by S. K. Ryder
Dominic peered at his master through damp black hanks of his hair. “Bravo? Is that all you have to say? Bravo? For what? For my skill with the swords? For murdering a monster who should never have been made? Or for surviving one more night of your madness?”
“Perhaps all three.” The smile grew tighter, more mysterious. “Perhaps none.”
Cursing, Dominic stalked toward Kambyses. His hands clenched around the ornate handles of his beloved swords. What he wouldn’t give for the strength to strike himself down. “What do you want from me? From any of us? What is the point? You have taken my life, made me take the lives of those I love, make me take still more lives, and hold me prisoner. You owe me an explanation even if it’s only that you are fucking insane!” In a blur, he whipped up the katana. Aimed it at Kambyses’s face. “And don’t even think about ignoring me, old man. I’m done letting you toy with me.”
Kambyses didn’t seem to register the lethal point hovering a mere hand’s breath from the tip of his nose. “You are not ready, Nico. But you will be. Soon.”
Soon? What was ‘soon’ to an immortal whose heart had ceased beating? How old was Kambyses anyway? ‘Soon’ might be anything from next week to next decade, both equally unacceptable. With a growl of pure warning, he said, “Now.”
“You belong to me. For now…”
Dominic swung the katana at the same moment he brought up the wakizashi. His rage made him faster than he had ever been. Kambyses should have fallen in pieces before him. Instead, the swords tore out of his hands like living things fleeing his touch. The night blurred around him into a vast smear of shadow and starlight and startled jungle creatures. Then, something massive hit him from behind.
“…that is all you need to know,” Kambyses finished, his cedar smoke breath feathering across Dominic’s face. After studying him at close range for a while, his voice dropped to a reverent, sensual whisper. “You belong to me.”
Too stunned to respond, his heart hammering his ribs, Dominic remained perfectly still. No, the subtext wasn’t lost on him. Not only did Kambyses own him, but he also had the strength and speed to do with Dominic anything he pleased. Anything at all.
Kambyses stepped away. But the strange pressure grinding the vertebrae in Dominic’s spine did not subside. Blood soaked the fecund air, and he had trouble moving, too, as if…
Glancing down, he got another shock. The hilts of his swords. They protruded out of his body—one in his right shoulder, the other in the left thigh. The pressure against his back was a massive tree. He was pinned to its trunk. Run through flesh and bone by his own swords so fast he never felt it happen. A rising pool of pain seeped into Dominic’s awareness. He had to bite his lip to keep from howling.
“Think on this a while, Nico,” Kambyses suggested with the calm of a tomb. “Think on it well.”
“I will make ash of you, if it’s the last thing I do!” But Dominic was shrieking into empty shadows. Kambyses was gone. Dominic was alone in a jungle gone heavy with silence.
He was still alone hours later when he had done all the thinking he ever wanted to do. The sun rumbled just past the horizon, and his beast grew increasingly frantic to be free while his soul rejoiced. Soon, this agony would end.
And this time, ‘soon’ was now.
9
The Searcher
San Juan, Puerto Rico, was the largest city Dominic had set foot in since long before Kambyses turned him into a creature of the night. The lights and bustle bordered on overwhelming, but the hunting was easy and varied enough to keep two blood-drinkers well fed for an extended period of time. Apokryphos moored at the far end of the San Juan Bay Marina—well out of the way of shipping lanes choked with freighters and cruise ships—and remained there for over a week.
Dominic knew what that meant. Kambyses would soon demand his blood again. The weeks after that would follow a predictable pattern. Apokryphos would stay in the same port until after the youngling had not only regained his reason, but also severed all emotional ties with his or her former life. For some, like Emilio, this was instantaneous. Others took longer. A few, like Dominic, had to see their past reduced to corpses before they could let it go. Those were the worst. Linked to Dominic’s mind as they were, all their torments continued to fuel his own grief until it was almost a relief when they finally moved against him. Dominic cut short their misery with a strike of his sword the way he could only dream of cutting his own.
