Darkness Comes (2 page)

After an hour or so, she was carrying several bags of gifts and realized that she only had one last stop before she could pick up cinnamon rolls and get the heck out of there and back home, to Toby and her father. Smiling to herself, she contemplated the life they had created for themselves the past two years, the nursery where she discovered she had a gift for growing things and the little quad-plex they rented with its small, communal yard that Toby loved to explore. It was the longest they had ever spent in one place and she hoped that they would be able stay a while longer. There didn’t seem to be any need to move any time soon; there wasn’t much need for someone with her skills anymore.

As she made her way to the humongous toy store on the second floor, a hurried shopper bumped into her, making her stumble a little. Righting herself, she turned to the man to apologize but he was already half way down the corridor, a strained expression on his face as he clutched his three bags in a white-knuckled grip. Strange; his behavior was reminiscent of the Uprising, rushing to be someplace else. Or it was an open feed, though that wasn’t possible; a feeding was announced weeks in advance, to keep the wary away. To lure the idiots in. There had been no such notice.

Then why was she alarmed?

It was foolish to be concerned; one man rushing through the mall did not mean anything; she was just hyper-sensitive. If there was a scheduled feeding, she would have heard about it; she always heard about them. Part of the treaty was the promise of enough advance warning in regards to open feeds with the explicit understanding that victims knew what they risked when they participated and monsters caught feeding at any other time would be killed immediately.

Malorie laughed at herself as she walked into the toy store, avoiding the pink aisles and grimacing at the vampire paraphernalia. She could never understand how there could be a market for vamp toys: vampire dolls, fake teeth, cheesy costumes; vampires were big business and it made her cringe. Malorie was almost convinced that the rash of vampire romances and young adult fiction were written by vampires to lure people in who would have ordinarily been a bit more cautious of monsters. It was a fiendishly clever plot to make one’s food desire being eaten.

Rolling her eyes at such foolishness, she made her way to the trucks and weapons. Guns were all well and good when dealing with mortals, but when it came to monsters, medieval weaponry seemed to work the best: swords, maces, staffs. It was probably God’s way of giving the humans a chance back in the day….

Automatically, the image of a dark haired man flashed in her head, the green-eyed man of her dreams, and her stomach clenched. Wearing clothes that belonged at a Renaissance festival, he was magnificent: a billowy, shirt opened at the throat, torn and stained; dark, paned slopes that emphasized his strong thighs; bare feet.

He was standing in the middle of a razed village, bodies littering the ground. Rage and sorrow wrapped themselves around him as he dropped to his knees, placing his hands on the broken body of a very pregnant woman. Malorie could smell the burnt flesh, the ruin, and she thought she was going to be sick. But then he lifted his head and she was staring into his extraordinarily brilliant green eyes.

She could feel her chest rising and falling with each rapid breath she took, her pulse pounding in her head. Her skin was cold, clammy, as his eyes bore into her, deep inside of her. He wasn’t human, he couldn’t be human. But he wasn’t a vampire. She could almost feel his warmth, his heartbeat. In her dreams, in her more… erotic dreams, he was very much alive and blistering hot.

Until he would open his mouth and his white fangs glistened; until he would bite her and drive her to ecstasy as he drove his cock deep into her womb. Until she cried out in surrender and woke up crying because she wanted to lose herself in a stranger’s embrace. In a vampire’s embrace.

She had studied enough psychology to realize that her dreams were just her screwed up head creating a man out of the monsters she fought. And the whole sex thing? Well, it had been six years since she had been with anyone…. She chose to ignore the fact that she had had the dreams since she was sixteen, two years before she ever had sex.

But she was awake and he was still staring at her with those green-green eyes of his. And he was standing up, walking towards her, reaching for her. Her breath quickened as he came nearer and nearer. She knew she was still in the toy store, but they were standing in the middle of the razed village, the carcasses still warm, still bleeding.

