Air of Darkness Read online

  “All better,” she said softly, opening her eyes. Her hand, slender and smooth, moved to cup his jaw, and his hand rose to cover it. Her touch was so full of warmth, and he wanted to feel it just a little longer, to stare into those eyes and lose himself. Her other hand moved to cover his forehead again.

  “I’m sorry, cowboy. I can’t let you remember what happened tonight, but you probably don’t want the memories anyway. Just try to relax.”

  Those words had the opposite effect on him. He tried to sit up, but he was still so weak. The whispering started again and he could feel her, like an alien presence in his mind, moving and sifting through his thoughts. It wasn’t painful. It felt like a soft, silken hand lightly brushing his skin, lips moving in butterfly kisses. He resisted, mentally moving to block her every advance.

  His body writhed; his head thrashed, trying to move away from her, all the while, her whispers filled his ears and his mind.

  Her lips brushed his and he stilled, his body instantly flaring to life, and she deepened the kiss, sliding her tongue between his lips. That distraction was all she needed to move past all of his defenses. He could feel his memories of the night being snatched away. Like grains of sand, the more tightly he tried to hold on to them, the more easily they slipped through his fingers.

  As she ended the kiss and pulled back, Alex let the darkness claim him. The last image he saw was her indigo eyes, staring into his.

  Chapter 2

  Alayna Blackwell pulled her rumbling Suzuki Hayabusa motorcycle into the garage entrance of the warehouse off 51st Street and killed the engine. One side of the cavernous space was taken up with several of the team’s vehicles, while the other side was dominated by gym equipment and racks of various weapons the team used for combat training. With the push of a button, the garage door was rolling back into place, just another nondescript, quiet warehouse in a sea of other warehouses, seemingly deserted on a Saturday morning. The Council of Magickal Creatures maintained the building as the Austin headquarters for their primary strike team.

  Alayna let her eyes adjust to the darkness. The garage had no windows and for good reason. Couldn’t risk anyone getting a peek at what went on in here.

  Her boots made hardly a sound as she moved across the concrete floor to the stairs and took them two at a time to the offices and interrogation rooms on the second floor.

  Having heard the office door slam, Dumeril poked his head out of one of the three interrogation/conference rooms. Her second-in-command was tall and lithe, with the grace and silent movement common to the elven races. His skin was midnight black and almost seemed to absorb the light around him. Long white hair was pulled back from his face in a tight braid at his nape and he gave a flashing white smile that reached his deep, violet eyes.

  “You changed clothes,” he said, nodding at the black T-shirt and fatigue pants she’d traded for her club wear from last night.

  “I managed to make it home for a minute. The red top was a loss, unfortunately. I really liked that one, too.” She sighed.

  “You are hard on clothes, girl,” Dumeril said, shaking his head. “Did you get any sleep?”

  “Nope.”

  “Did you remember to eat?”

  Crossing her arms, she tapped her chin thoughtfully.

  “I have a vague memory of a bagel at some point in the last few hours.”

  Nodding, Dumeril said, “Salvadin is all set up for you, Commander. He’s been toasting for about two hours, and he’s getting pretty uncomfortable.”

  Alayna steeled herself and put on her not-fucking-around face before pushing open the door to the conference room. Nick was in the corner, tied to a solid steel chair that was bolted to the floor. Bright morning sunlight streamed in through floor-to-ceiling windows on either side of him. His skin was lobster red, blistering and peeling in a few delicate places like the tips of his ears, the bridge of his nose.

  When he saw her walk in the room, his fangs slid from his gums, nestling tightly behind his human-looking teeth. The whites of his eyes started to bleed to red, pupils dilating, heading to full vamp in a matter of seconds. The veins in his arms stood out against his skin as he strained against his bonds, feet pushing at the floor and his head thrashing from side to side. Just as he was ramping up, he seemed to deflate and shrink in on himself. Exhausted then. Good. Probably starving. Even better.

