Dawn's Darkest Hour

The soft carpet whispered against the soles of his bare feet as he padded out of his room. In the wee hours of the morning the dark suburban house just looked wrong. Pale light from streetlamps filtered through the narrow kitchen window and shone in streaks across the tiled floor. He flipped on a light, as if the yellow, incandescent, glow would chase away the nightmares that constantly circled his mind like buzzards circling a forgotten, decaying carcass abandoned at the side of the road. Bit by bit the nightmares pecked away at his sanity. By now, he thought there wouldn't be much left of the fragile organ occupying the hollow place in his skull. But, there was always a new twist to his imagination, enough to keep the nightmares healthy and well fed.

David sat at the dining room table and unzipped his backpack. It wouldn't hurt him to try to be a good student. The spine of the English book in his hand groaned with age as he turned the pages. Out of the blur of his first day at school, the English teacher had stood out amongst the other teachers. For some reason, he found himself actually wanting to earn a passing grade in her class.

As if impressing her mattered in the slightest. Once his mission was completed, he was gone, back into the shadows where he belonged. He should be focusing on finding the source person for the drug instead of analyzing the intricacies behind Pride and Prejudice. Yet, he read on, for her. Irritated with himself, he pulled out his class schedule. Her name was not familiar to him. N. Temple: English Composition 101. The name that went with his teacher meant nothing. But, there was something about her. Something he couldn't quite place and at the same time there was something familiar about the woman behind the English teacher.

Vampire speed was an amazing thing. He scribbled his answers and scanned pages with blurring strokes of his pen and movements of his fingers. By the time dawn filled the horizon with finger like streaks of gold and pink, his homework as finished. In completing it, he'd found none of the answers he sought. He was no closer to discovering how pink was filtering into the school system or its source. Maybe today, he would.

Chapter 15

Carter spent the night wandering the city. He aimlessly roamed through the dingy, filth littered narrow streets of the city's ghettos. There was no fear or wariness in his stride as he walked though the dark. Even the most desperate had enough sense to give him a wide berth. Especially on a night like this when his mind was a thunderstorm pounding behind his temples.

A wide river separated the city's fine upstanding citizens from the embarrassment of the disease of poverty rotting away on the other side. A dazzling display of reflected light danced on the water's rippling current. Carter wasn't impressed. The stench of decay from the shore's steep banks tickled at the back of his nose. The water was as diseased as the city around it.

Humans could be fooled into believing anything. For the most part, they only saw what they wanted to see anyway. The good part of the city wasn't any different than the impoverished streets he'd wandered all night. Things were cleaner on this side of the river. Occasionally, a police car would idle past the neat rows of brownstones in guise of protecting the humble, law abiding citizens that slept inside.

Postage stamp sized front yards and tidy brownstones gradually gave way to rolling, sprawling lawns carefully clipped to perfection and homes, both larger and grander in scale and accouterments in comparison to their shoebox sized predecessors. These homes were the biggest and best the city had to offer; her crowning jewel. Crime and poverty happened to other people, not to the people who lived inside of these grand homes. These people slept securely behind heavy, ornate iron gates and tall fences. In this part of town, patrol cars were a regular sighting. If only the good people inside these fine homes knew who their neighbor really was, they wouldn't feel so safe in their expensive beds.

Carter didn't need the pale, gray light of dawn to see the addresses. He found the house easily enough. All he had to do was search for the biggest, most overstated house on the block and he knew he'd found her.

The gates were wide open in invitation. O'Sullivan knew his enemies very, very well. O'Sullivan knew he would come and had thrown out the welcome mat. Garish topiary bordered the long walkway leading to the house. Lights twinkled merrily from behind heavily curtained windows, competing with nature's dazzling pre-dawn hues of pink and gold. The house towered above him like a brick fortress. Carter could feel eyes on him as he glided through the shadows toward the thick, ornately adorned, oak door.

He didn't need to knock. O'Sullivan knew he was there and was watching him with casual interest. Making him wait before he came to the door. Carter didn't have to wait long.

