The bloodsucker made a strangled sound, part pain, part ecstasy. My eyes snapped open and my heart slammed against my rib cage at the thing I was clasping. Its eyes were red pebbles in its sunken sockets, its cheeks were sallow hollows, and the body, oh god, if the sucker had been thin before he was positively skeletal now. I released it, and it slumped to the floor and lay unmoving.
Shit, shit, shit.
Was it dead? Had I killed it? Oh god. What had I done? Wiping my hand on my jeans, I backed up and then the thing gave a shuddering breath, raised its head and smiled.
The door slammed behind me as I strode back to my office, my stomach a writhing pit of nausea.
***
I finished up the report on autopilot, my mind whirring. It wasn’t as if the bloodsucker could tell anyone what I’d done. Scourge didn’t speak. At least not any language we understood. There was nothing to worry about. But the whole thing left a bitter taste in my mouth, stirring up memories I’d prefer remain buried. Memories of twinkling blue eyes and dimples, memories of Jonathon—my first crush and first sexual encounter. I’d almost killed him. Turns out shields didn’t work so well when you were in the throes of an orgasm. I’d slammed them down in time, but not before I’d tasted something so pure and delicious it had almost made me lose my mind. If I hadn’t been so fucking infatuated with him, I’d have carried on feeding. But my feelings for him had pushed back the darkness or I’d have killed him. Turned out because humans had no supernatural power, the only thing left for me to siphon was their life force, and, man, that shit was intoxicating.
That was my first and last relationship. Just couldn’t risk losing control like that again. Ever. Ten minutes later, report done, I was headed for the exit. Henry, one of the officers, was chatting up Julie, our receptionist, and Bellamy was busy pulling fliers off the corkboard.
I grabbed a scrunched up sheet of paper. “Join the silvered and be saved.” I snorted. “Fucking tossers.”
“Yeah.” Bellamy shoved the balls of paper into the wastepaper basket. “I keep taking them down and they keep showing up.” He shook his head. “If I catch who’s been pinning these, I’m gonna rip them a new one.”
Bellamy had lost his wife and son to the White Wings less than a year ago. Hannah had fallen prey to the propaganda after their son had been born. Maybe it was a postnatal thing, maybe just a mother thing, but she’d become obsessed with saving her son from all the possible nasty fates that awaited him. What if the magick of Arcadia got to him? What if he went scourge? What if he didn’t and one of the bloodsuckers or rippers got hold of him?
The White Wings provided the perfect answer. A completely safe haven for all humans in the district of Dawn. It wasn’t even expensive, not really. Not like the house prices in Sunset. No. All you needed to do to get into Dawn was hand over your free will and become silvered.
Yeah, a pretty silver chain that made you their puppet. As far as I was concerned, the White Wings were monsters. They had the perfect sanctuary, a place where the scourge couldn’t enter, where the magick of Arcadia couldn’t warp and they kept their gates closed, accepting only humans who’d happily agree to be their slaves.
I screwed up the flyer and lobbed it into the bin. “Have you heard from Hannah?”
“Not in three months.”
The White Wings allowed minimal familial contact. Two or three visits a year, but not out of compassion. It was in an effort to recruit more slaves. Maybe the families left behind in Sunset would miss their loved ones so much they’d sign up to be pearly gate prisoners too. The visits didn’t last once you made your resistance clear. Once that happened, you were unlikely to ever see your loved ones again. Once you were silvered, there was no going back. No one had ever returned to live in Sunset. Sorry White Wing, I changed my mind, being a yes man sucks and I’d like my free will back now, please.
Nope. That didn’t happen, and yet every year, more humans packed up their belongings and left for Dawn.
“This is them, you know,” Bellamy said. He pulled off his cape, smoothed back his hair and then shoved it firmly back onto his head again. “Those bastard White Wings have us trapped here. This is them.”
A popular theory. “We don’t know that for sure.”
His lip curled. “They’re the only ones getting anything out of this.” He dropped the bin and lifted the barrier. “There has to be a way out.”
