Sanguinary (Night Shift Book 1)

by Margo Bond Collins

  Dahlia.

  With a jerk, I pushed myself sideways on the ground and rolled over, my feet drawn up to my stomach and ready to kick. But Dahlia had landed beside me. I pulled a stake from my ankle holster, rocked to my feet, and stood up. Without taking my eyes off the vampire, I moved sideways, trying to use my peripheral vision to find the phone she had knocked out of my hand.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked—more to keep her occupied than from any real desire to know.

  “You planned this,” she snarled. “You killed them all. Everyone who mattered to me.”

  “You’re a quick one.” I took another step. Dahlia followed.

  “How did you get out?” I asked. “Why didn’t someone stake your screechy ass?”

  With an inhuman shriek, she leaped toward me. I spun back out of her way, and she followed. We danced around the storeroom that way, Dahlia lunging and me ducking, shoving shelves, and throwing bottles at her while I waited for an opportunity to use my stake. I was half-waiting for Reese to show up and even the odds.

  Unless this is part of his plan.

  I stumbled as the thought hit me, barely catching myself in time to swing around behind a stack of boxes and avoid Dahlia’s swipe at me.

  Right now, Reese and I were the only ones who knew that the Sanguinary had a victim here.

  We had killed all the local Sanguinary members.

  If Dahlia killed me, Reese would be the only one who knew that the blood magic was pooling here.

  And I didn’t trust him enough for that to happen.

  I moved along the wall, grabbing a bottle of whiskey on my way past a shelf, testing its weight in my hand, and eyeing the distance to my target. Her lips curled up in an ugly smile, and I saw her prepare to pounce.

  Then my phone sang out, and I saw Dahlia hesitate—saw her gaze flicker toward the side of the room for the barest moment.

  At least, that’s what I thought at the time. Now I’m pretty sure it was a ruse, designed to draw me in. Because when I dove in to take advantage of her moment of inattention, she was waiting for me. My stake was centimeters from her chest when her hand, as cold and hard as ice, grasped my wrist, halting its progress and holding it still.

  She used my forward momentum to spin me around and shove me against a wall. The whole thing felt like it moved in slow motion, but it took less than a heartbeat for her to pin me and bury her fangs in my neck.

  I think I screamed.

  This was nothing like Reese’s blood-taking. There was no seduction, no gentle caress. It was hard and fast and brutal.

  For an instant, I saw clearly past the veneer of civilization that the vampires wore, to the horror that had haunted humanity’s nights for eons.

  Fifty years until this monstrosity ruled.

  And I won’t be here to stop it.

  The room wavered around me, the lights sputtering in and out. Or maybe, I realized, it was me—my consciousness flickering and fluttering. A bone-deep languor settled in my limbs, and I drooped in the vampire’s arms. She followed me down to the ground, sucking in time to the frantic pace of my heart’s pumping.

  I closed my eyes as the chill from her hands spread throughout my entire body.

  When her mouth ripped away from my neck, I could barely summon a whimper, even as my flesh pulled away with her teeth.

  The room felt very far away, and a warmth drifted in from some other place, wrapping me in a soft blanket of silence. For an instant—or maybe eternity—I was done.

  Chapter 28

  Noise penetrated my silent cocoon first. Someone calling my name.

  Reese.

  He wants me to stay.

  And with the knowledge came awareness, and pain.

  I was still in the storeroom—I wasn’t sure how much time had passed. I opened my eyes, and the first thing I saw was Reese, staring intently into my face.

  Where was Dahlia?

  “That’s it,” Reese said. “Open your eyes. I need to know this is okay, Cami.”

  “Wha—” A half-gurgled noise, barely recognizable as speech, bubbled out of my throat. Almost frantic to warn him about the other vampire, I tried to lift my head, to look around the room, but that sense of an iron will holding me motionless returned.

