DarklightShadow - Hehe, I'm glad you like Carden so much. He was definitely a favorite of mine. It's fun to dream of cursing and being as rude as he is.
CalliopeMused - Yeah.. Hollis might be doing something stupid. But who knows how it'll turn out. Okay, I know, but the rest of you don't!
syrai - Thank you for all the lovely compliments. :)
Incarnated-Soul - Again, yeah, Hollis is full of bad ideas sometimes. But it's daylight. What could happen to her? Yay, I'm glad you find the story funny. I try to bring in my sarcasm. I don't know where the car thing came from.. I needed a place for Carden to land safely and thought.. hey, why not make it ruin Ian's day? And oh yes, angst is very good. I wouldn't be writing without it. :)
They almost looked normal, seated in the back of a crowded Starbucks as they quietly sipped their overpriced coffee. The signs of tension were subtle. Their eyes darted from one another to the other people in the shop quickly and constantly, always watching for a new threat, always looking for new exits. The silence among them was heavy with their apprehension and reluctance to be the first to speak, to relinquish information. They knew all too well that the value of their knowledge could be the only defense they had against one another.
“Would someone please talk, already?” Risa said. “This is getting ridiculous.”
Carden watched his soulmate in his peripheral vision. She looked relaxed, leaning back in the overstuffed armchair, but he could feel the strain of her anxiety through the link. He tried to push some calming energy to her, but she only glared at him. Mind your own business, her mental voice snapped. Stay out of my head.
I’m afraid it’s not up to me, sweetheart, he told her.
But the majority of Carden’s attention was trained on Ian McCafferty. The assassin wasn’t exactly what he’d been anticipating. Carden had expected his old rival to be more like himself—loud and obnoxious and egotistical. But McCafferty was quiet in a thoughtful way that made him even more dangerous. Carden had no idea what the Daybreaker was thinking as Ian watched him and Risa with interest, but with no outwardly sign of aggression. He couldn’t help but think that the assassin could strike at any moment with deadly precision, like a snake.
“You asked for this meeting,” he said to Ian. “So talk.”
The Daybreaker smiled slightly, as if he were amused by the direct order. “How much do you already know about the assignment?”
Carden answered. The less his soulmate said, the better. “You were sent here to observe and destroy Risa because the Night World found out about her hunting habits and she’s inspired some copycats. It’s starting to draw attention to the Night World and is causing more rifts between humans and Night People, which is giving Daybreak a headache. You’re not sure if Risa knows about it or if she’s openly working with the Night World, and you’re not sure if you care. The only thing you do know is that you need a solution. Fast.”
Ian nodded. “Very good. A little too good, actually, but I won’t ask how you got that information.”
“There’s no way in hell that I’d ever give up my source, you son of a bitch,” Carden growled.
“I just said that I wouldn’t ask.” The Daybreaker turned to Risa. “Does he always have this much trouble listening?”
“Yes,” Risa replied just as Carden answered, “No.”
“I see,” Ian laughed. “That soulmate link doesn’t help your communication much, does it?”
“How did you know about that?” Carden asked.
“My partner and I deduced that you two knew each other before you left the city eight years ago. And sitting here with you now…well, the connection is obvious.”
Risa rolled her eyes. “You could’ve fooled me.”
“Okay, whatever,” Carden snapped. The last thing he wanted was for Ian to know the details of his relationship with his soulmate. The guy knew too much already. “What do you want, McCafferty? You were assigned to kill her. So why aren’t you doing it?”
“You know about the new policies, right? Daybreak implemented them last year.”
“The assassin has to be part of the investigation team.”
“Right. To make sure that he understands the weight of his decision.”
“He or she,” Risa butted in. Both Ian and Carden stared at her. “You do have female assassins, don’t you?”
“Not at the moment, actually,” Ian replied.
“Why not?”
“Take it up with the ACLU later, Risa,” Carden said dryly. “Let him finish.”
She glared at him. “Go to hell.”
“In any event,” the Daybreaker continued, “the new policy dictates that I have the last word. My partner and I have been watching you, Risa, for nearly two weeks. We know that you’ve killed a lot of people, taken justice into your own hands. But I didn’t see any evidence that you were in contact with the Night World or that you knew about the copycats.”
“Carden told me last night,” she said softly.
“You didn’t know before that?”
“No. I’ve been on my own for eight years.” Risa glanced at Carden significantly and he just hoped that McCafferty didn’t notice. “I don’t really know much about the Night World news or laws. I only paid attention to my own work.”
