Reaper's Dark Kiss (2 page)

As they left the park, morning bore down on the city. The streets were getting dangerously light. Julian asked Sky where she lived.

“Why should I tell you?” she asked, turning to him.

In Julian’s world, he asked questions and got answers. Civilians didn’t talk back to reapers. He thought fast.

“Because if I don’t walk you home, no deal,” he said.

She pursed her lips together, looked at him. “One question. Now.
Then
you walk me home.”

Julian tried not to feel the coming sun. His instincts were tearing at him to go. “One question,” he said.

“What do you want with the Fang Killer?”

“I’m hunting him just like you are.” That was as close to the truth as he could get.

True to her word, Sky told where she lived. Julian found shortcuts through narrow streets and alleys edged with dawn.

In front of her building, Sky asked, “Why are you hunting him?”

Knowing he couldn’t tell her even half the truth, Julian baited a hook he knew she couldn’t resist. “You used up your one question,” he said. “If you call me before you go back to the park, I’ll answer two more.”

“Tomorrow?”

The rush of breath behind the single word was what Julian had been waiting for. Sky was hooked. And caught.

“Tomorrow’s good. I’ll walk you home after you write more on your tablet.”

“Are you asking me out?”

Julian was at a loss. He’d never had to ask a female into his bed. They came and went easily. A day’s pleasure was all he’d ever wanted from any of them. With Sky he wanted to ask for more, but he didn’t know how. “I’m afraid of the dark. Tomorrow?” he asked. “Around midnight? I’ll take you to the park.”

She gave him a sharp look. “You’re built like the cover page for
Steroids Does a Body Good
. You’ve got inside information on why corpses are showing up with zero blood.” She folded her arms over her chest. “And you expect me to go with you to Central Park in the middle of the night?”

Julian ran his gaze over Sky’s delicious curves. “Not a good time for you?”

* * * *

If a tourist saw Vandar mixed with the Friday-night crowd in Washington Square Park in New York’s Greenwich Village, their first thought might be that he was a six-and-a-half-foot wrestler with blond dreadlocks.

This would not be a fatal mistake.

If a mortal ignored the street musicians, the jugglers throwing fire, or the artists sketching in pencil and gave Vandar a closer look, they might notice that perhaps his big chest didn’t rise and fall enough.

This would not prove fatal.

The streets around Sixth Avenue—the oldest part of the Village—are narrow and twisting. A mortal who got turned around in the confusion of dimly lit streets might find the Lord of the Dominion lurking.

This would prove quite fatal.

Vandar owned a row of town houses that bordered the north side of Washington Square Park. Dressed in faded dirt-gray jeans and a sleeveless black leather vest, he stood before a UV-filtered window, watching night flee the skies.

Each drained body that appeared in Central Park was like a nail into his coffin lid. Sooner rather than later, he would be trapped and caught. No measure he took to conceal the bodies was enough to stop them from surfacing after he’d drained them.

Behind him, his counselor waited.

“Will Marek risk withdrawing my blood contract from the council?” he asked Kraeyl. His counselor’s knowledge of the law was the greatest asset Vandar had in the building war against the Creed.

Kraeyl, his straight black hair flowing out behind him, his delicate Japanese features revealing nothing, said, “He can’t risk that. Not unless a witness comes forward to reveal the identity of the drainer.”

That Vandar was the drainer was an uneasy, open secret between them.

“He’s sent Julian to bear witness,” Vandar said, curbing his rising anger with an effort. Exile to this world was punishment enough. The added burden of uncontrollable emotion was insufferable.

“Yes,” Kraeyl said. “But no death scroll has been issued.”

“Not yet.” Julian still hated Vandar for rising against Marek and founding the Dominion. Vandar’s rebellion had driven a stake into the heart of the Shadow World, forever dividing them into Creed and Dominion. Only Kraeyl’s machinations before the council kept Dominion vampires one bare step from being ruled outlaws.

Draining was the cancer of the Shadow World. It struck without warning and there was no cure. More and more when he drank, it came over Vandar in a tidal wave of undeniable hunger, easing only when the mortal’s heart stopped beating. Only then did he come back to himself and see what he had done. It was unpredictable and infuriating. “I must have A sub D blood,” he said.

