Blood-Kissed Sky (Darkness Before Dawn) Read online

  “Not like a virus, not like when we get sick, but I guess it’s the closest they have to an illness. My father may have made a reference to it in his journal. They need to keep their blood pure. Vamps aren’t known for their creativity. Maybe ‘Infected’ made sense to them.”

  “Really makes them dependent on our blood, doesn’t it?” she asks.

  “Yeah.”

  “Puts the situation in a different perspective.”

  “What about Faith and Richard? What are they doing for blood while they’re on the train?” Michael asks, his voice rife with suspicions.

  “Vampires can go a week between feedings before they begin to weaken.”

  “Well, then let’s hope they fed before they got onboard.”

  I don’t bother to tell him that they wouldn’t just take the blood. If they discovered that they needed it, they would pay someone—very handsomely.

  “So are we good with Faith and Richard?”

  “Sure,” Tegan says, and I can tell she’s willing to give them a chance to prove themselves.

  “Michael?” I ask pointedly.

  He shakes his head. “I’m never going to like them, Dawn, but I’ll tolerate them until they give me a reason to stake them.”

  I realize that’s the best I can hope for from him, for now.

  “Okay then. Faith, Richard, and I are going to see what was happening in the lounge car tonight. Thought you might want to come with us.”

  “Nothing better to do,” Michael says.

  Chapter 22

  The atmosphere is way different tonight. The lighting is low, but at least it’s not pulsing. The music isn’t so loud. People aren’t dancing. Tables and chairs are scattered throughout. The bar is open.

  Tegan, Faith, and I grab an empty table while the guys fetch us drinks. I can’t help but notice the way Faith watches Richard walking away from us. She’s totally focused on him.

  “You love him, don’t you?” I ask quietly.

  She knits her eyebrows together to form a tiny furrow. “Don’t be ridiculous. I just appreciate a nice male form.”

  “Where’s the harm in admitting your feelings?” Tegan asks.

  “Vampires don’t love.”

  “So when Sin told me he loved me, it was all just part of his con?”

  Richard and Michael become lost in the crowd. Faith shifts her attention to Tegan. “Not necessarily. I really don’t know enough about Day Walkers to know how they function. They could love. My brother certainly seems to understand the emotion of revenge.”

  I’m pretty sure that’s her attempt to console Tegan. Richard has told me before that Faith isn’t as cold as she appears. Of course, if my father had been Lord Valentine, then I might have locked my heart away as well.

  “But you do care about Richard,” I persist.

  She scratches a perfectly manicured nail over the tabletop, as though something she can’t scrape free is stuck to it. She suddenly appears young, vulnerable, more my age than two hundred. “It’s—it’s complicated.”

  “You think he’ll hurt you.”

  “I know he has the power to.”

  “He loves you. He wouldn’t hurt you.”

  She pierces me with her blue gaze. “How do you humans do it? How do you take that chance?”

  “Because we don’t want to be alone. And because the rewards are worth the risk.”

  “I don’t even regret falling for Sin,” Tegan says quietly. “While we were together, it was the best part of my life. I just wish he hadn’t turned out to be the bad guy.”

  “The notion of giving someone that much control over you—”

  “If it’s real, it’s not about control,” I interrupt quickly. “It’s about sharing, helping, being there for each other. Maybe you could try letting some of your defenses down.”

  She shakes her head. “That’s the most frightening thing one can do.”

  “Start small. With Tegan and me.”

  She wrinkles her nose, so un-Old-Familylike. “Are you saying I should fall in love with you?”

  I laugh, and Tegan just stares at Faith as though she can’t believe what just came out of her mouth. For all her vamp psych courses, I imagine she’s learning more about vamps while we’re on this train than she has in any book she’s ever read. “No. But you can trust us to be your friends.”

  I don’t know how she might have responded to that offer, because the guys return and set strawberry margaritas in front of us.

