Dorian

by Angela Cameron

  Dorian brought a different kind of familiarity. His presence made her dead heart flutter. Her mind went immediately to thoughts of snuggling into a warm bed, making love all night, and letting him take her neck. That feeling of blissful vulnerability was like nothing she had ever experienced, too. Both were wonderful in their own ways and very distinct.

  Tori’s bare footsteps were loud and echoed ahead of her as she came down the hallway toward her. LeAnne looked and saw she had changed into a grey T-shirt and black yoga pants. She smiled at her friend, who smiled back. The gesture was more than LeAnne had expected from someone who hated her just an hour ago. Then again, Tori always had a talent for bouncing back. A tough life had taught her the art of the quick recovery and truly forgiving those she loved most. LeAnne could definitely relate.

  The front door opened. Both of them turned toward the sound.

  A young woman with short, bright purple spiked hair walked in; black motorcycle leathers squeaked with her movement. The girl smiled, black helmet in hand, hip bumping the door shut behind her. “Hey!”

  “Jude!” Tori said with a genuinely bright smile. “How was Disney World?”

  “Great!” She walked toward them, shrugging off a black backpack, which she tossed onto the counter. “I looked all over that place and never found that damned Jack Sparrow anywhere.”

  LeAnne laughed. It was easy to see in the way she carried herself that the girl was a vampire—who loved Disney World. There was a childlike way about her that was evident, but also something very dangerous, too. She could not quiet put her finger on it, but didn’t think about it long. The thought of Jude running around the park at night, fangs bared, chasing a Jack Sparrow impersonator was priceless.

  That seemed to catch Jude’s attention. “Who’s the new kid?”

  She held out her hand and smirked at the kid comment. “I’m LeAnne.”

  “Oh! Tori’s friend.” Her eyebrows knitted together, and she turned her face toward Tori. “I thought she was human.”

  Tori sighed.

  “Bad topic,” LeAnne said.

  “Oh. Sorry.” Jude sniffed. “Oh!” The woman sniffed again, bigger this time, and leaned closer to her. “Oooooh.” She frowned. “Want me to kick his ass?”

  Tori turned and went to the fridge without a word.

  Jude grunted and looked at LeAnne again. “Must have been something major happening for him to do this.”

  LeAnne shrugged. She wasn’t exactly sure how much to say.

  “Feel like Alice in Wonderland yet?”

  “You could say that.”

  There was a thud as the front shut opened again. Elena darted to the fridge, almost too fast to see. “Do we have any blood?”

  “No,” Tori said. “I heard Gregory say he got the last one this evening.”

  “Shit.” She mumbled a string of curses, and darted out the back, leaving the French door open.

  “Jonas is hurt,” Tori said then, heading toward the door.

  LeAnne had just a moment to wonder how she knew before Michael came in, carrying his garante. From the angle, LeAnne could see a hunk of Jonas’s leg seemed to be missing, and there were two bullet wounds in his chest. He looked paler than normal.

  “Let’s put him on my bed for now,” Michael said, walking toward the kitchen.

  “No, the pool house,” Jonas said.

  “I want you in here with the rest of us,” Michael mumbled.

  Tori paused. “What’s going on?”

  “Just open the door,” Michael barked. Watching him, LeAnne understood. He was not anything like Twilight vampires. No, Michael was fearsome, ruthless, and more than a little scary. Tori glared at him, then ran ahead, through the kitchen and down the hallway opposite of the one that led to LeAnne’s temporary room. Michael turned sideways to fit him and Jonas down the hall, and moved awkwardly toward the door Tori held open at the end.

  LeAnne felt for him. A man as powerful as Jonas had to hate everyone fussing over him and the inability to take care of himself. She did. It was torture having to rely on someone else.

  Dorian winked at LeAnne as he followed them, carrying what she assumed was Jonas’s gear. She smiled and slid off the chair to follow the group. Not only did she want to know what happened, she wanted to see what Michael’s room looked like. She was halfway down the hall when an explosion rocked the house, rattling the pictures on the walls and sending glass through the room.

  * * * *

  A scream echoed through the room right after the blast, and the house went dark. Dorian glanced up in time to see LeAnne run into the room. He thought she was the one who had screamed, but she looked fine. Without speaking, he and Michael lowered Jonas to the floor where they stood at the foot of the bed.

  “What the fuck was that?” Jonas asked, grunting with the effort to move.

  Looking down, Dorian saw Jonas had changed. He had taken on a demonic appearance with darker eyes and claw-like hands, and black veins streaked his skin. Dorian was not sure how it happened but one thing was certain: he looked damned scary.

  LeAnne hustled over to Dorian. “Something exploded. It blew out the kitchen.”

  “Where’s Elena?” Jonas asked in a growling voice.

  “She went for blood.”

  Jonas let out a stream of curses. “Something’s wrong. I feel it.”

  Michael held up a hand. “Calm yourself, fratello. I’ll get her.” The padrone disappeared.

  The wind from him moving past blew LeAnne’s hair and stirred the air in the room. It brought the smell of smoke from kitchen.