The door opened slowly, on silent hinges. The backlighting from the wide foyer highlighted the rich silk gown wrapped around her shapely curves like a lover's embrace. Lush, full, crimson lips, curved in an utterly feminine smile, inviting him in unspoken invitation to sample their softness. A waterfall of pale, blonde curls cascaded over her shoulders and ended in a thick pool at the slope of her waist. Eyes the color of blue that existed only in his boyhood memories of a sky he'd not seen in centuries, twinkled at him. "Eric said you'd come," a voice as soft, and soothing as a summer rain on dry, parched earth, whispered.

Carter stood there trapped between worlds. One foot over the threshold and the world he knew would no longer exist. If he stayed planted where he was, the world he'd fantasized over for centuries would disappear in a puff of lemon verbena scented smoke.

Fingers reached to touch the pale, peach soft skin of her shoulder. Lips formed to say the word that had been trapped on his lips for countless days and nights. He could scarcely believe that she was real when he'd tried so hard to convince himself that she was nothing but a rotting corpse long forgotten by time and the world. Was she some cruel apparition that had come back to haunt him or perhaps a memory that had, in the fringes of what sanity he had left, formed into flesh? "Yessette," he croaked helplessly as an infant long starved for its mother's milk.

Like a blind man suddenly given back his sight, he followed her through the open door. His fingers slicked over the lushness of her lips. She was real, flesh and bone beneath them. She smiled up at him, urging him deeper into the foyer. The door slid shut with a soft click. "Carter, you've finally come back to me."

O'Sullivan leaned against the marble mantle of the fireplace. So easily the mighty fall, he thought watching the reunion that transpired in the foyer. Carter was an unyielding, great oak in a forest of lesser saplings and twigs. Lightening struck, as Yessette placed a kiss on those placid lips, searing him to ash.

O'Sullivan could withdraw the blade hidden behind his back and have been done with Carter right then and there. But, watching his son, his finest creation brought low by this tiny, waif of a girl, was much, much more fun. He'd kill Carter later, if the son of a bitch were lucky. Eric's patience had finally paid off and the last round of the game was finally beginning.

Yessette lived in a world of flowers and sunshine. Her feet weren't fully grounded in reality, or at least not the awful version of it she watched from her window seat. Her universe was far happier and Carter was at the center of it. He always had been. Eric was a benevolent caregiver, but Carter was the only reason she'd stayed with him for so long. He promised her one-day, Carter would come back for her, and just as Eric promised, Carter had come. Her heart fluttered like hummingbird's wings as her lips found his. His arms crushed against her body as they kissed after so many, many, long centuries apart.

Sometimes she didn't think clearly. Pretty things devoured her attention so that there wasn't room for much else. Her chambers upstairs were stuffed full with vibrant silks and delicate laces. She had music boxes lining the walls. Sometimes she wound them up and listened to them all play at the same time. Shinny things were especially distracting to her. Eric loaded her jewelry boxes with pretty, shiny objects. Sometimes, she'd spend hours, maybe days, staring at their glitter against her pale skin.

She couldn't understand how or why she'd become the thing she was. It bothered her that she couldn't remember or comprehend exactly what was wrong with her. Every time she strained to recall what had happened to make her the way she was, why she'd never die and always be beautiful, Eric would buy her another present to add to her already extensive collections. He didn't want her to fret. That was so sweet of him, to take such good care of her for so long. Now with Carter back, Eric wouldn't need to worry so much. Carter was here and he would see after her.

There were so many things she couldn't remember about what she called the time before. Eric and Carter had been such good friends, close as brothers. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't remember why they weren't or what had happened to make them such bitter enemies.

Big pieces of the past were missing from her mind. As the years flew by, more and more of what she could remember vanished. She could barely recall the feeling of sunlight on her face or the gentle whisper of a warm breeze on her cheek. She couldn't remember her parents or details about the land of her birth, but she knew she was English. She had no concept of time and couldn't recall her birthday, but she knew she was very, very old. Food held her fascination, but she couldn't remember why.

When she got hungry, Eric fed her. He gave her rich, sweet, crimson drink in fine, crystal goblets that chased her hunger away. Something about the goblet's contents always repulsed her. But no matter how hard she tried to turn them away, the delicious aroma and Eric's gentle urging always coaxed her to drink.

