by S. K. Ryder
“Slaves,” Isao said on a derisive snort.
Dominic made a small, ironic smile, but didn’t argue. Explaining the Strikers served no purpose right now. But he liked this man and his moral compass. So did Cassidy, whose presence lingered in his mind like a banked ember. He stuffed his hands into the front pockets of his jeans and did his best to look as non-threatening as possible, for he knew Isao was about to reach another conclusion.
“So much power in one so young. Who sired you?”
And there it was.
“The first of our kind.” He took a step toward Isao. “He was immensely powerful and old, and so very tired of the darkness. But instead of condemning his kingdom to die with him, he chose me as his heir. He no longer exists. But his essence and power does. Within me.”
Dominic could almost see the wheels turning behind Isao’s hooded eyes. It was a preposterous story. But it was also the only plausible explanation for the things Isao had seen Dominic do. “Then tell me his name,” he said softly. “Tell me the name of the one who made you.”
The smile turned brittle on Dominic’s lips. “Kambyses.”
No reaction from Isao. Or perhaps shock.
“You know the name?”
Isao nodded. “I have seen him in my sire’s mind. The Lord of Night.” The reverence in his voice bordered on fear.
Dominic said nothing as he let Isao absorb the implications.
“You’re not here just to avenge a friend, are you?”
“No.” His back pocket vibrated again. Damn that man. “Aubrey traveled the world on my behalf. He spread the word about me and the new way of things.”
“Indeed. And what might this new way be?”
Dominic let his vampire rise and his pupils dilate. “No more feeding on terror. No more killing. We feed with compassion and in love.”
Again, Isao seemed taken aback, this time by the glow in Dominic’s eyes. But then he chuckled, a warm rumbling sound emanating from his barrel chest. “If that is what he told Adilla, I can see why he ended as he did. Adilla tolerates no authority but his own.” He sobered before continuing, “He feeds on the worship of his followers. By the time they discover the deadly nature of his mercurial temper, it’s too late. Any who leave or even waver in their loyalties are hunted down and destroyed.”
“Except you?”
“I know him too well, I’m too old, and I have my swords. He can’t harm me or those I protect. Though his pet, Esteban, continues to delude himself into believing he can. I have killed a dozen of his soldiers this past year alone.” He paused. “Make no mistake. No one deserves my sword more than Adilla. But as my sire, he is safe from my wrath. And he knows that when it comes to it, I will fight to protect his miserable hide.” An unmistakable warning slid beneath the words.
Dominic’s mouth twisted into a wry line as he thought of his own far more volatile battles with Kambyses. “I have no intention of destroying one so old. I do not kill without good reason.” Never mind that only days ago, Aubrey’s horrific death was such a reason. Things had become complicated since then and were getting more so by the moment.
“Oh, he will give you that. It’s his way.”
“Then I must seduce him first.” Lowering his voice, he added, “I will find him, Isao. With or without your help. But I would prefer to count you among my allies.”
Isao’s shoulders squared. “Do you intend to seduce me as well, then?”
“I already have.” As the words left his tongue, he cast an illusion over the proud samurai. The sky over their heads appeared to brighten. Within seconds it turned from hazy black to velvet violet to resonant blue. The rain dissipated, replaced by a warm wind. Isao whirled around, face upturned, gaping. In the east, the molten edge of the sun crested the mountains in an explosion of light and warmth.
It was the sunrise Dominic imagined he would see here if he used one of the suppressant doses—and if he could remember enough to cherish it. But to Isao, the illusion was real—the first sunrise in centuries of darkness. Stunned, he fell to his knees.
Dominic crouched before him and let the fantasy fade. As night thickened again, Isao looked at him, unguarded awe in his face. “You would give me back the sun?”
“That I cannot do,” Dominic said with genuine regret. “But I can free you from the lonely terror of our kind that was Kambyses’s heart. I can give you peace. And I can give you love.”
As Dominic explained the re-siring process, Isao, still seated on his folded legs in the wet grass, listened intently and then thought with care when Dominic asked, “Will you allow this?”
The samurai was bright enough to understand that the question was one of courtesy only. His nod of agreement couldn’t be described as enthusiastic, but at least it didn’t feel resigned either.
Isao formally submitted by exposing his throat. The Lord of Night accepted without hesitation.
Memories swam in the ancient blood. Eight hundred years of time unfolded, rich with experience, tradition, and passion. Dominic dove into the centuries as though diving into an ocean, seeking Adilla. Adilla who had stolen Isao’s life. Adilla who brooked no competition . . .
The flash of agony made Dominic jerk back. It came with the memory of a woman. Her smile was sweet, and her obsidian eyes glistened with gut-wrenching emotion in her blood-drinker pale face. Then her face tumbled away along with her head, spinning in her long, black hair. Adilla stood over her body. Her blood dripped from his sword. “You are mine, Isao,” he said. “Mine alone.”
“It was then that I left him,” Isao whispered. I made her. I loved her. She was everything to me. Which was intolerable to him.
