by L. D. Rose
God knows it.
He chuckled. “I think we all do sometimes. But I’m glad to hear that. When are you coming back? Everyone is damn miserable without you.”
She smiled. “I’m hoping for next week. Pending the Sarge’s psych eval, of course.”
“Psh, he’ll let you back. Shit has kind of hit the fan here. Been a few pretty bad Temhota uprisings. We’re down to the bare bones so we need all the help we can get.”
She frowned, feeling another guilty tug. “I’m sorry, Deron.”
“You’re sorry? For what? C’mon, Val, you have nothing to be sorry about. We’re doing fine, it’s just not the same without you. We need our ass-kicking blonde back.”
The teasing remark eased her anxiety level. “Are you home?”
“Yeah, just got in.” Valerie heard him shuffling around. “Everything all right?”
“Yeah, yeah, everything’s good. I just, um . . .” And now, I present the crazy. “Could you do me a favor?”
“Sure, anything.”
“Could you stay home tonight?”
Silence. Then he let out a low laugh, obviously thrown off by her request. “Yeah, I can do that. Are you sure everything’s all right?”
Valerie’s throat tightened at the genuine concern in his voice. She felt an absurd urge to cry, but she beat it back into submission. “Yeah.” Her laugh sounded nervous to her own ears. “Yeah, I have a bad feeling, that’s all. Just promise me you will.”
“Okay,” he reassured her in that humoring-the-mental-patient sort of way. “I’ll stay. I promise.”
“Good.” She coughed, feeling extraordinarily awkward. “Thank you.”
“All right, well, I got to let you go,” he said as more shuffling ensued. “I fucking stink and I need a shower. But tell you what, why don’t we get some coffee in the morning? I’ll bring you up to speed on what’s going on at the station, so you’re not walking into pandemonium.”
“Yeah, I’d like that. It’d be great.”
“Okay, cool. I’ll give you a ring in the morning then. Have a good night, Val. Take care of yourself.”
“You too, Deron. See you tomorrow.”
He hung up first and she stared at the phone. Please let me see him tomorrow.
A sudden crash nearly sent her through the roof, a gasp escaping her as she dropped the phone. She stilled, her adrenals shooting into overdrive, fighting to listen past her hammering heart.
Somebody, or something, was outside.
Her apartment was on the first floor. She’d taken it because no one else would, which made it exceptionally affordable. Sure, she had problems, but she knew how to handle them. She’d been trained to resist a vampire’s lure and she knew to never invite them in. So when a leech crawled outside in the dark, she was the first to know about it. And that was exactly how she wanted it.
Hell, depending on how many there were, sometimes she went out and disposed of them herself.
Another crash. It sounded like whatever was going on had started in the street and moved onto the property line of the complex. Valerie leapt off the treadmill and grabbed her Beretta from the TV stand. She checked the clip, found it full, slammed it home. She pointed the gun at the carpet and racked the slide, chambering the first silver round.
Keeping the gun aimed at the floor, she turned off all the lights and headed for the bay window. She’d replaced it eight times so far this year and she hoped this wouldn’t be number nine. She settled near the frame, pressing her back against the wall, and waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. Slowly, carefully, with her heart thundering in her ears, she drew the curtain back enough to see.
And a huge fireball went soaring past it.
Valerie recoiled.
Blaze.
A screech tore through the air, like the sound of a dying alley cat. Pounding footsteps came closer, along with the voices of several men. Three, maybe four. Gunfire erupted—pop, pop, pop—so loud it sounded as if they were right in her living room. Another crash before three flashes of silver streaked past her window.
Her jaw slackened. Were those shuriken?
Forcing herself into action, she dove for the sliding doors in the kitchen, putting her in front of the firefight. She grabbed her Kevlar vest off the coat rack, yanked it on, and pushed two extra clips into the waistband of her track pants. She laid flat against the wall as she pulled back the vertical blinds, making sure the coast was clear. Then she unlatched the glass door and quietly slipped outside into the rising chaos.
Valerie crouched behind her recycle bin, daring a look into the walkway. A tree burned bright near the path, a beacon of destruction in the darkness. The fight had moved farther back, into the courtyard. Gunfire ensued, distant now, sending muzzle flashes into the night and revealing locations. She saw dark figures moving and they were moving fast.
With her pulse battering in her throat, Valerie eased out from behind the bin and lifted her gun. She slid along the building’s vinyl siding, heading for the courtyard. Barrels had been overturned, trash and recyclables spilt everywhere, benches and patio furniture shattered and mangled. She spotted the fallen body of a man, and as she came closer, she realized he wasn’t a man at all.
The right side of his face and his entire right arm had been roasted, the wounds still sizzling as he tried to crawl away from the burning tree. Two shuriken were embedded in his back, bloodied silver gleaming in the firelight. He let out a sick gurgle of agony, exposing long, bloodstained fangs. The familiar scent of campfire and burnt flesh pervaded the air as she came up behind him, aiming her gun at his head.
He looked back at her with soulless black eyes, reaching for her with a charred hand. He resembled a macabre version of Two-Face, except this villain had teeth. Bloody spittle fell from his mouth, hitting the walkway as he hissed at her. Wordlessly she planted two bullets in his head, splattering his brains all over the freshly cut lawn.
