Darkness Comes Page 4

  Her body protested having to move at all but she knew she had to keep moving, knew they had to get out of there before something really bad happened. A soft whimper escaped as her head pounded with each step they took. “I’m so tired, father.”

  “You can rest when we get in the truck,” Gus offered gruffly, tightening his grip around her waist. There was barely any time to look back and see how close security was; she was just grateful that there were so many bodies between them and their pursuers, especially since with the exit just ahead.

  Risking a peak over her shoulder, she saw that the vamp-wannabes were now preventing the authorities from reaching them. There was something quite disconcerting about that. Was someone controlling them? But that didn’t make any sense; if someone was controlling them, wouldn’t they try to keep her there? And she vaguely remembered that no one had been marked. Maybe the kids were acting of their own volition.

  No, she was pretty sure that wasn’t even possible. Was it? Damn, her head was so muddled. With a groan she realized that she still had too much blood missing to think clearly. Pushing through the doors and taking a deep breath of the night air, Malorie almost wept in relief; they were almost to the truck, almost free. She pressed her teeth together, pursing her lips, “What if they follow us?”

  Her father chuckled, hugging her with an added squeeze, “Don’t worry, Mal; I’ll make sure nothing happens to you.”

  Lowering her chin, she almost smiled at the comment; he had always been her rock. Thank God he was around; if not for him, Toby would not have a mother right now. The thought of leaving her son behind sent a shard of white hot guilt and pain through her; she would have died in a monster’s arms and not cared about orphaning her beautiful son. A sob escaped from her taut chest, “I’m so sorry, father.”

  “None of that,” he grumbled, opening the passenger-side door of their truck and pushing her in. Closing the door, he made his way around to the other side. Climbing in, he leaned forward to check and see if anyone was close enough to get a license plate number, grateful to find that no one had made it out of the building yet. Still, they were going to have to make a run for it sooner than they expected. “You buckled in, Mal?”

  Her head lolled forward and he tsked, reaching across her body and buckling her in. Pressing a kiss to her forehead, he murmured, “Get some rest, Mal; we’ll get home soon enough.”

  “Hmm,” she murmured, her eyes already closed as the memories of the last few hours swirled through her head.

  “After you’ve had some rest, we have to talk,” Gus practically growled, making her cringe; she knew that she was in for a long, heated lecture.

  Chapter 3

  Malorie startled awake, her arm tingling and her head aching. She felt as if she hadn’t had anything to drink in days, her throat dry and parched. She started to lift her arm but something was attached to it and she felt the sharp stab as a needle shifted beneath her skin. As she hissed in a breath, her father reached over and turned on a low light. Immediately, she saw the tube of blood traveling from his arm into hers, replenishing the missing blood. Arching a brow, she looked up at Gus.

  “We need you to be in tip top shape, Mal,” he answered roughly. “We have no idea what’s coming and we might have to make a run for it.”

  She had lost count of the number of times they had moved; twenty eight? Thirty? She had been the one who insisted on staying in one place for a while, who had grown complacent and lowered her guard. The lecture Gus was going to be giving her was going to blister her ears and her stomach quelled in trepidation. Being yelled at by her father, especially for something so… stupid, was going to be humiliating. Without laying into her yet, he handed her a glass of orange juice, “Drink this; it will help.”

  She drank it down without question, the citrus flavor bursting on her tongue and filling her senses with liquid sunshine. Her eyes closed in a moment of pure pleasure, of having her thirst finally quenched and giving her a moment to collect herself before getting soundly scolded. As his blood flowed into her veins, she studied this man, her father, and it was as if he were a stranger. She had never seen Gus looking so grim and resigned. She searched his face but he refused to meet her questing eyes and after a long, excruciating silence, he rumbled, “We have to talk.”

  Oh, God; she hated it when she disappointed her him. Her stomach was in knots but she refused to display any weakness. Straightening her spine and squaring her shoulders as much as possible while lying down on, she faced him. “Father….”

