When Darkness Hungers: A Shadow Keepers Novel (Shadow Keepers 5) (16 page)

As for Serge, his daemon had lived close to the surface throughout all of his long years, and on more occasions than he liked to think about it had burst free, taking control, pulling Serge into a dark, hellish existence where only blood and death mattered. It had taken all of Serge’s strength to battle it back, and the fact that he hadn’t always succeeded tormented him, the humans who’d died at his hand haunting him.

Now his daemon cowered against the power of the beast that lived locked within him. A monster that would burst free if he didn’t feed. He was paying the price for his earlier sins by hunting and killing rogues, and he calmed the beast in the process.

And Alexis and the girl? They were evidence. Tangible proof that he could do something good. That he could save instead of destroy.

He examined her face as the girl stood up, but there was no sign that her daemon might be rising. She’d emptied the blood bag neatly, not ravenously, and now she watched him, curiosity filling her features.

“Is there something wrong with me?”

“Why? Do you feel like something’s wrong with you?”

She shook her head slowly. “No, but you’re looking at me. Like … like I’m a bomb or something.”

“No,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with you. I’m just …” He trailed off, looking for the words, wondering how much of the truth to tell her. Maybe she was a vampire, and maybe she wasn’t.

Yes, she might be like him, with a hunger that had to be satisfied in order to quell a ravenous beast. But if she was, there would be time to contend with that later. Right now, all that mattered was taking care of her. “I’m just very glad you’re here,” he said, realizing as he spoke how true his words were.

“Really?” She looked up at him, as if no one had ever been glad to be near her before. It had been a long time since Serge had felt his heart break a little, and he hadn’t killed a human in a long time, either. But right then he wanted to head out into the world and drain every ounce of life from whatever humans had sucked the confidence from this girl.

“Really,” he said firmly. “I’m Serge, by the way.”

Her brows lifted, and she laughed. He grinned, waiting for her to stop, but the laughs just kept on coming. “Surge,” she said. “Like a surge protector. And you are. A protector, I mean.”

He rolled his eyes and decided he’d clarify his name later. “And who are you?”

“CeeCee,” she said firmly. “It’s short for Cecelia.” She made a face. “My stepfather hates that nickname.”

“He the one you’re running from?”

She tilted her head. “How did you know I was running?”

“Lucky guess.”

She hesitated, then shrugged. “Yeah. Him mostly. And my mom. But don’t worry. Neither one of them’s gonna come looking for me. I only just ran away, but I’ve been on my own for a long time.”

“Well, CeeCee,” he said, noting the way her eyes widened with pleasure at the name, “you’re not on your own anymore.”

Rough hands stroked her, skin against skin, the friction generating heat
.

The heat reflected in those slate-gray eyes. Sergius. As the world had been fading around her, she’d heard someone say that his name was Sergius
.

She moaned and reached for him, fingers outstretched. Seeking. Longing
.

But she found only air, and the loss of him closed a fist tight around her, squeezing her heart, forcing out her breath
.

“Please.”

It was her own voice, but it was so full of need she barely recognized it
.

She was moving then, her feet carrying her to some unknown destination. A thick mist swirled around her, and she squinted, calling out for him, her heart tripping when she saw flashes of him in the dense fog
.

His hair, his eyes, a hint of tattoo, links of chain circling
his bicep, flexing as he moved, the links strong enough to pull her toward him
.

They were bound, she thought. Bound together
.

“Please,” she said again, and this time, he was there. Touching her. Stroking her
.

And then, so softly she almost couldn’t hear, he whispered her name
.

Alexis …

Alexis …

She opened her eyes, disappointed to realize she was in her own bed and no one was whispering her name. With her head filled with fuzz, she sat up, trying to get her bearings as she pulled on a clean shirt. She remembered calling Leena and Edgar last night and telling them that everything was okay before she’d slid under the covers to sleep for a thousand hours. She hadn’t told them the whole story, though she had told them that the vampire was dead. Of course, she’d neglected to mention the fact that she’d been injured, too, and that another vampire had stepped in to kill the one she was hunting. And, oh yeah, he’d made her suck his blood, too.

No, that would have been some serious over-sharing. Maybe she’d tell them both eventually. Then again, maybe she never would.

She shivered, but whether out of disgust or something far more complicated, she didn’t know. The vampire had worked his way into her dreams, after all. More than that, he was in her blood.

She knew she should be disgusted by the thought. Disgusted at herself for letting such a creature into her mind, even if he’d forced his way in against her will.

Except, of course, it hadn’t been entirely against her
will. He’d saved her life, and she damn well knew it. And he’d saved that poor teenager.

At least, he’d said he would. But had he? The vampire had saved her, so why would he lie about the girl?

Alexis didn’t know. All she knew was that she didn’t trust vamps, and this weird … 
connection
 … she felt for some mysterious vampire who’d shown up in the dark wasn’t safe. She knew better. Vamps were hard, cold killers, and this one was probably a psychotic freak who knew how to play her to get what he wanted.

Damn
.

With the curse still on her lips, she tugged on her boots, frustrated by her mind’s fuzziness. She needed to check the scene. Make sure the girl was really gone. See what had become of the vampire she’d been chasing.

She hadn’t been able to see the fight between him and Sergius, but she knew enough to know that if that bad vamp had been defeated, he was a pile of dust now.

Once she found the dust, she’d feel a lot better about what was going on. Not that she necessarily
would
find dust. When a vampire was staked, it left a pile of greenish gray dust—about enough to fill a shoe box. The trouble, of course, was that dust could be dispersed by the wind. And this vampire’s dust might have been washed out with the tide or trampled by beachgoers. Still, she wouldn’t feel right until she’d looked.

