Kissed by Darkness

by Shéa MacLeod

  Danger is always on the menu for Morgan Bailey, a sexy and street-smart bounty hunter, who prowls the dark underworld of Portland, Oregon hunting creatures of the night. Morgan’s never met a vampire she couldn’t dust or a demon she couldn’t kill until she’s hired to destroy a new kind of mystical threat: the Sunwalker.

  A powerful immortal once believed myth, the Sunwalker carries with him an ancient secret which, if left unchecked, will destroy Morgan’s world. Pursued by a passionate Templar Knight and the target of the local vampire clans, an ancient power is awakened within her, unlike anything she’s ever known. Morgan must uncover the truth behind her mission and about herself, before the Darkness lurking inside swallows her whole.

  Kissed by Darkness

  Book One of the Sunwalker Saga

  By

  Shea MacLeod

  For Bonnie

  Cousin and Beta Reader Extraordinaire

  Chapter One

  “You’re dripping blood on my carpet. Again.” The voice was as expressionless as the face. Only a slight glint behind deep brown eyes betrayed the fact that Kabita Jones, my boss and best friend, was extremely peeved.

  I could sort of see her point. Last time she’d had to replace the carpet. This time the blood only went up to my elbows and it was mostly dry already. There were just a couple of drips. It wasn’t like she couldn’t get the place steam cleaned.

  “That’s what you get for calling me in right after a hunt.” I dropped into one of the two chairs in front of her massive mahogany desk. She scowled at me. She didn’t like me getting blood all over her fake leather chairs, either. Bad for business, having a client sit down in a pool of vampire blood.

  “Here.” She tossed me a box of wet wipes, only semi-effective for cleaning blood off things, but certainly better than nothing. I grabbed a wipe and scrubbed at my arm. That’s when I noticed a few drops of blood in my cleavage. Gross.

  Kabita leaned back in her chair. “How do you like weird?”

  As though killing vampires and demon spawn and other creepy crawlies for a living was normal. I tried to raise an eyebrow at her, but I was no Mr. Spock; both went up. “Define weird.”

  “Weird. As in: ‘up your alley’ weird.”

  Ah, she meant blood suckers. Nightwalkers. Minions of Darkness. Otherwise known as vampires. Right.

  Except for Kabita and me, vampires weren’t weird. They were normal, everyday stuff. Or maybe I should say every-night stuff. It was like saying that baking bread was a weird job for a baker.

  Kabita ran a private investigation firm which specialized in hunting down things the government liked to pretend didn’t exist. Creatures that would give most normal people nightmares. The government paid us decent money to track and kill the monsters while maintaining a cover as private investigators that did nothing more exciting than investigate cheating spouses. We got excitement and fortune, if not fame. The government got plausible deniability. We all went home happy.

  “And how is this weirder than any other ‘up my alley’ case?” I asked as I cleaned off the last of the blood.

  She pushed a file gingerly across the desk. Despite being one of the best demon spawn hunters in the business, Kabita found vampires extremely distasteful, not to mention creepy. Go figure. “It’s not an ordinary vamp,” she said. “It’s a Sunwalker.”

  I checked to make sure my jaw wasn’t lying on her desk. Nope, still attached to my face. “A Sunwalker? You’re kidding, right?”

  “Our new client wants us to hunt this Sunwalker and kill him, but more importantly, he wants us to retrieve something the Sunwalker stole from his family. He’ll fill you in on the details. You’re to meet him at this address.” She shoved a piece of paper across at me while carefully tucking a strand of long, ink black hair behind her ear.

  Despite edging on forty, she didn’t have a single strand of gray. I hadn’t quite hit thirty yet, twenty-nine to be exact, but I hoped I looked half as good as she did at forty. I had my doubts. My job wasn’t exactly the kind that kept one young.

  I shook my head. “This is insane. A Sunwalker? As in vampires who can walk in sunlight? You do know they’re not real, right? Sunwalkers are just a myth.”

  She gave me a look. She was good at “the look.” “Excuse me, oh Great Slayer of Vampires, but you don’t have a choice. Not if you want to keep your job.”

