By 2:30AM, Carden had been propositioned by eleven different prostitutes, he’d given away all of his cash to homeless beggars, and his feet were blistered beyond recognition. For some reason, it had seemed like a good idea to exchange his boots for the pair of designer loafers that he’d bought during the afternoon. His vanity really would kill him one day. As it turned out, the shoes were actually torture devices in disguise. Carden had a high threshold for pain, but this was pushing it.
The worst part was that he hadn’t found Risa and he was beginning to lose hope. In the back of his mind, he had believed that all he would have to do was walk and the fates would lead him to her. After all, they had brought them together in the first place. But after hours of unsuccessful searching, he was becoming anxious. What if he’d already passed her and hadn’t realized it? It had been so long, maybe he wouldn’t recognize her. What if the fates didn’t want them to cross paths again? They’d had their chance once and Carden had left her. He didn’t deserve another one.
But he wasn’t here to beg for another chance! He wasn’t asking for Risa to ride off into the sunset with him, like Cahill and his soulmate. He just needed to see her. That was it.
It began to rain. The stinging, misty kind of rain that seemed to bite into your face no matter what direction you were walking. Terrific. The water would do wonders for the blisters on his heels.
As his clothes began to soak through, Carden shook his head. There was really only one thing that he could do, one definite way that he could find Risa. He was going to have to use the soulmate link. He’d blocked it out when he left New York. To open himself to it now, after all this time, seemed unthinkable. But it was either that, or he’d have to suffer the wrath of his shoes for another few hours. And there was no way that he could give up for the night and try again tomorrow. He would be ready for a straight jacket if he had to wait another day.
Inhaling deeply, Carden braced himself. On the exhale, he reached out for the link with his mind. Immediately, he was overcome with a crushing weight on his chest. It brought him to his knees on the damp, cold sidewalk. But after a minute, the pressure faded, and an invisible force began to pull at him.
The link was as warm and shimmering as Carden remembered it. But now, after years of repression, it was more powerful; he could not move fast enough for it. Soon he was running down the street and the link was tugging at him harder still. It felt strong enough to tear him apart if he didn’t abide it.
He passed by several city blocks without really seeing them. After a while, Carden didn’t even know where he was. The link, not caring about the physical obstacles in his way, wrenched him to his left so that he ran full force into the side of a building. It took nearly all of his strength to push off the wall and trudge forward to the end of the block so that he could turn down the next street. Once he had, he let the link drag him again.
When the pull began to subside, Carden slowed to a jog. He didn’t recognize his surroundings. There were posts for street signs, but there were no signs on them. They’d probably been stolen or destroyed. Smiling wryly, Carden knew that this was the kind of neighborhood that Risa liked.
Suddenly, the soulmate link dissolved. For a scant second, Carden couldn’t breathe. The connection had been severed; Risa was dead. But he was right here. Right here!
There was a loud clang at the end of the block. Entranced, Carden followed the sound. He peered around the corner, careful not to draw attention to himself.
And there she was.
Her dark hair whipped around her, spraying raindrops as she threw a spinning high kick to a grubby man in an old leather jacket. The man’s head jerked to the side as he fell to the ground. While he lay dazed, she straddled him. Grasping his forehead and chin, she snapped his neck gracefully.
Her chest heaved. The man must have put up an unexpected fight. But she was smiling as she stood up. Another piece of human trash dead and gone. Damn I’m good.
These were her thoughts, Carden realized. He could hear her! Did that mean that she could hear him? He didn’t think so. She would be miles away by now, if she knew that Carden was right around the corner from her. It was so intimate, being able to hear her thoughts, feel her mind. For a moment, he couldn’t remember why he’d ever walked away from this.
He’d forgotten just how gorgeous she was. And now that she was a vampire, Risa was even more ravishing. Goddess, help him. Her eyes glimmered as she stood, tall and proud, over her prey. Whatever he thought about it, there was no question that she believed the man in the leather jacket deserved to die. She felt that the world was a better place without him. And watching her, so confident and impassioned, Carden could believe that she was right.
