Chasing Daybreak (Dark of Night Book 1) (20 page)

I made a show of taking deep breaths over and over even as I reached behind me to the countertop. In moments, I had carefully tucked a scalpel into my back pocket.

Straightening, I took a step forward. I had my ticket out of that madhouse, but first, I was going to get some answers. “What about Lisa Welch?”

“Poor Lisa. She was corrupted by those demons. I asked her to help me procure a new blood donor after the first one expired. This was in the early stages of my research, before I realized that a vampire could only lose so much blood before the decay process began, and she
refused
. She said the vampires had been kind to her, looked after her. Can you believe that? After she whored for them like that.”

“She was whoring with you though, right? I mean, I found her client list. She saw you a dozen times in the last year of her life. So were you upset that she refused to help you, or were you upset that she wouldn’t fuck you anymore once they let her out of her contract?” I demanded.

David glanced from me to Marlowe, looking for some sort of denial. All he got was an arrogant look of indignation from his devout leader.

Marlowe shrugged. “I didn’t know the vampires ran the service until she admitted it to me. I called her to come over late one night, but she said that she’d paid her debt and the vampires were letting her go. I begged her to stay, but she refused. Said the only reason she ever let me touch her was so they wouldn’t kill her husband. She called me evil,
me
! When all the while she was a harlot for the demons.”

“So you had David take care of her.” I looked Marlowe straight in the eye. “David was just trying to protect you, to look after you, and you lied to him and used him to get revenge on Lisa.” Not that I bought that for a second, but if I could get David believing it, get him riled up, then maybe…

“I saw an opportunity for her to be useful, so I took it. David was my angel of vengeance.”

I cringed at the depraved sincerity in his voice, turning my attention to David. “So David, does Pastor know about your dirty little secret?”

Marlowe glared at David. “What secret?”

“Oh come on, you must have noticed some of your blood supplies vanishing a little too quickly?” I made a ‘glug, glug’ gesture and pointed to David.

“That’s ridiculous,” David said, his expression taut.

“Really? Then how can you be so fast?” I folded my arms across my chest. “You dropped a dead body on my doorstep while I was at home, with a vampire bloodhound not five yards away from the porch, and managed to do it without getting caught. Pretty fast for a human, right?”

“Dead bodies? What is she talking about, David?”

David pointed to himself with his thumb. “I did it for her, to protect her. They were evil people. They deserved to die. And I wanted her to know that I could protect her, that she didn’t need the vampire. She had me.”

Marlowe moved forward and lashed out to slap David in the face. But in a blur of speed, David stepped backward out of range before the blow landed.

“It’s true!” Marlowe bellowed.

“Liar!” David accused, lunging forward.

The men grappled with each other as I quickly slipped out of the door, booking it back to Shane’s room.

Rushing to his bedside, I grabbed the IV of sedatives. With no time to be gentle, I tore the needle out of his arm, tape and all, and then leaned across his body to rip out the other needle. A spray of blood arced across the room. I used its tube to pull the donor bag up from the side of the bed where it hung, tossing it to the floor behind me. The bed’s metal handrails then served as leverage for me to slide under the gurney in search of the lock holding Shane’s chains together.

I cursed. It was a padlock. And I didn’t have the key.

When a pair of men’s shoes came into sight in the doorway, I froze under the gurney. Breath held, I wiggled forward on my back, trying to determine who’d won the fight. The shoes moved to the edge of the bed, and then turned away. I exhaled, sure whoever he was, he’d leave. An arm shot under the gurney and grabbed me by my hair, pulling me out. I screamed. No matter how tough you were, hair pulling was just painful.

Suddenly, I was face to face with David. His eyes were brown, but rimmed in red, the way a vampire’s eyes looked when they were in the thrall of bloodlust. But it wasn’t me he was looking at; it was the pool of blood beneath the IV bag I’d chucked onto the floor. It was slowly leaking a black-red puddle. My shoe had slid through the mess when David pulled me out, making a squeak that drew his attention downwards.

With one powerful push, he launched me across the room into the solid wall behind the curtains. I slammed into it at full force, my breath instantly pushed from my lungs, bouncing off to fall in a crumpled heap on the floor. Rolling onto my stomach, I looked over. David Pierce was on all fours, licking at the crimson puddle like a cat lapping up cream.

