Available Darkness Box Set | Books 1-3

by Platt, Sean

  He glanced at the passenger seat. The bewildered animal beside him seemed almost like a stranger. Her fear and confusion made the other night in her studio pale in comparison. Her aura was bright reds and blacks, off the charts of anything he’d seen in anyone not being murdered.

  Their world was crumbling, and she was finding it hard to hang on. John didn’t blame her — it killed him that it had to happen this way. He’d done everything he could to create a normal life, and thought he’d secured his future — their future.

  If Jacob was out there, John couldn’t know peace.

  They would never be safe from Jacob, the Harbingers who wanted to find him, or the government Guardians who wanted him dead. He had to embrace his powers and his weaknesses, return to the life he’d managed to avoid for the past few years, back to a life of murder and solitude. It was the only chance he had at killing Jacob and his group.

  “I want answers, John!”

  He didn’t know what to tell her. He could go with the truth and have her think him batshit crazy, or lie in hopes of keeping her compliant until they got to Larry’s and could get Adam wipe her.

  The only thing John knew for sure was that these chaotic moments were likely their last together.

  Everything was about to change.

  Forever.

  They arrived at Larry’s warehouse under the promise that once there, John would spill the entire pot of beans.

  Larry greeted them, wearing his gregarious smile and finest charm. “Even more beautiful than John promised.”

  He shook Hope’s hand and kissed it. She, too, was wearing her normal face, but her eyes couldn’t bury her fear or confusion.

  John said, “Larry is my right-hand man, a private investigator who has helped protect us.”

  “Protect us from what?”

  “I’ll explain everything in a moment,” John said then turned to Larry. “I need you to call Adam. Get him here immediately.”

  Larry’s face was grave, realizing what John was asking. “Sure, sure.” He grabbed his phone and walked toward the adjoining unit next door.

  John turned to Hope. The words in his throat had already left him for dead.

  Hope

  Hope watched John fumble for words, frustrated that she had to wait until they arrived at wherever the hell they were for him to even start explaining. Now that she was about to discover that whatever John’s dark secrets, part of her wanted to delay the inevitable, to linger with her lover in a few final moments of innocence before it was shattered by the ugly reality looming ahead.

  John looked her in the eyes. “I’m a vampire.”

  Hope paused, trying to make sure she’d heard him correctly, barely stifling a laugh. “You’re a what?”

  “A vampire, of sorts.” His cold, serious expression sent a chill down her spine.

  Holy shit, he is crazy. I’m in love with a crazy person.

  Her mind conjured scenarios of a deluded, murderous John, killing people under the delusion that he was a vampire. She swallowed hard and fell a step back.

  “I’m not crazy.” He kept his distance and used his hands, open palms out, to accentuate, or perhaps work through, his words. “I know how crazy this sounds, but I’m not from here, not from Earth. Neither are my brothers, Jacob or Caleb. We’re from somewhere else; we’re all vampires, for a lack of a better word. But I was able to find a way to become human, to be with you.”

  Hope shook her head, slowly at first, then violently. This was crazy. John was crazy.

  How could I not have seen this?

  “No, no, no, this isn’t happening.” She had an overwhelming need to run, to get as far away from John as possible, before he said another word.

  “I — ” John managed before Hope cut him off with a raised finger.

  “No! Don’t say another word. I’m leaving now.”

  John stepped between her and the door. “No; you can’t.”

  She stepped toward him, tears streaming down her face, and shoved him in the chest.

  “Get out of my way!”

  He stepped aside, and Hope moved toward the open warehouse door. She managed four steps before something stopped her cold.

  Levitating inches in front of her face, the single silver ring she’d given him for his birthday last year. The ring he never wore. Hope had always taken offense that he refused to wear it proudly as a token of their love.

  There it was, floating in front of her face.

  How?

  She reached toward the ring, not believing her eyes until the ring was lying warm in her palm.

  She closed her gushing eyes then turned to face John.

  He was making the impossible happen before her eyes — levitating a ring. And it wasn’t some magic trick. This was real.

  And if this was real, could it mean that he was telling the truth? That he wasn’t a human. That he was, in fact, a vampire from another world? There were many leaps between a floating ring and a vampire alien, though.

  It was so ridiculous, yet the earnest look in his eyes begged her to consider.

  It felt as though her entire world was about to collapse from the sheer weight of new, impossible information.

  At the same time, she felt a deep betrayal.

  If he was telling the truth now, why had he lied to her for so long? How could he hide what he was? Why would he even initiate a relationship with her while hiding this very big thing? And, as weird as it seemed, she felt a hate for this man standing before her now who had effectively killed the man she thought she knew.

  Thought she loved.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said, inching closer.

  Hope reached out, beating him furiously with her hands, then her arms, anger turning to rage. Eventually, she surrendered into the embrace she could never willingly leave.

  John

  John held Hope close, never wanting to let her go. If he could find a way to freeze this moment, or die right there in her arms, he would be happy. But fate had a way of dragging you forward, never caring if you went kicking and screaming.

