When Darkness Hungers: A Shadow Keepers Novel (Shadow Keepers 5) (29 page)

Jonathan Marcus Worthington III met his first vampire when he was fifteen. Or so he thought. Turned out the chick was just some overgrown goth girl who liked his money.

He’d let her suck him off, then headed back to his dorm room at Dayton Prep, the New England boarding school where his parents had dumped him.

For years afterward, he hadn’t thought about vampires. He’d been too busy scoring coke and exam answers to pursue that little hobby. But when he got kicked out of Yale after his first semester, he’d moved to New York and had started trolling the goth subculture again, asking questions, searching for answers. It had taken him a long time, not to mention moves to Philly, San Francisco, and finally Los Angeles, but at last he’d found a real, live vampire. Well, a real undead one. He’d played it cool, of course, doing whatever she wanted—sex, blood, anyway and anyhow. Her name was Hanna, and she was sexy as hell and dark as sin. She used to talk smack about something called the Covenant and the PEC, some sort of police department for vampires. All bullshit, she’d say. Humans were cattle. Humans were food.

And then she’d look at him with that thin-lipped smile of hers, and he’d realized that he was a human, too, and that he’d be lucky to get out of her room alive.

He hadn’t, of course. Hadn’t gotten out alive, that is.

Instead, he’d been dead when he’d walked out of her room. Undead, with his undead lover at his side.

And for the first time in Jonathan’s existence, he’d been happy. He’d been in charge. He’d been master of his own fucking domain without concern for rules or codes of honor or parents or nosy-ass friends telling him he was losing his shit, man.

He was a god. A goddamn, fucking god, and he had a beautiful goddess at his side.

And then some human with a wooden stake took her from him.

Some low-life
insect
with a superiority complex actually had the gall to think that he knew the way the world should be. That humans were superior and vamps should be iced. Fucking loser, and Jonathan had spent the next six months tormenting the bastard. Going after his family. His kids. Feeding off them. Draining them. Taking them to the point of death but not killing them. Not until the human—a supercilious bastard named Maury—was about out of his mind with rage and worry.

Then Jonathan had picked them off one by one. He saved Maury for the last, of course. And he didn’t even drain that asshole’s blood. Because he didn’t want it inside him. Didn’t want the foul stench of the idiot human lingering in his veins.

He’d cut the man’s throat and left him to die.

Two days later, he’d awakened to a pounding at the metal door of the abandoned storage shed he was squatting in. No back door, so running wasn’t even an option. He readied himself, prepared to fight the humans to the death. But when the door finally burst open, it wasn’t a human. It was a vampire.

And he was smiling.

Derrick
. And he’d welcomed Jonathan into the League.

Derrick had become Jonathan’s friend, his mentor, his leader.

Now it was Derrick he needed to talk to. And the older vampire was going to be pissed.

Jonathan stared at the phone in his hand, not quite able to believe the call he’d just received from Warren, one of his friends in the PEC, a friend he’d converted over to Derrick’s way of thinking. And flipping a PEC employee—even one who only worked at a computer—was a big fucking deal to Derrick. It had earned Jonathan major brownie points.

Now, though, it meant that Jonathan had to be the one to deliver bad news.

Bella was dead.

Beautiful, sexy Bella, now nothing more than ash.

At least that was the only conclusion Jonathan could draw, because after Bella’s mission to get information out of the humans who’d infiltrated the Z Bar, she’d disappeared off the map. She’d been scheduled to check in with Warren to find out what the PEC knew about the human deaths. But he never got her call.

And Bella wasn’t sloppy. As far as Jonathan was concerned, that meant Bella was dead.

The League members were dropping like flies. And even though Derrick had it under control—because Derrick always had everything under control—Jonathan couldn’t shake the cold whisper in the back of his head that said he was an idiot to stay in town, and that the one thing he should do if he didn’t want to meet the sharp end of a stake was get the hell out of Los Angeles.

Alexis stayed at the kitchen table watching her coffee turn cold and wondering about the regret she’d seen on Serge’s face, not to mention how quickly he’d left.

And why not? It’s not like she thought her attraction to him was one-sided—he’d clearly wanted her last night as much as she’d wanted him. But that didn’t change the fact that their passion had been driven by all that had happened between them.

She told herself it was for the best; she hardly needed to start something with a vampire.

And she told herself that she didn’t truly care that he’d run so fast from her, because she didn’t feel anything real for him—just lust. Simple male–female attraction mixed in with the compelling pull of his blood.

She told herself all of that, and yet she didn’t believe it. So she sat holding an ice-cold cup of coffee and staring at a quickly brightening sky and wondering what she could have done differently that would have made him stay. Because the hard, simple truth was that the house felt empty without him. And, dammit, she felt empty, too.

“Enough.”

Just saying the word aloud spurred her to action, and she shoved back from the table and marched to the sink. She dumped her coffee, splashed water on her face, and told herself sternly that the time for acting like a mooning teenager was over. She had a job to do, and with Edgar’s death it had become that much harder—and that much more important. A vampire had killed him, and she intended to inflict some serious payback on the rogues.

She threw on the clothes she found on her bedroom floor, shoved her hair into a baseball cap, then headed over to Leena’s. Only after ringing the doorbell did she remember that it was still incredibly early, but Leena answered the door so quickly that Alexis wondered if she’d been expecting her.

