Stalking Darkness (2 page)

“Whore
much?” Julie said with a roll of her eyes.

“I like
sweet.” Nigel said running a finger across the bridge of Cadence’s shoulder
causing an unexpected shiver of excitement to dance upon her skin.

“Yes, he
has been known to have a sweet tooth.” Anton agreed placing a hand beneath the
table on her thigh.

Cadence
was not usually the type to cozy up to a complete strange, or two for that
matter, but something about all this seemed different. Like a piece of her
favorite cake sitting on a plate in front of her while on a diet, she found
herself dying to take a big bite.

“Well I
hope one of you know how to dance.” She found herself saying with a very
uncharacteristic purr. Tonight was the last night as a college student, time to
live a little.
 

****

The
next three hours turned it to a blur of drinks, slow dances and long seductive
kisses. At every moment and every turn, Cadence found herself pulled tight
against either Anton or Nigel.
 
It seemed
neither felt threatened or jealous, in fact, the pair seemed to feed off one
another, each raising the bar a bit with each touch, caress or kiss. Never
before would Cadence have thought to spend a night at the beck and pleasure of
two men such as this, or had she felt so desired. It was as though she no
longer possessed the ability to control her darkest desire. As the band cranked
out the final tune and the bar announced last call, both men moved in,
sandwiching her between their hard bodies.
 

“The
party doesn’t have end here,” Anton whispered hotly against her mouth as his
partner pressed his lips to the curve of her shoulder. “You and your friends
should come back to our penthouse for the night.”

“I’ll
have Robert pull the vehicle around and pick us all up in front,” Nigel said,
stepping back and giving her a hard slap across the ass before fading into the
crowd.

“I
don’t know if I should,” Cadence said in a breathless whisper. “We have
graduation tomorrow.”

“Hush, my sweet Candy.
I promise Nigel and I will be gentle, at first, and
give you a night like you could never imagine in that pretty little mind of yours.”

She
intended to argue the point once more, but a long gaze into his blue eyes and a
slow sensual brush of his lips caused her head to spin, and before she could
form a tangible word, she was seated inside the dark SUV with yet another drink
in her hand.

“Oh my
god, Candy, can you believe how hot all these guys are?” Julie said, downing
her own glass of a dark amber colored liquid.
 

“I
really don’t think we should be here,” Cadence said as her mind began to clear
from the haze she presumed to be from the alcohol.

As
though her words sparked a fire under their asses, Nigel and Anton moved in
tight, one stroking her hair as the other took her wrist and raised the glass
to her lips. The mixture was sweet at first, turning harsh and almost metallic
tasting as it slid down her throat. Her head began to swim once again, her body
growing hot and wanton.
 
Blurry–eyed, she
looked at the glass still in her hand. Something was wrong.
 

Cadence
felt as though she were watching through someone else’s eyes as the car came to
a stop in a secluded underground parking garage and she stepped out. A strong
arm wrapped about her waist to keep her upright.
 
Guided to the awaiting elevator, they shot
straight up to the highest floor, opening on an elaborately decorated room
worthy of someone of high influence.

The
next hours were a haze of decadence, alcohol, and indulgence unlike anything
she’d ever been a party too. In every corner of the room were people in various
stages of undress, the soft mews of their pleasure mixing with the steady beat
of the music filling the
air.
Somewhere in the
madness, Cadence’s shirt lay discarded, left forgotten on the floor. Two sets
of lips pressed tight to her bare skin, each echoing promises of sexual
passions untasted before, if she would only say she accepted the offering. Her
inside were molten, pushed by growing desire. Yet still there existed a
hesitation. What was it they offered, and why did her ability to control her
cravings and think clearly escape her?

“We
should go to the back room,” Anton’s voice said in her ear.

Her
body responded despite her mind’s efforts to override the idea. Standing, the
room spun, and she felt her body begin to twist to match. Before Cadence could
fall far, she felt herself go airborne until she landed overtop a broad
shoulder. Nigel toted her toward the master bedroom; Anton smiled as he tagged
behind a step. Cadence felt as though she were floating across the hotel room
until the moment he flipped her onto the oversized mattress.

Cadence
was unsure when or how her jeans and panties ended up tossed forgotten in a
dark corner. What she did know was that someone—Anton, she thought—had pulled
both her knees up and over a broad set of shoulders and his lips pressed a
moist trail along her inner thighs.
 
She
watched through hooded eyes as Nigel smiled down at her before unzipping his
own trousers and dropping them down until he stood there stroking his swollen
cock.
 

Sudden
pain shot through her hips and thighs as though her flesh was being torn from
her body. As she screamed out, she swore she heard the sound of Nigel laughing.
Tear stung her hazy eyes while the room spun and darkness swallowed her.

Chapter Two

Cadence
did her best to open her eyes as the sounds of screams and chaos echoed all
around her. Her head still felt clouded, and her body weighed down as though a
million pounds lay upon it. Why couldn’t she wake up, and why did her insides
feel on fire? Straining to concentrate, she finally was able to suppress the
pounding in her head enough to comprehend the conversation happening nearby.

“What
about our sweet Candy?” a voice she recognized as Nigel said in the darkness.

“Why
want for someone who cannot willingly pleasure you as completely as I can? Come,
let me show you and your brother what skills I have to satisfy you.”
  

Hearing
Julie, Cadence struggled in vain to open her eyes to shake the darkness which
held her.

“Not
now, whore,” Anton said from somewhere to the other side of the room. “We need
to get away from here before the hunters arrive. Shriver has the cars ready.
Leave the other—she is too weak for the change.”

Change?
What did they mean by change? The thought no sooner formed
in her mind than extreme pain ripped through her. Cadence’s body convulsed,
jerking until she fell to the floor in a heap of blood, vomit and trembling
flesh.