Dominic’s hand shook as he wiped his mouth. Would that have been his tale as well if he had turned Cassidy the way Kambyses almost forced him to do? How long would she have survived around the ancient madman? His heart broke for his new friend.
Isao’s contempt for Adilla knew no bounds, and he held little hope for Dominic’s plans to ‘seduce’ Adilla into changing his ways. But it wasn’t his own life for which Isao feared should his sire perish, but the lives of his younglings, his eternal companions. For their sake, he wasn’t eager to show Dominic where to find Adilla. But given a choice between helping the new Lord of Night persuade Adilla to his cause and maybe dying, or refusing him right now and certainly dying, the former was the better bet. The more honorable way.
The doubt and anguish scratched at Dominic’s soul. He wanted to give Isao more than just his blood, more than just an abating of the lust for terror. He wanted to give him certainty.
Which is why, instead of cutting his palm to draw the blood that would complete Isao’s re-siring, he embraced him and offered him his vein—and his mind.
Chapter 17
The Fear of Death
An hour later, Dominic would have much preferred to spend the rest of the night in deep conversation with his newest convert ensconced in some dark corner of an atmospheric bar. Instead, he rode the Ducati through the biting wet chill and cursed under his breath every block of the way.
Isao had taken more blood than was necessary. Dominic didn’t stop him. Neither did he stop him from riffling through his memories to learn what he needed to know of how Dominic came to be the Lord of Night. But he concealed those things he was not ready to share with another blood-drinker, regardless how dear—the suppressant, Cassidy’s condition, his mortal family.
Garrett Striker, however, refused to be concealed. The moment Dominic’s phone buzzed in his pocket with an incoming call, he thought of the murderous old bastard and revealed his unorthodox relationship with the vampire hunters to Isao. The samurai’s eyes widened, the new light in them as intense as red-hot steel.
“Merde! That man,” Dominic fumed and yanked the phone from his pocket to catch the call before it dropped into voice m
ail. “What do you want?”
“I need to talk to you.”
“Then talk to me.”
“In person. Privately.”
“I am busy.”
“And I’m asking you to delay lording it over whoever for one lousy hour to come see the guy who almost died for you today. No, actually I’m not asking. I’m begging you. There. Happy now?”
The outburst was so out of character for the Garrett Striker Dominic knew—and loathed—that it gave him serious pause.
Perhaps he has a point, Isao offered through the temporary two-way link they had forged.
Dominic closed his eyes. True, the man had almost lost his life today while in service to him. Though one question took precedence. Will I find Adilla this night?
Not tonight. Isao showed him where Adilla was to be found, and it was nowhere anyone would reach before sunrise.
“Fine,” Dominic snapped. “I will be there within the hour.”
He sensed Isao’s mind already buzzing with questions from his younglings who kept to the surrounding woods. His new friend would be busy for a while re-siring them and communicating all he had learned. “You will hear from me soon. Certainly before I seek Adilla. That, I promise you.”
At Vancouver General, Dominic remained invisible as he parked the bike, slipped into the hospital’s antiseptic miasma, and made his way to Garrett’s room in no particular hurry. He was fairly sure he knew what the man would want of him. But how he asked for it left him baffled.
Even at this hour, the hospital was wide awake with nurses making their rounds, dispensing medication and providing assistance. One was leaving Garrett’s room when Dominic arrived there. He slipped in before the door swung shut in her wake.
Strange how frail the fearsome hunter looked lying under the thin blankets as though he had shrunk inside his skin and aged twenty years since the previous night. His slightly jowly face was gray with stubble, and his salt-and-pepper hair, usually so tidy, was in disarray. He lay staring at the window, though whatever he saw, the city gleaming beyond the rain-streaked pane probably wasn’t it.
An empty plastic cup sat on the stand beside the bed. Without moving it, Dominic cut his wrist and left an inch of blood in it. It was the odor of this that the patient noticed before he ever saw Dominic who had by then retreated to the visitor chair. “Is that what you want?”
“Dominic.” Garrett ran a self-conscious hand over his hair and squared his shoulders. The melancholy of seconds ago evaporated. “I was hoping we had moved beyond you playing these games with me.”
“Habit, old man.”
“You look drenched.”
“Probably because it is raining.”
“Yeah. It’s wet here. And cold. They haven’t been too generous with the blankets for this Florida boy.” His fingers grabbed at the edge of said blanket.
Dominic waited.
“I guess that doesn’t bother you, does it? Weather?”
“Surely you did not summon me away from my ‘lording’ business to discuss the weather.”
“No. I didn’t.” Garrett struggled into a more upright position. When he glanced at the blood, his mouth worked as though already tasting it. He took the cup and held it in both hands. Some of the bravado ebbed out of his steely eyes. “Thank you for this. But . . . this won’t fix what’s really wrong with me.”
“Which is a very long list indeed,” Dominic said dryly.
“Wiseass.” He put the cup to his lips and knocked back the contents like a shot of crimson liquor. Closing his eyes, he took several fortifying breaths. Dominic watched a silver sparkle build in the dark-gray aura.
“Well. That cleared a few things up,” Garrett said and lay back into the pillows with a confident control over his limbs he didn’t have only a minute ago. “For now.”