  Gunshot erupted outside, and her shoulders jerked up with the first blasts. Panic streaked through Dorian’s body too, but he was better at hiding it. He darted to put his body in front of hers. The explosion could have been an accident, but the gunshots drove home the point. They were under attack. His best guess: those fucking dogs were behind it.

  “You got them?” Gregory called from the other side of the bed. He knew the vampiro was referring to Jonas and the women.

  “Yeah. Go.”

  Greg was gone then, too.

  Dorian knelt down to Jonas. “Can you move at all?”

  He sat up slowly. Dorian put Jonas’s arm around his neck and wrapped his own around Jonas’s back. He pulled the garante to his feet. Jonas held his own weight, but when he tried to move forward, his legs did not work. He growled. “Put me on the bed.”

  Dorian did as he asked, then pulled out his gun and handed it to Jonas. He eyed the thing. “Can’t believe I’m fucking reduced to this.”

  More gunshots came. This time they were closer. Growls and snarls filled the air just after. Dorian glanced around at the women to assess their defense. Tori already had her gun out, legs apart and ready to move. LeAnne had the knife in her hand and looked slightly lost. If it came to hand-to-hand combat, she would be tough, but inexperience would be her downfall.

  He walked over and gave her a small smile. “I’ll do my best to keep them out of here. Stay with Tori. She’ll know when to run.”

  She stood on her tiptoes and stole a quick kiss. “I love you.”

  He grabbed her shoulders and pressed his mouth to hers. It was too long and deep a kiss for the situation, but he was determined to enjoy every second of what could be their last embrace. Then he broke away and hurried to the door’s edge.

  “Hey!” Jonas said. When Dorian turned, he was pointing to the swords over the fireplace. “They’re silver coated.”

  Dorian laughed, darted over, and grabbed a sword from the display. It was light and flexible in his grip. The weapon was a little more swashbuckling than he was comfortable with, but it would do the job.

  He walked back and leaned around the door frame. The ceiling had a thin layer of black smoke floating just below it that flowed from the kitchen. There was less than he expected, whic
h made him wonder if the explosion had been outside. Somewhere in the distance, he could still hear fighting. The sound seemed to come from out back. He headed in that direction, down the hall toward the kitchen.

  Where the wall ended, he peeked around the corner into the kitchen. The French doors were gone. In their place was a gaping hole of twisted wood and shattered glass. The pool house was in flames, which immediately brought to mind Elena and Michael, but he refused to get lost in thoughts of their fate. He had to focus.

  A growl pulled his attention toward the patio where Greg and Blane fought two small greys and a large russet-colored wolf. The wolves had backed them into the corner. Dorian crouched and prepared to draw their attention, but one of the greys clawed Blane across the arm. He growled and started to glow.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” Greg smirked and popped his knuckles.

  Blane’s hands glowed brighter. Then he lunged forward and grabbed the wolf’s head, and simultaneously flames burst from his hands, torching the howling wolf. The remaining two wolves attacked then. Dorian snickered to himself, wondering if they had some kind of death wish.

  A crash turned Dorian’s head toward the front door. Three men in black fatigues walked into the darkened foyer. He could smell the agent blood in them. He could not take all three on in a straight on fight in a small space, so he let down the wall inside him that holed up that dark magic he had spent a lifetime accumulating. It flowed outward from his chest, filling his torso, then down his arms, his legs and finally his head until it enveloped him. He had used this particular bit of blood magic a million times before and knew when he had it just right. He walked into the murky hall, confident the shadow melding was in place, manipulating the darkness like a dark cloak as he went.

  “Where do you think they are?” The one on the left, the one with red hair, asked the other two. “I expected more of a fight.”

  The one in the middle with black hair sniffed the air. “Oh, they’re here and you’ll get your fight.”

  Dorian slid down the length of the foyer wall that separated it from the kitchen, sliding through the shadowed part of the room farthest from the moonlit windows on the front of the house. The red-haired agent took another step into the room, putting him just a few feet from Dorian. He grunted. “I’ll gut that padrone.”

  The agent’s arrogance was annoying. Dorian wanted to step out and drain him, but that was foolish. Instead, he used the magic to wrap the shadow tighter around him, then bolted forward and swung the sword. He darted backward just as fast, then slid toward the hallway before the body and now-decapitated head hit the floor.

  The black-haired man screeched behind him. “What the fuck?”

  “It’s a shadow walker!” He assumed the third agent said it because he did not recognize the voice. Dorian fought back a smile as he crept down the hall toward the bedroom. He had not heard that term in a very long time, and it reminded him of the old days.

  “Let’s get the witch. I’m not risking my neck for this shit,” the same unfamiliar voice said. Their footsteps walked toward front door.

  Dorian groaned and darted down the hallway to the bedroom door. “Don’t shoot,” he said, opening it. Inside, he walked toward the bed. “We’ve got trouble.”

  “What kind?” Jonas looked worn.

  “They’re bringing in a witch.”

  “Shit.”

  “Want me to take you down to the safe room?”

  “It won’t do much good against someone who can make us open the door.” Jonas sighed. “The girls need to go though. She won’t be looking for them.”

  “No,” Tori said.

