Chaos and Moonlight (Order of the Nines Book 1) (6 page)

There was a collective inhale as the camera panned out and revealed the nervous brunette sitting in the guest chair.

“How did you know about this?” Kalin whispered.

Taris leaned back and withdrew a scrap of newspaper from his pocket. Without breaking his gaze from the television, he held it out to her. Kalin unfurled it, and as she read, her eyes went wide with shock.

“Hayley told me,” he said. “Now shhhh!”

They watched the interview, all five minutes of it, before it all exploded into a colossal display of ego and foul mouth. Taris couldn’t blame the doctor for her outburst, though. Maven Jenson had a reputation for being less than cordial to her guests. He picked up the remote and hit the rewind button on the DVR. He watched the interview three more times.

The miracle they had prayed for, bled for, and wept for, was literally just a short ride away. From their quiet estate on the outskirts of Asheville, they could reach St. Brigid’s in less than twenty minutes.

“Thank God,” Kalin whispered.

“No. Thank Hayley.” Taris turned off the television, not even trying to hide the smile on his face. He ran the tip of his tongue over the sharp tip of one of his fangs. “And thank Sarah Bridgeman.”

“God, Taris. You have to thank God first.”

“Yeah, I know. That whole working in mysterious ways thing.” He glanced up at the ceiling with genuine reverence. “Thank you,” he whispered, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment.

Looking back down at Kalin, he could see that, with the new blissful news setting her at ease, sleep was finally beginning to take hold of her. “Get some sleep. The next few days are going to be hell.”

“You are going to see her, aren’t you?”

“Of course,” he turned toward her, “but I have to plan first. I will go see her tomorrow evening. It gives me time to get shit straight here and for the circus to die down over that interview.”

Taris leaned down and kissed Kalin’s forehead before she turned and staggered out to the hallway. When he was sure she was safely in her room, he sauntered over to the bar, kicking his vodka-soaked T-shirt and the shards of a broken bottle out of the way with the ball of his foot. He grabbed a brand new bottle of Johnnie Blue from the shelf and twisted off the cap, gulping down several fiery swallows before setting it on the counter. He inhaled deeply and closed his eyes.

“Well, Dr. Sarah Bridgeman,” he muttered into the empty room, “wait ’til you see the project we have for you.”

“Bane!”

Morrigan was lying in her bed, trying to do several things at once. One was calling Bane. Two was trying to book transatlantic flights on a moment’s notice. Three was making the horrid movements going on beneath her sheets stop.

“Bane!” She slammed her cellphone shut and leaned back against her gigantic, intricately carved headboard. The satin sheets hit her waist, baring her perfectly round breasts and her slim shoulders to the open air. Her irritation was reaching its zenith, and she lifted back the edge of the sheet, peering down. “If you’re not going to do it right, then don’t do it at all!”

“Feathery hell, woman, what do you want?”

Bane strolled into the room, closing his purple velvet robe over his large, hard, and obviously naked body. He sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled out a black cigarette from his pocket. With a whiz of his Zippo, he set it burning, its
crackle
filling the space between them. Morrigan sat up, the small amount of satin that covered her now falling below her navel.

“First of all, don’t talk to me like that. Second of all, I need you to start packing.”

“Packing?” he asked as he blew out more smoke. “Why on earth?”

She smiled as she picked up the remote next to her and hit the back button on her TiVo. Bane watched with a wicked smile at the American interview gone terribly wrong. He turned his gaze away to bring a heavy fist down onto the middle of the bed.

“Really, Bane. Such violence,” she said, her voice dripping sweetness and sarcasm.

When the interview was over, Bane turned back to Morrigan, the malevolent smile on his face spreading from ear to ear.

“So when are we leaving?”

Morrigan flopped back onto the bed, unable to move her legs from the dead weight on top of them. “An hour. I’ve already reserved the flight. Managed to bitch my way into a penthouse until we can either buy or steal something big enough.” She darted her eyes to meet Bane’s, her cobalt blues now focused, deadly. “When we get there, you bring her to me.”

