Darkness Falls (13 page)

Pleased with his quick capitulation, she smiled and gave him the address of the warehouse. She watched in fascination as he turned and stared at her in horror as the color faded from his cheeks. “Miss Macklemore, I could lose my brand new balls for looking at you twice. If I drop you off in that neighborhood, your Feryn would stuff them down my throat. Give me a different address.”

“Feryn knows where I’m going,” she told him smugly, crossing her arms beneath her breasts and leaning back in the seat. “Now, I would suggest driving before anyone grows curious enough to see why a police car is stopped in the middle of the street. You can’t be sure who’d look into the window and see you sitting here with me. Word might get back to Feryn and your precious balls will be history.”

“Do you know that phrase, ‘
She goes where angels fear to tread
?’” At her nod, he smiled ruefully, “The warehouse where you’re going is such a place. Are you absolutely certain I can’t take you somewhere else? Anywhere else?”

“I’m sorry,” she said, truly remorseful to put him in such a position. “But I have a contact there and I have to talk to him.”

“God, this sucks.” Slamming the gear into drive, he pulled back into traffic. “As soon as I drop you off I’m packing up my stuff and getting the heck out of the city.”

“Where would you go?”

“As if I’d tell you,” he grunted. “No, it’s better to keep you in the dark so your Feryn can’t extract the information from your pretty, little head.”

“You act like you know so much about Feryn and Aradians and me but you don’t know anything,” she grumbled, watching as the streets grew darker and darker the closer they got to the warehouse district. Underneath one of the lone streetlights, a girl with too much makeup and not enough clothes was being propositioned by a too-skinny man. As the police car cruised by them, the man took off and the girl looked up with a scowl on her unexpectedly pretty face. Her eyes were dark and hollow and she could have been a vampire if not for the thready pulse at her throat. “What the hell is that?”

“That’s a
Calix
,” he murmured. When Malorie looked at him, he nodded towards the abandoned girl who was now behind them. “She was going to drink the blood of that man and return home to the
Adytum
where one of the
Apocritae
would drink her blood and pleasure her beyond a human’s endurance. Now that there is a new Queen, we are seeing fewer and fewer of these rogue
Calices
but they’re still out here, usually on the fringes of society.”

“The false vampires?” she asked, curious in spite of the circumstances.

“Yes,” Scott said, nodding his head. “The new Queen recently came to power and things have been a little chaotic for them. Growing pains, you understand.”

She nodded her head as she twisted in her seat to get one last look at the false vampire. A new man was standing there, larger than the one before and just as eager. Facing forward, she stared out the window, lost in contemplation. There was so much more to the world than she ever knew. Why hadn’t she known?

“I am a little bewildered,” she admitted softly. She hadn't even realized….

Smiling sheepishly, he shrugged, “I don’t get the chance to talk about this with a lot of people so you’ll have to forgive me.”

She smiled at his confession, understanding his wayward tongue more than she cared to admit. “I don’t mind. There’s obviously a lot I need to learn.”

His smile became brilliant as he continued, “Well, I’ve been on this planet for a long time, mostly keeping to myself and just observing.”

“It sounds lonely,” she murmured, her heart thumping with sympathy in her chest at the wistful longing in his voice, a feeling she understood too well.

He shrugged his shoulders, turning onto an even darker road. “It isn’t so bad. Anyway, a few years ago, everything changed and the world was thrown into chaos. My brothers tried to contain the fallout but in the end it didn’t matter and the Apocalypse still came about.”

She understood the words coming out of his mouth but they didn’t make any sense. “But the world didn’t end.”

“Mistranslation,” he explained. “Humans in their beautiful arrogance believed it was about them but it wasn’t, not entirely. The Apocalypse was the ending of the separation of man and monster, of angel and demon. It is the commencement of a new reality and I guess we should have known more creatures would be coming out of the woodwork.”

“I’m still mostly human,” she protested feebly. But it wasn’t true in the strictest definition of the word since an alien had changed her father’s and grandfather’s DNA four hundred and fifty years prior.

“And now so am I,” he said with a wry grin. “When the new era was ushered in, all of the angels on the planet received new bodies and let me tell you, human bodies are unpredictable and terrifying and absolutely amazing. As much as I am dreading it, I am looking forward to my first sexual encounter.”

Out of everything he had told her, confessing to being a virgin was perhaps the most surprising. He must have understood her stunned silence because he added, “As I’ve said, these bodies are unruly and I don’t want to cause injury to my partner or myself by losing control and sex is all about losing control.”

“Only if you’re doing it right,” she murmured without thinking because she always lost control when she was having sex with Feryn. Clearing her throat, she added, “But, yeah, I can see your point.”

“And I’d prefer to keep my balls long enough to experience the joys of the flesh,” he added with a knowing look.

Without quite expecting it, a burst of laughter exploded from her lips, coming all the way from her belly. After the drama with Feryn and then Jack, it felt good to laugh, which only made her laugh until her eyes began to water. Wiping the tears from her eyes, she looked at him and shook her head, “I would have made sure Feryn didn’t touch you, Officer Macintyre. In some areas, he is surprisingly lenient with me so your balls have been perfectly safe this entire time.”

He gaped at her and she saw the wheels turning in his head and she quickly added, “However, if you refuse to drop me off at the warehouse,
I
might do something about your genitalia.”

“You’re a cruel woman, Miss, er, Macklemore,” he smirked, pulling the car to a stop in the parking lot of a large, dilapidated building. He turned to look at her and that glow that had been there when she first met him was back and all at once she knew what he was, either from a fragment memory or intuition.

“You’re a Guardian Angel, aren’t you?” she asked.