  “You okay?” Richard asks solicitously as he takes a chair beside Faith.

  “Fine.”

  Michael sits between Tegan and me, watches the exchange between the vamps, then looks over at me. I just give him a nod and soft smile before reaching for my drink.

  “Old Family females are so lucky,” Tegan says after slurping on hers for a few minutes. “I bet you never go long without a date.”

  “Why? Because we’re rare? Because we can only produce one offspring and then we go sterile? Don’t you see how careful we have to be that we don’t make a mistake when selecting our mate? We may be precious commodities, but that’s only until we have a child. Once we reproduce, we’re often cast aside. My mother was. So was Victor’s.”

  “And Sin’s?”

  “I’m not really sure of Sin’s mother. Her name was Esmerelda, but that’s all I know. I’m not even sure which family she came from. Father never spoke of her. For all I know, he may have killed her for creating the abomination—as Father liked to call Sin.”

  “Here’s something I don’t understand,” I say, leaning forward, crossing my arms on the table. “Sin claims to be the first Day Walker. Why didn’t your father consider him a miracle? Why didn’t he embrace him, flaunt him—”

  “Announce to the world that he had a child who could bridge both worlds: the one of light and the one of darkness?”

  “Yeah, something like that. It would be like discovering your child was a baby Einstein. Wouldn’t you be proud of what he could accomplish?”

  “Just because he hid him away doesn’t mean he wasn’t proud,” Tegan says, kicking into psychoanalyzing mode.

  “Keeping him hidden made him a weapon Valentine could use at his discretion,” Richard explains. “If you’re planning a war, you don’t tell your enemies that you’ve created a more powerful bomb.”

  “You think that’s what this is all about? Another war?”

  “I think Valentine wanted absolute control over all humans and the blood supply. If he controlled that, he could control the vampires.”

  “But what does Sin want?”

  “I suspect he wants the same thing.”

  “Those had better be virgin drinks,” a deep voice booms.

  I glance back to see Ian standing there. I’m wondering if he’s worried about us getting drunk or reducing his liquor supply. “We’re cool.”

  “You’ll want to get some sleep tonight. We arrive in Los Angeles shortly after dawn. You’ll have three days. No more, no less. Per Clive’s orders, I intend to stick close the entire time. The good news: Los Angeles is one of the safest cities. Still, we do have to follow some protocols.”

  He tells me that our first stop will be the Agency, where I’ll be introduced to the director who runs the city, and from there we’ll go to our hotel. Straight to the hotel.

  Three days. It doesn’t seem like enough time anymore, but I’ll make it work.

  Chapter 23

  I fall asleep, hoping against hope that I see Victor again. Instead …

  Blackness.

  But there’s something here. All around me. I can feel it. I want to call out, but I’m afraid. I can’t explain why. I take a step forward, feeling the solid ground, so real, so cold. Clean and sterile. Clinical.

  Crying. Ahead of me.

  “Victor?” I bravely call out.

  The crying grows in response, nearly stopping my heart, and I think I’ll wake up from the jolt it causes. But I don’t; instead I slip further into this dark world
.

  The crying echoes off of unseen walls, unseen ceilings.

  I take another step, and another. I begin to run as the crying grows, unsure if I’m heading toward it or running from it. In my peripheral vision I see the darkness changing; I see shapes forming. Shapes that are my own. Reflections of me, ghostly and hollow, as though mirrors surround me, closing in, showing me running.

  Only something is within these glass walls. And its hands make streaks along the corridor, following me, so my reflection is never whole, never perfect, always filled with the black claws of some monster that can’t escape.

  The crying pierces me and I’m seized with the strange fear that if it grows any louder, it will shatter the fragile walls and the monsters within the cages will escape and devour me, unsatisfied with merely feasting on my reflection as I run past them.

  Then I see him. The crying … thing. He’s kneeling in front of a glass chamber, looking in, but there’s not enough light for me to pick out details.

  I slow to a walk.

