ran alone in the dark, toward a light that kept retreating beyond his reach. Over the years, he had learned to recognize the nightmare and wake himself up. This was different.
This time, he was in a place full of light and peace.
This time the dark came looking for him.
It pooled on the tiles around his feet and oozed from the outlets in the walls, dimmed the lights and clogged the air. Darkness covered his eyes and filled his lungs.
He ran until it swamped around him. Fought until it deluged him. Screamed until it choked him. The sound of his banging heart thundered in his skull.
Remember…
The pounding became the rhythmic beat of helicopter blades. The darkness coalesced into a sleek shape on the ocean surface. A cruise ship. No, a yacht. It belonged to…
Cassidy was there and desperate. “Jackson, I need your help. Get us the hell out of here.”
Help her. He had to help her. Why hadn’t he? She was so angry, throwing things at…
The darkness shoved at his back, pushing him through a thick veil that grabbed at him with vicious hooked claws. He had to get through, had to get out. Had to get them all out. Had to…
Nick! Where did he come from? He was angry, too, and so wretched when he spoke to…
Jackson gasped for air that wouldn’t come. The darkness kept pushing, kept crushing him. He disintegrated against it. If he could only breathe. Then he could scream.
The veil thinned. Through the fog, he could just make out a new face, heard an unfamiliar voice, defining the world in wordless whispers. The voice of God…
The devil! wailed the darkness.
At last, the veil cracked, then shattered, the jagged edges tearing flesh off his bones as he fell through, screaming.
As the agony subsided into a dull throb, a new reality formed around him. True reality. He gasped. His stomach churned, reacting to what he already knew, but had yet to acknowledge.
Someone hovered over him. Tangled curls. Dark eyes, pools of night in a face as round as a moon with bright red lips. The copper smell of blood.
Jackson rolled over and retched.
“Is he okay? Did it work?” his sister asked, sounding more anxious than he had ever heard her.
“It is done,” said the darkness that had chased him from the light, the vampire who had just fed on him. “He will need a moment to adjust.”
A moment? Jackson was on hands and knees on Samantha’s kitchen floor and drowned in memories. He’d lived under a compulsion—in an illusion—for days. An illusion spun by a predator without equal. Both he and Garrett should be dead. They had been captured and subjugated with terrifying ease. Cassidy saw it, knew it, and had fought to reach him.
“You’re fucking compelled out of your fucking minds…” The naked fear in her voice had been the lifeline he should have known he needed, even if only by instinct. This was what he had trained for, this skill of recognizing when his own thoughts failed him. But his moment of recognition had come and gone in the space of half a heartbeat, a ruthless monster’s power over him complete.
His jaw clenched as he stared down at his sick, splattered on the tiles between his hands. Helpless anger punched his solar plexus. They had been taken so easily—by humans, no less. He had broken his promise of protection to Cassidy, and on top of it all, he had to be rescued by yet another vampire. Not just any vampire, no, but the fucking bloodsucker he had killed, and who would not stay dead. Jackson wanted to howl with it all.
“Yes,” Serge said, drawing the word out into a menacing hiss. “How fortunate you failed, isn’t it?”
“Fuck you. And get the fuck out of my head.”
“Yep. That’s the baby brother I know and love,” Samantha said. “You did it, sweetie. You fixed him.”
The vampire drew the back of his wrist across his mouth. “Not a simple thing, undoing that.”
“You all right there, Jack?” Garrett asked as if inquiring about nothing so much as a stubbed toe. He stood at the counter, compelled—as Cassidy had rightly claimed—out of his mind. It was like looking at a happy zombie. A zombie like he had been.
He choked down the need to throw up again and instead got to his feet. As he moved, the too-tight jacket he wore wafted a smoky stench. He tore it off, balled it up, sloppily wiped the floor with it, and tossed it in the trash bin. The rest of him stank of sweat and exertion.
Calmer now that he took at least a minor step toward righting the world, he poured himself a glass of water and gulped it, while hyper-aware of the vampire in the room with him.
“Kid, what’s going on?”
“Shut up.” He turned to his uncle. “Not another word out of you until you’re fixed.”
Garrett’s brow furrowed in confusion, but he said nothing, as ordered.