The blood type was as yet undiscovered by mortal science. It was the rarest on the face of the world. In a land mass the size of North America, there were perhaps a thousand mortals with A sub D. Red gold, as it was known, was as valuable as precious metals were in the Sun World. With a steady supply, a Shade could withstand hours of sunlight. To Vandar, red gold brought a benefit worth even more: it quelled the urge to drain.

“In the territory I’ve negotiated, we’ve found red gold in only one mortal so far,” Kraeyl said, “but acquiring her may prove difficult.”

For months, Kraeyl had dedicated every waking moment to a systematic, unrelenting search for the scent of red gold. Now, mere days before the counselor’s carefully negotiated contract was finalized, the specter of failure threatened Vandar with annihilation.

Early this morning, the A sub D mortal they’d found caught Julian’s eye. Kraeyl, a superior tracker, said he suspected Julian’s
haeze
was falling. The haeze was a storm of useless emotions that could drive a Shade into frenzied, murderous madness to defend what belonged to him.

“As of last evening,” Kraeyl said, “the voting on the contract is in your favor.”

“How long?”

“A night, perhaps two.” Kraeyl crossed his legs, straightened the crease in his silk trousers. “If no more bodies show up.”

“I’ll go for her tonight.”

“As your counselor,” Kraeyl said, “I strongly advise against that action. At present, she is in Creed territory. Your claim on her does not begin until the council approves the contract and Marek executes it. Should you go for her before that, you will be banished to the light.”

“And as my friend?” Vandar asked Kraeyl. “What is your counsel?”

“Survive at any cost,” he said, rage spiking every word, “in this world into which we have been thrust and from which we cannot escape.”

The draining, Vandar knew, would grow harder to control. A sub D blood would grant him perhaps a year’s reprieve. With red gold brimming through her veins, Sky Jordan was all that stood between the Lord of the Dominion and a death sentence.

Chapter Two

Her hand was on the door to the lobby when Julian said, “Sky.”

She turned.

“Don’t go to the park alone. If you don’t call me, call someone else.”

Standing on the bottom step, one hand on the iron rail, Julian had a quiet intensity about him, like a warrior who would fight to the death to protect whatever he claimed for his own. “In between looking at flowers,” Sky said, pulling the door open, “you better be thinking up answers.”

Upstairs, Sky unlocked the door to her fourth-floor apartment, tossed her tablet on her desk, and hurried to the window. Julian was gone. She let down the blinds, shut the blackout curtains, then pulled out her phone. Three e-mails from her editor, one of them reminding her of a deadline in two days for a new Fang Killer story. Sky had nothing new. Not one thing.

Going to her desk in the living room, she sank down in her office chair and leaned back until metal creaked. She’d gone to the park tonight hoping to get a feel for the killer, or for the place itself, and maybe come up with an angle. Closing her eyes, she sketched Julian. Sky did this after a tough interview when she couldn’t figure out a way into the story.

Julian was over six feet tall, big-muscled, and olive-skinned. His black hair had been pulled back into a leather tie. He wore an ankle-length duster that was faded lighter than black, supple. It moved with him in a strange way. It was either weighted, like curtains, or it was lined with something heavy. His jeans, faded beyond ancient, clung to legs built like columns. Full lips, deep brown eyes, and angled cheekbones gave his face an exotic, almost Persian look. They called it Iran now, but there was something about Julian, as if he came from an older place, an older time.

The strangest thing had happened in the park. The way he’d come out of the trees tonight, Julian had scared the life out of Sky. But for a moment she’d been almost overcome by a raging desire to knock him to the ground and ride him hard. How crazy was that?

Very crazy
, she told herself and tried to push the lingering feelings away. One look was enough to know Julian was a dangerous man. Sky had a life to live, a career to build, and…his eyes were a warm invitation to forget all that and maybe—

Sky sat up with a start. She’d heard something just outside her door. Or had she been falling asleep? She held her breath, listened. Nothing.

Oh hell. This was getting her nowhere.

She turned her mind to the killings.