“What was your work, exactly?”
“I thought you knew all of this.”
Ian shrugged. “I want to hear it in your own words.”
“I killed people who preyed on others, who hurt others. Sometimes I baited them. Sometimes I stopped them in the middle of a crime. Sometimes I was able to pull what they’d done from their thoughts. I killed them all, regardless, because they deserved to die.”
“Risa—” Carden started, trying to shut her up before she said something stupid.
“No,” she snapped. “He wanted to hear the truth from me, so I gave it to him.”
“They all deserved to die,” Ian repeated casually, but Carden knew what the Daybreaker was getting at.
So did Risa. “I thought so at the time. But I found out last night that I made some mistakes…killed innocent people.” She looked down at her lap, her shame painfully palpable.
“She had no idea, McCafferty,” Carden insisted. The Daybreaker had to believe that. He had to see that Risa wasn’t the monster she might appear to be on paper.
Ian nodded again, as if this was what he’d been expecting. “And what will you do now that you know all of this?” he asked Risa.
Carden held his breath. He knew that this was the pivotal question. This was why Ian had asked to talk to them. Risa’s life depended on her answer and whether or not the Daybreaker believed her.
She looked up at Ian fearlessly. “I’m ready to die for what I’ve done,” she said with unfailing dignity.
The assassin stared at her, his gaze searching. He seemed to be trying to sense deceit or bravado in her words. “Alright,” he said slowly. “But what would you do if I let you live?”
Risa’s expression contorted in horror and it made something in Carden’s gut twist. “Don’t keep the man waiting, sweetheart,” he sneered. “Give him an answer.”
His soulmate looked at him, pleading. “You don’t understand…”
“Oh, I understand. You want to die because you’re too weak to live with what you’ve done or to try to make amends for it.”
“How can I possibly make up for killing those people?” she asked desperately. “You think if I do enough community service, their families will pat me on the shoulder and tell me that it’s fine that I killed their husband or father or brother or sister or whomever?”
“Don’t be stupid. But dying won’t make it right, either. No, you’d never get their blessing and maybe you’d never get their forgiveness, but that doesn’t mean that you should stop working for it. I gave you forever, Risa. That’s a damn long time. Maybe one day, at least, you might be able to forgive yourself.”
“Why don’t you just hold your breath until that day comes?” she suggested. But her voice lacked the biting, sarcastic edge that it should have had. Carden wished that Ian was gone now, so that he could touch his soulmate, search her mind to see if he’d finally gotten through to her.
“Risa,” Ian interjected, “I think that Carden is right.”
“No, not you too,” she breathed, covering her face with her hands.
“Your skills could be—” the Daybreaker was cut off by a series of beeps. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his cell phone. “Sorry, it’s a text message from my partner. Just give me one second.”
Ian frowned as he read the message.
“What is it?” Carden asked. “If it’s about Risa, we deserve to know what’s going on. Tit for tat and all.”
McCafferty looked up at Risa coldly. “Were you involved in the murder of two girls in a townhouse near your apartment?” he asked her pointblank.
“What?” she said incredulously. “Jesus, you Daybreakers are good. I didn’t think anyone even saw me there.”
“Is that a yes?”
“No. I found the bodies yesterday morning. They were mostly rotted by that time. A wolf shifter did it, I think. He was in the house and he attacked me. I barely got out of there in one piece.”
“That’s why you were covered in blood when I found you?” Carden asked. “It was your blood.”
She turned her gaze back to him. “Yes. And I was going to go back there to kill the wolf before I went to the hotel to turn myself in to Ian.”
“Really. Why not just let the shifter kill you and save Circle Daybreak the trouble?” he suggested acidly.
“I promised those girls that I would get justice for them.”
Carden sighed. “You always do.”
“Not like this,” Risa insisted.
“No?”
“They were already dead. He left them there to rot, Carden. They were barely more than puddles of flesh on the floor, but I could tell how much he enjoyed tearing them up.” Her eyes filled with tears as her voice became unsteady. “And the older girl had her arm over her sister, trying to protect her when the wolf attacked, but it didn’t help. There was nothing either of them could do. He destroyed them and then he left them there like garbage!”
“How do you know they were sisters?” Ian asked, oblivious to how close Risa was to hysterics.