  Alayna walked slowly around the conference table and pulled out one of the rolling chairs, placing it a few feet back from where Nick was bound. The red was starting to bleed back out of his eyes, his head was slumped forward slightly and his breath was coming a little too fast.

  “You’re not looking so hot, Nicky,” Alayna observed.

  “Fuck you, bitch,” Nick spat.

  “Now, is that any way to talk to the gal that’s gonna save your ass?” she asked sweetly as she spun the chair and straddled it, placing her arms across the back, casual as could be. Her blue eyes met his, and she registered the fear he was trying so hard to hide. It was there, just below the tough guy, go-fuck-yourself attitude.

  “I’ll tell you a few things that I know, Nicky,” she said softly. “I know that you didn’t kill Blanca Rodriguez or any of the other people we’ve found.”

  She let those words hang in the air between them for a moment before continuing.

  “I also know that you didn’t dump her body.”

  What she didn’t tell him was that Lu, the team’s recon expert and a shape shifter had gone into wolf-mode last night and run her powerful nose over Nick’s car. The slight scent of blood but not death. That truck hadn’t been used to transport a body, and blood wasn’t all that unusual in a vampire’s vehicle, anymore than fast food wrappers would be unusual in the average person’s car.

  “What I need to know, Nick, is what went down at Revelations that night.”

  He strained again at the bonds, frustration evident in every inch of his skinny form, as greasy hair fell over his face. As his eyes met hers again, hate blazed across the distance between them, but there was something else, something that looked like a plea. But a plea for what?

  “Who are you protecting?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

  Nick’s exhausted body sagged again and she knew that was the right direction.

  “Who was in the SUV with you that night?”

  His eyes went wide and he tensed, but a second later he covered the fear. Bingo.

  She rose from her chair and walked slowly to him, dragging her fingers lightly across his scalp as she crossed behind him. His hiss of pain filled her ears.

  Real vampires, unlike those of legend, could withstand a certain amount of sunlight, especially if they wore sunscreen and particularly if they had recently fed. Most could pass for a normal human, albeit a particularly pale one, if they fed regularly and slathered on plenty of SPF 100. Still, most preferred to avoid sunlight whenever possible. It ate up a lot of energy to heal and that meant feeding more often.

  Nick had been snared last night, so he didn’t have any chemical help to protect him from the sun and she knew from his reaction when she walked in and his growing exhaustion that he hadn’t eaten in over twenty-four hours.

  “Dumeril, your knife,” she said to the dark elf who had been leaning in the doorway during their conversation. His brilliantly white smile flashed in his inky dark skin and with a movement too quick for most eyes to follow, he pulled a wicked curved dagger from his belt and tossed it to her. Nick’s eyes widened as the leather wrapped hilt hit her palm.

  Alayna let a bit of a demented gleam creep into her gaze as she fingered the very sharp tip of the blade. Her mouth turned up as an answering fear coursed through the vampire, and he swallowed hard.

  “You won’t use that,” Nick said. It was almost a question. If she started cutting, even that small amount of blood loss would compound his pain and exhaustion exponentially. “You don’t operate that way, Blackwell. We both know you’re not going to throw away your fair and just reputati
on now. Not on a little fish like me, anyway.”

  She kept the half smile in place and raised an eyebrow.

  The tough guy routine always started to falter when the blades came out. Even the most badass vamps would crack eventually. The fear of Alayna, the Council, and of whomever Nick was protecting had him close to spilling everything. He just needed one last push.

  With slow, deliberate movements, Alayna brought the razor sharp edge of the blade to the soft skin of her forearm. The bite of the fairy-steel barely registered as it opened a neat slice on the underside of her arm. Thank goodness Dumeril could be trusted to keep his blades in peak condition. She held her wrist up and let the blood run until it dripped down her elbow to the floor.

  Nick stared, eyes transfixed on the blood. The red was back in his eyes, his fangs still extended. He was right. She wasn’t about to start cutting up little fish like Nick. Besides, she had learned a long time ago that you caught more flies with honey than with vinegar. And the stuff running down her arm wasn’t so much honey to Nick as it was crack cocaine.