Jackson shot Serge a look. “Any time.”
The vampire shrugged as he considered Garrett. “Maybe I like him better this way.”
“You fucking little—”
“Jack,” Sam cut in. “Why don’t you tell us what you remember now? Where is Cassidy? And did you see Dominique?”
Cassidy. The memories rushed in, ridden hard by guilt and fury.
“I don’t know where she is. Last I saw her, she was sick and getting sicker on that yacht. That was a couple of nights ago—” Another memory. “He’s turning her. She told me so. I wouldn’t listen. Fuck.” His hands balled into fists on the countertop.
She wasn’t compelled. She knew damn well what she was dealing with. Still, she fought and spoke her mind with a courage that now took his breath away. “You’re not worthy!” she had told the most dangerous vampire in history. She might as well have been talking to Jackson.
Sam came to his side and put her hand on his hard-as-rock shoulder. “You didn’t have a choice. You were up against way more than you knew how to handle.”
He shook his head. “I should have—”
“Where is the blood-child?” Serge demanded.
“Who?”
“Dominique,” Sam translated, and more memories crystallized.
“He’s aboard. He…he sent us here, I think.” Jackson shook his head to dislodge all the tattered cobwebs. Just how many vampires had messed with his head? Even Bijou added her compulsion when she ushered him and Garrett into a hired limo and sent them on their way. She had made her vow quietly, sweetly, and with her green eyes as hard and cold as emeralds. “Never let me see, hear, or smell you again. If I do, you, your family, and everyone else you know and love…will be dead.”
They had smiled and nodded.
Now he groaned.
“He sent you to me,” Serge confirmed.
“We were there when he spoke to Kambyses about something.” He remembered the ancient vampire clearly now, a striking presence that eclipsed his short stature. Nick, too, his shoulders hunched, beaten, as he spoke to his sire, who looked inordinately pleased at what he heard. “Fuck no. Nick agreed to give Cassidy his blood. He’s committed them both to stay with that demon.”
“No, that can’t be right,” Sam said. “He would never do that.”
Serge backed away and tugged at the front of his Hawaiian shirt. “Tomorrow night. He will do it tomorrow night.”
“No,” Sam said again as tears pooled in her eyes. “That can’t be the destiny you saw for them, Serge. It can’t be.”
“Together they will change the world of night forever.” His voice dropped to a hushed whisper. “So many ways to do that. So many ways”
Jackson slashed the air with a flat hand. “Okay, enough. I don’t give a shit about what you two think is going on here, but I’m guessing that if Cassidy doesn’t get the blood tomorrow night, she’ll die.” Though that would be preferable to being turned into a vampire. “We’ll get her back.” If it killed him, he would get her out of this, human and alive. He’d promised. “We’ll get her back.”
Everybody, vampire included, looked at him, hushed expectation on their faces. Even his uncle, bemused though he was, uncrossed his arms, leaned on the counter, and waited for Jackson to continue, to speak, to spell out the plan. To save the day. Jackson felt the mantle of responsibility settle on his shoulders with an unaccustomed weightiness.
Taking a deep breath, he gathered his thoughts. “We have this one day to get our shit together, and we’re going to start right now. You. Serge.”
The vampire blinked as though coming out of a trance.
“Fix that mess masquerading as my uncle.”
Serge didn’t hesitate. As he passed Jackson on his way to comply, Jackson grabbed him by his shirtfront. “Then do whatever you have to do to be there tomorrow night. You’re the backup plan. Got it?”
The vampire gave a dazed nod.
“You think you can save her?” Sam asked and swiped at her eyes. “If you get to her in time?”
Could he? There was no record of anyone coming back from a turning gone as far as Cassidy’s probably had. Jackson was willing to gamble that this was only because no one had tried.
Garrett, pinned up against the stainless steel fridge with Serge at his throat, cursed vehemently as he fought the darkness chasing him out of his happy place. The scene brought to mind another memory for Jackson, this one of his twin brother fighting, just like that, in a vampire’s clutches.
He turned away and tried to tune out the sounds. “I’m going to do everything I can to save her, Sam. Everything.” And he wouldn’t hesitate to use every tool at his disposal.
Every last fucking one of them.