He was almost on top of her, his green eyes smoldering, his sensuous lips curving upwards in a cruel and promising smile. He traced his finger along her cheek. “The time has come.”

Squeezing her eyes shut, willing the images to go away, Malorie told herself to snap out of it; a guy having a panic attack didn’t mean anything. She managed to shake off the disturbing image and realized that she was still holding two construction kits in her hands. Blinking a few times to clear the remnants of his image out of her head, to get back to some semblance of normalcy, she studied the two kits: build your own boat and build your own car.

Deliberately ignoring the sense of a destiny she didn’t believe in sneaking up to bite her in the ass, she focused on which toy to get for Toby. Closing her eyes, she did eenie-meenie-minie-moe; choosing the kit in her left hand, the boat.

Grabbing a few more things, including batteries, she made her way to the cash register. It was odd that there wasn’t a longer line. It was even odder that there were hardly any customers left in the store at all. It was a toy store on Christmas Eve; where were the parents? She looked at her watch and frowned; it was barely eight; she still had an hour….

A group of young twenty-somethings walked by the entrance to the store, black and metal the apparent dress code. None of them were carrying shopping bags. Had she fallen asleep or something? Glancing around, she knew something was wrong; the regular masses were racing and the vamp-wannabes wore expectant, sullen smiles. It was a very unsettling feeling to realize that she may have happened upon an open feed. The anxious dread twisted in the pit of her stomach, like a cold, heavy stone settling low in her gut.

The ringing of her cell phone brought her back to reality and she startled, putting her hand to her chest, her racing heart. Fumbling with her purse, she managed to pull her phone out. Flipping it open, she breathed, “Hello?”

“Get the hell out of there, Mal,” Gustav’s voice ordered. “Get out of there now.”

“A feed?” she asked, though she already knew the answer; even if there had been no announcement, she should have remained vigilant. Out in the hall, several of the shops were already closing their gates and the sinking sensation deepened. Pressing her hand to her stomach in the hopes of calming her nerves, Mal shook her head in misplaced anger.

“Get out, Mal,” Gustav repeated, not bothering with explanations.

“There was no mention of a Christmas Eve feeding.” She didn’t want to believe what was happening. It couldn’t be happening because that would mean she let her guard down; that she took a breath too soon. With only one more person in line in front of her, maybe she still had time. "I'll be home soon.”

“Mal….” She closed the phone and slipped it back in her purse before her father said anything else. When it started to ring again, she simply pressed ignore, swallowing against the panic that was rising to the surface. It’s not like the vamps could bite everybody; only a few of the wannabes ever got bit; and with the treaty, hardly any of them died. Few, if any, were converted. No, it was going to be okay.

She was going to be okay; she still had some time….

“Um, that will be $33.47, miss,” the cashier said in such a manner that led Mal to believe he had said it once before. Or a couple of times, judging by his expression.

“Of course,” she smiled, though it felt a little wobbly. Pulling out a debit card, she swiped it in the machine. She only screwed up the pin number twice before she got it right. It was disheartening to see how badly her hand was shaking. It was hard to believe that she was a seasoned warrior with how she trembled; morbid anticipation filled her and she trembled more. Taking the bag from the clerk, she left the toy store, moving as quickly as possible.

Her heart was pounding furiously in her chest and she knew that her breaths were coming too fast. Nervously, she looked around the mall, wondering how much time she had before the cold-blooded vamps descended. The black-clad youths were animated, but they were all human; there was still time. If she hurried, she could get away before they arrived.

Tightening her grip on her bags, feeling the blood being squeezed from her fingers, she picked up her pace; desperate to get out of there. A tear trickled down her cheek as she reached the last leg of her race through the mall; just a few more yards and she would be free. The cinnamon rolls were going to have to be forsaken in her need to be out of the mall before…. Before….