****

Gavin
Albright moved through the penthouse, stealthily inspecting every corner just
as the other four members of his team did. So far, the search had revealed
nothing but three dead co-eds, a lot of blood and some empty alcohol bottles.
It was a scene similar to a dozen others they’d been on in a dozen nameless
small college towns. The vampire bastards rolled into town, scoped out the
local hot spots, and coaxed a group of college kids to a party they promised to
be a killer. Unfortunately, it was not a play on words, and by the time the
hunters arrived most if not all of the students would be nothing more than
another group of toe tags with cause of death listed as anything from alcohol
poisoning to suicide.
 
It wasn’t as if they
could list fucked and sucked to death on the official paperwork.

Clearing
all but the last room, Gavin made a silent gesture that signaled the others to
be ready when he kicked open the off-white door to the master bedroom. Usually
it was the most gruesome location and where the leaders of the particular group
they tracked took their sport. With a single blow from his size twelve combat
boot, the door shook on its flimsy hinges and fell to the floor. Swinging the
beam of his flashlight attached to the muzzle of his assault weapon around the
room, he saw a single massive bed, its shredded and bloody sheets hanging half
off the mattress, and a red trail of blood smeared across the carpet toward
another door standing partly open. He assumed that it lead to the adjoining
master bath. Moving toward that area at a fast pace, Gavin spun, weapon ready, into
the doorway. Lying face down on the gray tile of the room was the nude body of
a woman. Blood coated her shoulder, neck thighs and buttocks, oozing from the
deep gashes and bite marks that covered her. She’d been used roughly, as was
their usual trademark, however as Gavin saw the slightest twitch of the fingers
of her hand he knew she’d been left alive. Well, at least almost alive. He
doubted she would survive what came next. Few did.

Gavin
signaled to the others that the coast was clear, and the entire group relaxed
slightly. They would need to clean the scene up, dispose of the bodies, and
figure out where to put the sole survivor of this mess until she either kicked
the bucket with her friends or changed into the very thing they hunted.
Grabbing a large bath sheet from a nearby shelf, Gavin used it to wrap the shapely
female before picking her up into his arms. Her body was ice cold, a product of
the change, and her breath came in shallow rasping breaths. She was close to
one outcome or another. Her fate would be decided within the next twenty-four
hours. It was something he’d not been prepared for. This particular group of
vampires never left business unfinished, which said they’d been there only
about an hour earlier.
 
Muttering a low curse,
he carried her out into the main room and toward the entry. He had no choice
but to place her in the small cage in the rear of his vehicle. She was too
close, and all the areas she could be safely confined were too far away. At
least if he ended up having to kill the girl, she would be close at hand.

“What
are you planning to do with her?” Drake, his second in command and hand-to-hand
combat specialist, asked as he pushed the button which called the private
elevator to take him from the pent house directly to the parking garage.

“I’m
going to put her in Phynix’s pen until she dies or changes,” Gavin told him as
a high-pitched ping signaled the arrival of his transportation. Phynix was the
team’s pit-bull boxer mix. Usually a constant on missions such as this, the
animal was currently back at the team’s temporary headquarters nursing a puncture
wound to his hind quarters from their last operation.

“And if
she changes, then what?”

“Depends.”
Gavin knew Drake hated the idea, but someone gave each of
them a chance at redemption when they simply could have killed them off.
 
Who was he not to give her the same
opportunity? If she changed and became like those they hunted, he’d be the
first to bury a stake into her black heart. Until then, they could only wait
and see Gavin thought perhaps the victims true self was the ultimate decision
maker.
A
individual who believed in doing good in
their human life refused the darkness inside them while others become the
disciple of evil upon reawakening.

Shifting
her so he could pull the keys from his pocket, he clicked the button which
would auto-open the rear tailgate. Setting her as gently as he could, he
secured the woman in the cage and fastened the door.

His
team slowly rejoined him, each stowing the larger weapon they’d carried and
giving the woman curled in the kennel a look before climbing into the dark SUV
for the trip back to warehouse that they would be packing up over the next day.
They never spent more than a week or two at any given location. Instead, they
tracked their prey across the miles of map dots and stateliness in a vain
attempt to catch up before the next group of college kids made the front page
of the local paper for seemingly perishing in a devastating car crash or fiery
blaze. Arrangements were already in place for this last group of casualties to
die as the result of a local garage explosion due to illicit drug making. Gavin
hated to ruin the reputation of the victims; however, there were only so many
body-destroying car crashes or dorm fires before someone noted a pattern.

Glancing
in his rear view mirror, Gavin surveyed his team. Disappointment, anger and
wariness stared back at him. They’d been too long after this group of
bloodsuckers and always arrived hours too late.

Raven
Whitefeather sat directly behind him. The man was a full-blooded Cherokee who wore
his long, dark hair in his usual braid and stared out the side window deep in
thought. He’d been with Gavin a little over ten years now, joining a short two
years after a werewolf attack devastated dozens of his fellow reservation
members. Raven had been one of only two survivors at the time, and was later
forced to kill his own brother to protect those who remained in the small
community.
 
The tanned six-foot male also
had a sort of second sight that the team could thank for saving their asses on
more than one occasion.

 
Beside him sat Gavin’s wingman, Drake Knight,
the onetime Special Forces soldier and a power to be reckoned with.
 
Drake joined the team around the same time as
Gavin. His was a story of tragedy and vengeance. Shortly after returning from
his last tour in Afghanistan, he, his wife and their thirteen-month-old son
were attacked by a group of vampires while returning home from a military
family function. The bastards made him watch both die before using him up and
leaving Drake for dead. Much to their surprise, he’d survived. The six-four soldier
managed to take out the entire vampire clan responsible in a single attack.