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Silence…shock.

Close to the coast that slid past on the western horizon, a single member of the swarm paused in his nocturnal habits and felt warmth crawl over him like the touch of a sun he hadn’t seen in more years than he cared to recall. The invisible sun sought him out, enveloped him, stung his flesh. He overturned tables and chairs as he bolted for the hotel bar’s exit. Outside, tires screeched in his wake. A speeding pickup hit him, sent him flying across the pavement, tearing a fine suit, skinning knees and elbows.

Cassidy cringed, but the Lord of Night wasn’t about to let the first blood-drinker to sense him get away. He focused harder.

Terrified, his target ran, speeding down alleys and up walls, over rooftops and across freeways. The heat pursued him, relentless. Finally, he stopped, far out amidst the vast fields of a commercial grower. He spun around, seeking what his eyes could not see. Strawberries crushed beneath his feet, their fruity sweetness rising around him. He was alone. The sensation of sun-fire thrummed deep in his trembling flesh.

Dominique and Cassidy sensed the panic rise once more and reached out before it could overtake him again. Do not be afraid. I mean you no harm.

Out in the field, the other vampire fell to his knees, sliding along the razor’s edge between terror and relief. What are you?

Their joined hands tightened in silent triumph. They drew a mighty breath with their lungs and with their hearts, and set out to change the world of night forever.

I am your lord and master. Hear me. You are not alone.

Thank You For Reading

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Bonus: Ancient Hunger

A Dark Destinies Tale

1

The attack came inconveniently close to dawn. With the night’s tasks complete, Kambyses had just turned his attention to his most promising acolyte in centuries, when strident alarm shot through the mental links he maintained with his crew. In an instant, he was off and racing for his lair, turning into a ghostly smear against the city lights.

At the San Juan Bay Marina, the cause of the turmoil was clear even before he reached Apokryphos. Four helmeted humans, encased in heavy gear to protect their fragile mortal bodies, huddled behind the facility’s maintenance building of the marina. Their weapons were pointed toward the far end of the dock.

One jerked a gun barrel toward Kambyses before he remembered to will them not to see him. He’d been momentarily too astonished by those weapons of war to think clearly. Fully automatic, highly portable, and more efficient at taking lives even than he was. What in the name of all that was eternal was this firepower doing here?

The mortals exchanged brief words of suspicion and warning in Spanish. The man who had gotten a glimpse of him was breathing harder than the others. All their hearts pounded in Kambyses’s sensitive ears, and their auras glowed like colorful prisms in the predawn darkness. Wafting in the sultry air, shading the stench of sweaty bodies, was the heady, unmistakable aroma of fear.

Kambyses’s canines lengthened in anticipation of a satisfying feed.

A shout pulled him back to the crisis at hand. It came from Apokryphos, the yacht that was his lair. More warriors bristling with weapons could be seen moving around the outside decks. His crew’s anxiety escalated. There wasn’t time to gain thorough control of the warriors here. Instead, he shifted his voice into the resonant register of a mere compulsion. “Remain here, no matter what.”

Leaving them as good as shackled for the moment, Kambyses sped the rest of the way to the yacht. There, he found all eight of his crew on their bellies in the salon. A few were dressed in their standard uniform of black slacks and shirts, but most were rumpled with sleep and clad only in their underwear. Four more human warriors stood over them, assault rifles at the ready.

The scene was so unthinkable he stopped, gaping, beset with an unfamiliar sense of shock.

Banging and crashing noises echoed from every one of the vessel’s five decks as men systematically ransacked her. Violated her. His home. It felt like an attack on his very soul. The low growl in his throat escalated into an outright snarl as he allowed himself to be seen.

Every gun swung toward him. Orders were shouted in both Spanish and English. One weapon discharged.

Kambyses saw the stream of bullets coming, and he flashed inhumanly fast out of their way. By the time the tiny instruments of death thudded into a sofa, splintered the cherry-wood-paneled wall, and shattered a window, he had torn the offending weapon out of the soldier’s hands.

“Stop,” Kambyses roared, voice throbbing with power. “Drop your weapons. There is nothing to do here. Sit down. Shut up.”

The three remaining weapons thumped onto the rug. The four warriors followed, dropping to their haunches on the spot.

Kambyses tossed the rifle aside, his hands shaking.