Loathe to start this cycle all over again, Dominic began to fantasize about disappearing into the island’s chaos before Kambyses could deliver his next mark. But a fantasy was all it was. Even when he didn’t try to escape, when he just roamed the streets, Kambyses always appeared well before dawn to retrieve him.
Just like he had that morning two months ago in the jungles of Tortola. Dominic had been on the verge of passing out when Kambyses pulled the swords from Dominic’s bones and caught his limp body in his arms. Dominic regained consciousness tucked away in his cabin the following night.
Since then, he hadn’t uttered a word to Kambyses or anyone else. Dominic existed from feeding to feeding, sunset to sunrise, doing as he was told, making no argument, asking no questions.
He had become the Silence.
The only thing he still cared about was gaining the strength to stop himself from taking lives when he fed. He had yet to manage it. But it had to be possible. He had seen Silence do it. He saw Kambyses do it. How many months would it take Dominic to master this skill? Or would he still struggle to do so years in the future the way Silence had?
Lost in thought, he ambled along a narrow street that led to the beach for a few hours of peaceful communion with the sea. Kambyses had vanished right after Dominic was done feeding, no doubt off to see to his next convert.
By now, Dominic had a good idea of how it was done. A transformation seemed to involve several consecutive nights of being fed on or bitten. Like stoking an infection. Once the human was fevered and weak, a drink of vampire blood finished the job. And it was the blood that linked the minds of the donor and recipient. It made sense the secretive Kambyses wouldn’t complete the process himself. Clearly, having younglings rampage through his head was beneath him.
As Dominic passed a glitzy, upscale hotel, someone jerked upright in the periphery of his vision. Someone who turned toward him. Someone who stared.
With his dark clothes and loose, shoulder-length hair, he tended to blend in with any given shadow. People would glance his way, but at his blank expression, they soon lost interest. Not this time. Someone had spotted him—and recognized him.
Dominic’s steps faltered, and then stopped when he met the wide blue gaze of the stocky young man standing just outside the lobby entrance.
Jérôme.
For a timeless moment, Dominic was torn. Vanish into the night? Or acknowledge this visitor from a past life that hardly felt real anymore?
Jérôme called his name.
Dominic didn’t move.
Not even when a woman engrossed in her phone bumped into Jérôme did he look away. Brusquely pushing her aside, he headed for Dominic.
“Mon Dieu. It is you.” He scooped Dominic up in a tight embrace, kissing his cheeks in exuberant greeting. His lips and stubbled cheek burned against Dominic’s inhuman skin. The mortal’s pounding heart filled his ears, a drum the size of a house.
Jérôme.
Dominic’s dearest friend. Here with him, in his arms. In his arms like so many others of late…
His hands fisted in Jérôme’s tropical-print shirt. Like an aching erection, his lethal canines slid out. He began to tremble. No. No. I can’t. Not him. Not like this. Not like this…
Taking a breath to speak, he caught a sensitive nose full of Jérôme’s ever-present cigarette cologne. Unlike Kambyses’s sweetly smoky fragrance, there was an acrid edge to this stink that cut through Dominic as violently as sulfur vapors. His belly clenched, and the bloodlust evaporated. Instead of sinking his teeth into his best fr
iend’s neck, he whispered, “Mon ami. What are you doing here?”
Jérôme pulled back. Held Dominic by the shoulders at arm’s length. “What am I doing here? Isn’t it obvious, you dolt? I’m looking for you.”
There was a moment of Jérôme just searching his face. But before he could ask questions that could never be answered, Dominic said, “Looking for me? How did you find me?”
“The black yacht. Apokryphos. You mentioned it once, and that was the only thing that left St. Barthélemy without her passengers and crew fully account for after you disappeared. But she was a ghost. Vanished into the night.” He emphasized with a sweep of his hand. “The authorities sent alerts to every port, but nothing. I didn’t trust that. I thought someone with a great deal of influence must be hiding her.”
A great deal of influence indeed. Kambyses made sure that no permanent records of his lair’s travels ever existed. No one in an official capacity ever noticed the vessel, much less connected her to alert bulletins. “So you searched in person?”
