Dark Child of Forever

by S. K. Ryder

  Hefting the flashlights from their utility belts, the officers tagged along.

  The temperature dropped ten degrees the moment they crossed into the cave. A cold breeze whispered from the depths. The beam of his torch cut through the gloom. Odd bits and pieces of civilization emerged, some half buried in mud and gravel—rusted winches and chains, an overturned bucket and coils of frayed rope, a stack of wooden crates.

  “Vampires,” Dominic said in a dramatic whisper that sent shivers racing down Jackson’s arms. He turned to see the real vampire’s light pointed straight up at the ceiling where a cluster of bats shuffled and squeaked in the glare.

  “Wiseass.”

  Dominic chuckled.

  “Over here,” Rao called. “This looks man-made.”

  And so it was. The square tunnel was narrow, but tall enough to stand in, and swallowed their beams whole. A path carved straight into the mountain—and possibly deep underground.

  “Bingo,” Jackson said, letting his beam follow a metal pipe as thick as his arm which emerged near the tunnel’s ceiling and snaked toward the cave’s mouth. A power conduit, he reasoned. Possibly data as well. Those solar panels and the batteries they must be charging clearly powered more than the cottages.

  Dominic made a small worried noise. “Surely you don’t expect us to—”

  “That’ll be far enough,” Terry called.

  This was followed by a sharp bark from Officer Campbell. “Drop your weapon!”

  Weapon? Jackson spun around and straight into a blinding beam of light. Dominic turned away, shielding his eyes.

  “Take cover,” Rao commanded before echoing the order to drop weapons. He sounded like he was close to the ground now. Amidst the skittering beams, Jackson couldn’t see a fucking thing.

  The same was not true for the village men pointing those high beams at them. “I said that’s far enough,” Terry hollered and emphasized his words with a shotgun blast that reverberated in the cavern like a thunderclap. Campbell—or maybe it was Rao—returned fire which was met with more explosive blasts. The crescendo of discharging firearms grew deafening.

  Jackson grabbed Dominic’s arm and hauled him toward a shadowy outcrop. Whatever it was, he prayed it was substantial enough to stop bullets. Where the fuck had the villagers gotten those guns and lights? They must have been stashed in the crates, ready and waiting.

  Just before he ducked into the shelter, Jackson cut off his torch. Dominic had dropped his and stumbled after him, blind and clumsy. Jackson yanked him down beside him, eliciting a pained cry from the vampire. “Keep your head down, you idiot. You’re not so immortal that it can’t get blown off.”

  Screams and shouts punctuated the gunfire, which raged for what felt like minutes but probably was no more than seconds. When the noise finally subsided, Jackson noticed Dominic curled beside him in the dirt, speaking in French as though reciting prayers or dispensing curses, maybe both.

  “We told you it’s not safe in here,” Terry’s nasal voice admonished. “Wouldn’t listen, though, would you?”

  “I got hit in the arm,” one of his cohorts wailed.

  “What a mess,” another one spat.

  “They had guns,” Terry countered defensively. “Nobody said anything about them having guns.”

  Someone who sounded like Campbell cried out in obvious agony.

  “Guess we save ’em,” a fourth voice said from very nearby. “Let’s be grateful nobody got killed this time.”

  From their hiding place, Jackson watched as one of the men walked up to Rao who sat with hands raised and his face scrunching in the glare of a flashlight. The man picked up the discarded gun and ordered Rao to secure himself with his own cuffs.

  Jackson pressed his lips to Dominic’s ear. “This would be a great time for you to remember what you are. Because we are royally fucked if you don’t.”

  Dominic said nothing. He was shaking.

  “What the—”

  Light burst over them. “Oh, man. Someone may have gotten killed after all,” a disembodied voice said with genuine regret.

  In the light, Jackson got his first good look at Dominic, who lay staring at him with unfocused eyes, his breathing shallow—his side covered in blood.