She looked at him blankly. “I…don’t…”
Oh, Goddess. Everything always came back to this. For Risa, it all came down to her father’s death and how terrified she’d been that she would never be able to take care of Cori or keep her safe. He could see flashes of the dream she’d been plagued by for years. He remembered how she used to wake up screaming her sister’s name. But Carden realized that seeing those dead girls had distorted the dream. For whatever reason, her mind had confused the girls with herself and Cori. Risa seemed to take their deaths as evidence of her failure.
Fucked up, as always, but there it was.
Suddenly, he didn’t care of Ian was watching. Carden got down on his knees before his soulmate and took her hands in his.
It wasn’t Cori that died, he said. Your sister is alive and you’re alive. You can’t take responsibility for everything, sweetheart. You can’t control everything. It’s killing you. It’s killing me. Don’t you see that?
Her gorgeous eyes met his. What do I do, then? Tell me what to do.
“She’s not answering,” Ian suddenly said, startling Carden. The Daybreaker was staring at his cell phone mutinously. “Damn it. She sent that text message over two hours ago and I only just got it.”
“Your partner?” Risa asked.
“Yes,” he replied, dialing the number again. Then again. Carden watched as Ian’s calm persona crumbled. The Daybreaker impatiently ran his fingers through his hair and got out of his chair. “This isn’t like her. I’ve got to get back to the hotel.”
Ian hastily strode through the door with Risa and Carden following close behind him. But as soon as they were back on the sidewalk, he froze. “Damn it,” he hissed.
“What’s wrong?” Carden asked.
“You destroyed my rental car,” the vampire snapped.
“What? When?”
“When you landed on it.”
“Oh.” Carden bit his lip, trying not to laugh. He remembered that he’d been glad to put that godawful car out of its misery. “Sorry about that. But, really, I think I did it a favor.”
“It’s not funny,” Ian said seriously. “I need to get back to check on Hollis. I’ve got a bad feeling about it.”
He sobered quickly. “Look, we can take the subway. It’ll be faster anyways.”
“We?”
Carden’s eyes met Risa’s and she nodded at his unspoken question. “Yeah,” he said to Ian. “You said you had a bad feeling. You might need backup.”
“What’s in it for you?”
“The opportunity to be in your glorious presence a few hours longer.”
The Daybreaker wasn’t amused. “And?”
“You helped us, so we’ll help you. Then we’ll be even.”
Ian smiled grimly. “Fine. Let’s move, then.”
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this confused. For so long everything had been simple. Wake up, hunt and kill, sleep. Sometimes she’d felt exhilarated and other times she’d been was close to despair, but right now she felt both at the same time. Part of her wanted to pull her hair out, another part wanted to fall into Carden’s arms. She wanted to die and she wanted to live and both of those desires made her feel guilty for different reasons.
You can’t take responsibility for everything, sweetheart, he had said. It’s killing you. It’s killing me. Don’t you see that?
Risa couldn’t help but notice his use of the present tense. Did he really still care that much?
He squeezed her knee, as if responding to her question, but she didn’t know if he’d actually heard her. She didn’t dare to hope that he still cared about her. He could be gone by the end of the day, just as soon as they were done helping Ian, and it might be another eight years before he contacted her again. Risa could barely stand the thought, but she had to brace herself for it. She had to be prepared.
What would she do after this was over? Her entire existence had effectively been destroyed. She couldn’t hunt any more—she didn’t want to be part of the war between the Night World and Circle Daybreak and she couldn’t risk killing another innocent person. So where did that leave her? If she decided to live, what could she do to start making up for the damage that she’d done?
It was all too overwhelming and it made her head throb.
Carden reached up and guided her head down to his shoulder.
So he had been listening after all.
She waited for him to say something, but he stayed quiet. In the end, Risa was grateful for it. She didn’t want promises or propositions or solutions thrown at her right now and Carden had somehow known that even before she had. God, this soulmate link was strange sometimes.
Risa stared ahead at Ian, who was sitting across from them, anxiously glancing out the window. She wondered if his partner, Hollis, was his soulmate. Probably not. If she were, then Ian would know for sure that something had happened to her. He would be able to track her better.
Still, he did seem really worried. Maybe he was just in love with Hollis. Risa smiled at that thought. The soulmate principle could make things so much harder and more complicated than they should be. It was nice to think of Ian’s love being something simple and pure.
She would never know. Risa had only ever been in love with Carden and regardless of what happened after this, she knew that there would never be anyone else for her.
The subway pulled up to their stop and Risa reluctantly got up. Ian was already at the door, impatiently waiting for it to open. He had been so cool back at the coffee shop that it actually unnerved her a little to see him like this. It reminded her of the time that she’d seen her father cry, when she’d been very young. Adults were not supposed to cry, were not supposed to be scared.