The crushing pressure squeezed his chest again. He held his breath, afraid that if he didn’t, he would call out to her. No, just look at her, his mind whispered. She’s alive and she’s the same Risa that you left eight years ago. Nothing has changed. Let her go now.
But he couldn’t move. Even as he watched her turn to walk down the street, away from him, Carden was still rooted to the ground. The voices in his mind made his head throb.
Go after her! Make her see.
No! It won’t do either of you any good.
She needs you. There were dark circles under her eyes. She’s gotten worse.
She never needed you. She made that perfectly clear. Respect her wishes. You got what you came here for. Leave now.
It took every ounce of will he possessed to tear his gaze away from her and turn back around. He leaned against the wall, swallowing hard. The soulmate link pulled at him again, demanding that he follow it. But he couldn’t.
Goddess, he’d been a jackass to come here. Moronic to think that he could just see Risa and then let her go. He knew in his gut that Aiden St. Helen was not going to come after her. Then what had he come here for?
There were voices around the corner now—a male and female, shouting at each other in whispers.
Carden peered back at them and saw that it was a human girl and a vampire. The girl was in her twenties and she wore a large, billowing coat that was soaked through. The vampire…for some reason, he looked familiar. Regardless, they were standing exactly where Risa had just been, where the dead man still lay, and it couldn’t be a coincidence. Carden strained his ears to make out what they were saying.
“—so stupid!” the male vampire hissed.
“Well, you certainly weren’t going to do anything!”
“I never said that I wasn’t going to follow her, Hollis. I was the one who suggested that we do it almost a week ago, remember?”
“Oh, and I’m supposed to be able to discern your sincere suggestions from your sarcasm?”
“Yes. It’s called a brain, princess. Analytical thinking. Try it some time, before you get yourself killed.”
“I was perfectly fine!”
“You’re just damn lucky that the subject isn’t as paranoid as she should be. You were following her so closely that she probably could have heard your footsteps. And you’re wearing a bright-colored puffy coat, for god’s sake! Why don’t you just tap her on the shoulder and say, ‘Hey, Miss Sinclair, I just wanted to let you know that I’ll be tailing you. But please go about your normal business.’”
What the hell, Carden thought. Miss Sinclair? The subject?
He squinted and tried to see the male vampire better through the rain. Dark hair, youthful face. Hell, the kid looked like that actor…the one who’d been a blond elf in The Lord of the Rings. A girl that Carden had slept with for a while had always drooled over that guy, said she liked him better with the blond hair. But Carden didn’t think that was why this vampire looked familiar.
“Are you just angry that I got the evidence first? Is that it? If you had been doing your job and cooperating this whole time, then you would have—”
“Right. Like you would ever let me help you. I would just screw it up, right? I’m just a gun-toting imbecile, right? That’s what you think.”
“No. I think your worst weapon is you mouth, you jerk. You haven’t even shown me the smallest bit of respect—”
“And you’re a pinnacle of congeniality. That may be what you want everyone to believe about you, princess, but I know that it’s all just for show.”
“You don’t know anything about me. You’ve known me less than two weeks and you’ve hardly spoken to me except to be rude. And—”
“Fine. Whatever. Would you just stop talking already?”
“You never even let me finish a sentence!”
Suddenly it came to him. Ian. Ian McCafferty. The vampire was an assassin for Circle Daybreak—a rival of Carden’s. A few years ago, they’d both been gunning for the contract on Kendra Pollox, a Night World vampire who was leading slaughters of entire towns of humans, turning as many of them as possible into Night People. She’d been making soldiers for the war. Ultimately, the contract had been given to Carden. Kendra Pollox was still his most infamous kill to date.
But McCafferty was good. Really freaking good.
Carden stopped listening as he slid down the wall into a crouch, his stomach churning. His thoughts were painfully jagged. They wouldn’t come together to make any sense.
The subject.
McCafferty.
Miss Sinclair.
Tailing.
Paranoid as she should be.
Got the evidence.
Snapped his neck gracefully.
No, this couldn’t be right. It had to be a mistake.
He had to away from here. He had to go.
Carden got to his feet and started running back the way he came. The rain hit his forehead and dripped into his eyes, but he was grateful to feel something clean and cold on his face.