This was dangerous talk. Crazy talk. Talk that often preceded going scourge. “Bellamy, babe, I know you’re hurting, but you can’t think like that.”
The barrier slammed shut and he turned to me, eyes red rimmed. “If people can get in, then there must be a way out.”
He was talking about me—one of the few people to end up in this town with no memory of a time before. Me with a handful of others, all gone now, taken by the scourge or lured into Dawn by promises of sanctuary and peace. There would be more. There always were, every twenty years or so the stories said. Outsiders would wander into Arcadia and our ranks would swell, a little.
Except this time, the twenty years had come and gone and no outsiders had walked out of the turnaround forest.
“Bellamy, I—”
The entrance bell beeped, and I turned to find Mrs. Carlson standing on the welcome mat, her eyes behind her Coke bottle spectacles.
Oh shit.
“I called and called and the line is engaged. Why is the line engaged for so long?” she asked.
Julie reached for the phone and cursed softly. “Dammit, I had it on busy.”
“Did you see him?” Mrs. Carlson asked. “Did you see my boy? Is he all right? He didn’t mean to hurt those kitties. He doesn’t know what he’s doing.”
Julie and Henry exchanged panicked glances. This was the part every officer hated—telling a parent their child was lost to them. Going scourge was one thing, but it was when you went under that you truly died. To some, it brought comfort. They even held funerals for their lost loved ones. But for Mrs. Carlson, it would only bring grief. It was no secret that Romeo had been hanging around Sunset due to his attachment to his mother. The neighbors had even reported sightings of him in their back yards. He’d found a way back into Sunset each time we’d chased him out. Each time we’d thought the Protectorate would find him. But he’d come back a few weeks later. It had been a year and Romeo had held on, fighting going under. It was a testament to his mental strength, and no one could truly blame Mrs. Carlson for encouraging the visits. But her son was gone for real now.
She looked up at me. “Serenity, dear. Did you speak to him? You know he always adored you.”
Oh, man. I so did not want to be the one to do this. But she was here, and I was here and damn it. “Mrs. Carlson I—”
“Harker, what the heck are you still doing here?” Nolan’s voice boomed down the corridor leading up to reception. He strode down the hall, his long stride eating space. “Get your arse home to your sister and take tomorrow off.”
I looked from Mrs. Carlson to Nolan and he jerked his head toward the exit. This was him giving me an out and, with the fucked up day I’d had, I was grateful for the reprieve.
Nolan lifted the barrier. “Why don’t you come with me Mrs. Carlson?”
With a final confused glance my way, Romeo’s mother followed Nolan into the depths of the SPD.
It was my cue to make a getaway.
Chapter 3
The smell of lasagna hit me as I entered my house. It was a neat bungalow on a nice street with neighborhood watch and way too many electrified fences. Sunset was a place for the affluent and the skilled. Humans in here were highly educated or could offer a special skill essential to the running of the district. To stay on this side of the border, you needed to fit into the machine, and you needed to make money. Money didn’t take away the fear, though. Nor did it make Sunset as safe as Dawn. But this was home, and I loved it.
The clang of pots and pans filled the air. A quick peek at my watch told me I was over an hour late for dinner. A gl
ance at my mobile phone showed ten missed calls, but the damned thing had been on silent.
Crap.
Okay, so Jesse was going to be pissed. I’d made a huge song and dance about family time a couple of weeks ago, moaning that she spent way too much time working, grading papers and doing after school activities with the kids. I’d pouted and done the whole, me, me, me, thing, and when she’d finally caved and promised to do family dinner at least two nights a week, I’d turned up late for the first one. Yeah, I deserved a verbal bashing.
I stepped into the kitchen perfectly prepared for her wrath. “Hey, I’m so bloody sorry I—”
She whirled round, dropped the spatula she’d been wielding and flew at me. I backed up, but not fast enough, because she had me in a crushing hug before I could get my foot back over the kitchen threshold.
“Oh god, oh god, oh, god.”