“I thought you might come,” she said. “Now that Edgar’s dead, you’ve lost one of your major sources for tracking the toothy bastards. You’re going to need another mole in the task force.”

The words were harsh and Alexis gaped at her friend, then reached out to touch her arm. “Are you okay?”

Her eyes softened and a soft smile touched her mouth. “I’m sorry. Yes. I’m fine. I’m just so—I don’t know. I can’t believe he’s dead. I think I’m processing anger right now. Grief will come.” She stepped away from the door, shifting her attention away from Alexis and toward the floor. “Come in.”

“I’m alternating between grief and anger,” Alexis admitted.

“I just wish I’d already figured out how to do a capture spell,” Leena said. “We could have used it on that bitch of a vampire last night, and you could have staked her.” Leena had recently come up with the idea of devising a spell that would hold a vampire in a mystical prison at least long enough for the hunter to move in and stake him. “Instead, you had to rely on Sergius. And if he hadn’t been there, we’d probably both be dead.”

“But he was there,” Alexis said firmly. “And there’s no point kicking yourself over what-ifs. You’ll get it eventually. Are you any closer?”

“I am, actually.” Leena’s smile was cold, and Alexis was once again struck by how much Edgar’s death had
impacted her friend. She seemed harder now, and while Alexis had come over hoping for comfort, right then she felt removed from Leena, as if they were business associates rather than friends. She cleared her throat and managed a smile. “That’s great.”

“It is,” Leena agreed. “I’ve got a new perspective on things,” she added with a laugh. “A new lease on my magic.” She smiled as if at a private joke, then shook it off and aimed a real grin at Alexis. “It’s not perfect yet, but I’m getting very, very close. Of course, the biggest problem is that I don’t yet have a way for you to operate the spell, so I’d have to go with you on the hunt.” She tapped her leg. “Obviously that’s not happening. But I’ll work it out. I’ve had a long time to think about just what to do.”

“Did you try to track Tori’s killer?”

“I did. No luck. Either he’s dead or he’s not on the prowl.”

“Too bad. I could use a hunt right now. I’m at loose ends. Edgar’s death was like a stake through
my
heart, you know? And at the same time, part of me is mourning the fact that I’ve lost my connection to the LAPD. I know I’m not really being a heartless bitch, but I still feel like a shit for thinking about how much I’ve been inconvenienced when it’s Edgar who’s dead.” She blinked, and the tears that had been welling in her eyes ran down her cheeks.

“Well, it’s not like you don’t have another way. Now that you’re cozy with that vampire, he can help, right? Isn’t that supposedly his whole raison d’être? To kill other vampires?”

Alexis brushed the tears away, the motion hiding her
frown. Leena’s business-like approach was disconcerting, but she was also right. Except that Serge was gone.

“Gone?” Leena said when Alexis told her as much. “You can’t let Sergius go. He told you he knows who’s organizing these rogues. Make him take you to their leader. Use him. You’ve made this your mission—you can’t back out because you made the mistake of spreading your legs for him.”

Alexis winced a bit from Leena’s vulgarity, but at least that explained the coldness. Leena was no fool; of course she’d figured out that Alexis had slept with Serge. And considering how much she despised vamps, it only made sense that she’d be a bit edgy. And the truth of it was, Alexis probably deserved the reality check. Serge
was
a vampire, after all.
A vampire
. One of the creatures that Alexis had dedicated her life to hunting.

Except that what she thought she knew about vamps didn’t fit with what she’d learned about Serge. More important, it didn’t fit with what she felt for him.

In the end, she didn’t even stay an hour at Leena’s. She told her friend that she was going to go home so that Leena could continue working on the capture spell and Alexis could think about alternative ways for tracking the rogues. She promised she’d also think about how to contact Serge again, but Alexis wasn’t sure that was going to happen; he’d wanted to leave, and she wasn’t inclined to beg him to come back.

She ended up spending the day at loose ends, filling in the time with a lot of naps, which made sense considering how little she’d slept the night before. But the naps weren’t entirely restorative. She ended up dreaming of Serge, and she woke up at dusk feeling edgy and needy and bitterly alone. All the more so when reality struck
her once again, and she remembered that Edgar was truly gone.

Even the hours she spent working out didn’t take the edge off, and when she was well and truly frustrated with herself she went down to the Batcave, among all the expensive equipment that her parents’ money had bought. She sat in front of the $12.99 police band radio and settled in to listen. It wasn’t ideal, but it was mindless, and with luck maybe she’d hear a call in which the dispatcher said more about the injury than she actually should.

Amazingly enough, after two hours of mind-numbing, static-filled chatter, that’s exactly what happened. A woman had been attacked in an alley and the paramedics were called in. A neck wound. The victim died en route to the hospital, but detectives were needed at the scene.

Bingo
.

She’d hit the scene, snag some dust, and get Leena to do her thing. With luck, she’d find something to kill tonight. At the very least, she’d be in motion, and her mind would be on something other than Serge and how quickly he’d rushed away from her after what she’d considered a night of uncommon bliss.

“We should leave Los Angeles,” Jonathan said. He was fidgeting in front of Derrick’s desk, his usually meticulous hair sticking out in all directions.

Derrick fought the urge to slap the younger vamp down. He was scared; Derrick got that. But at the moment,
Derrick wasn’t interested in mollycoddling his men. No, he was interested in revenge.