  “Tell me what happened, Malorie,” he interrupted sternly, making her swallow back an apology. He licked his lips and for a long moment looked everywhere else but at her. He took a deep breath and finally met her gaze. In that moment, she wished that he had continued to avoid her eyes; his own held so much despair and disappointment, she didn’t know if she could bear it.

  Her mind raced frantically to figure out what to say and how to say it. Perhaps it was best to start at the beginning and hope a rational explanation presented itself as she talked. Slowly, holding her father’s stern eyes, she explained, “I was at the mall….”

  “Yes, I know that,” his lips curved in a half smile that he quickly quashed. “How did you manage to get bit?”

  Chewing on her lower lip, she tried to figure that one out herself but still hadn’t come to any conclusions. “Well, the vamps swooped in, reeking of death, but they didn’t pay me the least amount of attention.” With a perplexed scowl, she added, “In fact, they actually avoided me.”

  She hadn’t thought about it at the time because everything had happened so quickly. Now that she was thinking about it, trying to pinpoint the moment it all went to hell, she could remember seeing a few of the vamps look at her and then literally cringe away, almost as if they feared her, which was ridiculous. They were vampires, already dead and afraid of nothing….

  Malorie was starting to get lost on that train of thought when her father cleared his throat, forcing her back to the present. Defensively, she added, “It was just weird, is all.”

  “Malorie,” he interrupted, a hint of warning in his voice.

  Wrinkling her nose at him, she continued where she left off, “Suddenly, this… guy appeared and he simply burned with life and I knew that he couldn’t be a vamp, despite his fangs and his associations with vampires.”

  Gus inhaled sharply and as she watched, the color seemed to drain from his face. Swallowing thickly, he said gruffly, “Go on.”

  Malorie felt her cheeks warm with self-conscious color, “I have never seen such life, father, and I am ashamed to admit that because I was, well, mesmerized I never noticed the second one at all. His arm was around my waist and his fangs were at my neck before I even knew what happened.”

  “Why didn’t you fight back?” he asked grimly, his body tense.

  “I don’t know.” She lifted her shoulders, suddenly finding the fringe of her blanket the most fascinating thing in the world. “He was so… warm and when he bit be, nothing else mattered.” Willing him to understand the depth of her failure, she added, “Nothing at all.”

  He was silent for a long moment, digesting her words. Emotions played over his usually non-expressive face and Malorie was apprehensive to hear his thoughts. Licking his lips, he slowly clarified, “He was warm and you had no resistance.”

  At her nod, he swore viciously and started to stand up. The needle pulled at her arm and she hissed in pain, causing Gus to remain in his seat, agitated with nowhere to go. Jerking his free hand through his hair, he swore again, “Damn.”

  “What is it?” Malorie asked in a hushed voice, concerned and confused. “Is it really bad?”

  “You have no idea,” he rumbled gravely, his face twisted sorrowfully as he looked at her, his eyes stormy and his jaw clenched. His abnormal behavior was making her stomach roil and her palms sweat; he was scaring her and she wasn’t sure she wanted to know why. Pushing his thumb and middle fingers into his eye sockets, he suddenly appeared very
tired and worn out; an old fighter who had seen it all and was being forced out of retirement to face something new.

  Reaching out her hand, she whispered, “Father?”

  “I’m sorry, Malorie,” he rasped softly, taking the offered hand in his and pressing it against his cheek and squeezing his eyes closed. Swallowing thickly, he repeated, “God, I am so sorry; how can you ever forgive me?”

  She had been prepared for a harsh condemnation; she wasn’t prepared for this, a confession of her father’s sins. Hesitatingly, her world spinning in this new and unexpected direction, she asked, “Why? What have you done that needs forgiving?”

  “There’s so much that I need to tell you, so much that you need to know, about you, about me; but I don’t know where to begin,” he lamented, busying himself with pulling the needles out of their arms and covering the puncture wounds with band aids. As good as she was feeling, her stomach was in knots over what her father was telling her. “I don’t know if you’ll understand.”