She lifted up the sheet at her waist and huffed when she looked down at her legs.

“Damn it, Bane, you knocked him out.”

“Like you care. Wasn’t even on the job, that one.”

Bane stood up and jerked back the covers, revealing the naked, unconscious body of a man who was, until recently, trying his best to win over Morrigan with nothing but his lips and a prayer. Bane leaned down and placed his polished fingers against the man’s neck.

“Think I killed him.” He stood up, taking in a drag of his cigarette.

“Well, fuck me.” Morrigan let out an exasperated sigh.

“If you insist.” Bane said, his voice dripping sarcasm as he threw down his robe and slowly crawled on top of her. His pierced tongue left a burning trail up her calf. The dead body was impeding his progress, so with a muscular arm, he sent it crashing to the floor with a
thud
. Morrigan looked up at him with half-narrowed bedroom eyes once he was stretched completely over her. With his large hands guiding them, she lifted her long legs over his shoulders.

“I want her alive and well when you bring her to me. She’s no good to me if she can’t work.” She closed her eyes as she felt his hard body press against her. He didn’t move.

“Don’t talk business when I’m in you, Morrigan. I will do things my way.” Bane pulled his hips back and with a growl, he drove into her, hard and fast.

* * *

There was nothing more chilling than the midnight sound of silence.

Taris sat on the rooftop, his long legs dangling over the concrete edge, and he listened. He didn’t move. He barely breathed. Deep within his center, he was pulling in the darkness, reveling in the chilly air that surrounded him. Every sense he possessed was on fire, heightened to its very peak.

This was the life he missed. This was the way his life was supposed to be. He wasn’t supposed to be stuck in a house, watching the years tick away. It was in his nature to live in a constant state of high alert at all times. Gone were the days where he would watch, protect, and defend. Now, he was relegated to being a leader.

It wasn’t that he despised the status that being the oldest vampire alive gave him. There were times when he reveled in it. It softened the need for him to feel useful, important. With few exceptions, the sparse members of his race who were left looked to him for guidance and wisdom. They turned to him for advice. He wasn’t a king or a government head. There were ancient rules in place that most of the rest of the vampire community adhered to, and for those who did not abide by those unwritten rules, there were ancient and unsanctioned enforcers. At one time, Taris was that unsanctioned enforcer. Now, he was more like the sage in the forest that all of the villagers went to for their spiritual liftoff.

But the temperament of his youth was far different from the temperament of his slowly earned wisdom, and he spent decades shirking the reverence the people of his race gave him. It was in his blood to fight, to be a warrior, a soldier as his father was before him, so he fought against those who would seek to destroy their kind, both vampire and human alike. Centuries of battle had molded and scarred his body. They turned him into a lethal killing machine, one that operated with grace and skill, one that his opponents never saw coming.

It wasn’t until the realization that the vampire race was teetering on the verge of extinction that he began to reassess his responsibilities, and even then, it took a hefty shove from his fellow friends and warriors to make him actually take them on. He was their one shot, their hope. It was that proverbial bitch slap that made him finally face the bitter truth: without his leadership, the race would collapse into nothingness. And so, with the lead-heavy heart and a mouth full of curses, he put away the blades and began devoting every waking moment to fighting a different kind of battle, one that slowly consumed him more than any bloodied hand-to-hand combat ever had before.

The centuries he had spent working on the cure to their looming extinction problem had turned him into something more than just a skilled fighter and a menacing force to be feared. The two hundred years had turned him into the scholar his mother always wanted him to be and the deliverer his people always prayed he would become. Now, instead of literally grappling with a physical force that carried death, he fought an unseen evolutionary killer, one that left fewer than five hundred vampires—that he knew of—left on earth with no perceived hope of replenishing their numbers.

Sitting there on the rooftop across from Dr. Bridgeman’s apartment building, he felt like his old self again. No, he felt better. Combined with the warrior was a wiser being, someone who now knew more about the world and the things in it. From his perch high above the street, he felt brand new.