The bleak, dark hollowness that sometimes filled her mind frightened her. Eric

was always there to soothe her as a father eases a child terrified of the night. At first, he sought her out as a lover. In her gratitude, she'd tried to comply with his gentle requests. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't conjure up the feelings that a woman has for a man and she could not return his gestures. She loved him, but as a child loves a parent.

Those feelings, the rightness that a woman feels when held by a lover, gripped her body in heady siege. Slowly, afraid that Carter might flee, she led him up the winding staircase to the bed that had been vacant for far too long.

Her eyes met Eric's as he glanced at her from the fireplace in the sitting room. She was supposed to do this. She remembered now. Eric promised that if she did this, took Carter to her bed and loved him as a woman loves a man, Carter would stay. Forever. Eric wanted her happiness and now, her joy was about to be complete and the three of them would live happily ever after, just like in one of her fairy tales.

Carter's foot struck the first stair. The heel of his boot echoed off the hollow wood beneath it. He hesitated for a moment. He was in the enemy's lair. He should be paying attention to his surroundings. No doubt, O'Sullivan was a master of trickery and had traps set at every turn. He never should have come here alone. He was never unarmed. But, in his present mental state, he was in no shape to fight. Yessette's delicate fingers warmed his frozen palm. Gently her fingers tugged on his hands, urging him up the staircase. His feet were planted solidly on the first step, frozen. There was another reason he couldn't go up those stairs and follow Yessette to her bed. Shayla.

"Carter, come," Yessette's voice was almost a palpable thing, like a gentle lover's caress on his skin. She tugged on the tips of his fingers insistently. "Please." Maybe it was the please or maybe it was her sheer gown clung to reveal a creamy length of shapely leg, the gentle slope of her stomach, or the soft down at the apex of her thighs. Blonde lengths of hair spilled over her shoulders to hide the ripe peaks of pert nipples and perfectly shaped breasts. So strange, out of all of the things he had forgotten over the centuries. He'd never forgotten how right the soft fullness felt in his palms or the taste of their ripe peaks on his tongue. His legs felt as if they were made of rubber and his feet as if they were infused with lead. Slowly, like an invalid standing for the first time, he climbed the stairs.

O'Sullivan watched Yessette work her magic. He'd been in pursuit of his wayward son for centuries. The man had always somehow avoided every one of his traps. Yet, Yessette had Carter mindless and entranced within a matter of seconds, leading him by the hand like a trusting child. This trap was one that Carter couldn't escape. Sex was, after all, the tenderest of all traps. Carter hadn't seen this one coming. He had willingly stepped into it head first.

"Carter, love me." Yessette purred in delight as his lips traced a path over her collarbones. She hadn't realized how dead and lonely she felt until his hands roamed over her body, thawing her frozen flesh.

Carter battled with the beast in his groin and the shattering of his heart. Shayla. He was destroying her heart with every taste of Yessette's berry lips and with every brush of her skin against his. He'd been starving for her for centuries and now she was offering him his fill. What a bastard he was to be pawing at Yessette, feeling the love he'd buried deep inside for her flowing once again through his veins. His hands traveled over her bare skin, relying on the memory of her to guide them along the way to her secret places he'd never forgotten.

Yessette's sighs of pleasure were like strains of beautiful music that hadn't been heard in centuries. Her body was an empty canvas for his brush to paint. Shayla's heart was breaking, pounding in lethal rhythm with his own. A part of him was dying with her. The part of him that he deluded himself to believing was still human. He could do her a small courtesy and break the link, better that than to feel their love suffering in its death throes. The sudden awfulness of nothing was kinder than to have her endure sensations and the depths of emotions that weren't hers. Better to end it this way than to allow her to see him fall headfirst into a deep well and drown.

His fangs descended from their hiding place in his gums. Aching and wild with need he freed his erection and buried the bastard betrayers, his cock into Yessette's tight sheath and his fangs, into her beautiful, graceful long neck and sated both needs simultaneously with furious, instinctive, animalistic abandon.

