The Darkling Hunters: Fox Company Alpha (Fox Company Series Book 1)

by Rhiannon Ayers

  “In other words, humans prefer myths and legends,” Sam said, his smile twisted and sour. “Yeah, I can see that. I grew up Catholic. Even when I found out about darklings, some part of me still wanted to believe they were demon-possessed. That made it easier to accept than the reality that some men were just born without souls.”

  “I always assumed they were demons born in human bodies,” Dex admitted, shrugging when Sydney looked at him. “Hey, I never grew up in a religious household, so I never had any pre-conceived notions about what demons could and couldn’t do. But then you told us about Levi, and how he’s the one going around stealing souls. That’s why I asked you if he was a demon. Isn’t that what demons are supposed to do? Steal souls for the Devil?”

  Sydney rolled her eyes. “Yeah, that’s one of Levi’s favorite stories. Except he likes to think he is the Devil. That’s why he usually chooses phone numbers and addresses with six-six-six somewhere in there. President Nixon may have had no sense of irony, but Levi sure does. The asshole.” The last was said as an aside, under her breath.

  Sam hesitated, then asked the question that had been burning in his mind since the moment she revealed the existence of the darkling-maker. “How do you know him, Sydney? What’s your real connection to him?”

  She didn’t answer for a long, long time. So long, in fact, Sam was afraid she wouldn’t answer at all. Eventually, though, she let out a sharp sigh, squared her shoulders, and lifted her chin.

  “I know him because…I was married to him.”

  Chapter 20

  Dex lay on his back, staring at the ceiling as pre-dawn light oozed around the edges of the blackout curtains. Cold morning air kissed the exposed skin of his chest and the arm he had pillowed behind his head, but it wasn’t unpleasant. Sydney slept tucked against his other side, her head pillowed on his chest, black hair spilling everywhere in a raven waterfall. The contrast of her toasty body heat paired with the brisk mountain air left him feeling lazy and yet energized. Weird combo, but nothing he could do about it.

  He hadn’t slept at all. The details of Sydney’s story kept chasing each other through his troubled mind, refusing to let him rest. Hell, the things she’d told them after revealing her previous relationship with Levi would give anyone nightmares. Maybe he was lucky the insomnia bug bit him.

  Careful not to disturb her too much, Dex pressed a gentle kiss to the crown of Sydney’s head. She lay nestled on her side, her front pressed against him. Sam lay curled around her back, his massive body providing a protective cocoon. He’d threaded his fingers together with Sydney’s, and both their arms lay sprawled across Dex’s stomach.

  A week ago, he would have been freaked out by that. Not anymore. Not after what he’d learned. His previous inability to accept his feelings for Sam seemed trivial now. Hell, he’d even said the words last night—admitted his love for both of them without blinking an eye. So much angst went into the buildup of that simple statement, and yet saying it had been the easiest thing in the world. Compared to the things Sydney had been forced to tell them…

  Dex shivered, but it had nothing to do with the cold morning air.

  It had taken a bit more cajoling after her startling admission, but eventually, Syd gave them the Cliff’s Notes version of her life story. He would have to hit the history books at some point—a lot of the historical references she’d mentioned flew right over his head—but he did gather that she’d been born in Cleopatra’s time. As in, the Cleopatra—Caesar’s lover, Marc Antony’s conspirator, died-by-a-viper-bite-to-the-tit Cleopatra. Sydney had witnessed both the rise and the eventual fall of the Roman Empire from a front-row seat. She’d also witnessed the rise of Christianity, the Crusades, the rise and fall of the Byzantine Empire, and many other historical events that had shaped modern history. The very scope of what she’d seen, up-close-and-personal, made his head spin.

  She’d started out simple enough, though. Her father was a carpenter—hence, her surname—who worked for a rich Roman landholder in Egypt. Her parents were Greek, definitely not slaves but not far from it, and they were forced to build their lives around their noble benefactor’s wishes. When that noble benefactor decided he wanted to impress Marc Antony by sending an Auxiliary unit to fight for him, Sydney’s father had been conscripted as a foreign soldier and forced to march to war. All this was important, she said, because it happened before her birth.

