Dianne Duvall: Darkness Rises

Who would even bother to look inside?

“You need to mow the lawn,” she huffed, gritting her teeth against the pain as they trudged over uneven ground, up the steps, and through the door.

They also left it unlocked for expediency’s sake. There had been nights when time had been of the essence.

“Ground’s still too wet.” He flicked a switch, and bright light flooded the small living room.

Krysta limped over to the futon and slumped down on the waterproof tarp they always placed over it on nights she hunted. That bright idea had come to them too late to save their first from bloodstains.

“Do you need help getting your coat off?” he asked, sitting in front of her on their dented and scarred coffee table.

She nodded. Pulling cloth away from the wounds it stuck to always made the pain worse.

Sean, tight-lipped and silent, removed her coat as gently as possible.

Krysta tugged her shirt over her head. Underneath, she wore a heavy-duty sports bra that covered everything . Not one hint of cleavage could be found, not that she had much. And, beneath the pants she removed, she wore bike shorts.

Sean scowled as he examined her wounds. “The leg isn’t broken. It’s sprained. I don’t like how these two cuts”—he motioned to one on her shoulder and one on her thigh—“are bleeding, so I’ll heal them first.”

“Thank you.”

He closed his eyes and rested his hands on his splayed knees. Krysta remained quiet while he breathed in through his nose, held it, then released it several times. Opening his eyes, he covered the wound on her thigh with his hands.

Warmth flooded her skin. The cut began to tingle as if a numbing agent had been applied. Blood ceased oozing from beneath his fingers. The pain eased.

When Sean withdrew his hands, the cut had been replaced by a faint scar. “Turn to the side a bit.”

She did so, giving him greater access to the wound scoring her shoulder.

He cupped a hand over it. Again a soothing warmth suffused her wound as it healed beneath his touch. Sean had borne this gift all of his life. Just as she had borne hers. And he had been healing her for as long as she could remember. Though she was two years older than Sean, she couldn’t count the number of times he had stopped her crying in their youth by covering a scraped knee or cut elbow with his little hands and making the wounds disappear.

Of course, they didn’t actually disappear. Neither of them were sure how exactly it worked, but he seemed to transfer the wound to his own body, which healed at an accelerated rate. Even now, a red stain appeared on the shoulder of his shirt.

“I’ll heal the leg now before I heal the others.”

“The others aren’t bad,” she insisted. “I can just use some butterfly closures on them.”

He shook his head. With careful hands, he lifted her foot and propped it next to him on the coffee table. “Do we really have to do this every time?” He settled his hands on her shin where it hurt the most. A muscle in his jaw jumped as he clenched his teeth.

She hated causing him pain. That was the worst part of all of this. Not the vampires trying to kill her. Or having to hide what she did from everyone so they wouldn’t think she was crazy and commit her. But the pain Sean experienced when he healed her time and time again, saving her ass so she could go out and do the same thing again tomorrow.

The pain in her leg vanished. And she knew Sean would limp if he were to stand and try to walk now. But he didn’t. He stubbornly healed every cut and bruise on her arms and legs and back.

She hugged him gingerly when he finished, knowing he now ached in all of the places she had. “Thank you.”

He patted her back, then shifted over to slump down on the futon.

Healing her didn’t just open wounds on him. It also exhausted him.

“Can I get you anything?” she asked.

He shook his head. “How long are we going to do this, Krys?”

She slumped back beside him. “I don’t know. As long as it takes, I guess.”

“Takes to do what? For a while there, it seemed like we were making a difference. The vampires’ numbers decreased. You’d go weeks sometimes without running into one. But eleven in one night?”

“Twelve, if you count the . . .”

“What? The good one?”

She sighed. “I don’t know.”

“It’s turning into a never-ending battle. We can’t win this.”

“How can we stop?”

Another deep sigh soughed from him. Raising a hand, he rubbed his eyes and shook his head.

She understood his weariness. Some may have counted tonight a victory. But she and Sean could see it only as defeat, as proof that they would never succeed in ridding the world of every bloodsucker on the planet.

It was a war they couldn’t win.

And sooner or later it would kill them.

Étienne stood in the small frame home, staring down at Krysta. Darkness surrounded them, broken only by the glowing red digits on her alarm clock.

She slept the sleep of the utterly exhausted, curled on her side with a faded, striped sheet tucked beneath her chin. Sean slumbered in the only other bedroom in the house. Both were blissfully unaware that he had invaded the safety of their home. Étienne had gone to great lengths to avoid detection while he had followed them from UNC.

Taking his time, he inspected the interior of the house. It reminded him a bit of the one Sarah had been renting when Roland had met her. Small. Old. Tidy. He guessed, by the pictures displayed on the wall, that the two were siblings. Why that was a relief puzzled him. Though he didn’t know them, he hadn’t wanted the two of them to be lovers. It made no sense.

He returned silently to Krysta’s bedroom, a task made more difficult by the many squeaky floorboards.

The conversation he had overheard earlier led him to believe that hunting vampires was not a new endeavor for her. How the hell had she gone undetected? There were over a dozen immortals in the area. Seth, their leader and the most powerful among them, had been dropping in regularly. Seconds and cleaners abounded. And the network headquarters was stationed in Greensboro. Yet none of them had ever encountered Krysta? It seemed rather remarkable.

Rustling sounded in the next room. Étienne melted back into the darkest corner as Sean shuffled past the doorway in boxer shorts and a T-shirt. Moments later the door to the bathroom closed and Étienne returned his attention to the warrior woman slumbering so peacefully a few feet away.

She would have to be dealt with.

Both of them would.

When Sean next passed by his sister’s bedroom, Étienne was gone.

Sebastien slipped through the front door of David’s home. The amount of time he spent here was ironic, considering how eager he had been to leave this place a couple of months earlier.

Of course, he hadn’t left under the circumstances he had assumed he would. He had thought he would tell the Immortal Guardians to kiss his ass and either leave and never see them again or fight them to the death. Most likely the latter.

Instead he had fallen in love with a mortal doctor (who was now immortal), gotten her into all kinds of trouble, then married her and moved into a quaint home in the country.

Life could be strange as hell sometimes. Who could’ve foreseen that fate for him?

Well, maybe Seth. That bastard seemed to know almost everything. Very annoying.

No one called a welcome when Bastien closed the door behind himself. The French immortals—Étienne, Richart, and Lisette—lounged on a couple of sofas along with Richart’s wife, Jenna, watching some movie with a lot of explosions while they snacked on pita chips.