  “Fuck, no.” He unzipped Dominic’s vest and pulled up the sopping-wet shirt. “You goddamn fucking bastards!”

  Judging by the dark pool soaking into the grit beneath him, Jackson expected to find blood fountaining out of the vampire’s innards. But there was only a thin trickle. He wiped at the wound. Not ragged. Just raw. And shrinking, slowly, right before his eyes.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” someone else said. Terry.

  Four pairs of muddy shoes surrounded them now. The air reeked of clay and blood and gunpowder.

  Dominic moved his hand to the wound. Feeling it closing, he sucked in a gasp.

  “It’s about time,” Jackson said, but there still was no sign of the vampire in those wide, glazed eyes.

  Only shock.

  Chapter 21

  Early Riser

  We’re fucked. Screwed. Done for. Dead.

  The words circled Jackson’s thoughts like vultures as he circled his cell for the tenth or twentieth time by feel, inch by inch, in the complete darkness, looking for a way out. Any way at all.

  “Dispatch will send someone to check on us,” Rao said. He had said it almost as many times as Jackson had orbited the cell and sounded a little less certain every time. Maybe they would. But they’d walk into the same trap.

  And it wouldn’t be soon enough.

  The luminescent markers on Jackson’s Tag Heuer glowed with the bad news. Two, maybe two-and-a-half hours until sunset, no more. He rubbed both hands over his face, heedless of the gritty grime stuck to his fingers. “Nick?”

  “Oui?”

  “How are you doing over there?”

  Silence.

  After witnessing Dominic’s wounds closing, their captors knew he was different, and placed him in his own cell. Before the light was extinguished, Jackson counted four of these makeshift prisons—all empty—at the end of the skinny mineshaft boring into the heart of the mountain.

  He had also spotted another shaft going straight down. There was no doubt about what would come crawling out of that hole before too long.

  “Nick. Dominic. Listen to me, my friend. You are a vampire. You have the strength to break us out of this mess. But you need to do it soon. Like now. You hear me?”

  A French curse floated his way, followed by, “I am chained to a wall, you imbecile. Don’t you think if I could free myself I would? The more I move, the more my wrists burn.”

  “The shackles must be coated in silver then. And I bet you’re feeling it because the suppressant is wearing off, probably because you’re starting to wake up. Wake up faster.”

  “You are insane!”

  Jackson grabbed onto the bars he had just rediscovered and shook them as hard as he could. “For fuck’s sake, Nick, you saw how you healed from a fucking gunshot wound. How much more proof do you need? You are a vampire.”

  Silence.

  Furious, he slammed the heels of both hands against the cold, invisible iron. “Goddamn it, you stubborn bastard, you’re a vampire. We’ve had our share of differences about that, believe me, but right now I really, really need you to be all vampire. We all do. Or—”

  “Jackson, ta gueule.”

  “—we’re going to die. You included. Because there will be enough evil bloodsuckers coming for us at sundown to take you down, immortal or not.”

  The chains clinked again. “Be quiet, you fool.”

  Like hell he would. “You need to break the fucking chains, Dominic, and then break these bars. Your wrists will heal.” In truth, he had no idea if Domi
nic would be strong enough to do either even at night. Mind over matter, though. It’s all they had left.

  Silence as thick as the darkness.

  “Well? What is it to be?” a new voice queried, male, casual and dispassionate. “Will you break your chains?”

  A cold finger stirred Jackson’s innards. No. This couldn’t be happening. It was nowhere near sundown. He straightened, his wide-open eyes, staring straight ahead, seeing nothing. This could not be a vampire. Not conscious. Not yet.

  It was.

  A light came on. After hours of complete darkness, the grimy fixture attached to the ceiling between the cells was blinding. The newcomer stood under the light, the pull chain still swaying. His features were cast in shadows, but Jackson made out a petite male dressed in simple black clothes with hands so pale they glowed.

  Vampire.

  Before sunset.