My stomach rolled at the grotesque sight. I’d seen junkies act the same way when they were whacked out on crystal, doing anything for another hit. And I knew that as soon as he wasn’t distracted with that anymore, he’d turn on me and
I’d
be the puddle on the floor.

Reaching into my back pocket, I steeled my nerves. Shane might wake up soon, or he might not. Who knew how many or what kind of drugs they’d pumped into his system? Add that to the blood loss and he could be out for hours. I had to take my shot now, while David was distracted.

It was one of those moments where rational thought turned off and you were running on pure instinct. The adrenaline shot through my system like a comet, making everything clearer. Everything moved in slow motion, as if I were standing outside myself, watching events unfold but unable to control anything.

Gripping the scalpel tightly, I lunged, jumping onto David’s back. He bucked wildly, but I held on with a tight chokehold. In a frightened haze, I drew the blade across his neck just under my arm, pushing the scalpel as deep and fast as I could. I clutched the now-slippery tool as I fell backwards off him, crab walking until I was a few paces away. Then I rolled into a crouch, readying myself to fight if he turned round.

But he didn’t. Gasping for breath, David lurched, finally dropping face-first onto the floor, eyes open and glassy, the color in his irises fading from red back to brown.

With a sigh, I fell onto my butt, dropping the scalpel. It made a soft clink, but I hardly noticed due to the vomit crawling up my throat. I flipped over onto my hands and knees, retching all over the cool floor until nothing else would come up.

By the time I was done, the shaking had begun, tremors ripping their way up my spine and through my body. I tried to keep still, my muscles clenching around each quake, and I fought off the chill ravaging my body as shock began to settle in.

I heard footsteps thundering from somewhere seemingly far away, and within seconds, a small army of vampires, Xavier at the lead, were in the room with me, all looking ready for a fight.

I fell back onto my butt and laughed hysterically, my arms wrapped tightly around my middle. “You guys give new meaning to the phrase ‘a day late and a dollar short,’ you know that?”

The vampires were helping rouse Shane, breaking through the heavy chains like they were made of paper instead of solid steel. Xavier put up his hand, wordlessly demanding silence. That was when I heard it—a small voice, its call echoing down the hallway. The sound made me feel like I had spiders crawling up my bare skin.

My breath caught in my throat. I put a hand on Xavier’s arm. He frowned and raised his finger to his lips in a signal for me not to speak. Then he jerked his head in a “follow me” gesture. Together, we tracked the soft cries, Xavier in the lead. We stopped outside a door I recognized. Then Xavier moved quietly inside, and I followed close behind.

Melanie Marlowe was sitting upright in her bed. She’d pulled the tube of blood from her arm, the bag empty. Her cheeks were rosy, her hair the color of spun gold. She looked like a porcelain doll. Only the stillness gave her away.

No human child was so still.

Her eyes watched us like a vulture’s, tracking our every movement with frightening intensity. Her gaze swept over me, making me feel like a pig at a barbeque, before settling on Xavier.

Hands up in a gesture of peace, Xavier moved past me toward Melanie’s bed. When he glanced down at the dead body of Charles Marlowe on the floor, she followed his gaze. Marlowe’s head was turned at an impossible angle, almost backward, his eyes empty.

Melanie frowned. “Daddy?” she asked in her soft voice, bottom lip trembling.

Xavier quickly stepped over Marlowe, putting himself between the little girl and her father’s corpse. He reminded me of a lion trainer in the circus. I just hoped he didn’t do something stupid like stick his head in her mouth.

“It’s okay, small one,” he said in hushed tones as he sat on the bed beside her. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

As if hypnotized by the child, he reached out to gently touch her hair. Heck, even from the doorway, I was hypnotized by her. It was sort of like watching a train wreck. You didn’t want to look, but you just couldn’t look away. I waited for her to strike out like a cobra and latch her baby fangs into Xavier. But if he was as tense as I was, it didn’t show. He looked positively relaxed.

“Are you my daddy now?” she asked, smiling sweetly.

“If you want me to be,” he answered, amused.

She lunged forward, her vampire speed blurring the motion. Before I could decide whether to make a move to protect him, I heard him laugh. A short, happy sound. I looked closer and saw that she wasn’t attacking him at all. She’d wrapped her slender arms around his neck in a hug.