  He pulled away, looked Hope in her eyes, and rested his palm on the side of her face. “I know you have a million questions. And I know it’s not right to ask this of you, but as crazy as it sounds, as crazy as I sound, I need you to trust me. The more I tell you, the harder this will be.”

  “The harder what will be?” she asked, pulling back.

  “What you need to know now is that Jacob has been looking for me and Caleb for a long time. He wants something that we have. Something that, if he gets it, is a threat to the world.”

  Hope’s eyes had that look again, as if she were on the verge of not believing a word. He had to charm her, use magick to kill her reservations. He didn’t want to, but it was the only way of getting through this conversation.

  He focused on her eyes, then past them, sending calming thoughts through to her brain. Hope’s eyes grew almost glassy as he smoothed his influence over her defenses.

  “Caleb has no idea what he is. He had his brain wiped as a child, made to forget everything — our past lives, our mother’s death, and what we are. I’ve been keeping an eye on him, from a distance, ever since. The people who wiped him are the same people looking to protect our knowledge, even if that means killing me. To keep it from ever reaching Jacob. In wiping Caleb, they were able to make him mortal, to remove, or at least halt, his vampiric disease.”

  Hope stared, absorbing it all, though he had no way of knowing if it would make sense once she was clearheaded.

  “I wasn’t so lucky. They couldn’t wipe me. How much easier it would be, if they’d been able. I lived for years as a monster, feeding off of people, until a few years back, I’d found some magick users from my home world, people who helped me claim something of a normal life. But with me, there was no guarantee it would stick. I’d already reverted once, for some reason, so I could never be entirely certain I would have a normal life.”

  John swallowed and looked deeper into he
r eyes.

  “When I met you, I tried like hell not to fall in love. I didn’t want to bring this chaos into your world. But I fell hard, and dared to dream we could live a normal life.”

  He fought the tears, dropped the magick, and was left staring into Hope’s wide, beautiful eyes. He prayed she wouldn’t run, prayed she’d accept what he said, and what he was about to say.

  “I can’t protect us any longer, not without risking Caleb. I need to stop him. But before I can, I need to protect you in case I don’t make it back. I need to wipe you.”

  Hope’s eyes narrowed at the phrase, hitting her with the blunt force of a head-on collision.

  “Wipe me? What?”

  “Erasing your memories is the only way to protect you. You’ll have to start over somewhere else. Like a witness protection program, but you won’t have any memories of your old life. Since I won’t know where you are, there’s no way Jacob can find you.”

  “Take my memories away? All of them? You can’t erase me!” Hope pulled away, clearly disgusted. “No!”

  “You’re in danger if I don’t. Jacob has found you; he can sense you. He will find you and use you to get to me. He’s evil beyond anything you’ve ever seen. He murdered our mother, and he will kill anyone to get what he wants. Anyone. Wiping you is the only way to get him off your scent.”

  “No,” Hope said turning away, “you can’t erase me! I’d rather die than have my every memory stolen.”

  “You don’t know what you’re saying. You have no idea what he’s capable of.”

  “No,” Hope said, arms folded, “I won’t let you.”

  “I’m not giving you a choice.”

  “Fuck you!” Hope screamed, the first time she’d ever said anything even remotely so harsh to John. “You can’t do this to me! What about my family? My friends? They’ll come looking for me.”

  John shook his head. “We’ll wipe them, too. Remove memories of you.”

  She stared at John as if he were the monster he was.

  Her voice laced with accusation, she said, “You have it all planned out, don’t you?”

  “I didn’t want it to come to this, believe me. I have enough money, fake IDs, and people in place to help you start over.”

  She snorted, and started toward the exit. “No, I’m not letting you. This is my life! You don’t ‘wipe’ people’s lives away!”

  She reached the doorway, but Larry stepped forward with a lean, dark-haired man, his skin pale and his eyes impossibly bright. Almost gold.

  Adam.

  Hope fell back like a trapped animal.

  “I’m sorry.” John came up behind her, put his palm to the back of Hope’s neck, and let her drop unconscious into his hands.

  John hated every fiber of himself.

  Fifty-Four

  Caleb

  Caleb met his partner, Wu, for dinner where they discussed putting a tail on the suspicious man from earlier. While Caleb hadn’t mentioned John’s seeming familiarity, Wu agreed that he thought something was definitely going on.

  He agreed to tail John if Caleb took the morning shift. Perfect; Caleb felt half-dead anyway.

  He left the car with Wu and took a cab to the hotel. On the way back, he retrieved his personal cell to check for messages from Julia. The empty mailbox underlined his loneliness.

  Caleb noted that he seemed to miss his wife most while on the road and unable to see her. Yet when home he’d routinely stay late at the office, often missing her for days at a time, save for those moments when they’d pass like ghosts in an attic.

  He hit three buttons and listened to her last message, from two days earlier.

  “Hi, honey, I’m running late. Carol and I stopped for coffee. Let me know if you want me to bring you anything. Oh, who am I kidding, you’re probably still at work. I love you. See you around eight — if you’re home. Bye.”