  Which I did, and she knew it. There was something so immensely satisfying about going to work and hacking someone or something’s head off. They didn’t usually let you do that at, say, the pharmaceutical company or the post office, even if that someone really deserved it. They kind of frowned on it, actually. I also got to wear jeans and really cool kick-ass boots every day.

  Truth was, though, Kabita knew I loved a good challenge. She wasn’t just my boss, she was also my friend and would never give me anything I couldn’t handle, no matter how much I bitched and moaned about an assignment. I was damn good at killing vamps. A Sunwalker would just be a little more … tricky. Not only were they not supposed to exist, but how were you supposed to find a vampire that could walk around in daylight? Heck, he probably even had a nice tan.

  “Jesus, Kabita. What have you gotten me into this time?” It was rhetorical and accompanied by an eye roll. I snatched the paper off the desk. “Fine. I’ll meet him after I take a shower.”

  “Good idea.”

  I just glared at her. Sarcastic witch.

  Her return smile was annoyingly beatific.

  ***

  I crossed my legs and leaned back in my chair, trying desperately not to look like I wanted to crawl out of my skin. Kabita must not have met our new client in person. He was giving me the heebie-jeebies big time. Granted, when it came to humans, my Spidey senses weren’t so accurate, but seriously, there was something a little off with this guy.

  The room we were meeting in was all dark wood paneling and big leather chairs, plush wine-red carpet and even plusher drapes. All very manly. All very overbearing. And the client? Well, he was just as bad.

  Sure he was good looking and suave. Definitely suave, but in a creepy Julian Sands kind of way. Like you wouldn’t be surprised to see this guy hanging out with royals or schmoozing with the rest of the rich and powerful, but you sure wouldn’t want to meet him in a dark alley. He made my skin itch.

  Then again, maybe I was wrong. After all, Kabita had vetted the guy and Kabita was never wrong. If she met him in person. Dear gods, I hoped she met him in person.

  So, Mr. ah …” Not Sands. Bloody hell, what was it? I snuck a glance at the file. “Mr. Darroch. How can I help you exactly?”

  He gave me what I could only interpret as a smarmy smile. I hated smarmy. Made me feel like I needed a shower. “Please, Ms. Bailey, call me Brent.” I tried not to wince. Ever since my brief flirtation with college, I’d hated the name Brent. Long story, but let’s just say … ew.

  “Right.” I forced a smile. “Brent. How can I help you? I hear you have a slight problem with a Sunwalker?” I couldn’t quite keep the disbelief out of my voice.

  He quirked a smile at that. Not so smarmy this time. In fact, he seemed genuinely amused. “I know. Sounds insane, doesn’t it? Rich businessman chasing after a mythical Sunwalker.” He leaned forward earnestly. I was surprised. He did earnest pretty well. “Then again, until a few years ago, you believed vampires and lycanthropes and demons were pure fiction.”

  He had a point. Once upon a time, we’d all thought the monsters that dwelt among us were just a myth, but that had changed, at least for those of us who’d been sworn to protect the rest of our kind. No one knew that better than me.

  “Sunwalkers are real, Ms. Bailey. Or at least one of them is real.” He leaned back and steepled his fingers together in an e
xcellent Dr. Evil impression.

  “Excuse me? Did you say one? As in there is one Sunwalker?” Images of the Highlander flooded my mind. There can be only one. I really had to stop watching so much TV. My mother was right; it was rotting my brain.

  Darroch nodded. “Yes. According to legend, there were more, once upon a time. Dozens of Sunwalkers lived among us, if not hundreds. Now there is just one left.”

  How did he know that? “And what does this Sunwalker have to do with this object you want us to retrieve?”

  “The object is a family heirloom. A necklace. Not particularly valuable except, perhaps, to collectors of the arcane.”

  My ears perked up. “The arcane?” Oh, juicy. I did love a good magical twist. Kept things interesting.