  “Hello?” I call.

  The crying stops. But the thing doesn’t turn toward me. Is he a child? Is he a man who has succumbed to the weight of the terrors surrounding him? The terrors that lurk behind these walls of glass, their darkness ever-reaching?

  I approach the crying thing, wanting him to move, to recognize my presence. I don’t want to scare him, but maybe I’m the one who should be afraid. I sense some power within his fragile shell, some darkness that matches this world, a darkness that has bled into it.

  A few more steps and I’ll be near. A few more steps and I can …

  “Dawn.”

  I turn around and see the outline of Victor, distant but recognizable in the shadows.

  “Victor!” I shout.

  “Dawn, you have to go.”

  “What?”

  “You can’t be here, Dawn.”

  “Victor, what are you—”

  “Dawn, run!”

  Over his scream, the shattering of glass reverberates around me. Behind him, I see the rain of reflection, giant shards that fall to the ground, and the smaller fragments scattering as they explode on the hardened floor. Victor’s right—I shouldn’t be here. All I know is that I can’t stay in this place. I wasn’t meant for it. This isn’t a dream.

  It’s a nightmare. I’m trapped in Victor’s nightmare.

  Victor turns away and heads toward the darkness, toward the raining glass and the monsters that have been released. He’s buying me time. Time that isn’t real in this place. But the fear is. Whether it’s my own, or Victor’s, it’s palpable and genuine.

  So I run. I run through the darkness, away from the screams, but they’re always around me. I run and run and run. And then the darkness becomes something else. The glass walls that hold my reflection become like stone, and the moon rises above me. And the mountain calls.

  The mountain of my own dreams. My own nightmares.

  “Find me.”

  I don’t want to listen; I don’t want to be drawn toward it.

  “Find me.”

  But what choice do I have? What choice do any of us have against the nightmares that haunt us?

  “Find me!”

  I awake in a cold sweat. The terror of what was still thundering in my heart. And the terror of the unknown growing greater.

  As I get dressed in jeans and a red sweater, the nightmare lingers in my mind. What did it mean? What was that place? Why would Victor visit it in his dreams? If vampires don’t dream, did I conjure it up? Or did we both fall deep into his subconscious, to places he’d rather keep hidden?

  “You’re awfully quiet this morning,” Tegan says. She’s also wearing jeans, but she’s layered on a white T-shirt, a green tank top, and a yellow one. “Were you with Victor again, in your dreams?”

  I strap on my holster and slip the stake into it. “Sorta. It’s hard to explain. It’s more like I was in his nightmare.”

  Placing her duffle bag on the bed, she starts stuffing her clothes into it. “Can you control what happens when you’re there?”

  “Not really.” I stop zipping my duffle and look at her. “I don’t think so, anyway. I haven’t really experimented with it.”

  She sits on the edge of the bed. “What if you are transforming into a vampire?”

  “It’s not a gradual process. They drain your blood, you die, they give you their blood, and then you’re—according to Victor—awakened.”

  “Then why are you able to do something that Faith says only vampires can do?”

  I shrug, trying to make light of it. But I’m just frustrated because I’ve never felt so in the dark about something. “Sometimes I think vamps know less about themselves than what we know about them. They didn’t even know a Day Walker was possible.”

  “You’re probably right. How many times do Old Family fall in love with humans anyway? It probably has more to do with the power of your love for Victor.”

  I move over, sit beside her, and take her hand. “I heard what you said to Michael in the observation deck. I’m sorry if I haven’t been here for you, Tegan.”

  “You’ve been there, Dawn. It’s just going to take time. That’s all.” She gives me a wicked smile. “What will really help is when we find Sin. What if he’s here, Dawn? What if he’s in the city?”

  “It doesn’t make sense that he would come back here. He wants to destroy Victor. He wants Denver—”

  “He wants you. And you’re here.”

  “But he doesn’t know that.” Her face falls. I can’t leave her with no hope. “But maybe we’ll discover something here that will help us find him.”