He had been watching the window to her apartment for an hour now. Finding her wasn’t terribly difficult. Since the interview the night before, he’d scoured the NC Medical Board website and put two and two together. Add to it his borderline scary ability to hack into just about anything, and he had her address and phone number in no time.

The wind was beginning to whirl around as he stood up on the ledge of the rooftop. His trench licked the air behind him, stretching out like thick leather wings as he braced himself against the night. Toe to heel, he stepped back from the concrete edge, feeling the pebbles rolling under his rubber soles until he was on the opposite side of the roof.

“Here goes nothing.”

Pursing his lips, he let out a long breath and started toward the place where he had been sitting at a dead run. Once he hit the ledge, he launched himself with all of his might, sending his body hurtling through the air. He felt the wind hit his face and whistle through his earrings as the good doctor’s apartment building drew closer and closer, until the gravel of the rooftop was finally firmly underneath his thick, steel-toed combat boots. He hit the ground with a firm
thud
, landing a solid three feet from the edge. He stood and looked over at the other building. He smiled and fought the urge to laugh. The distance between the two buildings was at least fifty feet. How long had it been since he had used his power like that? A hundred years, maybe?

“Not bad, old man. Not bad,” he whispered as he looked down at the street. The gravel crunched underneath his feet as he walked to the building access door. As he suspected, it was locked. He gripped the stripped metal knob, and with a firm twist, he pulled the front half of the casing off. His fingers worked quickly, busting through to the cement landing on the steps. The dead bolt directly above it was the next thing to go. Just like the inside half of the doorknob, it hit the floor with a metal
clack
after he punched it clean out of the frame. He easily nudged the door open with the toe of his boot and stepped over the ruined metal locks as he began to follow the service stairs down into the apartment building.

As his boots pounded down the stairs, his heart began to race from more than just the physical exertion of moving his big body through the tight space in the stairwell. The anticipation that coursed through him made his feet move faster, quickly passing the eighth and the seventh floors. He was mere feet away from a woman who could save them all, and the thought of it sent his head reeling. If this worked out—if
she
worked out—his entire life could change. He could reclaim the existence he had once lost, but now with a heightened, more globalized sense of things.

Whereas he was on the verge of giddy on the inside, his outside was all business, no play. No recess, strictly schoolwork. From the top of his head to the bottom of his size thirteen steel-toes, Taris was ready for anything that lay beyond the other side of the door that led from the stairwell to the hallway of the fifth floor.

Taris pushed on the metal spring bar with one hand and nudged the door open. The plain brick walls and narrow concrete slabs of the roof access stairs gave way to brand-new Berber carpet and oatmeal-colored walls. He could see all four doors, separated by a wide corridor. Between the doors, aptly marked A, B, C, and D, were typical neutral Impressionist prints that one would expect to see in a doctor’s office or a bank. The decor could only be described as boring as shit with a touch of yawn. The hallway was brightly lit, the faux brass lantern wall sconces blazing. His eyes drew back to the floor, and he couldn’t stop the sneer from contorting his face.

“Eh, carpet. Why does everyone have carpet?” Taris mumbled in disgust as he let the door shut slowly behind him. His boots led him slowly and, thanks to the padding underneath his feet, quietly to the apartment marked B.

Taris stood in front of the door and took in a deep, calming breath. He shrugged his coat on tighter around his shoulders and ran a hand through his hair, doing everything in the world he could to avoid knocking. He’d waited for this moment for centuries. The nervous anticipation was making his entire body shake. Now he knew how kids must feel on Christmas morning. The promise of something amazing was just behind that slab of wood. He brought his hand up to the door and knocked several times before the realization that he had no idea what to say set in.

“Jesus, Taris, think first, would you?” he grumbled to himself as he stepped away from the door. “Okay, what to say? Um. ‘Hello, I’m a vampire.’ Fuck, that’s stupid. Eh. ‘Hi, my name is Taris, and I saw your interview, and I would like to hire you.’ Yeah, explain that one. ‘I’m eight hundred years old, and I need you to save a race of people who have been turned into horror movie villains and romance heroes from extinction.’” He chuckled. “Not likely.”