Her slender body trembled in my arms.
“Jesse babe. What the fuck?” I stroked her back. “Shit, are you crying? What happened?” I pulled back, gripping her shoulders tight. “Jesse, what’s wrong? Did someone hurt you?”
She shook her head vehemently. “You were late and I couldn’t get hold of you, and the office phone was engaged, and I thought... I thought you were dead.” Her face contorted in a silent wail, and I pulled her against me, rocking her back and forth.
Dammit. I was an idiot. A total fucking moron. “Jesse, baby girl.” I kept my tone soft. “Jesse, you know if anything were to happen to me, Nolan would have called you. Heck, he would have come down here to see you himself.”
She pulled out of my embrace and nodded. “My head knew that, but my heart...” She pressed a hand to her chest. “My heart was so scared. I thought they’d gotten you, like they got Mum.”
My mouth was dry. “I’m sorry, babe. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
She slumped into a seat at the table. “It’s stupid. I know it’s stupid but...You should have called.”
“I know. I’m an idiot. But, babe, you know my job. You know I have to work late sometimes.”
“But you always call,” She insisted.
Did I? Yeah, I guess I did. Probably why she’d succeeded in hiding her fear for so long, her terror that she’d lose me, that one day I just wouldn’t come home. I’d thought I’d created a safe secure environment for her, that I’d chased away the past with my commitment to our family.
At twenty-one, Jesse was three years my junior, and had never known a world without me in it. She’d been barely a year old when Mum and Dad had taken me in—the four-year-old child that had walked out of the forest and into the Arcadia. Where had I come from? Who were my real parents? These were questions I’d never have answers to, but it hadn’t mattered because the Harkers had become my family. They’d loved me and nurtured me, and Jesse had been the perfect little sister. When Dad had gone scourge, it had almost crippled Mum, but she’d soldiered on. I’d been barely thirteen then, and Jesse had just turned ten. We’d slowly rebuilt our world, and just when we’d finally healed, Mum had gone to the shops and never returned. They never found her body, just bloody scraps of her favorite floral skirt up by the border to Midnight, at the edge of the forest. At seventeen, devastated and broken, I’d taken on the responsibility of looking after Jesse. I’d pieced myself together for her and it had been just the two of us ever since.
“You should have called,” she said in a small voice.
I pulled out the chair beside her, sat, and took her hands in mine. “Jesse, I am not going anywhere. Not ever. You get me. It’s you and me against the world, babe.”
She swallowed and lifted her chin to look me in the eyes. “Jimmy Wright went scourge today.”
My hand went to my mouth. “No...” He was only ten years old. It never happened that young.
She nodded. The motion was jerky and stilted. “His parents have petitioned the district council to keep him until he goes under. They’re requesting special privileges. A cell in their basement.” Her eyes shimmered with tears. “Why is this happening to us, Serenity? Why are we being punished this way?”
She said it as if she assumed there was still a higher power at work, but everyone knew that God had packed up and left. He’d abandoned us to the White Wings and the scourge and the nephs. This fucked up city was our world, and we needed to do what we could to survive, and it wasn’t so bad. It was home, except right now she was upset. She was coming down from an adrenaline rush and she wasn’t thinking straight.
“Don’t you wonder what’s out there?” Jesse said in a hushed tone, her eyes wide. “They say we used to be part of a world that’s still out there.”
My heart skipped a beat. “Who says?” I squeezed her hands. “Jesse, who have you been talking to?”
She lowered her lids and gave her head a shake. “No one.”
She’d just lost one of her pupils, and then I’d been late home, it was enough to throw anyone for a loop, and if she hadn’t emphasized the word they, then I’d let it go, but there was only one group of people I knew who made such claims to knowledge. But they couldn’t be in Sunset. Not without an official permit, and the SPD would have been alerted if that had been granted. Still, I had to ask.
“Jesse, have you been speaking to the Order of Merlin?”
She looked up sharply. “No. I mean not intentionally. They just, they came by the school a couple of days ago wanting to speak to the children and their parents. We called security of course, but...I was curious.”
