Darkness Comes (18 page)

“I wish I could say I was sorry but I cannot,” he murmured, softly, candidly. His elegant fingers brushed a strand of hair from her face and she looked up at him from beneath her lashes, needing to draw in her breath at the intent look in his green eyes. Cupping her cheek in his warm hand, he brushed his thumb over her lips, making them tingle in response. “Because if he were still alive, I would still lay claim to you; you know that, correct?”

She shook her head no, unable to stop the telling movement. Just because she wanted to trust him didn’t mean that she could; in the end, after everything was said and done, it might all just be a game to him. He must have seen her doubt for he smiled ruefully and sat back, releasing her from his hold. For now. If he decided he no longer wanted her, she would have no reason to stay.

Her thoughts returned to her son and the other Aradians, Aradians who would not be happy to learn Breeders were not as extinct as they may have liked. Her eyes automatically went to Toby as he lay on the grass, superimposing the image from the Breeder village massacre. There had been no hesitation when the vampires slaughtered the entire village; bodies of all ages had littered the ground. Feeling her heart pick up speed in her chest, she started to stand up, needing to get out of there, needing to protect Toby, to keep him safe. “Are they a threat?”

His hand wrapped around her arm, stopping her from running off. “The Aradians who lost a great many vampires still suffer, Malorie; there’s not much of a threat from any of them.”

She wanted to believe him, but it was difficult. Cold premonition snaked through her skin, freezing her to the bones. They needed to get out of there; escape before she… before she…. Feryn’s hand slid down her arm and captured her hand, holding her in place, “Malorie, relax; I’ll keep you safe.”

Her smiled quavered as she looked at him, “You keep saying that but you brought us here; you exposed us to the rest of your kind. And Toby’s just a little boy; he would make such an easy target.”

“I won’t let anything happen to him,” he vowed solemnly, holding her eyes and not blinking. He was so damned sincere and yet she couldn’t trust him. What if he was lying to her about what he wanted, and she was just a pawn in a game she had no hope of understanding. There was so little she knew about… all of it and despite her best efforts, her years of training, everything was undermined by the connection she had had to him since she was sixteen. It alarmed her. “You have my word, Malorie.”

Her face twisted with dark humor, desperate to hold on to her independence for just a little while longer, willing him to understand her reluctance. “Until a few days ago, I didn’t even know you existed; I thought you were a creation of my subconscious mind trying to make sense of the chaos that surrounded me. I still don’t know if I can trust you, if you’re not just telling me what I need to hear in order for you to get what you want. I don’t know if you’ll discard me when I’ve served my purpose….”

“Never,” he snarled vehemently. Taking her face in his hands, he vowed, “I’m never going to discard you; they could chain me up and I would claw my way free to fight and protect you.”

Her jaw went slack at the passion of his voice, the intensity of his words. As if embarrassed by the strength of his reaction, he sat back and turned away from her before she could even think of a reply, even as she felt something within her shift, as she felt the fear melt away. He spoke without looking at her, “I would do anything to protect you, Malorie; you and your son. You just have to let me.”

Oh, God; did she dare?

Pulling her legs up to her chest and wrapping her arms around her knees, she looked out across the vast, tropical waters. She never had a chance to escape. Peaking over her shoulder and studying the silent man behind her, she had to ask herself if she had even wanted to escape. There was something about Feryn that was at once familiar and exhilarating, as if she truly were created for him. But that flew against everything she had been taught; she didn’t believe in fate and destiny, not really. She just wanted peace, knowing peace only came when everything else was dead. Or else when she was dead.

But she could have happiness, at least for a little while, if she took a leap of faith….

Licking her lips, she wanted to understand the nature of the Aradians who give in to vampire making. “Are vamp creators more powerful?”

He glanced at her and the corned of his mouth quirked up in a wry smile, “You’re so curious, sweetheart; it’s very peculiar.”

“Why?” she sounded like a two year old to her own ears.

“Breeders didn’t spend a lot of time… talking,” he answered with amusement. “Nothing interested them but pleasuring us. And being pleasured in return, of course.”

Flames licked over Malorie’s skin as she clearly imagined what he meant by his words. Pressing the backs of her cooler fingers against her burning cheeks, she ignored her embarrassment and arched an eyebrow, “Are you not going to answer?”

With an amused look, he let out a long sigh but remained silent. When she continued to simply stare at him, waiting for an answer, he relaxed and nearly blinded her with his smile. Then he crossed his arms over his chest, his biceps flexing and pulling the material of his shirt taut. In return, she pursed her lips and cocked her head to the side, perversely enjoying the silent battle.

Conceding the battle after a few more moments, Feryn told her, “Initially vamp creators can be more powerful but dedicated Aradians, those who are devoted to the non-vampire path, can accrue incalculable power, Malorie, it just takes longer, a lot longer.

“Vampire creation is so easy, it’s seductive; it… lures the creator into a false sense of… righteousness. He feels invincible, and to some extent he is. But, as with anything that comes too easily, there is a dark side and vampire creators have a very dark side. If they lose their power, they lose everything; whereas an Aradian who chooses the more difficult path loses nothing.” He watched her as if to gauge her reaction. Fascinated, she nodded her head, encouraging him to continue. “It is immeasurably difficult and time consuming and there are no short cuts. All too often it feels as if you are not making any progress at all; and when there is a change, it is accompanied by tremendous pain.

“But with enough power and enough provocation, an untainted Aradian can do great and terrible things.”

“Like what?” she asked in a hushed voice, enthralled in spite of herself.

“Like take out vast numbers of vampires,” he grinned. But the smile faltered and sadness washed over him, enough so that Malorie could feel his agony. He looked out across the ocean but she doubted he was seeing the water and in a voice void of emotion, he breathed, “Thousands if the motivation is powerful enough.”