“Guilty,” he said with a pleased smile. “Despite this new body, I still have the sense to know when a person is in need. It’s how I found you when you needed someone.”

“Very cool,” she murmured, nodding her head in appreciation. “Thanks for the ride.”

“I have to ask one last time,” he murmured as she opened the door. “Please let me drop you off somewhere safe.”

“I’m perfectly safe here,” she assured him, ignoring the twinge of doubt that was in her belly. “But thank you.”

“Well, if you refuse to listen to reason, do you want me to wait here for you to do whatever you’re doing here?”

She shook her head as she got out of the car and leaned back in. “I plan on staying the night and I fear if you stayed the night with me your precious balls
will
be in grave danger since there is only so much leniency with Feryn.”

He grinned at her teasing as he handed her a dark coat. “Good luck, then, Malorie.”

She could only stare after the car as he pulled away. It made sense that he knew her real name. After all, he was a Guardian Angel. A shiver went down her spine at the realization that there was so much to the world that she had never even known, a world that was rapidly opening up around her.

Replaying the conversation in her head, she slipped her arms into the sleeves of the jacket, barely sparing a moment to wonder where Scott had gotten it. As she welcomed the protection against the bitterly cold night, she hurried across the deserted parking lot to get inside where she knew there would be someone waiting for her.

Chapter 5

~
Jack
~

“This sucks,” Jack said sullenly as he threw another rock into the clear blue water of the ocean that separated him from his wife. His son – his son! – was quietly building a sand castle a few feet away, occasionally glancing at Jack and studying him with those brown eyes of his. It was like looking at a living picture of himself at that age and he had to rub his sternum to ease the ache of everything he had lost. He had missed out on so much of his son’s life and until he returned from the dead, he hadn’t even spared Toby a passing thought.

“Why’s that?” the Aradian asked. His name was Jiro and Jack understood that the man was his babysitter, despite the fact that he was no longer a vampire. The man had bleached blond hair and a multitude of diamonds that sparkled in the tropical sun. He also had brilliant silver-green eyes and for the first time in his life he could actually see the difference between a vampire and an Aradian. Malorie had always known, even when it seemed impossible, but that was Malorie.

In all of his time with Taella, he had never even known Aradians existed, that Taella was an Aradian and not a vampire. But her eyes were dull compared to this Aradian, whose eyes blazed with untainted power. Chucking another rock at the ocean, he spat out, “This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. I shouldn’t be a stranger to my own child. I shouldn’t be apart from my wife.”

“She’s no longer your wife, Jack,” Jiro said with a hint of sympathy, though his conviction was firm. “She’s mated to an Aradian and there is nothing you can do.”

“I could fight for her,” Jack ground out, knowing the futility of his words before he even spoke them but determined to at least try.

Jiro threw his head back and laughed, the diamonds winking in the sunlight, mocking Jack’s pain. “You do not understand the nature of a Breeder, Jack. They live and breathe for their Aradian mate and I have never seen a bond as… complete and all-encompassing as the one that binds my brother and your former wife.”

“Bonds can be broken,” Jack said with sullen conviction, ignoring the unease in his gut. Malorie wasn’t the same girl he knew all of those years ago, the sheltered fighter that worshiped her father and fought even though it was apparent she hated it. Of course, he wasn’t the same boy who idolized the man who had taken him in after his own family had been killed. He wasn’t the twenty-one year old virgin who worshipped Malorie. He was no longer innocent.

“Not this one,” Jiro said, shaking his head as silent laughter continued to shake his body. “Unless my brother wishes it broken it will remain and I doubt my brother will ever wish it broken.”

“Does he at least love her?” Jack asked softly, remembering seeing the two of them in the window after he woke up in the ditch. He hadn’t wanted to admit it, but she had never looked more beautiful than when she smiled up at the black-haired man. 

“Love shouldn’t be a factor,” Jiro said, his words trailing off as a thoughtful frown wrinkled his forehead, “My brother has known countless women and yet Malorie is the only one he has loved so perhaps I am wrong and it
is
a factor. Gods know an Aradian has never been marked before and he wears her mark with absurd pride.”

Jack didn’t fully understand what the other man was talking about but he knew enough to realize Malorie’s new partner wouldn’t give her up easily. If she wished it, Jack would take on the world to keep her safe, including this new man in her life. Shading his eyes from the sun, he looked at his son and he knew he would die for the little boy. “What am I supposed to do? The moment I became a vampire I lost everything but now I’m no longer a vamp and I still have nothing.”

“Which leads me to the reason you’re here,” Jiro said, all business now as he faced Jack. Startled, Jack turned back and tried not to wither beneath the Aradian’s penetrating gaze. “How did you recover?”

Jack shook his head and shrugged his shoulders since he had gone over this a million times in the days since he woke up in the ditch. “I was a vampire and then I wasn’t.”

“Walk me through it,” Jiro prompted, his silver-green eyes darkening as he seemed to look into Jack’s soul. “Start with the evening your group attacked the human village on the nearby island.”

Closing his eyes, Jack forced himself to remember the time he desperately tried to forget. He hated the squirming, crawly feeling that rippled through him when he remembered what it was like to be a vampire, to be cold and… dead. How could it have ever felt like life? “We were in one of the frat houses…. Taella liked setting up shop in frat houses. She liked surrounding herself with young, human males who were easily impressed with beauty and sex. Being on college campuses provided her with an endless supply of donors, though she didn’t convert many college kids.

“She preferred vamps with little or no ties,” he continued from the things he had pieced together through the years. “College kids were for fun and fucking.”

“The day of the attack,” Jiro interrupted, encouraging him to remain on track.