Darkness Falls (6 page)

She should be living in perfect bliss whether he loved her or not so why couldn’t she shake the storm of worries and doubts that were hounding her day and night? Her dreams were bothering her because she couldn’t remember all of them and she knew there was something important there, something she
had
to remember. Unfortunately, the memories she wanted to forget, those of Feryn seducing innocents and turning them into whores, drowned out everything else.

Letting her eyes drift shut as silent tears leaked from her eyes, Malorie wondered if her pregnancy hormones were the cause of all of this madness. She hadn’t been this emotional when she was pregnant with Toby but then they were two extremely different situations; she hadn’t had the time to be emotional with Toby. Whatever was plaguing her, she was going to have to figure it out soon because Feryn wasn’t going to be patient forever. Eventually he was going to grow bored or realize how screwed up she was and no mating mark was going to keep him by her side.

Drifting in and out of consciousness, she thought she heard the front door but when she didn't hear anything more, she figured she was probably dreaming. Jiro would have used the Netherworld corridors and simply appeared, much like how Feryn disappeared so quickly. There was no one else in the neighborhood and Feryn had placed anti-vamp wards everywhere so she and Toby were perfectly safe. Her thoughts trailed off as she sniffed and tried to go back to sleep.

“Don’t cry,” a soft, male voice whispered, his strong fingers brushing her tangled hair out of her face. His voice was achingly familiar so it took her a moment to realize it wasn’t Feryn. How did she know him? “It’ll be all right, Mal, I’m here now. It’ll be all right.”

Her eyes shot open as soon as she recognized the voice. Rolling over, she collided with the hard body of her dead husband who was gazing at her with affection. “Jack!”

Chapter 2

~
Jack
~

The week before….

The world swam in darkness and for the longest time he couldn’t remember who he was, where he was. Lying in the ditch, naked as the day he was born, he struggled to put the shattered pieces of his life back together, not able to comprehend the images that were coming together in his head. It was as if he was two different people, a man and a monster, and he wasn’t sure which one was really him.

But he remembered Malorie, the only girl he had ever loved, both as a man and as a monster, and guilt and desire burned in his belly.

He remembered the first time he ever saw her. It was after the monsters invaded his peaceful world and stole everything from him. The memories were hazy but he could still smell the blood and hear the screams as his family was slaughtered in front of him. He remembered how he had fought back in savage desperation.

Then she appeared, coming out of the mist like a miniature angel, her honey brown hair cropped close to her head, her lithe body clothed in black. At first he had thought she was another vampire come to finish the job and he had attacked her. But with grace and surprising strength, she had spun around and slammed him against one of the remaining walls and hissed in his ear, “
I’m not a vampire, you fucking moron
.”

Relief that was painful in its intensity grabbed ahold of him and so he had grabbed onto her, the only real thing in the world. As she comforted him, he realized that she was a girl and when he looked at her, he realized that she was a
pretty
girl. At least, she was pretty beneath the shorn hair and the dirty face. Her gray eyes were steady as she looked at him and in that moment he had fallen in love.

He remembered training with her father to hone the skills that had let him take out two vampires without any formal training. But in his heart he knew that he practiced diligently so he could impress Malorie, who at fifteen already possessed amazing grace and impressive talents. She was so serious all of the time and he lived for the moments that he could get her to smile, feeling like a freaking hero every time her lips curved upwards.

When she finally laughed he felt like a fucking god.

She was his world. He would have done anything for her, even as she dreamed about a fucking vampire. Hearing her moans as she slept had both infuriated him and made him hard as nails. For two years he endured the torment of listening to her nocturnal ecstasies until he finally made love to her on her eighteenth birthday, giving her his virginity as she gave him hers. After that, any time she started breathing heavily in her sleep he would nudge her awake and take her.

Those heated moments were always the best and he came to love her dreams as much as he hated them.

When her father approached with a grimmer than usual expression on his face, Jack knew he was in grave shit. But as Mr. Hunter yelled at him in that disturbingly quiet voice of his for getting his daughter pregnant, Jack couldn’t wipe the smile from his face. The baby bound them together and he gladly promised to honor her and cherish her and make her his wife.

He saw how the other men looked at her but it never bothered him because she was his, beautiful, brilliant, and his, and being married to her had been the happiest months of his life. But then it all went wrong.

Jack swallowed thickly as he squeezed his eyes shut to remember what had happened, how it had ended, because he knew he would never willingly leave Malorie.

His naked body shivered in the cool morning but he ignored it as he struggled to remember what happened next, how he became a monster.

His phone rang as he was sharpening his blade, but really he was watching Malorie as she went through the forms with her sword. Her back arched with such grace, even with the rounded belly that stuck so far out in front of her. She was all belly and limbs and he thought she was the most beautiful she had ever been. There was a glow about her, a peacefulness that radiated from her, and he realized that impending motherhood suited her. He could spend all day watching her.

Absently, he picked up the phone, “Hello?”

“Is this Jack?” a soft, feminine voice asked, startling him out of his favorite past time.

Tearing his eyes away from his wife, he stood up, “Who is this?”

“I believe we have something in common, Mr. Sinclair,” the voice murmured without answering his question. “I believe we can… trade.”

“I don’t even know who you are,” he said in a scathing tone.

A low, sensuous chuckle slithered through the phone, wrapping around him and making him hard. Embarrassed by his reaction, he shifted uneasily and turned his back on Malorie, afraid she would see his response to the disembodied voice on the other end of the phone. “Several of my… associates inform me that you are looking for a particular, um, vampire.”