  He glanced at his watch — 8:20 p.m. — and wondered if he could catch a flight home and surprise her. Then he remembered that he’d be trailing John in the morning; he’d never get back in time. His idea died on the vine.

  He paid the driver, shuffled into the hotel lobby, grabbed a copy of USA Today, and went upstairs to spend the night in his room, alone.

  Caleb slid his key card in the door, surprised to find candlelight and music. He did a double take at the number on his door and was about to curse the hotel for giving out cards that worked on multiple rooms when a familiar face appeared from behind a wall.

  “Hi, honey,” Julia said, slinking forward in red lingerie and holding a glass of wine. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  “What are you doing here?” he said, pleasantly shocked.

  “Wu told me where you were, and helped arrange the whole thing.”

  Caleb smiled. “That bastard never even hinted.”

  “We never do anything spontaneous anymore,” Julia said. “Remember when we used to do stuff like this all the time?”

  Julia was remembering things through rose-colored glasses, but she still had a point. Their lives were flying by — routine on their way to stagnation.

  She took a sip of wine, crimson moisture pouting her lips. Caleb, though tired, was surprised how quickly he’d become aroused. Julia offered her glass, but he set it down and took her instead. Kissing her softly at first, then deep, then ravenously. They fell to the bed in a tangled mess as Julia tore at his clothing.

  Caleb was dizzy. He hadn’t felt such burning desire in years, if ever. He desperately wanted to be inside Julia, reclaiming her more with every thrust.

  Fifty-Five

  Hope And John

  Hope

  Hope came to, groggy and lying in a bed, disoriented. The room was small, sparsely furnished, lit only by a few small lamps with red shades.

  Where am I?

  The door, a smear on the wall, opened. John entered. At least she thought it was John. He was blurry. She remembered something bad was going to happen, though she wasn’t sure what, and she scrambled back in the bed, knees to her chin.

  “Wha did you doooo t’ me?”

  Her words were garbled, barely coherent.

  “It’s starting,” John said as he sat beside her, placing a hand on her shoulder and pulling her into a hug.

  She relented, unsure why she was even mad. Something he’d done, or was going to do.

  “Wha’s hap’ning?” Her head hurt, the room spinning.

  “You’re going to go to sleep again, soon. When you wake up, you’ll be someone else. You’ll remember nothing of this. But you’ll be safe, and happy.”

  “Someone else? Whooo will I be? Whooo will youuu be?” She laughed at the absurdity, her thoughts a drunken slur.

  “I don’t know who you’ll be. But I’ll be me. And I’ll try to find you. But I might not be able to. There’s a chance that once I become a vampire again, I won’t be able to revert.”

  John’s words were making less sense, but something in them seemed so terribly sad. He was crying.

  “Why are youuuu so sad?” Hope reached up to clumsily swipe at a tear, but her hand gained a few pounds and fell to her lap instead. She leaned into John harder, embraced him as best she could. She knew only that something bad was happening, and that she never wanted to let him go.

  Hope slipped into darkness.

  John

  John sat with Hope for more than twenty minutes, unwilling to let her go. This was it, the last time he might ever see her. Definitely the last time she would remember him, or them. Humans wipes were irreversible so far as Adam, or anyone, knew.

  John had lied about erasing Hope from the minds of her family and friends. That would be next to impossible without an entire team at his disposal, and such resources weren’t his to claim. Instead, he’d have to plant a few memories of Hope running off to another country with him. Such a spur-of-the-moment decision might work for a while, preventing suspicion or worry, or at least an all-out search for her. Even if the authorities (or Jacob) looked for Hope, they wer
en’t likely enough to find her.

  Adam would use magick to change her appearance — hair color, eyes, and a few minor changes. Just enough to throw off anyone who might run into her. John was sure that the Guardians had done similar work on Caleb, even though John had recognized him. And even though they’d been dumb enough to keep Caleb’s first name for reasons John never understood. But then again, the Guardians often did things that flew in the face of logic. Hell, they had Caleb out in the field chasing down the very bad guy who was looking for him. A ballsy move for sure.

  Hope mumbled incoherently and lost consciousness. John remembered the time he and Hope had their dog, Sinbad, put to sleep last year. Sinbad was old, and his body was failing him. John could still remember the look in his dog’s eyes as the veterinarian injected the solution to put Sinbad down. It was an expression of love, confusion, and — maybe John imagined it — the briefest glimpse of betrayal.

  Hope’s eyes held that same look now.

  Then they closed.

  And it crushed him.

  John laid her on the bed and kissed her one last time, wishing she’d been awake for the kiss. But maybe this was best. He needed to cut free from her now. He had to find Jacob.

  John left the room, went downstairs, and nodded at Adam and Larry, sitting together on a tattered couch watching Seinfled.

  “She’s ready,” John said.

  Fifty-Six

  Caleb

  In a dream of long ago …

  Caleb was back in his childhood home, a boy, waking to the sound of his father beating on his mother — again.

  He cowered under his blankets, praying for the sound to finally stop. Night after night, the monster tormented them. And every night the boy cursed himself for not being older, stronger, or brave enough to stop it.