Nausea rose in the back of her throat, but she forced it down, turning away from the body. Focus, Val. The pool shed was directly ahead and she quickly cut across the path, jamming her shoulder against its wall. She waited, listening, sweat trickling down the sides of her face. She could hear the in-ground pool humming, the water swishing around softly from the filtration system. Silence had fallen, the charged kind of silence that signaled impending violence.
And violence it gave.
Something massive slammed into the other side of the pool shed, rocking the entire structure and threatening to level it. Valerie cringed against the blow as a low growl sliced through the air, turning her blood into ice. Then the sound of a fist smashing into flesh, bone cracking against bone. And a very familiar voice, like dark whiskey set aflame.
“You remember me, you motherfucker?” More muffled blows, a feral hiss, a guttural growl. “Where is he?”
Another male voice spat, “Fuck you, Knight.”
Blaze let out a roar.
The leech’s big body suddenly smacked onto the pool’s concrete wraparound, then tumbled into Valerie’s line of sight. Blaze leapt on top of him, straddling him as he drove his gloved fist into the vampire’s blond head again and again.
Valerie straightened, pushing off the shed as she raised her gun. Her hands shook as she aimed at the vampire, circling the two of them wide, sticking to the shadows. There were more out here—she could feel them, danger thickening the air. Her breath burst forth in shallow gasps and her heart threatened to tear its way out of her chest as Blaze beat the vampire into oblivion.
When he finally stopped, he yanked off his right glove, lifting his big bloody hand in the air. Like a bad car wreck, Valerie couldn’t look away as his palm began to glow. Light wavered around his fingers as he brought them down toward the vampire’s face.
Then he stopped in midair.
&n
bsp; He took several deep breaths, drawing them into a chest covered in a black T-shirt and Kevlar vest. His nostrils flared as he looked up, leveling his hidden gaze at her. The ethereal glow from his hand died as he clenched it back into a fist.
His thunderous voice rumbled with an unmistakable note of menace. “Val, get out of here.”
“Let me help you—”
“No! Get out—”
The vampire struck him and his head snapped back, his sunglasses flying off his face. As Valerie took aim at the leech, a strong arm wrapped around her waist and lifted her high in the air.
She yelped, firing into the starless sky as her assailant dragged her toward the pool shed. Panic flooded her when they passed the burning tree, and she cursed herself for having been distracted. Writhing and kicking in the iron grip, she screamed at the top of her lungs.
The guy swore as she elbowed his head hard, but he kept going, heading straight for her apartment.
“Let me go,” Valerie cried.
Abruptly, he yanked open her sliding door and tossed her into her kitchen. She landed on her hands and knees then flipped onto her back, aiming her Beretta at him as he shut the glass door behind her.
He was built like Rome, huge, yet not as big as Blaze. His skin had more of an olive tone rather than gold, and he sported dime-sized plugs in his ears. He’d left his cropped, blue-black hair longer on top, falling over his forehead. Barbell piercings in his eyebrow and lower lip glinted silver like the shuriken, and his slanted Asian eyes were a startling cobalt blue. He wore the same dark clothing, but he had no visible tattoos or markings, and he was armed to the teeth, wearing several loaded holsters and utility belts, just like Blaze.
He pointed to the latch on the door. “Lock it,” he ordered, his deep voice muffled through the glass, the sound cleaner and less thunderous than Blaze’s, but still easy on the ears.
Another hybrid, maybe a brother. “Who are you?”
He frowned and stepped back. Then, without warning, a dark figure slammed into him like a linebacker, wiping him from sight. Valerie gasped, scrambling toward the door, but she stayed down on the cool tile, just in case.
The hybrid wrestled his attacker to the ground and catapulted himself to his feet. He fought fast and hard, meeting the vampire blow-for-blow, strike-for-strike. It was obvious he’d been trained in martial arts, his every movement graceful, lithe, like a dancer. He quickly gained the upper hand as he drew a wicked silver blade, ready to deliver the deathblow, when another dark figure dropped out of the sky.
It happened so fast.
The hybrid, seeming to sense the threat above him, turned and threw up his free hand. The temperature dropped, sucking the heat out of Valerie’s kitchen like a vacuum. A blast of pale blue light blinded her momentarily, as if someone had flashed a camera in her eyes. Then a burst of arctic air blew back into her apartment, raising goose bumps over her skin. With a sick crunch, the airborne figure hit the ground, shattering like glass.
Both sliding doors froze over in a thin layer of ice.
She’d seen enough. She retreated, scooting across the floor until she hit the kitchen island. The gray edges of shock closed in around her as she gaped at her frosted doors. Frosted doors in the middle of July.
A streak of blood sprayed across the ice, painting it red as the intended deathblow struck.
Oh. My. God.
Fire and ice. Valerie felt an insane urge to laugh.
Who would’ve thought?
TEN
Blaze dropped the blade on top of the rest of the bloodied instruments of torture.
Done.