Jack stilled as he thought about the vampire his wife had saved when she had been a foolish sixteen year old girl with more compassion than sense. The vampire that she dreamed about at night. Standing up, he walked further away from Malorie, not wanting her to hear any part of this conversation. “Go on.”

“Tomorrow night, he’ll be at the fraternity house where you first encountered him,” the voice purred. “There will be a brief window of opportunity for you to have your revenge but you must come alone.”

“How do I know this isn’t a trap?” he asked, his heartbeat galloping painfully in his chest as excitement boiled his blood. He was finally going to confront the bastard who had enchanted his beautiful bride and he wasn’t sure if he even cared that it was a trap.

“Because if I wanted you dead I wouldn’t be calling to offer you this gift,” the woman said, her voice compelling and rich. “Do you accept?”

Looking over his shoulder, he saw Malorie talking to one of the soldiers, her hand on her lower back as she spoke. Love and determination filled his chest. He could do this for her. “Yes.”

The woman gave him the time to be at the rendezvous point before hanging up and he knew that there wasn’t going to be a lot of wiggle room. Luckily, the old fraternity house was only a few hours away. He shouldn’t draw too much suspicion if he told the other soldiers that he had a tip about possible vamp activity and he was going to scope it out to see if there was anything to it.

Sliding the phone into his back pocket, he walked over and took Malorie’s hand in his, ignoring the other man as he pulled her away. If he was going to do this, he needed to feel her beneath him before he left, to give him incentive to come back in one piece.

Jack sucked in a deep breath as he slowly remembered the confrontation with his wife’s nocturnal dream lover, the exhilaration of looking into the bastard’s eyes as he sunk the stake into his chest, the heat of the vampire’s blood as it spilled over his hands. “She’s mine, you goddamn vamp.”

“Mine!” he hissed, holding the stake as the green-eyed vampire sank to the ground, the life draining from his eyes. Afterwards, with as much stealth as he had used when he entered the house, Jack left with no one the wiser. Once he was across the street, he finally looked back and thought he saw a woman standing in one of the window’s staring down at him, a sly smile on her blood-red lips that were visible even from that distance. Long, midnight black hair hung to the small of her back as she turned around, letting the curtain flutter back into place.

A shudder whispered through his body as he rushed to his car, the scepter of Death hanging over his head. That night, he had made love to Malorie with frantic lust. Well, with as much frantic lust as he could with her rounded belly. Over and over he had claimed her, speaking nonsense words of ownership, of passion, of love.

The next night, he and a few of the men were out hunting when they were ambushed. The vampires captured and bound Jack and made him watch as they killed his fellow soldiers, his friends. He struggled against the binds until his wrists were bleeding and he screamed until his throat was raw but the vamps didn’t spare him a passing glance as they devoured Stavros and Mercer.

Then
she
walked into the room, the woman with midnight black hair and blood red lips, and he knew he was fucked. Holding his eyes, she dismissed the vampires, making them leave the bodies. When she smiled, he felt fear like he had never before known tear into his guts. He tried to back away from her as she approached but there was nowhere for him to go because he was bound to a chair and couldn’t move.

“Welcome to my neck of the woods,” the woman said, her slender body undeniably gorgeous with her full tits and long legs. The silken gown fell to the ground where she stood, revealing her body in its entirety and Jack’s body responded in spite of his terror. She ran a red talon along his cheek and over his chest. “I wish to thank you for taking care of that little problem for me.”

“The hot-blooded vamp?” he asked in a pathetically weak voice, his throat still ragged from screaming.

Her lips curved upwards in a wicked smile as she showed him her deadly fangs, “He wasn’t really a vampire, you know, but that is neither here nor there. I wish to thank you.”

Slowly, she began unbuttoning his shirt and his body froze as he suddenly realized what was happening, that she was trying to seduce him. He almost threw his head back and laughed because there was no way he would be unfaithful to Malorie. No way. Even when the woman pressed hot lips against his sweaty chest he knew he wasn’t going to succumb.

She tugged at his pants, dragging them down his legs until they couldn’t go any further because his ankles were tied to the chair. Closing his eyes, he pictured Malorie as she smiled at him with all of her love and trust and he willed his unruly erection away. It became increasingly difficult as the woman wrapped her lips around his cock and took him all the way down her throat. The experience was so new and the feeling so exquisite, his hips jerked upwards and his faith faltered. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to picture Malorie but she was fading.

Tears slipped down his cheeks as the woman massaged his aching balls, as she licked and sucked at his straining erection. Against his will, his body moved to her rhythm, desperate for the oblivion of pleasure her lips promised.

Pulling back, letting his cock slip out of her mouth with a soft pop, she looked up at him with a smug smile, as if she knew how much he wanted her to finish. Leisurely stroking his thighs, blowing softly on his wet penis, she purred, “You are going to be richly rewarded, my pet. When you are one of my children you will be my favorite, I think.”

“No,” he pleaded, looking down at her with glossy eyes and flushed cheeks. “Please. I don’t want to be a vampire.”

“Oh, my poor baby,” she crooned, cradling his cheek in her hand as she straddled his lap and sank down onto his erection. Her wet heat enveloped him in a lover’s embrace and he had to squeeze his eyes shut as his breath shuddered out of his body. “You simply don’t understand what an honor it is to be chosen.”