She hurried out of the house and found the motorcycle where she’d left it in the drive. She roared down San Vicente, then headed south on Ocean Avenue. Despite the weekend crowd of tourists and locals, she didn’t have any trouble parking the bike near where she’d found the teenager. When she reached the scene, she wasn’t terribly surprised to see that there was nothing
there for her to find. No vampire dust, no crime scene tape. She grabbed a stick and poked through the beach detritus—bits of paper and plastic—but nothing caught her eye. Just damp sand and a few fast-food wrappers that had obviously been caught in the wind.

Well, damn. She’d been hoping to find something—anything—that could give her some sort of clue.

Apparently, wishing wasn’t enough.

She took one last look at the scene and started back toward her bike. She’d gone about a hundred feet when she heard the pounding of footsteps behind her, accompanied by the sound of heavy breathing. She turned, and found herself face-to-face with a sweating, overweight guy in swim trunks and a Navy SEAL T-shirt. A camera hung around his neck.

“You’re a cop, right?” he demanded.

“What makes you say that?”

He rolled his eyes, as if to say,
Oh, please
. “You’re here about the mummy, aren’t you? Come on. Just give me a quote. I’ve been out here all day, and I’m never an asshole to the cops like some other bloggers.”

“The mummy?”

“I mean, it’s my scoop, right? I was here when Homeland descended on the place, and—”

“Wait. Homeland Security? How do you know?”

“One of the dudes at the perimeter told me. Why, were they shitting me?”

“You say they were looking at a mummy?” she said. “In the drainage ditch. And you’re asking
me
if they were shitting you?”

His face lost some of its confidence. “You mean—”

“I mean this is Los Angeles, my friend.” She held her
hand out and smiled as broadly as she could. “Tori Jennings, production executive. Pleasure to meet you.”

“Production exec?”

“Cable channel. Small but strong. And I’m afraid you stumbled onto a run-through of one of our new shows.” She stretched the smile even broader. The last thing she wanted was some blogger digging around in the very mystery she was investigating. She glanced at her watch, then exaggerated her expression of extreme displeasure. “I’ve got to run. Drinks with Tarantino. You understand.”

She left him with his mouth hanging open, then realized too late that she should have asked Mr. Blog back there if he’d gotten a name from the Homeland Security agent. Because she had a feeling that Mr. Severin Tucker’s name was going to come up again. She frowned, considering how she could poke around Homeland without putting herself—and her fake FBI badge—on their radar.

To be honest, though, she wasn’t in a huge hurry. Because as intriguing as the mind-bending agent had been, what she wanted most was to track down Sergius.

She approached her bike, shivering slightly from the vivid memory of her sensual dream, and told herself firmly that this wasn’t why she wanted to find him. She was concerned about the girl. She wanted to make sure she was really okay. Confirm that he’d taken care of her as he said he would, and hadn’t turned her into dinner once he was two blocks away.

It was all about the girl, and that was the mantra she repeated over and over as she drove from the beach back to her house. Because if she repeated it loud enough and long enough, maybe she could will it to be true.

“I wish I could track this Sergius for you,” Leena said. “But I don’t have a spell that will let me search for someone by name.”

“Besides,” Edgar added, “didn’t you say he helped the girl?”

Alexis raised her brows. “Do you believe him? Because even though I want to, I just can’t. That’s why I have to find him. I have to know.”

As soon as she’d returned from the beach, she’d called them both over even though she’d known that the odds of Leena being able to do anything were slim. But she’d had to try. And the truth was that she wanted to be with her friends. Sure, she’d toyed with not telling them, knowing how they’d worry since she’d been injured. But in the end, she’d shared everything. She’d come to rely on them, after all, and it felt nice knowing they were there, and that they cared.

She aimed an imploring glance at Leena. “Isn’t there some way? I could bring back some sand from the beach, maybe track him that way?”

“Sure, except the sand’s been overrun by kids and animals, and the tide must have come in and out at least once, so—”

“My blood!” Alexis said, interrupting. “He gave me some of his blood. Can you use that?”

Leena cocked her head, considering, then nodded
slowly. “Maybe. It’s not too often that I have vampire blood in my toolbox, but I think I can pull something together. Yes, I’m sure of it.”

“Excellent.” Alexis leaned back, satisfied.

“But are you sure you want me to?”

“Why the hell wouldn’t I?”

“It’s just that he probably did save the girl. Why save you and then lie about her? So that means we’ll both be spending our time trying to find a vampire that isn’t part of the problem.”

“What other vampire should I be hunting?” Alexis asked reasonably. “Until there’s another attack against a human, I don’t have any dirt for you to make a tracking ball. And now we know that the vampire who killed Tori is dead.”

Dead
.

That was the first time she’d let that simple reality sink in. She’d known that the killer was in that alley. She’d killed one of the vamps. Sergius had killed the other. Which meant that Tori’s killer was dead. Gone. Kaput.

Holy shit
.

She looked between Edgar and Leena, certain that her own expression had to be glowing. “Oh, my God, he’s really dead, isn’t he?”

Leena’s teeth dragged across her lower lip. “Probably.”

Alexis tensed. “What?”

“Come on, Al, you know how this works. I do the map, but then you have to get there. What if there were four vampires in that alley before you arrived? What if there were ten? We think it was one of the two you
fought, but it might not have been. The only way to be sure is to look again.”

She was right. Oh, dear God, she was right. How could Alexis have been so stupid?

“I could look for Sergius,” Leena continued. “But I’d rather use my energy to search for the one who killed your sister. Assuming he’s not dead, we know he’s in town. There’s no law that says he has to stay here, though. So which is more important to you? Finding Sergius? Or making sure the vamp that killed Tori is dead?”