He had to get away, he had to hurry.
It could have been one mile or ten, for all Carden knew. But he finally reached his hotel and belligerently pushed his way into the lobby. The night shift clerk at the desk looked at him fearfully as he ran by.
“Come on, come on,” he whispered, pushing the button for the elevator again and again.
It wouldn’t move fast enough, nothing would. Not even his body. When the elevator finally reached his floor, Carden sprinted down the hall to his room, but it felt like he was running in slow motion.
After an eternity, he somehow made it to his room. Somehow he got the door open and somehow he got into the bathroom just in time to be violently ill.
They walked through the lobby of their hotel and she felt eyes on her as Ian yanked her towards the elevator. Only two people who had seen them, but that was embarrassing enough. Once they were on their floor, she let him drag her to his door. Then he pulled her through their adjoining door into her own room and shoved her roughly onto the bed.
Hollis fell back, but sat up slowly and slid to the foot of the bed, trying to maintain a sliver of her dignity. She would not give him the satisfaction of seeing how exasperated she really was. Calmly, she unzipped her heavy, soaked coat and placed it on the floor. Then she smoothed down her wet hair before she looked up at Ian.
Her first thought was that he was angry. Of course, she’d already known that. When Ian found her in the city, he’d called her a slew of names that had told her as much. But the look in his eyes now chilled her. Hollis had to force herself not to back away from him.
“Let’s get one thing perfectly clear,” he said. “You will not do anything like that again.” His voice was soft and serious. She’d never heard him speak this way. It had never made sense to her before, how a guy who appeared so vapid could have the patience, precision, and skill to be an assassin. But now she understood. This vampire had a core of ice and for the first time, Hollis was afraid of him.
“I have been in Circle Daybreak for a long time,” he continued. “In all of these years, not a single member of my team has ever been hurt or killed. You deliberately put yourself in danger tonight because of your pride and stupidity. And I will not stand for it, especially not from a human. Daybreak rhetoric notwithstanding, you are weaker than I am and moreover, you are not trained for field work. I don’t care about how you feel about me, princess. You are my responsibility. If you ever—ever—do anything that senseless or reckless again, I’ll kill you myself. Do you understand?”
Hollis knew that she should be cowering, but she couldn’t. Her pride may be the death of her, it was true, but sometimes it felt like all she had. And she would not let him trample all over her for something that wasn’t entirely her fault.
“You’re a liar,” she said, her voice as soft as his.
His eyes widened, as if he were shocked by her audacity. “Please, go on.”
Staring into the depth of his brown eyes, Hollis almost backed down. He hadn’t blinked once since he’d pushed her onto the bed. Wait, that wasn’t true. He had flinched when he was saying that he didn’t care how she felt about him. Well she would see about that.
She stood up and faced him. “You said that no one on your team has ever been hurt and that’s a lie, Ian. You have hurt me over and over again since the moment we were paired together. Earlier you said that no one can make me feel anything, that I’m responsible for my own reactions. Fine. But there is such a thing as common courtesy and you’ve shown me none of it. I don’t know what I ever did to you to deserve how you’ve treated me.”
Ian sneered. “You’re a hypocrite. I know what you think about me, princess. You’re not very good at shielding your thoughts most of the time. You give me unfailing politesse, this common courtesy, and the entire time you’re thinking that I’m just an ass with great eyes.”
The blood rushed into her face. That exact phrase had run through her mind more than once. “So you do care about how I feel about you.”
“No,” he replied so coldly that it stung. “I care about honesty. If you thought that I was so dense, you could have told me that in the beginning. Hell, after a five minute conversation I could have proven you wrong. Instead, you quietly clung to your prejudices. I was just being who you wanted me to be, princess. So if you were hurt by anything that I’ve said, it’s your own damn fault.”
“I was honest with you!” Hollis replied angrily. She thrust her face close to his. “I told you several times to stop insulting me, to do your work. I told you exactly what I thought of you!”
“But you still expected me to carry on as I had. You lectured me about work and yet you never gave me anything to do. You thought I would just screw it up, so you might as well do it yourself. It was the only way it would be done right. You set yourself up to be a martyr and you played the part so well that you could have gotten yourself killed tonight.”