Chapter 16

The coffee mug shattered into a thousand tiny ceramic pieces, sending hot liquid, cream, sugar, and shards in a spray across the wooden kitchen floor. Shayla gripped the counter and tried to remain upright, but the assault upon her senses drover her to her knees. Sweat rolled between her shoulder blades in a thick river. Her fingers trembled and reached out for something to hold onto. A whimper escaped her throat at the fury of sensations assaulting her body. Carter...his hands smoothed across foreign flesh... the taste of feminine sweat coated the tip of her tongue... The surge of want slammed into her core and left her gasping for breath... his want...his want for another woman.

Nausea rolled through her stomach as her view of the world narrowed down to Carter. Shayla crouched on the kitchen floor and gripped the sides of her temples. She just wanted it to stop. Knowing that Carter was having sex with another woman was bad enough. She didn't want to feel what the woman's skin felt like to Carter's sensitive fingertips or how the bitch whore tasted! A hard jolt of pure lust sent her scrabbling across the wide wooden planks. "Make it stop!" she panted in utter disgust and agony at her body's betraying response to the sensations.

A scream peeled from her throat. She blindly crawled across the kitchen floor as she saw Carter's world unveil before her unseeing eyes. The woman ...whore... was amazing beautiful and fragile as a mountain wildflower with an eternal frost upon its brilliant petals. Hot tears rolled down Shayla's burning cheeks. Carter's desire for this woman battered her psyche. HE LOVED HER. Shayla could sense that Carter loved this woman in a way that he'd never loved her. She felt his longing for this woman, longing that had been consuming him slowly, bit by bit, for centuries.

Realization was as painful and shattering as the assault on Shayla's body. She thought she knew Carter, all of him, mind, body, and soul. How well he'd hidden this woman and his feelings from her. Shayla slid down the wall and curled into a fetal ball on the floor. Her breaths came out in short pants of pain as she unwillingly bore witness to Carter's betrayal. The peals of her son's shrill cries echoed in her ears. She couldn't answer them. She couldn't move. All she could do was feel sensations that weren't hers and the agony of her breaking heart.

Shayla's body rocked and trembled on the cold planks beneath her. Not even the loss of her husband, witnessing his life drain from the fatal wounds onto the wooden beams beneath him could compare to the suffering she felt at Carter's betrayal. He wasn't done yet. Her agony wasn't nearly complete. He did the unthinkable. Shayla choked on the invisible blood as it burned a path over her tongue and down her throat. There was a moment of searing, wrenching, pain that drove another agonized, hollow scream from her throat, and then...nothing. NOTHING.

She floated in this empty, hollow world of emptiness. Strong arms, their owner she could not guess, lifted her and carried her upstairs. She didn't know where she was being carried. She didn't care. She was lost in this black universe of nothing. Inside of her mind a wolf howled in the distance, an agonized pitiful sound filled with mourning. Her wolf verbalized the pain their co-joined selves felt and she could not put into words. There was no definition for the echoing, empty, pit that had swallowed her whole. She was alone, utterly alone now. Carter had broken the link. To him, she was as good as dead and to her, she was dead.

She felt the warmth of a body stretch out on the bed next to her. Trying to thaw her frozen skin. She was limp and lifeless. Nothing mattered. Nothing was everything. Nothing was all she had left of him. The medicine stung as it burned its way along her bloodstream. She hadn't even felt the pierce of the needle bite through her skin. She struggled against the alluring pull of the drug. Nothing was melting like black wax under the heat of a flame, into a soft, squishy darkness. She was melting with the wax, dripping into the abyss, drop by drop, as her nothing melted away to oblivion.

Chapter 17

Rachael nervously gnawed at the end of her pencil, eying the empty seat beside her. Maybe David wasn't coming today. Maybe The Society had gotten to him and he'd dropped English Comp because he didn't want to sit next to a crazy person. First period was a stupid time to have a boring English class anyway.

The bell was five minutes from ringing and there were several empty seats left. Maybe he was just casually late like some of the other students. She couldn't take not knowing if David was coming back or not. Idly she doodled his name on the back of her binder and quickly erased the hearts and flowers and brushed the evidence onto the floor as she glanced up to see him wading to his seat with the rest of the stragglers. "Hi," she said with a furious red blush.