Everything stilled; the air, the Christmas music pumping through the sound system, the smell of cinnamon and cream cheese frosting. Malorie lifted her head and watched a group of vamps swoop in, swarming from all sides. Ice filled her veins. There weren’t a lot, maybe seventy-five, but their presence was… overwhelming and the air oozed with their malice. The useless idiots eagerly embraced their own deaths, willfully ignoring the inherent danger. Time slowed from moment to moment, breath to breath, heartbeat to heartbeat. She always felt this leaden energy right before a fight….

Excitement rolled off the fools in black; she could taste it – self-indulgent and earthy. Slowly, she turned around, seeing kids being taken, being bit. Rotting and decaying creatures embraced the humans and she could see gray seeping into the kids’ living glow. She wanted to cry out, to warn them, but their smiles…. Her chest rose and fell with each ragged and painful breath; the air was too thick to breathe. Her limbs were heavy; gravity was pulling her into the depths of the earth, holding her still. Malorie’s heart thudded once against her chest, painful in its intensity and her breath rasped. She was too late.

As she stood there, a preternaturally beautiful man with spiky blond hair and a darker goatee caught her eye. Diamond earrings adorned his eye brow, his ears, running along the shell, sparkling in the fluorescent lights. Several carats of diamonds winked at her as he prowled, his movement fluid and graceful. Predatory. He turned his head and her breath caught in her throat as his silver green eyes met hers; eyes that mesmerized, that were lit from within, that burned with life. Eyes that no vampire had. It wasn’t just his eyes that burned, his entire being burned with life. What the hell was he?

Was he the one responsible for changing the tides of war?

She hadn’t known how the war had come to such an abrupt end. The vampires had been winning and she knew that it was only a matter of time before all of humanity was enslaved and she feared the world her unborn son was going to be inheriting. And then in one moment, thousands of vampires imploded and she knew, she simply knew, that there was something out there even more powerful than vampires. It was terrifying not knowing whether the new player was a friend or an enemy.

Her father had become even grimmer but when there were no attacks on humans and the remaining vampires seemed to behave, even he had to admit there was no immediate threat.

Looking around the mall, she saw that there was one other creature burning with life, his auburn hair gleaming under the florescent lights, his face just as exquisite. Were these the new enemy? Or perhaps a possible ally? And could they truly keep the hordes of vampires in line? As soon as she got home, she would talk to her father about it, after she endured his lecture for getting caught at an open feed.

The man with the silver green eyes looked past her, an odd expression on his beautiful face as he continued on. Relaxing a fraction of a moment, Malorie almost convinced herself that she was to be spared. When she got home, she was going to drink a large glass of wine to calm her nerves; maybe take a hot bath.

A hand slid around her waist, pulling her back against a solid wall of flesh and steel, bone and sinew; but he was not cold, was not dead. Masculine heat enveloped her as her body was lifted off the floor, her feet dangling in the air. A dark and seductive aroma invaded her mind, making the world disappear, leaving her alone with the enemy and no desire to fight. All of her training, everything she knew, vanished. She simply froze. Or melted.

Strong fingers grabbed her jaw, tilting her head to the side; warm, moist breath fanned across her neck, fangs grazed her skin. The dark, spicy scent of him swirled in her head and the tight grip she had on her bags loosened and the packages slipped away. If they made any sound, Mal didn’t hear it. Her mind and body were no longer connected and she was lost. With his heat, was he simply a living vampire? Is that what the others were?

But, no, that wasn’t possible. Vampires were cold and dead and she hated vamps; her father trained her to be a slayer; she fought against them for all of those years. Her husband was killed fighting them. She hated them. Why wasn’t she fighting?

Maybe she was still dreaming, still standing in the toy store picturing the man with green eyes. Her fears, her desires, were simply taking a new form because she knew that it was wrong to dream about cold, dead vamps, about having sex with cold, dead vamps, no matter how hot his body, his breath, how strong his heartbeat. It was a dream and in her dreams she always surrendered....