Nightwalker

Three

I strolled toward River Street, heading slowly northwest to the Docks. The River Walk area housed the majority of the city’s nightlife entertainment. For most of the year the front doors would be thrown open and the sweet sounds of jazz and blues trickled out onto the street, drawing people into the dark confines of the various bars. However, at the far western edge of the street the neighborhood turned a little darker and grittier. People shrank back into the heavy shadows that clung to the buildings and followed me with slitted, calculating eyes. They watched but never moved, as if they could sense that I was somehow other. Or at the very least, more than the easy prey I appeared to be.

I nodded to the large, heavily muscled man who stoically guarded the front door to the club. He nodded back, one corner of his thin mouth quirking in a half smile as he let me in ahead of the line. The Docks was one of my regular haunts, and the manager seemed to appreciate my business. Pulling my wallet from my back pocket, I grabbed a twenty and laid it on the chest-high counter as I walked in. The cover charge was only five dollars, but the little extra was part of a silent agreement that ensured the doorman wouldn’t ask for my ID and they wouldn’t try to put one of those silly paper wrist-bands on me indicating I was over twenty-one.

With a smile and a wink, I slipped my slim leather wallet into my back pocket. The entryway was open, with a scattering of tables and a large bar taking up residence against the right wall. A network of televisions hung from the ceiling, playing rare and independent music videos that no one could hear over the cacophonous roar of music tumbling from the other end of the building. A winding maze of walls and partitions blocked the main dance floor from the rest of the bar. The lighting at the front of the club was nearly nonexistent, with only the occasional spotlight and stuttering strobe cutting through the smoky haze of shadows.

Scanning the midnight crowds, I wandered toward the dance floor. Even without my powers, I would have felt the looks running up and down my body. Swathed in my typical attire of black leather pants that fit like a second skin and my matching black leather halter top that stopped at my midriff, I felt like a ghost from an SM dream. My only concession to my unnatural abilities was a pair of gold-rimmed, red-tinted glasses balanced on the bridge of my nose. My eyes had a tendency to glow in a heated moment, potentially scaring off my hard-won prey.

I was on the dance floor when I finally sensed him. Sandwiched between a pair of strong, healthy male bodies, I let the thunderous beat of the music wash over me. Their hands roamed my body, slipping from slick leather to cool flesh and back to leather. Sweat beaded on their skin and their heartbeats vibrated against my body in their own hypnotic rhythm.

And then somehow above it all, I felt a new pulse ripple through the crowd. I cracked open my eyes and scanned the darkness. Something new and strong had entered my domain. Danaus stood on the edge of the dance floor directly across from me, arms folded across his chest, legs braced wide apart, as he stared.

He was early. I knew he would seek me out, but I had guessed that it would be another night or two before our paths crossed again. I also hadn’t expected him to confront me at the Docks. We couldn’t try to kill each other here. Too many potential witnesses, too many people who could easily get hurt in the fight. The secret existence of nightwalkers hadn’t remained intact over so many years because we fought our battles around scores of humans.

Danaus could have easily waited outside, watching for my departure—maybe this strange creature was telling the truth when he said that his goal wasn’t to fight me. But I had my doubts. Unfortunately, I was still waiting for word from my contacts in Europe regarding the hunter. If someone else had information on Danaus, I could remove his head and put the whole messy business behind me. But if he represented something no one knew about, I couldn’t get rid of the hunter until I had gotten a little info out of him. I would have to string him along until I heard from the Old World.

Smiling at Danaus, I leaned back into the young man who danced behind me. I lifted my left arm and lay it behind his neck, my long fingers threading through his brown hair. He put one arm around my waist, his hand grabbing my side. His warmth seeped into my body and I absorbed it like a sponge. In fact, if I spent the night on the dance floor with a man wrapped about me, I would finish the evening with a nice flush to my cheeks without ever having to feed. I could suck in their warmth, their vitality. It would give me the look of the living, but I still needed blood to sustain my existence.