  She perks back up at that, jumps to her feet, and grabs her duffle bag. “Then let’s go.”

  We step out in the hallway. Michael is waiting for us, his bag clutched in one hand, his stakes at the ready.

  “Ian stopped by just a few minutes ago,” he says. “He wants us in the observation deck.”

  “Okay, I know we’re here for some serious business,” Tegan says, “but it is so exciting to have the chance to see another city.”

  “According to Richard, it’s very different from Denver,” I tell her.

  When we get to the observation deck, we discover that many of the other passengers have crammed into the confined quarters, wanting a glimpse of the city. But Ian has saved us a spot near the front, and we have nothing to block our view as we approach Los Angeles.

  It’s amazing. The desert has continued all the way here, and the roads that would normally come out of the walled city are nonexistent. And then I remember Richard’s description, that it was the opposite of my city. The walls are so thick, and so high, that the Carrollton family has no influence, can issue only idle threats. Even if they want to attack, they can’t. As a result, the vampires fed off of one another and the Thirst set in. But because the sun is out, the Infected are hidden away for now.

  “Oh, man,” Michael says in awe. “Have you ever imagined anything like that?”

  The walls are absolutely massive! I thought they were a small mountain at first, a geological oddity, before I saw the tracks running right into them. As the metal gate slowly retracts to allow our passing, Ian tells us that this is the only entrance into the city.

  We speed along the tracks as if chased by demons, and they need to close the doors quickly to keep them out. As we enter the narrow passageway, I see that we barely fit, the designers of the wall wanting the smallest entry possible in order to safeguard their city. And the walls, which seemed tall from afar, are even more impressive as we move through them. They must be a mile thick, all stone masonry intricately laid to make them as strong as possible, and they are higher than the train itself.

  When we emerge on the other side of the wall, I catch my breath. Shock ripples through me. The city is in absolute decay. It’s as though we’re going through an old battlefield, blocks of buildings that have been bombed so only their shells remain. Their clothes little more than rags, people walk th
e streets like the dead looking for the graves from which they escaped.

  “This is the Outer Ring. Most of the poorer population lives here. And those deemed less than beautiful,” Ian says, surely noticing my surprise. “They’re as close to death as you can be while your heart still beats. They no longer fear vampires, only starvation.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “Not many people do.”

  “Why didn’t you tell Clive?”

  “What could he do, Dawn, from so far away? He has enough on his plate worrying about his own city.”

  The realist, once again. He’s right. I’ll put it in my report, and Clive will read it, but what can he do to help a city beyond his reach?

  “I hate this city,” Ian mutters. “It’s rotting from the inside.”

  I realize that he is one of the few who has seen the full devastation of our world. Even knowing that Los Angeles wasn’t like Denver didn’t prepare me for this. But I’m left to wonder what the other cities might be like.

  A group of children are chasing a rat, and I hope that they aren’t grocery shopping. Men and women, their arms thin and their stomachs bloated from malnutrition, let the flies converge over their bodies, too tired to swat them away. It’s hell. There’s no other way to describe this place. It is hell.

  Something grabs Ian’s attention. A man running toward the train makes a desperate leap onto the speeding machine and latches on to the front car. I don’t know what he’s hanging by, but it isn’t much, and his face contorts with pain as he struggles to hold on.

  “Get off,” Ian mutters. “Get off, you idiot.”

  It’s a cold thing to say. But then I realize Ian’s trying to save the man.

  Up ahead, another wall, as large as the first, looms. I suspect we’re about to enter the Inner Ring of the city. And the man, clinging on for dear life, isn’t invited. On top of the wall is a guard tower, much like the ones around Denver. But the guardian at the top, rifle in hand, isn’t after vampires. He’s after trespassers.

  He takes aim. I turn my head, hearing only the cracking report echoing in the distance. When I look back, the man who was holding on to the train is gone.