  His eyes met hers, disbelief warring with hope as his red tongue darted out and ran over his fangs.

  “You really offering me a taste of mage blood?” he asked, eyes narrowing. “It’s forbidden. The penalty is death.”

  No one really knew what effect mage blood had on vampires and other magical creatures. Mages carried an unfathomable amount of energy around; it was what allowed them to control their element and weave their spells.

  Legends and whispered horror stories told of vampires that gained god-like strength and the power to wield the elements as mages did. Others described crazed monsters tearing through whole villages single-handedly after ingesting just a mouthful.

  “Just tell me what happened that night, Nicky,” she whispered softly, holding her arm just out of reach of his questing tongue. Inwardly, she cringed, trying to keep the disgust off her face.

  He was slipping. She could see it. Leaning closer, she placed the arch of her boot on the edge of the chair’s seat, the toe hovering just over his balls. If he made a move, she’d make him regret it.

  His eyes left the blood and returned to her face.

  Here we go.

  “See, what happened is Ricky, the head of security at Revelations, he texted me that night,” Nick said, his voice high, his words coming fast. “I was working down the street at Maggie’s. I took off sick and pulled my truck up at the loading dock at Rev. Then Jimmy Medina, the Culebra himself, gets in.”

  Jimmy Medina owned half a dozen successful bars in town, including the infamous Hellraisers, along with more real estate than anyone could accurately calculate and the most successful shipping company in the state. If you needed the hookup, particularly in the magickal world, Jimmy was the guy.

  “So, I’m scared shitless and he’s ducking down in the backseat and telling me to drive.” Nick was really spilling his guts now. It was all coming out in a stream of consciousness, his red eyes darting back and forth between her face and the blood on her arm.

  Alayna turned to Dumeril and he nodded, understanding her silent question. Yes, they were recording this.

  “He told me to just drive. I headed south, across the river. Drove around SoCo for a while. Headed north and swung around the campus. Then he tells me to drop him off at Hellraisers. So I did. That’s it. That’s all I know.”

  “Bullshit,” Alayna scoffed, rolling her eyes.

  “I swear it!” he shouted, his voice high. He was desperate for her to believe him, but there was something else to it.

  Hands on hips, she fixed him with a narrow-eyed glare. “If all you did was give one of the richest vamps around a ride home, then why did you try to kick my ass when I asked you about that night? You’re awful fired up for it to be that simple.”

  Nick whispered something. It was so soft Alayna couldn’t hear it. He was slumped forward, mumbling under his breath, almost jabbering, and rocking slightly. She was going lose him if they kept it up much longer.

  Taking a risk, she leaned in to hear him.

  “Covered in blood, covered in blood, covered in blood.” He was saying it in a breathy voice over and over again.

  “COVERED IN BLOOD!” Nick screamed and lunged at her throat, coming up short at the chains around his chest. He was fully vamped out, fangs extended, eyes crimson. Alayna managed to cover her flinch by turning away as she processed that info.

  She needed to talk to Jimmy Medina in the worst way, but the guy was slicker than greased owl shit and was no doubt on a “buying trip” in South America right now, lying low to avoid the heat.

  What had happened to Blanca was a major fuckup. The girl was not supposed to die. But why would a smooth operator like the Culebra, with nearly two centuries under his belt, screw up and kill a veteran turned college student? The guy had to have willing donors stashed all over town, and from what she’d heard, he’d gone all respectable and was drinking bagged blood these days. Something wasn’t adding up.

  She turned to Dumeril, “Get me a couple units for him.”

  He returned with two bags of blood, handing one to Alayna. She held the bag to Nick’s mouth and pushed it against his fangs until they punctured the plastic with a little pop. With one hand she pushed his head back and he gulped greedily as the dark fluid flowed into his mouth.