When the next song started, Danaus’s frown deepened. He finally caught on that I wasn’t going to leave the floor just because he was lurking on the fringe. I turned my back to him as he approached, wrapping my arms around the neck of my dance partner, grinding my hips into his. Leaning into him, I ran the tip of my tongue up his neck. I had just reached his earlobe when Danaus’s hand clamped on my right shoulder.

“Enough,” he growled in my ear. “Come with me.”

I turned my head enough to look at him over my shoulder, my eyes barely open. My wide smile had faded to one of languid pleasure. “I’m a little busy.” I looked back at my dance partner and the lovely expanse of his neck when a sharp object was suddenly pressed into my back, biting through the leather halter.

“Now! I have a knife in your back and I have no problem putting it in you while on the dance floor.”

“Is that the slang for it now?” I laughed. Reaching back with my right hand, I grabbed his hip. I started to slide my hand toward the front of his pants, but Danaus released his hold on my shoulder and grabbed my wandering hand. Then he thrust my hand away and turned, stalking through the crowd, which seemed eager to jump out of his way. His black leather coat flared as he walked, making me wish he wasn’t wearing it. It would have made watching him storm off more enjoyable.

Curiosity demanded that I follow. I had to know what would make this man follow me not only to this lonely ring of the Inferno, but out onto the dance floor. What would make a vampire hunter seek me out for anything other than to kill me? I leaned back into my dance partner, running my tongue over the pulse throbbing against the surface of his skin, promising myself I would find this tasty little bit later.

I strolled off the dance floor, my arms swaying at my sides. My gaze casually traveled over the pockets of people gathered along the black walls and in remote corners. Some looked up, their eyes following me as I passed, but most seemed oblivious to my presence, lost to whatever escape they had sought for the evening. I paused for a moment when I entered the bar area at the front of the club, wondering where my little stalker had disappeared to, when I felt him just behind my shoulder. Turning, I found him sitting on a bench against the wall. He leaned back, one hand resting on the table while the other lay on his upper thigh, inches from where I guessed a knife was sheathed near his waist.

Biting my lower lip to keep from smiling, I walked over, placed a knee on either side of his hips and sat in his lap. If he could have jumped up, I believe he would have been hanging from the ceiling in his attempt to be free of me. But all he could manage was sitting up a little straighter, his back pressed into the wall as if he wished to merge with the wood and gypsum.

“Did I interrupt dinner?” His low voice rumbled up from his chest. His teeth were clenched and the muscles in his jaw strained against his skin. Narrowed blue eyes glittered at me, catching the pulsing white light that tripped from the dance floor.

“No, just an appetizer, as it were. Have you come to offer me a warm meal?” I asked, wrapping my arms loosely around his shoulders. He remained silent, staring at a point somewhere behind me. I leaned forward and lay my head on his shoulder, touching the tip of my nose to his throat. “I’m so glad to see that you managed to escape without being singed too badly.”

“Get off.”

It was a struggle to keep from saying the first crude thing that came to mind, but I finally succeeded. “I can’t. The music is too loud in here. We’d never hear each other speaking if I moved away.” I sat up so I could look into his face.

His eyes narrowed at me, his muscles stiffening. “You could hear me from across the room if you wanted.”

“But could you hear me?”

His lips pressed into a tight, thin line of anger and frustration. What could he do? I honestly wondered. I sat here in his lap, with his aura wrapped around me like a fleece blanket. What could he do with all this strength and power? Of course, he wasn’t going to volunteer the information.

The soft throb of power washing over me felt all wrong for the typical rabble of witch or warlock. And a warlock wouldn’t rely on a sword when hunting nightwalkers when he could use magic. Lycanthrope? Maybe. He didn’t have the same rich earthy scent as most weres, or their amazing strength, but he definitely had their speed and agility. I mentally shrugged. The quandary would be nice to figure out, but it wouldn’t stop me from killing him.

“What do you know about the naturi?” he asked.

My thoughts were a sudden train wreck, ideas and images lying broken and derailed. I stared motionless at him for a long time, my mind unable to fathom why he would bring up such a topic. While few knew of the existence of nightwalkers, even fewer knew that the naturi actually lived and breathed. The other races had spent countless years wiping away all accounts of their existence. Of course, some tales had become embedded in the human psyche, which we could not destroy. From the naturi grew the stories of elves, fairies, and many other magical creatures that could not be explained away with the cold, hard logic of science.