  “Hush.” Reese’s voice came to me, soothing and soft. “I staked her. Dahlia’s gone.” Reese closed his eyes briefly, and warmth flowed through the thread that connected us, swirling around and around until I could almost see it growing, a blue-white rope tying us together, heart to heart.

  Even if he is a monster? I wondered.

  Even then, some deeper part of me answered.

  I wasn’t sure if the answer was my own, or his.

  “I don’t have any other choice, Cami.” He pulled my head onto his lap. “If I don’t change you, you’ll die. Please tell me yes.” He held his wrist to his mouth, prepared to bite into it for me.

  Change me?

  My breath rattled in my chest, and as I looked into Reese’s eyes, I knew it was true. If he didn’t turn me soon, I wouldn’t survive.

  Could I manage that?

  Could I become the very thing I hunted and still remain myself? Or would it be better to slip back into that warm silence and let others take over the fight?

  What others?

  Could I keep my allegiance to the human world, even if I let Reese turn me?

  The bond between us flared to life as an image of former SWAT members rising as vampires in the Adolphus ballroom flashed across my mind.

  “You’ll still be yourself, Cami,” Reese whispered. “Because you are part of me, I can make sure of it.” I didn’t know if I heard his sob, or simply felt it as if it were my own.

  “I promise,” he whispered.

  Fifty years before everyone was either a vamp or vamp food.

  I couldn’t let that happen.

  “Do it,” I whispered, my voice barely displacing the air around us.

  Reese stood and lifted me into his arms in one fluid motion. My head drooped back against his arm, despite my attempt to lift it.

  “Hold on,” he whispered to me.

  The room around me narrowed until I saw only his face, its clean, strong angles set in serious lines. When he began to move, everything faded to black for a moment—or maybe a lifetime.

  Reese stepped behind a curtain into one of the bleeding rooms and sat down, holding me gently in his lap.

  I wanted to tell him that he didn’t have to be so careful, because I couldn’t feel anything. But I couldn’t speak, so I watched him as I concentrated on the breath that rattled through my chest—pulling it in, and pushing it back out.

  Breath is life.

  But even as I thought it, I knew it was wrong.

  Breath didn’t matter.

  Not anymore.

  Reese turned and placed me on the cushion, sliding to his knees beside me even as I slipped out of his arms. Never breaking eye contact, he raised his wrist to his mouth and bit down, hard.

  And then he was leaning over me, sliding his fangs into my neck, back into some of the several half-healed wounds from before. This time it hurt, and I tried to cry out, but all that emerged from my ravaged throat was a strangled whimper.

  My heart stuttered in my chest, beating out a tattoo that slowed, and then sped up again for a moment as a last surge of adrenaline sped through my system. My vision blurred and went dark around the edges.

  The next thing I knew was heat, sliding into my mouth and down my throat.

  Blood is life.

  In that moment, I knew it was true.

  “Swallow,” Reese ordered.

  I tried to follow his command, choked, then tried again. Hot blood ran down my chin and onto my neck, mingling with the sticky mess already there. On the third attempt, I managed a convulsive gulp.

  After that, I don’t remember much but the warmth moving back through my body, circulating through my almost-dry veins. When Reese pulled his wrist away from my mouth, I whimpered and
grabbed at his arm.

  “Wait here,” he said. “If we’re going to get out of here, you have to feed.”

  I shook my head, pulled at his hands as he stood up. “I can’t,” I said. “I can’t feed on a human.”

  He stared down at me for a long moment as if deciding whether or not to tell me the truth. When he finally spoke, his voice was low. “You have to. You won’t be yourself much longer if you don’t feed.”

  The image again flashed through my mind of the SWAT officers in the ballroom—I’d do anything not to become what they had become.

  “Cami, you have no choice. I can’t keep you here, like this, much longer.” The connection between us pulsed hot, this time burning through my veins as well as against my skin, and I realized Reese had activated it on purpose.

  He spoke more urgently as I still hesitated. “This is what you agreed to. I’ll be here, and I’ll make sure you don’t kill her. But if we’re going to win this war, then you are going to have to accept the things you have to do, just as I did. Starting now.”