Shit. How the heck had they slipped into the district? “You spoke to them?”
She winced.
“Jesse, come on, you know better than that. Those fanatics thrive on curiosity. Look, promise me you won’t engage with them again, please.”
She gave me her most earnest look. “I promise.”
Ignoring the thud in my pulse, I smiled reassuringly. “I’ll speak to Nolan. They shouldn’t be on this side of the border without a permit.” We’d have to do a sweep, find the troublemakers and chuck them back over the border. “You know they’re not entirely human, right?”
She gnawed on her lip. “He said they were witches able to harness the magick of Arcadia, that if you join them you never go scourge.”
Oh for fuck’s sake. I pressed my lips together. “Babe, they’re just as bad as the White Wings. They just want mindless followers to do whatever shitty nefarious thing they want to do. If they have all this harnessed magick then what the fuck are they still doing in Arcadia, why not channel that shit and blast their way out, huh?”
She sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose before tucking her blonde locks behind her ear. “You’re right. Of course you’re right. Let’s just eat. I’m starving.”
Jesse busied herself with plates and cutlery and I sat back, my heart still thudding too hard in my chest.
The reason Sunset thrived was because we had no illusions. We accepted our world and we lived life to the fullest. Clubs and bars and theatre, we had it all. Yet people still left, lured by the prospect of a different kind of security offered by the White Wings—the sanctity of their souls. No one wanted to go scourge, because going scourge meant eventually going under, and once you did that, your soul was lost.
As we sat down to a home cooked meal my stomach quivered with a strange sense of dread, because if the Order had infiltrated Sunset then things were going to get messy. And messy made keeping my secret that much harder.
Chapter 4
The coffee room was teeming with activity. The aroma of freshly brewed coffee was potent on the air, and someone had brought in donuts too. Yum.
“Did you hear?” Henry said with a nudge to my ribs. “We’ve had three Order sightings today.” He winked, eyes twinkling.
“Three? What? This morning?”
“No. They were reported this morning, but timeline-wise the earliest was around a week ago.” He rubbed his hands together. “We’re finally going to get some action.”
There was no denying the leap in my pulse
. This is why I’d joined the SPD, not just to protect humans, but to have the opportunity to beat the shit out of stuff. Of course, aggression was a poor substitute for what my body really needed, and all the physical activity tapped me out, heightening the need to feed, but the momentary high it gave was irresistible. The Order was on our turf without permission. Surely, some ass-kickery would be permitted.
Nolan clapped his hands. “Everyone. Please, calm down and take a seat.”
Coffee was being poured and officers were hiking up their trousers. Yeah, this was exciting stuff. The SPD was merely a figurehead for law enforcement in the District. We dealt with petty crime, the odd domestic abuse case and, maybe once or twice a month, a scourge sighting. Once the scourge we succeeded in catching were handed over to the Midnight Protectorate, that was us done. We trained hard, but rarely got to utilize the skills we learned. Nolan had been heading up the department for over a decade, and despite the lack of real crime, he insisted we keep fit and sharp. So, this was big for us. The Order was in our midst—lurking in the sleepy district of Sunset. Whoop-de-doo. Ha.
Chairs scraped against lino and butts kissed plastic. Mugs were set down, and the buzz died as all eyes found Nolan. He stood, arms crossed, legs slightly apart as he scanned the room.
“Three reports of the Order spreading their word,” he said solemnly. “The school, the Sunset Coast Club, and the bowling alley. They’re hitting public areas, places with families and kids and we know why, right?”
“Because parents are easy targets,” Bellamy said, his tone laced with bitterness.
“Yes.” Nolan tucked in his chin. “Now, they didn’t apply for an official permit, because the council would have no doubt turned it down, so we have authority to evict them. However, this is the Order of Merlin, and they have access to magick that we can’t comprehend, so we must proceed with caution. I’ve contacted the Protectorate, and they’re sending a couple of representatives with unique abilities required for interaction with the Order.”
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