But the naturi weren’t the only ones we attempted to erase from history. After humans were created, the old stories stated that the gods created two guardian races to maintain the balance. The naturi were guardians of the earth, while the bori were guardians of all souls. The naturi existed in five clans—water, earth, animal, wind, and light.

On the other hand, the bori existed as a single clan with their own dark side, as they worked to become the one dominant power on the earth. From the bori, the legends of demons and angels were born.

Unfortunately, the powers and strength of the two races were dependent upon what they protected. As humanity flourished, the earth weakened. So the wars started.

“Sorry,” I said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” No one talked about the naturi. They were gone, for the most part, banished centuries ago to another reality, similar and forever linked to this world, but always locked away, hopefully.

“The naturi; guardians of the earth. Sometimes referred to as the Third Race, the Seelie Court—the Sidhe,” he corrected.

“They’re nothing more than fairy tales.” I leaned back down so I could rest my head on his shoulder while I ran my fingers through his dark hair. It was softer than I had initially expected, almost silky in texture. “Where do you come from?” I whispered in his ear.

He was silent for a minute, and I listened to the sound of his breath slowly enter and leave his chest. “Rome.”

“It’s been years since I was in Rome. Boniface IX had just been named Pope. Beautiful city, even before Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel. Have you seen it?”

“The Sistine Chapel? Yes.”

“Is it as lovely as they say?”

“Better.”

“I guessed as much.” The Sistine Chapel was one of the many things that I would never see. Whether I believed in a one great God didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. I could never step foot into a church. Trust me, I’ve tried—it was like running into a brick wall.

“Tell me about the naturi, Mira.” His voice softened for the first time to something less than a growl. It wasn’t what I would call an inviting or pleasant tone, just one not honed to an angry edge. His right hand settled on my left knee for a moment before falling back to the bench, but the brief touch was enough to send a wave of heat through my leather pants. I pulled away from him so I could look him in the face, my eyebrows bunched over the bridge of my nose in surprise. It was the first time he had used my name.

“So you know about the naturi; bully for you,” I said. The topic of conversation was beginning to grate on my nerves. “Vampires too much of a challenge for you, so you thought you’d go after a naturi or two?” The taunt was childish, but I didn’t want to think about the naturi, let alone talk about them. I wanted to forget about that whole horrible race. A part of me wanted to get up and return to the dance floor, to drown in the warm flesh and let the angry grind of music pull me under.

“Tell me.”

“Tell you what?” I snapped, but quickly got my voice back under control. “They were here, but now they are gone. That’s it.”

The naturi wanted nothing more than to rid the entire earth of all humans and nightwalkers. For them, protecting the earth was only possible through removing its greatest threat—mankind. But it was more than that. I had my own painful past with the naturi, memories overflowing with pain and white-gray stones splashed with my blood in the fading moonlight. And worse yet, a return of the naturi held whispers of a potential return of the bori. A tug-of-war that offered no victory. For nightwalkers, the naturi represented extinction, while the bori represented an eternity of slavery. The naturi and the bori had to remain in exile, never to be spoken of.

With his right hand, Danaus reached into the interior pocket on the left side of his jacket and pulled out a sheaf of papers. He dropped the pile on the table behind me. I twisted in his lap to look at what turned out to be a pile of high gloss, color pictures. My whole body reflexively stiffened and what little warmth I had gained on the dance floor flowed out of my body, leaving a sharp chill to bite at my tensed muscles.

I reached out, forcing myself to touch the top picture. With a little pressure, the pictures spread out across the scarred tabletop. They were all of trees with symbols carved deep into their bark. My eyes skimmed over them, vaguely noting that each curling symbol was etched into a different type of tree. It was the language of the naturi. I couldn’t read it or speak it, but I had seen enough to know that I would never forget it.