  He didn’t wait for a response before once again picking me up, then spinning on his boot heel and sliding out from behind the curtain. I wrapped my arms around his neck and buried my face in his neck.

  As he carried me through the storeroom, past Dahlia’s lifeless, crumpled body, and down the stairs, I thought about what he had said.

  He was right, of course. I would do whatever I had to do to save this world.

  But I don’t have to like it.

  Chapter 29

  Downstairs, Reese gently placed me on the floor so I could lean against the wall.

  He lifted the woman from the wooden stand by breaking off the hooks at the point where they connected to the stand, leaving them in place through her skin. She screamed at the first one and a blue light flared from the carvings in her skin for an instant.

  I could feel the magic again, beginning to swirl around me.

  And every time she screamed, the invisible waves crested.

  The shrill of her voice was overpowered by the rocking of the waves and beating sound of the hot silk running through her veins. I leaned toward her as she turned to look at me, and I knew the moment she saw the hunger in my eyes.

  I stared into her eyes. I wanted a tear to fall from those lashes—wanted to lick it away while more piled behind her frightened gaze, as she shivered, frozen and still and afraid.

  I could smell her fear.

  I wanted to taste it.

  My jaws ached.

  Prey.

  Then she passed out.

  My lust faded to hunger. I was glad of it.

  Reese placed her gently on the floor and beckoned to me to join him from where I stood, leaning heavily against the table holding the bookstand and various other arcane instruments.

  “We have to hurry,” he said. “I’ve called 911. The ambulance will be here soon.”

  More than that, some part of me knew that if I didn’t feed soon, the transformation wouldn’t take.

  I won’t survive for very long.

  It was true, but some other part of me knew it for the rationalization it was.

  I didn’t want to die.

  My jaw ached for a moment, and I felt fangs slide into place. I knelt down, and glanced at Reese. He pointed at a spot on the woman’s neck.

  But I didn’t need the guidance.

  I could hear her heart beating, the swish of the blood as it moved through her veins. I could see the slight pulse of blue under her skin. And I could smell the blood, calling to me.

  I inhaled deeply against her neck, and then pushed my fangs through the skin.

  She gasped and jerked, and her heart fluttered, the vein pulsing in time to the rapid beat.

  The blood that filled my mouth was as hot as Reese’s had been, but different—softer, silky and smooth.

  It filled me with a strength that Reese’s blood hadn’t.

  And with it came the swirling waves of magic, rolling in and through me. Reese gasped as warmth flooded me like the pulsing of the sun. With it came life.

  Never-ending.

  I lost myself, and I don’t know if I would have pulled back, had Reese not taken me by the shoulders and tugged me away. “That’s enough,” he said.

  I licked my lips, and then nodded.

  I could hear the faint wail of ambulances, the sound of people moving around upstairs as the paramedics crashed in through the front door.

  The few remaining magical waves—those that I hadn’t absorbed as I fed—had receded. But I could see them now, glowing with a deep blue light that called out to me.

  It matched the glowing cord that connected me to Reese.

  And it was nothing that belonged in this world.

  “Ready?” Reese asked me.

  I didn’t ask what he meant.

  I didn’t have to.

  I simply nodded, and he took my hand.

  “Let’s go, then” he said, pulling me back to the book on the table. Reese flipped it open, and then ran his finger across the lines on a page. I couldn’t read them, but in a quiet voice, he spoke the same words Mendoza had said in the ballroom.

  The waves coalesced into a blue light that flashed in front of the crucifixion stand, and the woman on the floor let out a long, sorrowful wail.

  The light grew in proportion to her scream. A hot, breathless wind whipped through the room—a wind that, I realized, was coming through the light.

  “Where does that lead?” I yelled over the air blasting through the room.

