Darkness Comes (5 page)

“The hell with that,” Gus grumbled, shoving the doctor’s protesting arm away and helping Mal to her feet. “We’re signing her out on her own recognizance.”

Turning to face her, he lowered his voice, “Do you have a purse?”

She shook her head no. “I don’t know what happened to it. I think I might have dropped it at some point. And my car is still at the mall.”

“We’ll worry about the car later,” he said, helping her off the bed.

Malorie held onto her father’s arm as her knees tried to buckle beneath her. She was still so weak and her muscles ached but she was determined to ignore the pain; she’d take some ibuprofen when she got home. Leaning into her father, using his strength, she let him take the lead.

“Sir!” The doctor protested in vain as Gus pushed past him, ignoring the threats the doctor was issuing. They couldn’t keep her there against her will, it didn’t matter if she needed help to walk and she still felt a little woozy. Very woozy. She knew she would be a hell of a lot safer in her own home, where she knew wards were in place to keep the vamps out. Where she knew those around her weren’t marked by and controlled by vamps.

Glancing around at the other bite victims, she realized that they were all watching her, awe filling their pale faces. Hushed voices whispered about her as hands slowly, reverently, reached out and touched her; her arm, her face, her hair. Fingers trailed over her skin and a shudder made its way through her body. She moved closer to her father and felt his arm tighten around her shoulders. Why were all of the bite victims acting so strange?

Tilting her head back, she saw the grim line of his mouth as he purposefully stared straight ahead, ignoring the hands, the people lining the hallways. “Father?”

“Hush, Mal,” he said through barely parted lips. “Let’s just get you home.”

Behind them she heard orders being given to hold them until security arrived. She could hear the shuffling of carts and the squeak of boots moving towards them. Without turning around, her father quickened the pace. He took more and more of her weight as she struggled to keep up. Under normal circumstances they were fairly evenly matched.

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.”