  In fact, she’d never have been born at all had her father not made that journey.

  He was gone for two years. During that time, he traveled to many different places, saw many different sights, and met many different people. One of those people happened to be a young woman by the name of Calypso, whom he claimed used her feminine wiles to draw him into bed with her. Being a man—and a former soldier—Dex doubted Sydney’s father had had to have his arm twisted to bed a gorgeous woman, but that was neither here nor there. He’d only spent one night with her, but it had been more than enough. Nine months later, Calypso had tracked him down and presented him with a baby girl. She disappeared into the crowd before Sydney’s father could even react, leaving him holding a squalling infant in the midst of battle-hardened men.

  Sydney said that it wasn’t uncommon at the time to leave unwanted children to die of exposure. Had her father chosen to leave her behind, and no one would have said a word. But by some strange luck, he decided to keep his unexpected love child. When he got home, his wife castigated him for it, threatening divorce—and then, miraculously, decided to raise the baby as her own. Despite the conflict her existence must have caused them, her parents never took it out on her. She’d grown up happy, never knowing of the scandal that had surrounded her birth.

  But that, in itself, turned out to be a tragedy, because her ignorance ended up being the catalyst that changed her life forever.

  Her father had set about finding her a husband as soon as she came of age, intent on finding her a good match. That part of her story had made Dex’s eyebrows hit the ceiling. “I beg your pardon? You were how old when your father found you a husband?”

  She’d just rolled her eyes. “Thirteen. Things were different back then, Dex. Woman matured faster. My family wasn’t part of the upper classes; my father had to do what he could to make sure I had a good life.” Her eyes went distant. “It was supposed to be a good life, anyway. It probably would have been, if I hadn’t killed the man I was supposed to marry.”

  “You what?” Sam exclaimed. “Why did you—”

  “I didn’t do it on purpose,” Sydney said, voice rising with indignation. “It was a freak accident. I didn’t know what I was back then—I had no idea I could do things other people couldn’t do. If he hadn’t tried to hit me—”

  That had been Dex’s cue to freak out. “He what?”

  “For fuck’s sake. Calm down, both of you. Again, different times. Do you want to hear the story, or not?”

  They’d settled down after that. It seemed that her soon-to-be husband, the man her father had so meticulously chosen for her, turned out to be a drunkard. On the night before their wedding, he’d gone off with some friends to imbibe a few celebratory glasses, then returned, drunk off his ass, to find Sydney waiting for him. Sydney had confronted him, demanding that he change his ways. The idiot swore at her, called her a harlot, and took a drunken swing toward her head. And Sydney’s reaction?

  “I panicked,” she said simply, shrugging just a little. “My father never struck me, not once. I had no experience with it. All I saw was a fist coming toward me, and I just…reacted. I reached out to try and catch his hand, thinking I would just push him away. But the moment his fingers touched my skin…”

  “You vaporized him,” Dex finished for her.

  She met his gaze with a grim nod. “I didn’t know what I’d done. Hell, I didn’t even know it was me who’d done it. I thought some god had struck him down for daring to hit me—or, worse, that some local sorcerer had killed him for the same reason. I was so scared…so very scared. I didn’t know
what to do. I fled the house and ran all the way back to my father’s home on the other side of the village.” Her eyes, along with her expression, went bitter after that. “That was when everything changed.”

  Her father received the news of his daughter’s actions with abject terror. It turned out, he’d known a lot more about the mysterious woman, Calypso, than he’d previously let on. As soon as Sydney told him what she’d done, her father confessed the truth of her birth—and told her that her only hope was to find her mother’s people. The next day, he booked passage for her on a north-bound ship, sending her off alone to face her fate. She never saw her family again. Sydney went from the breadbasket of Egypt to the shores of Italy with nothing but a hastily drawn map and a description of the woman she was supposed to find.