“How do you know it’s possible?” she asked quietly, not wanting to interrupt his thoughts but not able to believe something so unbelievable. How could one Aradian, no matter how powerful, destroy thousands of vampires on his own? From his memories, she knew that killing an Aradian destroyed its vampires, but she also knew that killing an Aradian was not allowed.

“I’ve done it,” he said softly, his throat working as he swallowed harshly, his lips curving upwards into a frozen smile. Malorie understood that smile; when the pain was so great, if you didn’t tell the story with a pathetic smile on your face, you would break down and cry and never be able to stop. It was the smile that kept the deepest, most painful, emptions at bay and made it possible to carry on when carrying on was the last thing one wanted to do.

Knowing that smile, she didn’t want to hear any more but she wasn’t going to stop him from speaking, especially if he needed to talk about it. Encouraging him without trying to push, she took his hand in hers and whispered, “How?”

“When my son… when my son was taken from me,” he choked out, giving her hand a squeeze and she had to catch her breath at the implication of his words. She hadn’t known…. “He had been working with a group of vampires belonging to Taella….” At her blank look, he added, “One of the Aradians who has a passion for vampires.” At her nod, he continued, “Varick had been working with them for several years, trying to have them show the other vampires that it wasn’t necessary to cause such carnage and destruction. He was considered the perfect emissary because he couldn’t create vampires at all.”

Malorie covered the sound of disbelief with her free hand but Feryn noticed and huffed a broken laugh, “It’s true; only first generation Breeder-born Aradians can apparently create vampires; our parents had too much… alien genetics and my son didn’t have enough.”

Was he admitting to being descendants of aliens or was he using the term in a vague manner, like incompatible DNA? She wasn’t sure if she even wanted to know, though it was surprisingly reassuring to hear that any children they had together wouldn’t contribute to the vampire escalations. If they had children….

She saw that he was struggling to get the words out and without hesitation she put her finger over her lips. Glancing over her shoulder, seeing that Toby was continuing to play with the plants, she looked back to Feryn, moistening her lips with the tip of her tongue. As he opened his mouth to speak, she murmured, “Share your blood with me.”

His eyes sparkled as he fought a smile, “I thought you were against vampire creation.”

She frowned, a little at a loss at his humor. She would never have expected it of him when she met him. It was bad enough that he was sinfully handsome and smelled like some sort of dark heaven; with his sense of humor, she had no defenses left. Sliding her fingers along the strong line of his jaw, she murmured, “I’m not asking you to make me a vampire; I’m asking you to share your blood.”

“Malorie,” he protested. His hand came up and covered hers, the pleasure of his touch almost making her forget her plan. But she wanted to know. “It’s not a good idea.”

“Trust me.” A faint smile curved her lips as she said the words. How remarkable it would be to have this powerful man trust her.

Holding her eyes for a long moment, he gently took her hand in his, bringing her wrist to his mouth. Moist heat warmed the delicate skin a heartbeat before there was a pinch of pain and then intense pleasure. She wanted to close her eyes but she was fascinated by the look of rapture on Feryn’s face as he drank her blood, his eyelids heavy. Her chest rose and fell with each rapid breath and it took all of her will power to breathe, “Stop.”

Slowly, he opened his eyes and she had to inhale sharply at the swirling depths of… of…
life
that danced within. Still holding her gaze, he brought his own wrist up to his mouth and bit down. Lost in the moment, she almost didn’t realize he had pressed his bleeding arm to hers. Memories and emotions rushed through her – his memories and emotions; too many to comprehend any of them. She let herself fall into them, concentrating on Varick. Her body slumped against his as she remembered and she felt his strong arms go around her before she was in his head, his memories.

The low lying fog swirled around him as he walked through the warm night, the smell of rain heavy in the air. He approached the old Victorian house with no small measure of loathing. It was like all of the other houses Taella’s vampires had set up in various college towns across the country, only this one had his son on the inside. As much as he loved Varick, he didn’t always understand what his son was thinking. And taking up residency amongst vampires was right up there at the top of crazy notions Varick had gotten stuck in his head.

The sounds of loud music and boisterous laughter spilled out of the open windows, making Feryn cringe; there were so many humans in there, so much temptation for the vampires. That was another thing he did not understand, this apparent death wish by so many humans. It seemed the entire race was on a collision course with self-induced extinction; why should he care whether or not one of the paths was to be a vampire’s dinner?

He had to turn to the side as he entered since a pair of drunken co-eds was in the process of mating right in the door way. Grinding his molars together, he made his way up the stairs, trying to ignore the flagrant sucking of blood and shameless couplings between the vampires and humans. He could only shake his head in antipathy as he saw a vampire use mind control to make the human puppets preform acts of such depravity, such debauchery; it could only come from the heads of a creature that had too much time and not enough worries. It was a toss-up to which group was responsible for any of it, human or vampire.

It gave him little comfort that the humans that were being fed upon, that had already been bled, looked at him with some reverence as he passed. With a long-suffering sigh, he pushed the bedroom door open and saw his son on the bed with a pack of females, all human. Varick was sucking at the neck of one female while another was bobbing her head between his thighs. Yet another stroked over his naked torso and a forth was kissing his throat.

Feryn remembered what it was like to be so young and couldn’t help but smile. “Don’t the vampires mind that you’re plundering their pets?”

“
Father!” he gasped, his cheeks turning red as he struggled to free himself from the mass of naked limbs and nubile bodies. As soon as he extracted himself, he stood before his father, his spine straight and his bearing proud, despite his lack of clothes. He had to discourage one or two of the girls but he did so as discretely and kindly as possible.

“
Come,” Feryn said, nodding his head towards the door to a private chamber. “Let us have a talk. I can wait until you’re dressed.”