  He nodded. “According to family legend, the necklace was created by an ancestor of mine who dabbled in the magic arts. He created the necklace, a simple amulet on a chain, as a sort of ward with magical symbols and so on. I don’t know if it ever held any real magic, but it certainly doesn’t now. However, it might be of interest to a collector or a museum as a curiosity more than anything.”

  I always found it interesting when a client was willing to kill to get back an object he claimed had no value. Frankly, that’s just not normal. In my experience, the object usually had a great deal of value to someone, somewhere, otherwise killing someone for it wasn’t worth the risk. Granted, in this case, it was a Sunwalker he wanted me to kill, so there wasn’t exactly any risk involved. At least not to Brent Darroch.

  “About 20 years ago,” Darroch continued, “this particular Sunwalker stole the necklace. I believe he thought it would give him some sort of power.” He laughed, but the laugh sounded forced. “I’ll bet he was surprised to find it a useless hunk of metal. In any case, it has sentimental value and I want it back.”

  His eyes bored into me like twin icicles. I forced back a shiver. “I also want you to destroy this Sunwalker. He is extremely dangerous. One is bad enough, but should he begin to perpetuate his kind again, the world as we know it will be destroyed as it almost was once before.”

  I’d no doubt he was right about that. I could just imagine the havoc an army of Sunwalkers could wreak on humanity. Humanity wreaked enough havoc on itself; it didn’t need any help from the undead. Besides which, part of our purview was to hunt and kill any and all supernatural creatures who posed a threat to humanity. Vampires were certainly in that category and, I imagined, so were Sunwalkers, being of the same ilk and all that.

  “All right, Mr. … Brent. I’ll see what I can do. Have you any idea where the Sunwalker is now? How I can find him?”

  He wrote something on a sticky note and handed it to me. It was a name: Cordelia Nightwing. “You can find this woman in a night club called Fringe. Maybe she can help you. Go carefully, Ms. Bailey.” He leaned back gracefully, his leather chair creaking slightly, and steepled his fingers together again. Boy, he had the Doctor Evil thing down pat.

  “I always do.” I glanced down at the name on the note. Please don’t let her be another nutter.

  ***

  Since nightclubs in Portland didn’t open until late, I decided to call it a day and head home for some much deserved sleep. First, I wanted to drop in on Kabita’s cousin, Inigo Jones.

  Inigo was a clairvoyant, or something of that nature, and into all kinds of weird stuff. Well, I was sure it wasn’t because of his clairvoyance that he was into weird stuff, but more because he was just, well, weird. Not to mention hot. But I tried not to think about that. After all, he was Kabita’s cousin and I was pretty sure there was something in the Best Friend Rules that stated that best friends couldn’t date each other’s cousins. Even if there wasn’t, the guy was like twenty or something. Practically a kid. A really hot kid, but a kid none the less.

  Granted, twenty was only a few years younger than my own twenty-nine, but I felt a lot older than my years most of the time. The job sort of did that to you.

  “Get your hormones under control, girl,” I muttered under my breath before pressing the button for the doorbell. It had obviously been way too long since I’d had a boyfriend.

  Three rings later, Inigo stood in the open doorway wearing a pair of red silk pajama bottoms and nothing else. His shoulder length gold and taffy hair was artfully tousled (damn him) and his usually brilliant blue eyes were heavy lidded with sleep.

  He bared his teeth at me, and not in a nice way. “Whaddya want?” came out more a growl than a question. The growl did things to my libido that I’d rather not think about. I barely refrained from clenching my thighs together.

  “Sorry to wake you, Sleeping Beauty.” I stepped past him into the dim living room which was just a touch too warm for my taste. “But I need your help with a little project.”

  “At,” he hesitated and squinted at the wall clock hanging above the television, its arms glowing faintly in the darkness, “ten in the morning?”

  “Sorry, but Kabita’s got me working for this new client. He wants me to kill a Sunwalker.”

  Inigo blinked. “Uh-huh.”

  “You see anything?” I didn’t mean in the physical sense.

  He shook his head. “Nah. Not before coffee. And I’m not drinking any ‘cause I’m going back to bed the minute you leave. Which will be … ?”