She’d stopped by a few hospitals and hijacked her night-shift contacts into coffee.
No one just sits still and gets exsanguinated
, Franklin, one of her doctor sources, had told her. Losing that much blood meant a deep cut somewhere—the abdominal aorta, vertically slashed wrists. There weren’t any cuts on the corpses. They were so fresh, rigor mortis had barely set in. And where the hell was the mess? Whatever happened had been fast. There was no sedative found in the tissues.
So
, Franklin had finished,
what you’ve got is a guy who knows how to make people sit still so he can drain them dry through self-sealing microscopic holes.

In other words, an impossible crime. She went to the window and raised the blinds. Dawn ate at the gray edges of the city’s darkness. Day was frighteningly deceptive, a cruel lie, full of sunshine that hid death in dim corners. Sky had gotten the worst news of her life on a bright sunny afternoon.

She turned her back on the coming daylight and wandered back to her desk. What had Julian said? His words came back to her: “
I’m hunting him, just like you are
.” Hunting? That was a strange way to say it. No. It was a good way. A headline way. She booted up her laptop and settled into the scarred leather chair. Hours later, when yellow light seeped through the seam of her blackout curtains, she had half a story finished. It was called “Citizen Hunts Fang Killer.” Time to hit the shower.

Afterward, she set her phone on silent ring, extra-loud alarm. Her rent was discounted because her bedroom had no windows. She closed her bedroom door and slid between crisp, cool sheets. How did Julian know Mace and a Taser were too slow? Since this whole Fang Killer thing started, he was the only one Sky had talked to who acted like he knew exactly what was going on. To finish the story she’d begun, she had to get more from him.

Damn! She’d almost forgotten. It had been three days since her last text to her brother. She grabbed her phone and sent him a message. It was only two letters,
OK
. She dropped the phone on the nightstand and turned over.

Before sleep spiraled her down to dreams, Sky thought about the walk home this morning. Julian’s footsteps had faded, and she’d thought she was alone. She’d turned to make sure he was still there, and she could swear that—no. That was impossible. Tonight she’d make sure she took a hard look at Julian in moonlight.

Chapter Three

The man’s intent gaze never left Sky. He murmured promises in candlelight, reached for her, and their lips nearly met, but thunder rolled and…

Sky turned over and shut off her alarm.

By the time she’d dressed and answered e-mails, it was after midnight. She was about to call the number in her notebook when she thought better of it. She didn’t know anything about Julian, but he’d promised to answer two questions. If she asked the right ones, she could have enough to finish her article and meet tomorrow’s deadline. But what if her call woke him up?

She smiled at the thought. Julian’s voice was hoarse, sexy. Hearing his voice full of sleep and even deeper wouldn’t be so bad. She lost her smile. Well, it wouldn’t be so bad till he told her to call at a sane hour and backed out of meeting her.

Thinking about what to do, Sky went to the window. Through the parted curtains and slitted blinds, she barely made out a vague manlike shape across the street. It was the third time this week.

Strange men following her was part of her job. When she set up a meeting, it was standard for the kind of men she interviewed to have her followed. They had to make sure she was just a reporter, not a reporter working with the cops. Of the three men on her calendar for the next two months—an ex-drug dealer, a former white slaver, a local politician—the man standing just beyond the streetlight’s halo could work for any of them. But she had an off feeling about him.

She decided to go to Aunt Millie’s, a nearby diner, and call Julian from there. On the way, she’d see if this guy was following her or what. She slid her notebook into the pocket of her jeans, put her tablet in her backpack, grabbed her keys, locked up, and took the back stairs. Her phone was in her hand, her Taser in the other. She could dial 9-1-1 with a touch.

Her sneakers were a whisper on the sidewalk in the quiet night. She listened but heard no footsteps behind her. By the time the diner came up on her left, she was convinced she was alone. She turned in. If heaven were an all-night diner, it would smell like Aunt Millie’s, homemade blueberry pie and coffee brewed so strong it would wake the long dead.

She snagged a booth by the window, then dialed the number from her notebook. She was looking out the window, waiting for Julian to pick up, when the man whose face she’d vaguely seen over the last couple nights went by. He turned to Sky and gave her a grin that didn’t touch the eerie glow in his violet eyes.