Again, Dominic waited.
Garrett didn’t look at him. “I’m dying, Nick,” he began and swallowed hard. “And I don’t mean in the sense of ‘we all die’—well, all of us mortals anyway.” He put the empty cup back on the table. “I’m sick. Really, goddamned fucking sick. The doctors in Germany diagnosed me. I was hoping your blood would cure it, but . . .” He glanced at him. “These fine Canadian docs agree with them. I’ve got a year. Probably less.”
Dominic didn’t quite know what to make of this revelation—or the maelstrom of mixed feelings running through him. He had hated this man and wished him dead. And yet, he relied on him, too. Despite everything, a twisted kind of honor dwelled in Garrett’s blood-thirsty little heart. “What are they saying is wrong with you?”
“Chondrosarcoma. A fancy name for ‘you’re screwed.’ Bone cancer. I’ve had pains for a while now, deep nagging stuff. I wrote it off as arthritis, popped some pills and hit the gym. Figured I was feeling my age.” He shook his head, a grimace distorting his face. “Nope. A goddamn cancer is chewing on me. It’s in my fucking arm, can you believe that? And in my ribs. That’s why one snapped when that prick we cornered in Germany rammed me. They’re saying to try—try—and cure me, they’d have to start by taking off my right arm. At the shoulder.” His eyes shimmered now. “And after that the chemo. And the radiation. And maybe, just maybe they could stop the one in my chest.”
Dominic had no words. He sat supernaturally still, aware of nothing but the man in the bed, the heart racing in his chest, and the anger and fear oozing out of his pores.
Garrett briskly swiped a hand over one cheek. “You’re the only one who knows. The only one I’m telling.”
“Why?”
“Because . . . I can’t live this way. And I don’t want to die like that.”
Dominic’s brows gathered. “You . . . wish me to help you die?”
“What? No. I know how to use a gun. I don’t need you for that.”
“Then—”
“I want to live, Nick. And I’ve decided that there’s no price too high for that.”
Dominic stared at him. He could not be hearing this, could he? Not from this man?
“What? You’re going to make me say it?”
“I fear you better. I do not want to misunderstand.”
“Fine. Dominic, I want you—no, I’m asking you to consider—” He sucked at the air. His hands fisted in the blanket. “Goddamn it. I want you to turn me.”
Yes, that was what Dominic thought he understood. Leaning forward in his seat, he rubbed the tips of his fingers together and spoke with care. “Not so long ago you claimed that you would rather die than consume even one drop of vampire blood. And when I threatened to turn you, you went into hiding in another country.”
“Death has a way of refocusing the mind.”
“You do understand all the consequences, of course?”
“No sunlight. Need blood to survive. Great strength and immortality. Yes. I’ve known that for most of my sixty years on this earth.”
“Also complete submission to me as your lord and master. The world of night is not a democracy.”
“Aren’t I working for you already? You’ve got a good sense of integrity. I can work with that.”
“You would lose your advantage of hunting during the day.”
“I think I might do pretty well with the suppressant if I need to.”
Unlike Dominic who despite all his powers and desperation to make it work, had yet to do so in any meaningful way. “Your mind would be forever linked to mine.”
Garrett clenched his jaw. “I’d get used to it.”
“I would not,” Dominic said under his breath. He didn’t even want to imagine such an intimate bond with a man who had so delighted in torturing him.
The patient shrugged by lifting both hands and putting them back down. “I can work on the other side of the world then. Whatever you need. Just say you’ll think about it.
”
Dominic stood as though getting ready to leave.
“Please. If you tell me ‘no’ right now, I’ll end it tonight.”
He arched a questioning brow. “You don’t have a gun here.”
“There are other, cleaner ways in a place like this. Believe me, I know them all.”
“Of that I have no doubt.” He eyed his former foe with care. Garrett as a blood-drinker would be formidable. Still, having him in his head every time they were near each other was too high a price to grant this favor. Far too high.
Garrett extended his arm. “Here. Take some. Start the process maybe. Or at least see for yourself how serious I am.”
Dominic wanted to refuse, but the shimmering ribbons in the offered wrist held him spellbound. Blood, freely offered, was beguiling enough. Blood, freely offered by a foe? Irresistible.
He half-expected Garrett to snatch his arm back before he closed his hand around it. Instead, the patient lay back in mute surrender.
It didn’t take much. A mere taste was enough. Fear was Dominic’s first impression. Fear of death. And anxiety over whether his request would be granted. Respect, too, for the young vampire who had claimed a kingdom and knew how to keep his word. A fierce warrior spirit lived in his heart, and a ruthless determination for anything he undertook—not unlike another mind he had touched tonight.
One thing that was not there was love. Garrett wanted to be turned to survive, and he justified this solution by acknowledging Dominic as worthy of being his master. But that was all. This man would never love him any more than he loved anyone else.
“So what will it be?” Garrett asked.
Dominic turned away from the window he had been staring out of as he processed all these impressions. “I will consider your request.”
The body in the bed seemed to deflate a little as he relaxed. “Thanks. I’ll take that for tonight.”