A knot in my stomach tightened and I fervently hoped I wouldn’t vomit in the mix of fear and horror that was replacing the blood in my veins. Somehow I managed to keep my expression bland and noncommittal, but that’s what nightwalkers did. We kept everything hidden beneath a mask of boredom and beauty. Danaus was watching me, peering deep, as if trying to read my thoughts.

“Trees. Nice, but not exactly my thing,” I said, proud of the fact that my voice didn’t crack. “I don’t know why you sought me out. I don’t know anything about the naturi or trees.” With one hand braced on the wall to the right of his head, I slowly unfolded my body from around his and stood. Turning my back to him, I started to walk away. I needed to leave and wash down the terrible memories with blood.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Danaus rise, his left hand locking around my wrist. “What about this?” There was an ominous thunk on the wooden table beside me. Something in me screamed, Run. All the survival instincts left in my brain were screaming for me to keep going, but I had to know.

In the center of the table, piercing the pile of pictures, was a dagger. It was a unique dagger—one I was sure no living human had ever set eyes upon it. Slim and slightly curved, the silver blade straightened an inch before the tip. It was designed this way so it slid nicely into the body and at the same time caused the most amount of damage when worked around the vital organs. On one side of the blade, symbols similar to the ones in the pictures were etched into the metal. The handle was wood, stained dark from the blood that had soaked in over the years.

I knew that blade. Not just its type, but that particular blade. The metal shiv had sliced sinew and carved hunks of flesh from my body. I’d spent seemingly endless hours developing an intimate knowledge of that blade and the many-faceted layers of pain it could cause.

I spun and grabbed Danaus’s shirt below the collar, slamming him into the wall. The hunter grunted. “Where did you get that?” My fangs peeked out from beneath my drawn lips. I’d drain him to the very edge of death that second in order to get my answers.

Around us, people scrambled away, trying to keep a safe distance and yet still be able to glean something from our conversation. It had to be a strange sight. A woman was pushing around a man twice her weight and size like a rag doll, while a dagger stood straight and tall in the table beside them. They would have paid less attention if I’d just pulled out a gun and shot him.

“From a naturi,” Danaus said. His voice was calm and even, completely unshaken by my explosion of temper.

“What naturi?” My grip on his shirt tightened and I was vaguely aware of the fact that he had released my wrist. He could have been going for another knife, but at that moment I don’t think I would have felt it even if he had buried the blade straight into my heart.

“Nerian.”

“You lie,” I snarled, slamming him into the wall a second time. Desperation was starting to crowd my thoughts. No one could have told him of Nerian except for a select few, who would have killed him on sight. “He’s dead.”

“Not yet.”

“Where?”

For the first time, a cold smile lifted his lips, revealing a hint of white teeth. His eyes danced with a dark light that almost made me growl.

“I’ll crush you now, Danaus. Tell me where he is!”

He stared at me for a long time, obviously enjoying the fact that the tables had been turned and I was at his mercy. “I’ll take you to where I have him,” he said at last.

I released him suddenly, as if he had burst into flames. He had Nerian? How? It didn’t seem possible. It had to be some elaborate trick.

Stepping away from him, my eyes swept over the crowd. Everyone scurried out of my line of sight, returning to his or her conversation. Their world had shuddered to a stop for a moment and stood balanced on the edge of a knife. But with a jerk it all started again, and they banished what they thought they’d seen. They weren’t ready for my kind and all the others lurking in the shadows.

It was coming, I knew that. And if Nerian was still alive, it might be sooner than I’d originally thought. Of course, if Nerian were still alive, I had to wonder if I would live to see mankind’s Great Awakening.

Beside me, Danaus pulled the dagger from the table and slipped it back into a sheath on his left hip. His nimble fingers swept over the table, gathering the pictures into a single pile. As he placed them back into the interior pocket of his coat, I looked toward the dance floor. One of my favorite songs had started, the lead singer promising that he would not let me fall apart. His low, whispered cry settled my nerves and I reluctantly smiled. I had often toyed with the idea of seeking out this human, with his raw emotions set loose for all the world to see. But I had learned the hard way that my kind often had an ill influence upon the artists of the world, and I liked his music the way it was. Tonight I would take his promise with me as I visited an old shade from Hell.