Night of the Fallen (Dark Tides, Book Two) (7 page)

He didn’t take his eyes off the roads at any time, always waiting for that twitch out of place in the all-encompassing darkness. For some time, it was just them and the night stretching ahead. Belle remained still, her body slightly tilted towards him. The humans in the back seat were listless, their breathing shallow.

And then
he saw it, the twitch in the darkness. Rabids.

He pressed the gas lightly and glanced into the rearview mirror. The second car picked up speed to keep up. If rabids were approaching, they would more than likely jump on the moving cars. He could probably shake them off, but the car behind him
wouldn’t be so lucky.

He turned his head towards Belle.
“Rabids, not many.”

Somebody in the back seat took a deep breath.

And then he heard the metallic thump and the car behind him veered off road into the night. He pressed on the brake and waited for the car to crawl to a stop. He waited for five seconds, ten. No rabids to be seen, so the car must have hit or seen something. 

“Stay in the car.”

“We have guns.”

Marcus grabbed the door’s handle and shook his head. “We are faster than bullets. The chances of you hitting a vampire when you shoot are basically zero.”

All this time, they had been carrying weapons for nothing. A pretense to make themselves feel better, to convince themselves they had a chance. The power of the mind to deceive itself in the face of failure. Because when you had nothing left to lose, when all was lost and you couldn’t possibly come out a victor, you had to at least convince yourself that not all was lost.

Marcus jumped out of the car before anybody had a chance to say anything else. Another door opened and shut quickly and she guessed Miles was rushing out of the other car. Then the lights
of the third car went off and the night became thick. She could barely see out of the windshield, except for flashes of movement rushing past.

The howling of the wind and the howling of rabids in the distance fused together.
Then a closer growl that chilled her spine. Everybody in the car froze, their breaths the only sound cutting through the night. She remembered Marcus saying how close all of them were to annihilation. Just a false step, a missed warning, and the rabids would end it all.

She closed her eyes and tried to listen. She hated that she
couldn’t tell Marcus apart from the mix of sounds reverberating around them. It was the one thing she despised the most about their differences. How attuned he was to her, to the echo of her blood, the vibrations of her skin. She resented not being able to do the same, to sense his presence feet away.

A loud crack near the door of the car made her jump. Then the silence stretched for miles, embracing them all.

“Belle, come out. It’s safe.”

Relief washed over her with astonishing force. She reached for the door handle and Shawn grabbed her arm. “It’s OK
,“ she reassured him.

The depth of the night was pulsing. Under the eerie light of the moon, the dead rabids looked like little more than ghostly shadows. Marcus was holding one of them down into the ground in something like an embrace. Sitting back against the dust, he had the
rabid’s back against his own body, held tight in between his legs. They were almost breathing as one: the beast and the majestic vampire. The two sides of a world she was beginning to understand so well.

The rabid was still alive, but not for much longer. Blood was oozing from
its throat. A cut that deep to the
carotid artery would have killed a human in as little as two minutes, but the rabid was still very much lucid and fighting its restraints. When the creature saw her step out of the car, all its energy returned, its scream howling into the night with chilling desperation. It struggled against the vampire restraining it, and Miles knelt down to hold on to its legs. The river of its blood pulsed faster and stronger with every scream. It wouldn’t be long before it died. It couldn’t be.

Shawn jumped out of the car behind her, his eyes filled with horror and fascination.

“Grab the blade,” Marcus told her.

The silver blade lay on the ground, a long
 
stiletto
 
thrusting knife with a slender, needle-like blade
. Its
sharpened edges
had clearly been designed as the ultimate stabbing weapon. A
single rune was carved right where the blade and the handle met, the image vaguely familiar, similar to the symbols tattooed on Marcus’ body. She closed her fingers over the ribbed grip and held it tight.
It was heavier than she expected and her arm buckled under the weight.

“I’m not letting him go,” Marcus reassured her. “Come closer.”

Belle stepped forward and then crouched beside them, her hands shaking so violently she wasn’t sure she would be able to hold the knife for long. She could feel the raw heat of vomit in her throat and she had to take a deep breath to push it down, will it away.

Then Marcus grabbed her hand and led the blade towards the side of the rabid’s body, right under the ribcage. “There are only two ways you can ever kill a vampire. Either sever his neck artery deep enough or pierce the heart.” He pushed the knife into the rabid’s skin just slightly. “You can only reach the heart through here. Our chests are too thick and you won’t get through otherwise.”

Her eyes got blurry for a second and she felt the world spinning out of sync.

“Belle, are you listening?”
She nodded, incapable of speaking.

“You have to push hard and push
quick. You won’t get a second chance. You understand?”

She nodded again, her throat burning.

“Do it,” he ordered.

Her entire body shook, the precision of the blade wavering from its place. She turned around to look at Shawn. She
couldn’t see his expression in the darkness, but he was still there, frozen in place just steps behind her.

Marcus let go of her hand. It was all her and he was giving her the choice. The air
tanged with the metallic smell of blood. She could almost taste the scent on her tongue, thick and salty. She looked into Marcus’ eyes, the silent silver shimmering in the night like a beacon. Calling her home.

He
didn’t move, didn’t speak, didn’t nod his approval even. And so she pushed the blade into the rabid in one swift motion, cutting through the lungs and slicing into his heart, fighting against muscle and cartilage tearing and stretching under the pressure. There was one last howl of pain and then the rabid went still in Marcus’ arms.

