Darkness Falls (15 page)

“Listen,” Jiro said with sympathy, which sounded strange coming from the arrogant Aradian. “I’ve got a few girls who would be more than happy to take care of you.”

Blinking his eyes, Jack looked at the Aradian, wondering if he understood correctly what Jiro was offering. “Are you talking about… sex?”

“Of course,” the man said with an insouciant shrug. “I don’t mind sharing, at least not with you. After all that you’ve been through, I can’t think of a more deserving human.”

“Gee, thanks,” Jack bit out with more than a hint of sarcasm. “But I don’t think I’m ready for a relationship.”

“I’m not talking about a relationship, just sex,” Jiro countered. “You don’t know what Malorie's blood has done to you, Jack. You don’t know if you’ll have an extended life or if you’ll die tomorrow. Do you really want to go through the rest of your days never knowing the touch of another woman?”

“Of course not but right now I don’t want any more complications,” he ground out, wishing the bastard would shut up because he didn’t want to think.

“Well, if you change your mind it’s not like I’m going to be very far away despite my brief absence this afternoon,” Jiro said with an almost cruel chuckle. “Your wife wants me to keep an eye on you and my brother wishes me to indulge all of your wife’s desires.”

Jack’s fingers curled into fists as he struggled not to punch the Aradian in his face, wondering if the man was deliberately cruel and occasionally kind or if his kindness was a complete accident. “But you’ll never truly know my wife’s desires, will you?”

“Touché.” The corner of Jiro’s lips quirked up in a half-smile. “Unfortunately, you’re wrong.”

“Your brother would share Malorie with you?” he asked with incredulity. Even if it were true, he knew Malorie would never go for something like that….

Jiro threw his head back and laughed, “Never. But you forget I am an Aradian.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Jack sneered, turning his head and finally looking at the man. A strange gleam lit Jiro’s eyes as he leaned forward, exposing the sharp points of his canines. Jack tilted his head back but the man’s hands came up, held his head steady, and sank his teeth into Jack’s throat.

Jack pushed against Jiro’s shoulders but the Aradian was too strong, drinking his blood without his permission as Taella had done all of those years ago. He knew that Jiro had no desire to convert him but it didn’t ease the tremor that made its way through his body.

“Think of your wife,” Jiro growled around Jack’s flesh.

“No,” Jack managed as he struggled to hold onto consciousness. He wouldn’t give this beast the satisfaction of knowing Malorie, even vicariously through a memory. Unfortunately, his body had been conditioned to find pleasure whenever Taella drank of him and it couldn’t tell the difference between a female’s teeth and a male’s. Against his will, the image of Malorie flooded his brain, all naked limbs, graceful beauty and passionate embraces.

“Can I taste you?” he begged, breathing in the heady, feminine scent of her arousal. He wanted to bury his face between her thighs and devour her whole.

“Jack, no,” she said, her face bright red as she shook her head. But her pulse raced in her throat and he knew she was intrigued by the idea of being fucked with his tongue. He had to remind himself that she was still young, only eighteen, and had even less experience with sex than he had. While he had been a virgin, he had watched too much porn and he had learned a lot of interesting techniques. In a few months, he would bring her to orgasm with his mouth.

Instead of licking her, he gently touched her with his fingers, loving how wet she was, as if she had been designed for sex….

“Stop,” Jack whispered, sliding a hand between his neck and Jiro’s mouth. As the Aradian continued to slurp down his blood, he concentrated on another memory, one that wasn’t about Malorie. He pictured Taella, with her blood red lips and long, raven black hair, as she kneeled in front of him, taking his heavy erection into her lush mouth.

After an eternity that was only a few seconds, the Aradian released him. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, Jiro sat back with a satisfied smile, “No wonder Feryn is smitten. Your wife blew my fucking mind.”

Jack scowled, holding his hand over his no-longer-bleeding neck. “I wasn’t thinking about her.”

“It doesn’t matter what you tried to remember,” he said with a smirk. “I only told you to think about your wife because I thought it would be more pleasant for you. Oh, well.  Since I have tasted your blood, Jack, I have your memories.”

“You bastard,” Jack seethed, swinging his fist and catching the corner of Jiro’s jaw, taking the Aradian by surprise.

Chuckling, Jiro worked his jaw back and forth but remained otherwise unaffected, talking as if he hadn’t just been punched. “Her blood is very powerful, Jack, and it’s still changing you. Now I understand why vampires avoid Breeders like the plague.”

Jack knew that her blood was changing him but the Aradian didn’t seem to be aware of how much it had already changed him. Despite himself, he was curious about the vampires and before he could think better of it, he blurted, “Why?”

“It’s like death to them,” Jiro explained, staring out into the night with a thoughtful expression on his face. “Just as becoming a vampire is like death to a human, only humans don’t have the instincts to stay away.”

“Vampires have the advantage of being extraordinarily beautiful,” Jack murmured absently. “I hated them because of what they did to my family but I still found them beautiful.”

“There is that,” Jiro agreed, acting as if he hadn’t just had his fangs in Jack’s throat. Turning his head, he looked at Jack with a serious expression, “Even if her blood turns out to be a cure, I doubt that we would have very many vampire volunteers because….”

“Vampires don’t think they’re sick,” Jack finished, remembering what it had felt like to be a vampire. “It had felt like life and the life I had before had been death. But now… now I know that a vampire is a slave to his maker. Will I be a slave to Malorie?”

Jiro’s lips quirked up into that half-smile again, “Haven’t you always been a slave to Malorie?” Not making Jack answer, he continued, “She doesn’t know, does she?”

Startled, Jack warily asked, “Know what?”

“That you gave up everything to stay with her,” Jiro said gently.