  “Tell me,” she whispered when he didn’t speak for uncomfortably long moments. Her stomach was clenching inside of her and she didn’t want to hear what her father had to tell her, not when it made him look so wrecked.

  “We’re not like other people, Mal,” he said softly, his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped together between his legs. It was obvious that whatever he had to say was difficult. It was unfortunate that her brain was so muzzy, still trying to wrap itself around this new course Gus was traveling. What did he mean they weren’t like other people? Of course they weren’t; they had spent their lives fighting mythical monsters that weren’t actually myth.

  “Of course we’re not,” she concurred, nodding her head in assertion. “We continue to fight even as everyone else buys into the vampire lies.”

  “That’s not what I mean.” He shook his head in obvious frustration, his lips thinning and his nostrils flaring as he contemplated his next words.

  When he didn’t continue, with her thoughts crashing against brick walls of ignorance, Mal asked, “What do you mean, then?”

  “Do you remember the story I told you?” he asked, frowning. “About one of our ancestors escaping a village that had been destroyed by vamps almost four hundred and fifty years ago.”

  She nodded slowly, “I do.”

  Gus nodded his head slowly, ruefully. Laughing without humor, he scrubbed his hands through his short hair. She could see the torment in his face as he tried to explain, how difficult it was for him to find the words. “In order for you to understand, you must know that it was my father – your grandfather – who was the man who escaped that village. With me when I was but an infant.”

  Malorie stared at her father for a long moment, confusion on her face over that fantastical bombshell her father just dropped. “What?”

  “The Hunters have very long lives,” Gus said understatedly. “Unusually long lives.”

  Melanie’s mouth dropped open and she would have slumped in her bed if she wasn’t already slumped about as far as she could slump. “You’re four hundred and fifty years old?”

  “Something like that,” he nodded his head, his eyes pleading with hers. Sucking in a breath, making a soft hissing sound, he said, “But my age doesn’t matter. The man who bit you is… I fear it was an Aradian, and they are the very thing my father wished to escape from.”

  “An…an Aradian?” She was even more confused and overwhelmed with what her father was telling her. She wasn’t sure where to start examining the information, what it meant for her and Toby. She had never even heard of these Aradians before but if they were so dangerous, why had her father never told her about them? “What the fuck is that?”

  “They are a race of very powerful… beings descended from gods or aliens or something that need our kind,” Gus answered, not very helpfully. Gods or aliens? And Malorie thought the existence of vampires was fucked up. “They use our kind and discard us at whim and what you need to know is that you, Toby and I are most likely the last of our kind and the Aradians would be very eager to learn of our existence; of your existence.”

  “Why?” she asked in breathless anticipation. “What are we?”

  He laughed bitterly, his eyes shimmering with frustration and anger. “I don’t know; my father never explained that; he only told me to keep away from Aradians and so I have; for over four hundred and fifty years I have done as he told me.” She watched as he deliberated silently for a few moments, trying to get his emotions under control. It was apparent that there was much he was leaving out, but perhaps there was much he didn’t know. Finally, he took a deep breath, and met her eyes. “It had to have been an Aradian that bit you; it’s the only explanation that makes sense.”

  “Thank God,” Mal’s mumbled words obviously surprising her father. He cocked his head to the side and looked at her until she sighed, feeling the color stain her cheeks as she admitted, “Thank God he wasn’t a vampire.”

  “I don’t know if an Aradian bite is any better,” he scowled, his thoughts contorting his handsome face. “I should have told you, warned you, but I had never seen one, I didn’t understand. In truth, I figured they were more myth than reality until….”

  He fell silent for a long time, letting his words play in Malorie’s head. She knew that he was thinking about the incident at the mall, about her getting bit. “Tell me what your father told you.”

  “Our blood is very potent to an Aradian and because we replenish it so quickly, they can feast on us for long, long periods of time….