“Daddy!” she exclaimed, voice full of joy like the sound of chimes on the breeze.

Xavier embraced her. I waited, waited for the tiny monster to turn on him, but she didn’t. Xavier stood, taking her with him. Her tiny legs wrapped around his waist, her bare feet locking at the ankles. As he carried her to the door, I got a glimpse of just what Xavier had given up, and I understood for the first time with perfect clarity what it meant for him to find this little girl. A child without a father for a father without a child.

Xavier moved past without a word. Melanie’s red-rimmed eyes stared back at me over his shoulder as he returned to where Shane had been strapped to the gurney.

I shivered, goose bumps breaking out along my skin.

I was in full-blown shock when the paramedics arrived. I wasn’t sure if the room had always been that cold and I hadn’t noticed, but my teeth were clacking like an old-fashioned typewriter. I felt like I’d been dunked in an ice bath. No part of me could get warm, even after they draped me with two heavy wool blankets. My arms and legs were heavy, numb from the chill in my veins. I wasn’t talking yet, though the police had started questioning me. It was like the words were caught in my throat. Only Reggie’s promise to get my statement at the hospital got them to leave me alone.

Xavier and the other vampires had gone, at my request, long before anyone else had arrived. Less for me to have to explain, and they didn’t want their names associated with this fiasco anyway. So I decided to just deal with it on my own. Plus, I couldn’t stand Melanie’s creepy little eyes staring at me from where she clung to Xavier like a monkey to a tree.

At first, all I could see was the blood. I mean, it was everywhere, including all over me. It started to dry and itch. Finally, Reggie took pity on me and let me wash my hands and face in the upstairs sink. I felt a little more human after that, at least, until I saw what I’d done to David as they wheeled him out of the house. The vampire blood was still in his system, keeping him semi-alive, but for how long was anyone’s guess. Even vampires would have a hard time surviving that much damage. From the looks of it, I’d almost taken his head completely off. The bile rose up in my stomach again. This time, there was nothing to puke up, so I just gagged.

Marlowe was dead. Broken neck, no big surprise. He’d gotten off lucky though. I mean, he never had to see his pretty little girl wake up fanged. In trying to save her life, he’d turned her into the thing he despised the most.

Irony, thou art a heartless bitch.

Xavier explained before he left that it was forbidden in Conclave law to create a vamp so young, and because she had no sire, he wasn’t at all sure what to do with her. While most vamps woke up starving and mad with bloodlust, she’d just sat up in bed, looking like a tiny doll, and asked if Xavier would be her daddy, polite as could be. Xavier decided to take her back to the Conclave, and since I had no idea what else to do, I let him. I thought he saw something in her tiny face, something he’d been looking for, for a very long time. I thought he saw the opportunity for a family. A creepy, undead family though it might be.

I wasn’t sure why exactly, but she scared me to the bone. If I were Xavier, I might have had to put her down as soon as I saw her. At the end of the day, I was glad it wasn’t up to me, and I really hoped he knew what he was doing.

As Shane’s punishment for breaking Conclave law when he attacked Gerard, he was assigned to be the Conclave liaison to the police department and lost his room in the mansion. I asked him if he felt like one of the Playboy Bunnies on her thirtieth birthday, and he smacked me with a throw pillow.

Yes, Shane was voted off Vampire Island. I didn’t think either of us minded nearly as much as Xavier seemed to when Shane moved back into my attic. It was nice to have him back again, comfortable. But I couldn’t help the nagging feeling that comfort came at the expense of something else.

Xavier became more persistent after that day in Marlowe’s basement. I didn’t know if it was something about seeing me covered in blood in full-on GI Jane mode that turned him on, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, but he kept sending me flowers and asking me out to dinner. Every time something new came, I rolled my eyes and Shane smiled. On the plus side, the office smelled like roses and gardenias all the time now.

There were worse things.

Oh, and Phoebe confided in me that her boyfriend was a werewolf. She was much calmer about it than I would have been had our positions been reversed. I asked how she did it, and she told me that when you loved someone, nothing else mattered. Maybe she was right. Maybe I’d been holding on so tightly to my ideas of what I wanted my life to be that I’d forgotten to live it.

Maybe, I could have a fling with a vampire.

I mean, what could possibly go wrong?