  When he had drained the first unit, she repeated the process with the second. Nick finished quickly and, with his fangs back in, regarded her with a steady gaze. His burns had healed, new skin forming before her eyes. The two bullets that FBI agent had put in Nick slid out of his shoulder and belly, clattering against the tile as they fell. The gaze that met hers was once again sane. Or mostly sane, anyway.

  “You have no idea what you’re getting in the middle of here, Blackwell,” he said, his voice low. “I don’t know exactly what’s going on, but it’s big, bigger than you and me.”

  “Thanks for the warning, Nick,” she responded cheerily.

  She wasn’t scared of wading into the middle of anything. There was already an early grave with her name on it, courtesy of her rather unique powers. Whoever or whatever was behind these murders could just get in line if they wanted to be the one to punch her ticket.

  “What else can you tell me?”

  He sighed and paused, working up the nerve.

  “There’s a lot of trucks moving around, more than usual,” he said, in a conspiratorial tone. “A lot more movers and shakers, in and out of the vampire-owned bars like Rev and Hellraisers. A lot of visitors from out of town and a lot of extra security around,” he said. His voice was even now, matter of fact. “That is literally the last bit of info I know. I’m done.”

  A look of sadness crossed his face. His body was slumped again, not in exhaustion, just defeat.

  “They’re gonna know I told you,” he said, bitterness in his voice. “They’re gonna tear me apart. You might as well take my head right now, Blackwell. It’ll at least be quicker than what they’re going to do to me.”

  “You know I’m not gonna do you like that, Nicky. The Mage Corps takes care of those who help us.” A small smile touched her lips. “I’m going to make you disappear.”

  Hope flickered in his gaze as he met her eyes. She patted his hand, still bound to the arm of the chair.

  His fingers moved, quick as a snake, snapping at the limits of his bonds, straining, and clamped around her wrist. Adrenaline slammed into her and she cocked her fist back to deliver a punch, but hesitated when she saw desperation and not anger on his face.

  Nick spoke again, his voice a little shaky, “Blackwell, watch your back. They know you’re coming.”

  “Dumeril, get Theron on the phone and tell him to get his ass up here,” she said, pulling her hand free and heading to the door. San Antonio was only an hour and a half away. Her brother could make the drive.

  “No,” he snapped, clearly miffed. He grabbed her bleeding arm and pressed his fingers over the cut as they both stepped into the hall
. Warmth flowed up her arm, and she could feel the sting as her skin knit back together. “I’m not talking to that dickhead, especially this early on a Saturday morning. You know what a raging asshole he is before noon.”

  “He’s been mostly nocturnal lately, and you know how fire mages get when they don’t get enough time in the sun,” Alayna said, trying to ignore the tickling tingle in her arm as Dumeril’s magick worked. “And Theron’s the only one I trust to get Nick out of sight and to someplace safe.”

  “Then you talk to him. He’s your brother. I’m not the goddamn Blackwell family answering service—”

  “He doesn’t answer my calls,” she said, exasperated.

  While Dumeril was technically her second-in-command, she wasn’t exactly a stickler for military discipline. Her crew worked well together, they followed orders when they needed to and the grumbling was all good-natured and mostly playful. A sense of humor was the only way they got through the stuff they had to deal with every day.

  Dumeril was right, though, she needed to talk with her older brother. The big fire mage was notoriously hard to get a hold of. He was the closest to her age among her three siblings, and while she loved him dearly, he always kept her at arm’s length. Her whole family did.

  She was twenty-seven years old, the commander of a strike team for an entire city, and even managed to behave like an adult on a fairly regular basis, but in many ways she was still treated like a child, shut out, cut off and left wondering.

  Locking eyes with Dumeril, she gave the order. “Give him the assignment and set up a pickup time. Tell him that I don’t care where he takes him, just make sure it is secret and safe. He needs to keep it off the Council and Corps radar until we know what we’re dealing with. And, not that I need to tell him,” she looked back to Nick tied to the chair, “but he needs to watch his back.”

  Dumeril muttered about mages needing to learn to send a damned text message, but she ignored him, taking her arm back and running her fingers over the now smooth skin.