  “Soon,” I assured him. I crossed my arms under my chest and gave my already impressive cleavage a subtle boost. Oh, I was such a bad girl. “I just need your help tonight. There’s this woman, Cordelia Nightwing. She works at some club called Fringe. You know it?”

  He grinned, his eyes on my chest. He knew exactly what I was doing. “Yeah, I know it.”

  “I take it that this is one of those weirdo clubs with mermaids swimming in fish tanks or something like that.”

  He tilted his head as he laughed and the sun streaming through the open door picked out the gold in his hair. “Yeah, something like that.”

  Down, libido, down. “Well, this Cordelia is supposed to know something. Something that will help me track the Sunwalker I’m hunting. So, can you help me out? Go to the club with me, find this Cordelia chick and find out what she knows?”

  “Yeah, sure, if you promise to leave me in peace and let me sleep. Unless you want to join me?” His grin was pure naughtiness.

  I rolled my eyes at him. “As if. OK, I’ll pick you up at ten tonight. I’ve got another hunt. I’ll try and get it done before then.” I headed for the door.

  “Make it midnight,” he called. “The weirdos never come out before then.”

  I tossed him a look over my shoulder. “Obviously.”

  Chapter Two

  I found rather perverse enjoyment in slaying. I sometimes wondered if that didn’t make me just a little bit sick and twisted. Or maybe a lot sick and twisted, but it wasn’t like I went around killing animals and taking candy from children. That would just be … wrong. I only enjoyed killing nasty things that went bump in the night.

  Terrance was one hell of a nasty bump in the night. With a name like Terrance, you’d expect leather patches on elbows and smoke billowing from a pipe. You didn’t expect one of the meanest, nastiest vampires in the city. It wasn’t that he was particularly powerful, just psychotic. I mean, the guy was a serious piece of work. His latest foray into the “real” world was prowling for an after dinner snack in a sorority house.

  Most vamps didn’t give a shit what was for dinner, as long as it was human and breathing. Terrance had a particular taste for college girls, preferably ones with big boobs and long blond hair. I’d had to kill more than one of his snacks after they’d ended up turning vampire. Fortunately, he also went for ones that were less than smart, so killing them once they’d turned was fairly easy. Intelligence, or lack thereof, seemed to carry over into undeath.

  Anyway, the night before, Terrance had pretty much gone through half the girls in the sorority and the dean of the university wasn’t real happy about it. It didn’t look so good when your entire cheerleading squad got eaten
by the undead. He’d hired us to get rid of his problem, which meant he really hired me to get rid of his problem, me being the only one of the three of us who actually killed vampires for fun and profit.

  Terrance lived in the basement of an old apartment building in southeast Portland. Nice and dark and only tiny little windows high up in the walls, easily blocked by a few sheets of plywood. It was nearly noon, so if I could get the plywood off the windows, it’d brighten the place up and make it easier to deal with Terrance. Then I could go home and get some much-needed rest before tonight’s meeting with Cordelia Nightwing. What the hell kind of name was Cordelia Nightwing, anyway?

  The building had a security entrance, but that wasn’t exactly a problem. I used to live in one of these old places. I didn’t bother pushing any of the buzzers; I just waited until someone came out then I grabbed the door and walked in like I belonged there. It’s amazing how many supposedly secure places you could brazenly walk right into as long as you acted like you had every gods-given right to be there.

  The door to the basement stairs was on the right, so I swung it open and tried to take the stairs two at a time. I say tried because at barely 5‘5”, taking stairs two at a time was a near impossibility. I gave up and just took them fast, using the handrail to propel me downward.

  The basement was cold and dank. Under the odor of mildew and laundry soap was another darker smell: the stench of the undead.

  I couldn’t really explain that smell because it wasn’t actually real. Vampires didn’t generally smell any different than living humans. If you were to dance with one in a nightclub, you wouldn’t know the difference, except that a vamp would possibly be a lot paler and maybe try and chomp on your neck. But I could smell the difference. It was something to do with my abilities and it was more a metaphysical smell than a physical one. It was one of my least favorite side effects of the virus that changed me but a very handy talent to have when hunting down vampires.