Jérôme threw up his hands in a ‘and here I am’ gesture. “I did. I’ve spent months traveling between islands, searching every dock and beach. I only arrived here this afternoon.”
People were starting to notice their intense conversation on the sidewalk, and Dominic felt an overwhelming urge to disappear. Jérôme tethered him to the spot like an anchor made of hope.
“Come. Let’s sit. And talk,” Dominic said. But Dieu. Talk about what? What could he possibly tell Jérôme about what had happened to him?
They retreated to a table in a quiet corner of the hotel’s beachside café. Jérôme placed an order for an assortment of tapas and wine before launching into his questions. “So tell me, am I right? Was it this boat that took you away? Is she here?”
“It was. She is,” Dominic murmured.
The questions kept coming even as Dominic offered only monosyllable answers and awkward shrugs. Jérôme carefully told him what happened to his father and sister and Jeovana, clearly uncertain if he was aware and convinced there was a connection between these gruesome deaths and Dominic’s disappearance. “The men who attacked Ana are the prime suspects, though there is no evidence and they have alibis.”
“Do they?” Dominic felt numb, his photographic memory reliving every detail of these horrors with stunning HD clarity. “How is my mother? And Genevie?”
His friend remained silent until Dominic met his troubled eyes. Then Jérôme took a deep swallow of wine. As he set the glass down, his gaze fell on Dominic’s own untouched drink and plate. Dominic thought he should compel Jérôme to notice nothing out of the ordinary, but he couldn’t. Not this man who knew him so well in a far happier life. He couldn’t corrupt Jérôme’s mind with the darkness that filled him now. Even if he tried, his heart wouldn’t be in it. He wouldn’t succeed.
Instead, Dominic reached for the water glass—and drank.
Cold and empty, the liquid fell into his surprised belly. There it stayed. Relieved, he drank some more before setting down the sweaty glass. “I ate earlier.”
This seemed an acceptable explanation. Jérôme nodded. “Your mother…she had to spend some time in hospital under sedation. Her nerves…it was all too much for her. But she is recovering now, slowly starting to help Genevie run Maison. Your sister took over like a general.”
Dominic smiled tightly. Genevie was a great deal like their mother, no-nonsense and always ready to tackle any crisis. It was how they coped. But Francesca hadn’t been able to cope with the death of her husband and daughter and the disappearance of her son. That had broken her. He prayed she would find the strength to reassemble the pieces of her life into something she could live with.
So engrossed in his sorrow was Dominic that he didn’t realize Jérôme had kept talking until the human’s warm hand closed over his own with an encouraging squeeze. “What?”
“Now that you’re found,” Jérôme said succinctly, obviously repeating himself. “They will be able to go on. Your mother and sister have clung to the hope you’re still alive. Just like me. They are the ones who financed my search for you.”
“What?” Dominic said again, dumbstruck. Go back? To his family? The way he was now? Risk them finding out what he had become—to say nothing of done? “No. I can’t…”
Jérôme removed his hand. “Why? I don’t see you in chains and shackles. We can leave tonight. Right now.”
“Leave?” Dominic envisioned himself boarding a plane. It would have to land well before dawn. He would have to get on it at the beginning of the night. Trust that there would be no delays or detours. His beast recoiled with trepidation.
It was all hypothetical anyway. Kambyses would intercept him before he ever made it on a flight. About that, there was no doubt in his mind. “I can’t.”
“I don’t understand, cher.”
“I know.” Dominic rubbed a hand over his face and through his hair, forcing himself to return to the present.
Brow pinched with frustration, Jérôme pulled out his pack of cigarettes and lit one with a snap of his lighter. He took a deep drag before continuing. “Maybe you better tell me what happened.”
A stream of smoke accompanied the words. Though Jérôme made a half-hearted effort to direct it away, the biting cloud drifted over Dominic anyway. His eyes watered. The beast squirmed, suddenly losing all interest in the plump vein along Jérôme’s neck. Dominic took a careful breath. He could have sworn his lungs caught fire. He didn’t move.
“Well? I’m listening.”