“I didn’t have anything left after the vampires wiped out my entire town,” Jack said defensively, his heart racing unexpectedly in his chest.

“You were eighteen years old with a full ride to UCLA,” Jiro murmured, his words tearing the flesh from Jack’s bones because he had forgotten. In his grief, he had buried everything and clung to Malorie and her father otherwise he would have drowned. Watching him carefully, Jiro continued, “If you want, we can arrange for you to go back to that life, though you’d have to have a new name, a new identity. And we’d also have to keep tabs on you.”

“Of course,” Jack huffed, his thoughts filled with the possibility of going to college. Yes, he was technically twenty-eight but he had the body of a twenty-two year old, the age he had been when he became a vampire. What would he study? What course could possibly compare to the life he had lived since he was eighteen and his entire world imploded? He had fought vampires. He had been a vampire….

“Or you could live here with us,” Jiro continued. “You would be allotted full access to our libraries, our knowledge. You’d be able to study anything and everything to your heart’s content or study nothing at all and just be Jack. The women here are beautiful and willing.”

“But they aren’t Malorie,” Jack said softly.

“No,” Jiro said simply. “But your son is here and I think you could have a strong relationship with Toby if you want.”

Jack nodded his head because he wasn’t ready to return to the real world yet despite his doubts about the wisdom of staying. “Maybe.”

“You can earn an entire college education here,” Jiro continued. “Hell, you can get a PhD in any field of your choosing. You can take as much time as you need to figure out what to do with your new life.”

With that, Jiro simply vanished, an Aradian trick that still baffled the mind. Jack stayed on the bench, mulling the words over in his mind for a long time. Watching the stars in the night sky that seemed so much brighter so far away from civilization, he kept coming back to the only thing left of his world: Toby.

Swallowing thickly, he spent the rest of the night lost in thought.

Chapter 6

~
Malorie
~

Malorie knocked on the door: tap tap tap tap, pause for three seconds, tap tap tap tap. Looking over her shoulder, she regretted sending Scott the angel away. She should have asked him to stay until she was safely inside but then she would never have been admitted had her fellow soldiers seen the police car.

Bouncing on her heels, she blew her breath into her cupped hands, trying to warm them up. She had only been in the tropical islands for a few months but she had lived in southern California for a few years before that. It was apparent her blood had thinned enough that she could no longer tolerate the cold. Maybe if she had been in New York while the weather was changing it wouldn’t have come as such a huge shock to her system and she wouldn’t be so cold right now.

After what seemed like an eternity of standing in a sub-zero freezer, the door creaked open and a sliver of a face peered at her from the crack, the large brown eye narrowed with suspicion. “What do you want?”

“
There’s blood in the streets tonight
,” she said, glancing furtively about to make sure no one heard her even though she knew they were completely alone in the middle of abandoned warehouses. It was an old habit that had been ingrained in her and one that she obviously never lost.

“How much blood?” the man asked in a gruff voice,

“Just me.”

The door opened a little further and there was enough light that she could see him clearly. Despite being a few years older and not nearly as intimidating as he had been when she was ten, she instantly recognized him. With dark hair and dark skin, he had been the perfect Blade Soldier, blending with the night to take out the enemy. At just over six and a half feet tall and nearly three hundred pounds of aging muscles, he was surprisingly fast and incredibly smart. In fact, he had almost been a professional football player but an injury sidelined that option his first day of practice. “Bruiser.”

“Malorie?” He looked closer and as recognition lit his eyes, his expression melted into a warm smile. The door swung open and he held out his arms. “Little Malorie Hunter?

“It’s Sinclair now,” she told him, stepping into the giant’s embrace and hugging him.

“Saint’s alive, it’s been nearly fifteen years since I’ve seen you,” he boomed, his words rumbling through her. Pulling her into the warehouse and closing the door behind them, he faced her and asked, “You’re married, girl?”

“Widowed. Just before the end of the skirmishes,” she murmured. A look of sympathy flashed in his eyes but as a fellow Blood Soldier he knew the risks involved and wisely kept his mouth shut. Forcing a smile, she said, “But I have a son and I’m happy. What about you?”

“Same old, same old,” he said with a sad grin, leaving it at that. Pursing his lips, he narrowed his eyes slightly and asked cautiously, “Where’s your old man?”

Since there was no reason to worry the remaining Blood Soldiers, she breezily lied, “Father is off on some adventure or another.”

“I can’t believe he would leave his little girl behind,” he said with a healthy dose of doubt.

“I’m a grown woman, Bruiser, and a mother,” she told him with an amused smile. “I’m no longer a little girl.”

“Yeah, but your daddy rarely let you out of his sight while the two of you stayed here,” he reminded her, holding his arm out. “Except when he was out hunting.”

She conceded the point as she looped her arm through his and they walked through the empty space to the hidden rooms in the back. “Luckily he was out hunting most of the time.”

Bruiser’s smile was as warm as always and she suddenly missed her old life. Despite the difficulties and uncertainty, there had been such a strong bond between the Soldiers that she thought would never be broken. But she had been ten years old and hadn’t known any other life.

Pushing through the door that looked like it weighed two tons but in truth only weighed fifty, they stepped into the world of the Blade Soldier. Old maps still hung on three of the walls, displaying the locations and movements of known vampires, and weapons filled the gaps, from old stakes and swords to chains, crosses and holy water. Malorie never understood the need for holy water since it didn’t really affect vampires at all. Maybe it hadn’t been blessed by a holy man and had only been regular water. Empty coffee cups still littered the room, the life blood of a Soldier and a musty smell hung in the air, the scent of decay and sweat.

The office chair squeaked as Bruiser sat down and crossed his hands over his growing belly. Motioning to the other seat, he asked, “So, what brings you here?”