  Reese didn’t respond, staring wide-eyed as the blue light grew to the size of a door and began to bulge toward us. The symbols on the stand glowed the same color, as did the wounds on the woman’s skin, all three beams of light meeting in the middle of the room, widening to become an oval taller than Reese.

  “Destroy the book.” Reese pulled a cigarette lighter from his pocket and tossed it to me. “It will take blood, I think. But wait until I’m back.” I caught the lighter and spun around to the book on the stand. The pages were glowing the same shade of blue as the light, the symbols in the book shooting light straight to the ceiling.

  I could feel the same glow within me.

  I didn’t know if my blood would do, but I certainly wasn’t going to take any more of the poor woman’s if I could help it. We had done enough to her.

  In any case, Reese had her in his arms and was striding toward the doorway and the stairs.

  Moments later, he was back by my side. “The paramedics have her,” he said. “Let’s do this.”

  I concentrated until my jaw ached again, and then I slid my fangs into my own wrist. I held it over the book, dripping blood over the symbols, and then smudging the dark red stains to occlude the glow of the arcane markings. When the light had dimmed a bit, I held the cigarette lighter to one edge of the pages, waiting until they were curling and smoking before moving it to the other three corners in turn.

  The wind in the room whipped hotter, and I could hear a scream inside it. Only when the top page was almost entirely blackened and the other pages glowing with red embers did I look back at the doorway-shaped blue light.

  And for an instant, I saw a snarling, fanged face pushing through the door, framed by hands curved into claws.

  We made eye contact, and my breath caught in my throat—that life-breath I was no longer supposed to have, holding in a way that wasn’t supposed to affect me any longer. The blue of the light swept out from the face’s eyes and into mine, power pulsing down through me, touching the part of me that connected to Reese, leaving me dizzy with the strength of it.

  The bulge receded. Reese moved to the doorway as the book toppled off its stand and onto a nearby table, where flames leapt up among the papers surrounding it.

  Reese stared at the growing fire for a moment and said, “Let it burn.” Then he held out his hand to me.

  “We won’t be able to come back this way,” I said.

  He nodded, holding my gaze with his
own. “We don’t belong here, anyway. Not any longer.”

  He took a step back so that his heel barely brushed the blue light. He lifted his other hand toward me, both palms turned up, and smiled. “We can do this, Cami,” he said. “We can fix it so the monsters don’t win—can’t even get through. But I think maybe we have to do it from the other side.”

  I didn’t know if I had chosen the right side, or if Reese could be trusted.

  But I knew he was right.

  I didn’t belong here now.

  We’re all monsters.

  And this might be the only possible chance to keep the world from going under the darkness.

  Fifty years before the vampires won.

  But maybe I could stop them.

  As black smoke filled the room and the flames swirled in the wind from the magical passage between worlds, I reached out to take Reese’s hands.

  We stepped through together.

  Epilogue

  Moonlight glinted off of the high-desert dunes in the distance. I slung my knapsack over my shoulder and followed Reese out into the tavern’s courtyard. “Are you sure the bartender knows what he’s talking about?”

  “He’s too afraid of vampires to lie to me.” Reese grimaced, speaking over his shoulder as he walked into the stable. “Humans are definitely in the minority here. He would never consider lying. It would be too dangerous.”

  I waited, tapping my foot impatiently while Reese saddled the two animals he’d managed to trade for on our third night here. Like everything else in this dimension, the creatures were slightly different from their Earth counterparts—their hooves, for example, were split, more like antelopes’ than horses’ feet. I called them the “not-horses.”

  In a fit of whimsy, Reese had given them spectacularly ill-fitting names: Sunshine and Sugar Pie.

  “Sunshine bites,” he warned me the first night we rode.

  I had the bruises to prove it.

  I mounted the cantankerous Sunshine and wheeled her around to follow Sugar Pie’s clattering steps out onto the cobblestone streets.

  It had seemed like a simple task, back at home: go through the portal, find out what the Sanguinary was hiding about the other side, and shut down the entry into our world from this one.