  Holy shit, were they really that shielded from the sun’s effects inside all this rock? But that made no sense. If that were the case, Dominic would have woken up by now and tossed his breakfast all over the place.

  Then what the fuck?

  The vampire ignored the humans, and Jackson lapsed into the mental exercises he used to keep his emotions under control, especially his fear. It wouldn’t do for him to smell like a meal right now.

  “All this effort I wasted trying to find you in the city, and here you are,” the vampire told Dominic with a grand gesture of both hands. “God smiles on me this day.”

  His mouth hanging open, Dominic glanced at Jackson who shook his head the tiniest bit. The less Dominic said, the better.

  The other vampire—judging by the faint Spanish lilt, Jackson guessed it was none other than Esteban—retrieved a key from a shelf in the rock wall and used it to unlock Dominic’s cell.

  “And to find you like this, awake with me, is a splendid surprise, indeed.” He stopped to study his prisoner who stood with his arms spread high and wide by the chains, his shirt and vest caked in drying blood.

  Dominic didn’t move. His gaze was riveted to this creature that he didn’t remember had tried to kill him twice.

  “You are not what you appear to be, Dominic Marchant, are you?”

  “Apparently not,” he said faintly.

  “Are you one of mine? Did one of my distant young ones make you without my knowledge and bestow on you my gift of cheating the sun?”

  “Gift?”

  “Did they not tell you? Of all the blood-drinkers, I and a precious few of those I make, sleep the least. Functioning at this time of day is not at all common for our kind.”

  A new worm of awareness slithered into Jackson’s mind. The vampire that had killed his brother had also been awake when he shouldn’t have been. Lying in wait for them. Ambushing them.

  Like this one was ambushing them.

  His heart walloped in his chest.

  Esteban still didn’t acknowledge the humans. “But even that doesn’t explain you, does it? You weren’t here last night. And you would have had to face the sun itself to come here during the day.” He tilted his head in thought. “So perhaps you compelled these mortals to bring you? That is no less a feat for one so young. How do you come by such power?”

  Dominic tested the chains again. Hard. They held. “Do you truly expect me to answer your questions while you keep me shackled?” The sneer was half-hearted, uncertain, a gambit. Dominic the vampire was still nowhere in evidence. The poor fool was running blind.

  “Oh, I’m extending you a courtesy by asking. If you weren’t so intriguing, I would have been rid of you by now.” For another second, he remained calm. Then his hand flashed out in a blur and grabbed a startled Dominic by the throat. “Tell me who sired you, or I will rip your baby brain to shreds.”

  Dominic wheezed. His eyes bugged.

  “Tell me!”

  “Kambyses,” Jackson called, holding the bars in a death-defying grip. No matter what, he had to keep Esteban out of Dominic’s muddled human head, had to keep him from learning just how vulnerable Dominic was right now. “Kambyses sired him.”

  For the first time Jackson found himself the target of Esteban’s full attention. Beast-black eyes like wads of tar pressed into his ghost-pale face. Refined mouth harboring brutal fangs. Dominic’s human must be shitting himself right about now. Jackson wasn’t far behind. Keep it together, Striker. You don’t spin this right, no one will ever find your body.

  “You have heard of Kambyses?” Jackson prompted. Esteban regarded him as if he were a dog that had used human speech. “The most powerful of you all? He had gifts nobody even imagined.”

  Leaving Dominic to gasp and cough, Esteban materialized before Jackson in a silent blur. Only the bars separated them. With the light behind him, Esteban’s face was in shadows again, but the vampire’s attention settled on Jackson like a physical weight. He took two small steps back.

  “You,” Esteban whispered. “I know you.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Yes. I know you.” The vampire closed his hands around the bars where Jackson’s had just been. “You were there that morning. The morning Santos died.”

  Jackson backed up farther. Every hair on his body stood on end. What the fuck was happening here?