  “I hate that bastard for not preparing me,” Gus spat out with some venom, ignoring the bewilderment coloring Mal’s face. “My father knew what the Aradians were, how they enslaved our kind for their own purposes, their own pleasure. He told me just enough to hate them but not enough to resist them. He was an angry and bitter man, Malorie; his perception of the Aradians are based on the fact that he had fallen in love with a woman and she gave birth to his child.”

  “You,” Mal reiterated, her head spinning with all of this. No wonder why Gus didn’t look much older than she did; if he was nearly five hundred years old, there was some serious power in his blood, his genetics. Did she share the same long life expectancy? Was her grandfather still alive? There were so many questions and she had the feeling that her father didn’t know the answers to them any more than she did.

  He nodded again. “Yes. He had hoped she would run away with him before she was chosen to be a… consort to one of the Aradians. But she laughed at him, telling him that it was her duty, her honor, to consort with their masters, that he was a fool to think otherwise. He was crushed, especially when the ceremony was performed and he had to… watch her with an Aradian….”

  Mal gasped, knowing what her father was going to say. “No.”

  “Yes,” he grimaced. “Father explained when one of our females was ready she would be given to an Aradian male during a festival of sorts. The female would be cleansed and pampered before being laid upon an alter where the chosen Aradian would lie with her, taking her and using her body and drinking her blood throughout the night in front of the entire village. She would bear his mark until he had his fill and then she’d be given to a different Aradian. If she survived.

  “They hosted many other festivals throughout the year as well,” Gus continued, lost in the story and oblivious to Mal’s difficulty in grasping everything he was telling her. “Our men were forced to fuck as many women – human women – as they could, in the hopes of producing more of our kind.

  “Father spoke of women being brought in by the dozens since many children were born but only a few had our… unique abilities. And females, the most highly desired by the Aradians, were even more rare; only a handful over many, many years. Several Aradians would be at the festivals, arousing our men and women into states of sexual frenzy, until it devolved into a gluttony of carnal excess,” Gus recited from memory, almost by rote, as if he had heard the stories many times and the words didn’t have any mea
ning. Until now. “Our people had no choice.”

  “I don’t think it was too much of a chore for them,” Malorie admitted softly, her fingers grazing the bandage on her neck. Forcing herself to meet her father’s eyes, she continued, “When the… Aradian took me in his arms I had no resistance and I have trained my entire life to destroy vampires; I would have given up anything to remain in his arms.”

  Grief twisted his features as he looked at her, but before he could say anything that might condemn her for a fool, she shook her head, “Finish the story; how did he escape?”

  “He managed to get out during one of these orgies,” Gus managed. “He took his son; he took me, and turned his back on his privileged life as an Aradian slave. Father had been grateful that I had been a son and not a daughter; had I been a girl, they never would have let me go.”

  Mal’s brows pulled together, trying desperately to make sense of her father’s tale. “But then how did he know the village had been destroyed if he escaped before it happened?”

  Gus huffed out a harsh laugh. “It was too difficult to make it on his own and he returned a few months later. Only, there was nothing left but the dead bodies of the men and women slaughtered by the vamps. It had been only a few hours after the massacre and he found the woman he loved – my mother – with her belly cut open and a child removed. He never knew whether the child lived or died, or who the father was; if he had been the father. ”

  “Oh, God,” Mal groaned, picturing the scene in her head; seeing the black-haired Aradian in the middle of it, his shirt soaked in blood as he held a small, newly born baby to his chest, his piercing cry alerting the world to his presence. She could smell the stench of burning flesh and blood and she almost gagged. But was this a memory of what had happened or was it only in her head?

  “My father went into hiding, managing to make his way aboard a ship heading for the New World,” Gus said, still oblivious to the anxiety nibbling at the edges of Malorie’s thoughts. “He taught me everything he knew and trained me to be a warrior, just as I’ve taught you.”