  “That trip was…unpleasant,” was all she would say about that particular journey. “But, eventually, I found the spot marked on my father’s map. And if I could go back in time, I’d tell my younger self to turn around, flee back toward civilization. But, I didn’t. I honestly didn’t think I had anywhere else to go.”

  There had to be a lot more to that story—a lot more—but Sydney glossed over most of it. “For your sake, honestly. How I met my mother is less important than what I learned from her.” She’d grinned a little at the mention of the old TV show, but then her expression turned sober. “I learned many truths during the fifty years I spent with my mother’s people. Not the least of which was the being immortal has its downsides.”

  “Like what?” Sam wanted to know.

  Her face stayed carefully blank. “Like boredom.”

  Neither man had been able to come up with a reply to that.

  She went on to explain—or at least, try to explain—how her mother’s people lived. Dex was still trying to wrap his head around her explanation immortal society. Turned out, there was a reason the whole “angels and demons” trope came about. Early versions of most religions held that these types of immortal creatures were similar beings, equal but opposite; essentially, two sides of the same coin. There was truth in that. The real-life race that gave rise to those legends consisted of two sub-groups: the all-female Seraphina, who possessed the powers of light and life, and the all-male Sedum, who possessed the powers of darkness and death.

  “I’d wondered why darklings were always male,” Sam had said at that point, a look of understanding dawning on his face.

  “Men have always been more susceptible to corruption, but this is more of a case of like calling to like,” Sydney replied with just a hint of irony. “But don’t assume darklings are just weaker versions of full-blooded Sedum. If anything, they’re just a byproduct. The Sedum specialize in the creation of chaos—war, famine, pestilence, death. When they get it in their heads to cause trouble, the world shudders.”

  “Four Horsemen,” Sam said, shivering.

  “I met those guys, and they were such assholes,” Sydney grumbled with disgust. “They jumped on that story like it had been written just for them. Talk about life emulating art.”

  Yeah, they would have to come back to that one. Dex had about a million questions puttering around in his brain right now. For the first time in his life, he wanted to sit down and read all the holy books from all the world’s religions—then sit down with Sydney and go over every single one, point by point, to find out what was and wasn’t true. She’d seen so much, experienced so much, knew so much, it would be like getting a first-hand peek behind the curtains of history. But all that would have to wait for a time when they had less pressing concerns.

  “Okay, help me understand this,” Sam said, frowning with concentration. “You’re saying the Seraphina and Sedum are two different things, but still part of the same people? How does that work?”

  “Masculine and feminine,” Sydney replied with a shrug. “Don’t ask me why it works that way; it’s just how it is. They are the same race, but their powers vary based on gender differences. Both are long-lived, essentially immortal, but not invulnerable. In the olden days, they kept mostly to themselves, living in single-gender communities that didn’t interact with human populations very often. Seraphina and Sedum only interact with each other when it’s time to breed, which only happens once every hundred years or so. Seraphina can’t conceive that often.”

  “So…they don’t, like, have families? Get married?” Dex had asked.

  Sydney gave a small shrug. “What’s the point? When you know you’re going to live forever, there’s little incentive to settle down with someone ‘for the rest of your life.’ Of course, being half-human, it took me a lot longer to understand that.” Her expression went grim.

  “I take it this is where Levi comes into the story,” Sam said quietly. He exchanged worried looks with Dex.

  Sydney’s gaze went distant, seemingly trapped in memory. “His real name is Leviticus. And, like me, he was born a half-breed. An accident. A fluke. Neither one of us should have been allowed to live past infancy.” A pause. “Maybe that’s why we were drawn to each other.”

  “Hang on, back up a bit,” Dex interjected. “Why so much angst over half-breeds? Is it just a stigma? Like being a bastard used to be?”