  LeAnne folded her arms across her chest. “I’m not going either.”

  “No time to argue.” Dorian grabbed her arm and took a step forward, tugging her along.

  The door to the room burst open. A chunk of a woman with long grey hair and a loose black dress stood with her hands spread out wide. He did not need an introduction to know she was the witch. The power radiated from her in a way that made him feel nauseous. She chanted something in Latin, but it was too low and too fast for Dorian to process.

  He tried to take another step, this time to go through the wall to escape if he had to, but his body would not move. Dorian tried to look but his head wouldn’t move either. So, he cut his eyes to Jonas. The garante was just as still as he. For the first time in centuries, Dorian felt his stomach roll with the urge to hurl. The witch was a necromancer, a practitioner of the one dark magic that worked well on the dead. Ghouls, zombies, vampires, and even tightly bound humans were affected. They were so fucked.

  Chapter Eighteen

  LeAnne stood as still as everyone else had suddenly gone. The sound of fighting outside, human hearts and lungs working, clothing moving, and the faster beating hearts of the agents filled the room. Moving only her eyes, she watched the witch waddle into the room. Her little sausage fingers were spread high in the air while she continued chanting. Behind her, another agent walked in. This one had brown, short-clipped hair, a black turtleneck, and a sport coat that made him look like Mr. Rogers’s evil twin.

  “Are they under control, Mary?” he barked in a croaky voice.

  She nodded.

  The agent chuckled. “Not so ferocious when you can’t move, are you?”

  It was exactly what LeAnne needed to know. Everyone was dead still because of the witch, but LeAnne could move. She could blink her eyes, and she knew she could move the rest of her. She didn’t know why she wasn’t affected. Maybe it was because she hadn’t been a vampire long enough. On the other hand, maybe she was just immune to it. It really didn’t matter. There was a chance she could reach the gun in Tori’s hand.

  “And we have the great and powerful Luciano in his own room?” The agent laughed again and rubbed his greedy hands together as he talked about Jonas, referring to him by his public name. “I’m getting a bonus this year!”

  A bonus? That’s what the psycho has been working for? He’s trying to kill us all for a fucking bonus? Geeeezus! The thought of it revved a level of anger inside her that could only be described as fury. LeAnne focused all her attention and all that fury on her right arm. She’d never shot a gun in her life, but if she could just get her hand—

  It budged. Her freakin’ hand moved upward. It was just an inch, but it moved. The small victory stoked the fire inside her. She focused and pushed that energy until her hand started creeping upward.

  “And you.” The agent walked toward Dorian, who was at the end of the bed. “You did exactly what I expected you to do. Pathetically predictable. But this new girl…” He glanced at LeAnne, and she stopped moving. “She’ll make an excellent addition to the new sector, along with the detective.”

  Dorian groaned. It sounded like he was trying to say something, but his mouth didn’t move. Considering the situation and what he was apt to say, his silence was probably a good thing.

  The agent slid a long, thin silver dagger from inside his coat. He turned, walked around behind LeAnne, and headed for Jonas. “I’m afraid you lost your mate, though.”

  Jonas didn’t move or make a sound. He was still and silent as stone, which was even more unnerving than when he was animated. LeAnne’s gut twisted at the thought of Elena being truly dead. Jonas had to be sickened and furious. Part of her hated to see what happened when the magic released him, but the other part could not wait for him to tear them apart.

  “And I have to immobilize you for transport. It may kill you, but you already know that.” The agent sounded happy about it.

  Panic streaked through her, and LeAnne forced her focus back down to her arm. It moved up to the gun. Tori glanced at her. Her chin moved up just a fraction. It looked like she was telling her to move the gun up. LeAnne hoped she knew her friend well enough to be right.

  She pushed the gun upward until Tori grunted. Then her friend blinked
hard. LeAnne wanted to take a deep breath, but didn’t because of the agents. If she understood correctly, Tori wanted her to fire. Once she did, they would know she could move. But she would not be able to move fast enough to save everyone, maybe not even herself. The only thing that was certain was she would have to be a monster to survive in a room full of them. There was no holding back now.

  The agent lifted the dagger into the air above Jonas.

  LeAnne squeezed the trigger. The pistol exploded. With her new vision, she could see the bullet whiz across the room. It struck the witch in the shoulder and spun her around. After a second, the woman screeched.

  Dorian bolted toward Jonas.

  The smell of the woman’s blood filled the air. Rather than fighting instinct, LeAnne let the scent carry her. She darted across the room and pounced on the witch, knocking her to the floor as shots rang out to their left. Without a thought to what she was doing, she sank her fangs into the woman’s fat throat.

  “Holy mother,” Witch Mary yelped. Then she let out a string of words that sounded like Latin.

  Something stung her lips. The feeling turned suddenly white hot. LeAnne screeched but did not let go. It had to be something magical, but even if it was silver, letting go meant putting the others in danger. She bit harder and sank her nails into the woman’s skin. When the blood flowed, something else took over. It siphoned away the woman’s life at a pace that matched the woman’s heart rate. The human inside her drank it down too, imagining a strawberry milkshake. Killing was child’s play for her now.