To buy time, to think, Dominic reached for his water again. The liquid soothed him and dulled the beast’s claws. He could almost think again. Jérôme wanted an explanation. But where to begin? Not that it mattered. Whatever he told Jérôme, it could not be the truth. At least not all of it. “I live on Apokryphos. I have…commitments to the owner.”
Jérôme’s brows lifted. “Very mysterious.”
“Yes. Very.” He drank more water. All of it. His gaze strayed to Jérôme’s glass. His ears focused on the sound of the ice melting inside it. “There is not much I can tell you. It is too…”
“Complicated?”
“Yes. Very,” Dominic said once more with more enthusiasm.
“You always were,” Jérôme said thoughtfully before pulling more smoke from his cigarette. He seemed to mellow as the nicotine filtered into his bloodstream.
“I can’t come with you, but maybe…maybe you could help me.”
Jérôme considered, pulled again, then reached to push his water glass to join Dominic’s empty one.
For the first time since sitting down, Dominic raised his head and squarely met his friend’s eyes. He didn’t know what Jérôme saw in him now, what he thought might have happened to him. Or if the desperation simmering in Dominic’s entrails also marked his face.
“Anything you need, love,” Jérôme said. “Just ask.”
Dominic struggled to contain his hope and anxiety when he returned to Apokryphos as near to dawn as he dared without drawing Kambyses’s attention…but also not to seem more eager than usual to get back. For any of the plans he and Jérôme had hatched to have a chance at success, he had to assume Kambyses was not already on to them.
God only knew what all Jérôme’s cigarette smoke had hidden from Dominic’s nose. But as they talked in the busy little café’s shadows, he had been vigilant of Kambyses’s distinctive scent. There had been nothing. Which, of course, meant precious little. Sometimes, Dominic suspected his mad sire to be part ghost.
There had been no sign of Kambyses later either when Dominic resumed his nocturnal wanderings, casual in every way except for his buzzing thoughts. Good thing there was no youngling tapped into his head right now. He would have been a psychic loudspeaker. But that could change at any moment. He rose the next night, half-expecting and completely dreading the possibility that Kambyses would present him with his next pawn before dawn, relegating him to babysitting duties for the next two weeks.
> When Kambyses left him to his own devices after supervising his feeding, a new worry quickly overshadowed Dominic’s relief—what if this worked? If he escaped Kambyses, how would he feed without leaving a trail of bodies everywhere he went?
Doubt about his plans slowed Dominic’s steps until he thought he might be too late. But Jérôme waited where they had agreed to meet, on the beach behind his hotel, nervously puffing at a cigarette. Another man was with him, and Dominic thought that if Jérôme had carried out this part of the plan, he would have managed the other. Perhaps they had a chance.
And perhaps Jérôme would live to see another sunrise.
A Latin music festival was kicking into high gear at a nearby resort bar. The upbeat tempo and noisy, inebriated patrons supplied cover for Dominic. Moving past an outlying table, he swiped a bottle of water on his way to his clandestine meeting in the skinny shadows of coconut palms.
When Jérôme saw him, he tossed the cigarette aside and greeted Dominic with a swift hug and a kiss on each cheek. “Finally. I was beginning to think you had run into trouble.”
“No more than usual,” Dominic allowed, cracking open the water and putting it to his lips.
Jérôme introduced his companion in heavily accented English. “This is Inspector Ramos. He is with the drug division. The vice squad.”
The man appeared to be in his thirties and had ‘police authority’ written all over his hard face and muscular body, even dressed as he was in casual civilian. His dark eyes glinted with intelligence as he regarded Dominic and extended his hand in greeting. “Buenas tardes.”
Dominic felt his hand pressed hard as though the man reacted to a surprise. Ramos might well not have fully believed Jérôme’s tale until this moment when the ‘friend in deadly serious trouble’ actually materialized. Even so, something in the inspector’s direct and confident approach told Dominic that Ramos had not come alone to this meeting. Sniper rifles might well be locked onto Dominic already.
“Buenas tardes,” he replied, and almost smiled. Ramos was exactly what Dominic hoped he would be.