And
she turned around so she could vomit the horror away.

~ * ~

His blood rushed faster as she pushed the knife into the rabid. Life ticked away from its sick body while he held on to it and waited for death to come.

He’d
broken all his rules with her, let her into the kingdom’s biggest secrets. Now he’d given not only her, but also the entire group, the secret to killing vampires. Not just a way to stop rabids and their sickness, but a way to kill his kind too.

There were no walls left between them except one: her mortality. He could teach her how to kill vampires and keep her by his side to protect her from Patrick, but the truth was that she would always be at risk. She would grow
old and weak and sick, and one day, not far in the future, he would lose her.

It
wasn’t something he was willing to accept.

She stood up, her legs trembling but her back straight. There was
a majesty to her movements that she probably wasn’t aware of. The strength coming from her was undeniable and his blood reacted to it, a rush of need pulling.

Five hundred years was a long time to be alone. After female vampires
went extinct, he’d never imagined the possibility of having a companion. And now… now he was wondering what would happen if he broke another rule and made her his queen.

The roaring in his blood intensified. 

The rabid’s last heartbeat boomed against his chest. He waited one more second and then he dropped the body to the side. Face down on the dust, the rabid was nothing more than a gray carcass, a brief reminder than death was always close, always on the hunt.

He jumped up and reached for Belle, bringing her into his arms. She melted against his body with a heavy sigh, ignoring the rabid’s blood on him. They fit each other perfectly, despite the impossibilities, and both his body and his soul yearned for her with a force that he
couldn’t quite comprehend.

A queen.
For centuries, male vampires had ruled the world, both in the shadows and during the war. Bringing a woman into the kingdom would change everything. Not only because a woman would share the royal house, but also because it would mean breaking the ban and bringing a human into the vampire world.

Just months ago, the possibility would had been unthinkable, but now they were so close to having a viable blood substitute. There would be no need for hunting, no need to fear the void. She would be safe.

And he would be able to keep her at his side forever. 

The world around them blurred away for a second as he considered the possibilities, and he almost missed the rush of movement behind the car.

The rabid jumped out of the shadows and tore into the other woman before he had a chance to move.

~ * ~

The shadow moved so quickly Belle heard the scream before she saw what was happening. One second Sarah was standing next to the back door of the car, the next she was on the ground, blood pooling on the dust with frightening speed. In between, a scream cut through the night for a fraction of a second. Then silence and only that river of blood, bright under the faint light of the moon.

The world slowed down, the rabid coming into view for an instant before the two vampires
pounced on him. The roar lasted one second, maybe two, and then it was over. The rabid stumbled on its knees, eyes set into the darkness, before falling face down on the dust.

Marcus was back on her side before reality sank in, a flash of speed. Then one
scream, and another, and another, cutting through the night as everybody realized what had just happened. She would have joined in if it wasn’t for the tight dryness in the back of her throat, cutting like a knife.
It’s not real, it’s not real.
But there was no denying the stillness of the body on the ground, the metallic taste in the air reaching into her nostrils and grabbing at her chest.

“Back into the cars, now.”
Marcus grabbed her by the hand and pulled towards the black sedan sitting nearby. Belle resisted the pull, her eyes frozen on the two bodies on the ground and the river of blood flowing from their bodies and into one another. Even in death, their destinies were tied together.

“We can’t leave her here,” she whispered. “Maybe she’s still…”

“She’s dead,” Marcus assured her.

“I need to check. Let me…”

He reached for her face, forcing her chin up so he could look into her eyes. “Belle, she’s dead. We have to go.”

That was it. That
was how you died after the end of the world. You were nothing but a blip in the darkness, a small spark easy to squash. You were there one second and gone the next, your body left to rot in the night. No time for even a proper burial, no time for mourning. Those still breathing would move on to continue surviving and you would be a once-in-a-while memory, but nothing else.

Belle
looked at Sarah’s broken body on the ground, then up towards Shawn and the rest of the group standing behind him. He nodded slowly, no words, and she knew he understood.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered into the night, an apology to more than just the dead friend on the
ground. Then she turned towards Marcus. “Let’s get out of here.”

Marcus pointed towards the cars. “We’ll never make it to the compound with one of you behind the wheel. Let’s take only two cars and Miles and I will drive.”

Robert groaned from the distance, probably at the idea of having to share a car with a vampire. But Marcus was right. If they wanted to make it to the compound—or even to the factory—before sunrise, they needed faster drivers.

She slid into the passenger’s seat of the black sedan with Anna following close behind. Shawn took the passenger’s seat next to Miles, maybe because nobody else would dare sit there. The rest of the group squeezed into the back seats as best as they could with ragged breaths. The silence was staggering and reality seemed held in suspension, as if everybody was waiting for the next tragedy to assault
them, to shake everything again. Or maybe the silence was just the final acceptance of what was really going on: their fates were now bound to the monsters’.

And
it was a fate she wasn’t sorry about.

Because she belonged to
Marcus. Every inch of her skin, every breath in her soul. Her destiny forever tied to the beast she once tried to hate. Her beast. Her love.

Marcus reached for her hand and locked his fingers with hers. Then the car took off into the cresting highway with the lights off.