  Sydney grimaced. “In some ways, yes. But really, it’s because the immortals believe they’re so much loftier than humans. To them, humans are insignificant; they don’t live long enough to have an impact. To breed with a human is to soil themselves, taint their blood with the filth of humanity. It’s especially bad for the Seraphina, since they can’t conceive that often—it’s considered a waste of life to give rise to a half-breed instead of a full-blood immortal. That’s where the legends of Nephilim came from, by the way. Half-breeds were considered anathema, and they were hunted down like animals.”

  “So…you and Levi were…unique,” Sam said.

  Her smile flattened into a thin, sardonic line. “You could say that. I met him by chance, almost a thousand years after I left my mother’s enclave. He was living like a hermit in a cave system near the Black Sea. I never would have found him at all, if he hadn’t been bleeding so much energy.”

  “Say again?” Dex said. “What does that mean?”

  “We can sense each other’s power. Immortals can, I mean. That’s why I’m able to detect darklings so easily. I can sense the power signature left behind after the soul is drained away. I can also sense if that drain is still…active.”

  Silence fell as they contemplated that. God, what the Agency wouldn’t give for power like Sydney’s. Finding a way to detect darklings from afar was one of their primary goals.

  “All right,” Sam said after a pause. “Tell us about Levi.”

  “I’d rather not,” Sydney replied, grimacing. “It’s a bitter story. The short version is, I convinced myself I was in love with him. By then, I had been cast out of the immortal community—don’t ask—and I was terrified that I would spend my life alone. When I met Levi, I was so desperate for any kind of personal connection, it just made sense to choose him.

  “Biggest mistake of my life.”

  “How so?” Sam asked softly.

  She leaned back against the headboard, arms crossed over her chest. “You need to understand how the male and female powers differ. Seraphina are basically…conduits of life. The power I wield could be best described as concentrated life energy. I can use it offensively—like I did with the darklings in the warehouse—or I can use it to…enhance…the things around me. That last part isn’t a conscious use of power; it just bleeds off me without my ability to control. If I stay too long in one place, small things start to change. Gardens that wouldn’t grow start to bloom. Trees get healthier, grow taller. Things like that. It will also affect people.”

  “Meaning what?” Dex said.

  A tiny shrug. “They get…happier, I guess. Start feeling better about themselves. Feel more creative. More productive.” She scowled. “It’s like I’m a living dose of Prozac.”

  Sam and Dex both chuckled. “Doesn’t sound like a bad thing to me,”
Dex said, smiling.

  “Yeah, well, the effect only goes outward, not inward. So I end up surrounded by life-loving, manic idiots who want me to sing Kumbaya with them. It’s irritating.”

  Sam grinned. “Fair enough.”

  She wiggled her hips a little, adjusting her position against the pillow behind her. “Now, Levi…I guess you could say he has the opposite effect.”

  All smiles and chuckles disappeared. “Darkling-maker,” Sam said grimly.

  She nodded. “When I met Levi, he was hiding because he was afraid to come in contact with humans. He’d watched his home village turn into a nightmare filled with depraved, immoral, soulless men who raped and killed each other for the fun of it. He didn’t have the benefit of learning about his people from his immortal parent—he was abandoned at birth, and some unlucky couple happened to take pity on him. So he didn’t understand that he was the cause of all that chaos. Not until years later, when he was old enough to realize he should have died already. When he did figure it out, he panicked and ended up hiding himself away. He’d probably still be there if I hadn’t stumbled on him.” A black scowl fell over her face. “I wish I hadn’t. The world would be better for it.”

  “I take it you…took him under your wing,” Sam said.

  “I took pity on him,” she replied grimly. “I thought I could teach him how to control his power because my mother had taught me to control mine. But I didn’t know, then, that the main reason half-breeds were forbidden is that we can’t control our power as easily as the true immortals can. A Seraphina can walk through a human city without affecting anyone unless she chooses to. Half-breeds like me and Levi…we can’t do anything to stop it. At all. But, like I said, I didn’t know that at the time.