  “I know you . . . hunter,” Esteban said. He keyed the lock to Jackson’s cell and cornered him as a tiger cornered wounded prey. A constant, inhuman growl vibrated in the air around him. Jackson fought to raise his anger, the fury that could mask his fear. He took another step back and bumped into solid rock.

  “Santos was my oldest child. And it was you and your brother who came for him, wasn’t it?” His cool breath brushed Jackson’s face. “I was close. But still too far. I saw you come for him through his eyes. I felt the blade that took his life.” He reached out to scrape a line across Jackson’s throat with a fingernail. The growl dropped to a whisper. “But before that . . . before that I shared his joy at tearing your brother’s limbs and hearing the wet crack of his bones.”

  Jackson shuddered.

  Esteban leaned closer, bracing one hand against the rough-hewn wall. “His skull smashed like a ripe melon.” He illustrated by flicking apart his fingers in front of Jackson’s face. “Pop.”

  And just like that Jackson’s burgeoning fear evaporated. The sire of his brother’s killer, the reason this Santos was conscious enough to attack them, the ultimate catalyst for every nightmare that haunted Jackson since, that monster stood right in front of him and prepared to destroy him as well.

  And there wasn’t a single thing Jackson could do to stop it. He wouldn’t even try.

  Staring down into the black eyes, he gathered all the grief and rage that defined him into two words. “Fuck you.”

  Esteban grabbed the back of Jackson’s neck and yanked his face down. “Is this why you’re here? To finish me? Did you drag in that pitiful young one to bait me? Trick me? Coerce me? You are nothing, hunter. Nothing! Nothing but what I say you are.” Compulsion resonated in the snarling voice. “And I say that you are mine to do with as I please. You are mine to grovel at my feet and to obey my every command for as long as I wish it. For. The. Rest. Of. Your. Miserable. Life.”

  Esteban released him with a shove that sent him smacking into the rock wall so hard he saw stars. The command vibrated in Jackson’s bones—and dissipated. It was no match for the Lord of Night’s earlier compulsion.

  But his life depended on him making Esteban believe otherwise.

  “As you wish,” he said, doing everything in his power to sound calm and entranced despite his churning insides.

  “I wish,” Esteban reiterated with a dark growl. Then he surveyed the others in the cell. Rao and Campbell sat propped against a wall, both of them handcuffed, the latter looking dazed and clammy, his left leg soaked in blood. Jackson hel
d his breath. His imagination served up a number of horrifying possible fates for them, including many Esteban might order him to execute.

  But Esteban’s interest in the officers appeared limited to being rid of them with the least amount of trouble. He hauled them to their feet and quickly drove his teeth into each neck in turn. If he was surprised by what he didn’t find in their heads—Dominic had erased himself from their memories as he compelled them—he didn’t show it. Esteban poured his own blood into Campbell’s wound, healing it. Shortly the man regained his footing and moved with only a slight limp. Then, while breaking their cuffs with his fingers, Esteban put a new compulsion on them. “You are released from your duties here. Go home, clean up, burn your clothes. Nothing special happened today. You were never here. Let no one tell you otherwise. Go.”

  Without so much as a backward glance, they walked into the tunnel leading to the cavern and disappeared.

  Only then did Jackson realize how much he was counting on Rao’s assertions about someone coming to look for two missing officers. Now no one would. Rao and Campbell wouldn’t even remember him.

  He was on his own.

  Dominic had witnessed all this with a stillness that reeked of shock. He watched Esteban return as though watching a bear charging at him.

  “Is the hunter your pawn, young one? Or are you his?” Esteban grabbed a hunk of Dominic’s hair and pulled his head back. “I will have the truth from you.”

  Without further preamble, he latched onto Dominic’s neck. The oblivious Lord of Night screamed and writhed, powerless as a fish in a net. Then twin pools of golden light flared in the shadows. For a breathless moment, Jackson watched comprehension dawn on Dominic’s face.

  Seconds later, the light in his eyes died and his face went as slack as his body.