Ian began to run as soon as the door opened. Risa hurried to catch up with him. Her ankle had started to heal in the coffee shop, but it was still fragile as she limped after him.
Suddenly she felt arms scoop her up from behind. “Need a lift, sweetheart?” Carden asked.
Risa struggled indignantly. “Put me down!”
“Afraid not. You’re hurt.”
“You can’t carry me and keep up with Ian. I’m too heavy.”
Carden snorted. “Don’t underestimate my strength or stamina again,” he replied. “Just let me do this.”
Risa looked into his eyes and realized how much he wanted her to let him help her. For once. “Fine. But you are not carrying me like I’m Sleeping Beauty or something. I’m getting on your back.”
“Suit yourself,” he said. Carden stopped briefly and allowed Risa to hop on his back, wrapping her arms around his neck and her legs around his torso. Then he sprinted to reach Ian again.
“Should we hail a cab?” Carden asked him when they hit the street. “Would that get us there faster?”
“No,” Ian said, not even winded yet. “It’ll be faster to stay on foot. At least for me. I don’t have a passenger.”
Carden laughed. “Yeah, I know you’re jealous.”
“Turn left at the end of this block,” the Daybreaker instructed.
They ran at a grueling pace and the miles between the subway stop and Ian’s hotel were a bumpy blur to Risa as she clung to Carden’s back. She saw several people stare in amazement as they flew by and she wondered how they rationalized such a feat to themselves. She wondered if humans would ever be unafraid of them, if they knew the truth.
Would Cori ever be unafraid?
Ian led them through the hotel lobby and up three flights of stairs. When they reached the door to his room, the Daybreaker fumbled with his key card before finally unlocking it. He burst inside and called out his partner’s name.
Carden set Risa on her feet and leaned against the wall, breathing hard. For all his talk, carrying her while running that fast had exhausted him.
“She’s not here!” Ian exclaimed after he’d checked his room and the room next door. “Where the hell would she have gone? Why didn’t she leave a note?”
Risa watched, feeling helpless, as Ian stormed over to the desk and went through the papers that were neatly stacked next to a laptop. Carden went over to the computer and opened the internet browser, searching for some clue there.
“The last pages she went to were about the townhouse where those girls were found,” he said. “She got directions and a satellite photo of it.”
“No, she wouldn’t have gone,” Ian whispered. “We just had a huge fight the night she went after Risa on her own. She’s not trained to be in the field.”
“Is her coat here?” Carden asked him. “Her shoes?”
Ian checked the two rooms again. “No. Neither is her cell phone. Damn it!”
“She may not have gone there,” Risa spoke up. “But we have no other lead right now. We should check it out.”
“Uh, uh. Ian and I will go. You’re staying here, sweetheart,” Carden said.
“The hell I am!” she cried. “That shifter was mine to begin with. I’m going after him.”
“You’re hurt,” he argued.
“It’s almost healed. I’ll be fine.”
“Risa, try to hear me. You. Are. Not. Going.”
“Carden, I can take care of myself. You changed me specifically so that I could take care of myself.”
“That is not what I meant.”
“I know. It’s just…I need to be there. This is the last time and I swore to those girls…” Risa trailed off. She didn’t have the words to explain it to him. She thought that she would be able to quit hunting. The damage she’d wrought was just too great. And she was starting to think that she might be able to bear the weight of her guilt, as long as she had something good to throw her energy into. But she had already made a promise to the girls and she couldn’t walk away without fulfilling it. She just couldn’t.
She waited for another tirade from Carden, but her soulmate just sighed. He was unhappy, but she could feel his resignation through the link. He seemed to understand, for once, why she had to do this. And for the first time, it seemed like he accepted it. “Fine. But promise me that, if anything happens, you’ll keep yourself safe.” Because if you love someone, you have a responsibility to stay alive and well for them, he added to her telepathically. Remember?
Risa nodded and gave him a tentative smile. “I will,” she said softly, “as long as you promise me the same.”
He returned her smile. “I promise.”
Carden turned back to Ian. “Okay, McCafferty,” he said. “Do you have any weapons?”
Ian pulled a large bag out from underneath the bed. Unzipping it, he revealed a large pile of guns, ammunition, stakes, and knifes. “This enough for you?”
Risa took out a silver butterfly knife, fluidly opening it and closing it with one hand. “It’ll do.”
Part 9
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