He braced his hands on the steel medical cart and hung his head. Like the weapons before him, he was covered in vampire blood, belonging to Tristan Levine, a longtime cohort of Chimola. Although Blaze had never seen Levine’s face until he’d chased him down outside Valerie’s apartment, he remembered the leech’s voice clearly.
No matter how hard Blaze tried to forget, that South African accent still echoed in his nightmares . . .
Blaze hung from the ceiling upside-down, bound at his wrists and ankles, naked and cold. Blood rushed to his head and settled in his brain, worsening his disorientation. A low mechanical drone seemed to come from everywhere, humming against his skin and vibrating his bones. The stench of sulfur and grease was potent, a smell he would forever associate with hell. He braced himself for what was coming, feeling the dead air shifting.
Sensing the ominous presence in the room, he felt like a suspended pig in a butcher’s shop, on display until someone decided to take a piece of him.
The sjambok smashed across his back, pain exploding over his skin as his capillaries burst like fireworks. Blaze caught the scream before it escaped his throat, choking it down into a grunt. His body betrayed him, however, his back arching as he swung like a piñata. Another blow struck his chest, followed by a second strike across his back, one right after the other. His skin split as a river of warmth ran up his spine, but he contained the agony, grinding his teeth to a near pulp as he roared into the recesses of his mind.
Low, sniggering laughter. “Hurts, doesn’t it?”
Tristan wanted to hear him scream. He got off on it, but Blaze quickly learned to cage his reaction in silence. It made the lashings worse, but Blaze never gave the leech the satisfaction of his torment.
Blaze sucked in the poisonous air, staring into the darkness behind his sealed eyelids. “Not enough.”
“Not enough?” Tristan cackled, the sound black and saturated with malice. Blaze heard him circling like a shark, tapping the whip against the floor. Tristan raised it, a sharp whoosh as the sjambok cut through the thick air.
“Guess we’ll have to fix that now, won’t we?”
Blaze turned, facing the suspended corpse of his flogger. Tristan was no longer recognizable, his body nude and tattered, as Blaze had once been. The blood from the leech’s gaping throat dripped steadily into a bucket below his head, the pearly shine of cervical vertebra gleaming like teeth from a macabre smile.
“Who’s screaming now?” Blaze had roared as he’d taken the vampire apart. “Guess we’ll have to fix that now, won’t we?”
He lifted his face and closed his eyes, rejecting the lingering taste of bile and death. Part of the furious maelstrom inside him spun away, swirling and dissipating, making him lighter. Cleaner.
Liberation. So this is what it’s like to be set free.
Only the beginning.
A heavy hand pounded on the dungeon-like double doors of one of the many cells beneath the Knight compound. The cells were rarely used, but when they were occupied, everyone on the premises knew about it.
Especially the man behind that heavy hand.
“Open it,” Blaze said, his voice ragged from shouting.
The locks snapped open, one after the other, before both doors swung back to reveal none other than Rome. Like Blaze, his inhuman eyes were exposed, gold sliced in half by obsidian.
“There anything left?” Rome asked, voice empty, expression hard.
Blaze’s lips twitched. “Nothing worth leaving.”
Rome didn’t smile, his face grim as ever. He stepped into the crypt and viewed what remained of Tristan, an unblinking scan of the body from floor to ceiling. He speared Blaze with the same intense scrutiny, as if checking Blaze’s soul for holes.
He’d sure as hell find plenty of them.
“I hope you got something out of him.”
“I got enough.”
“Enough,” Rome echoed, glancing back at the body. “Looks like you did.”
Blaze edged from his brother’s penetrating eyes and leaned against the cart again. Blades, pliers, hammers, and other hardware shone between the bloodstains. “You know what he did to me.”
Momentary sil
ence. “I know.” Rome’s baritone softened enough to reveal understanding and nothing else. “Get yourself cleaned up. We meet in an hour.”
He moved to leave, but Blaze called to him before he stepped over the threshold. “Rome.”
“Yeah?”
“I need you to show me a color.” Blaze closed his eyes again, his chest going tight for some inexplicable reason. “Please.”
Rome’s boots thumped up beside him before a big hand fell on his shoulder, his brother’s touch cool against his feverish skin. “How about I just show her to you?”
A vision blossomed behind Blaze’s eyelids, no longer infinitely dark. It was one of Rome’s memories, back at the precinct, when Valerie had introduced herself with an extended hand. Slender, fit, she wore a modest dark suit with her straight hair pulled back into a ponytail.
Dark blond. He’d guessed right on her hair.
Her skin tone reflected her Portuguese heritage, her face perfectly proportionate, untouched by cosmetics. Her pink lips curved like a cupid’s bow, the bottom lip slightly fuller than the top, and she wore no earrings or accessories. Young, but tired, stress tugging at the edges of her mouth and the corners of her eyes.
And what magnificent eyes, a radiant, shining olive green, framed with long curling lashes. The way she gazed outward with such wariness and distrust made them darker, but Blaze could only imagine what they looked like when she smiled.
God, she’s beautiful.
Seeing her in such vivid color took his breath away. He nearly reached out and touched her, the image so real in his mind he could almost smell her jasmine scent. But then it vanished, blown away like a cloud of cigarette smoke in the night as Rome dropped his hand.
