowboy anywhere. But then she saw a shimmer.