Hollis faltered. She was so livid that her brain simply stopped working.
“I’m done with your games,” Ian told her. “You get the real me now, princess. And I run the show. So get some sleep. Tomorrow you will tell me about the evidence you found so that I can kill Risa Sinclair and get the hell away from you.”
Ian stormed out, but he shut the door between their rooms quietly. Somehow that seemed worse than if he had slammed it.
It was too much for Hollis to take any more. She set her pride aside as she fell to her knees on the carpet. Putting her hot face in her hands, she began to sob.
It had been a great night, just what she’d needed. New York City was now free of twelve of the most disgusting excuses for human beings that Risa had seen in a while. There was no way for her to believe that she wasn’t making a difference on a night like this. She’d freed countless people from being victims of those scumbags in the future and she’d gotten justice for those that had been hurt already.
The rain had just stopped and the sky was brightening as dawn approached. With a giggle, Risa wrung out rivers of water from her hair and her shirt. The cold didn’t touch her. She sang out loud along with her music, not caring who heard. The city was full of weirdos; she was hardly noteworthy.
Well, maybe she was. Risa had the vague feeling that someone had been watching her earlier in the night. It hadn’t seemed important at the time because she’d been so caught up in her work, but now she wondered. She really ought to pay more attention to things like that.
Carden had scolded her about that sort of thing, as if she were a little girl. Remember to watch the shadows in your peripheral vision, Risa. Look both ways before crossing the street, Risa. For such a dauntless assassin, he could be so anxious and overprotective.
Anyway, she didn’t want to think about him. Strange that he’d popped into her mind twice in one night. She’d gotten pretty good at making herself forget about him. That is, of course, until she looked in the mirror.
As she skipped down the stairs into the subway station, Risa turned up the volume on her mp3 player until she literally couldn’t hear herself think. Her eardrums might bleed, but she was not going to lose the effervescence that had taken her over during the night.
A train pulled into the station just as she reached the platform and that simple stroke of luck chased away the darkness that wanted to descend on her. And the car was empty enough for her to have a seat. Jubilance was bubbling up in her stomach. This was how it was supposed to be.
The stranger sitting across from her on the train looked at her warily because Risa was smiling at nothing at all. She caught some of his thoughts and had to suppress a laugh. The man was really afraid of her. Happiness was such a foreign concept in this world that he was actually suspicious of it.
Risa started up a one-sided conversation with the man as he read a newspaper, just to freak him out a little more. She blathered on about how lovely it was that spring was coming, that she couldn’t wait to plant flowers in her garden, maybe some tomatoes and squash too. Not a word of it was true, but it felt good to talk. It occurred to her, suddenly, that sometimes entire weeks went by when she didn’t talk to anyone. The thought made her freeze mid-sentence.
She remembered long phone calls with her friends, asking Cori about her day, reminiscing with her mother about her father, whispering heatedly about work and love with Carden. All of that seemed so far away. Not her life at all. Just a movie staring a girl who was a plainer version of her.
And suddenly the bubbling happiness was gone as if it had never come. Risa stared absently out the window. The man across from her was obviously relieved at her silence, his grip on the newspaper wasn’t so tight any more.
The ride seemed long and Risa was grateful when she finally reached her stop. She wished that she didn’t live two miles away because she honestly couldn’t imagine how she was going to make it, just then. It was too far.
One foot in front of the other. Her mp3 player switched folders and then Trent Reznor was screaming at her. It seemed fitting. It would be so nice just to be swallowed up in his voice.
She caught the scent only two blocks from her house. Floating very faintly on the breeze was the smell of something rancid. Risa paused on the corner and wavered. She was drenched and cold now, bruised and aching, and she was so close to home. Hot shower and sleep.
The wind gusted and the acrid scent was stronger. The few humans that were on the streets at this hour didn’t seem to notice and Risa envied them. When she’d been changed into a vampire, the world had become a far more pungent place. In the sixteen years that she’d spent as a human, she’d taken it for granted that she wasn’t constantly bombarded by the odors of life and waste.
She turned away from her home and began to walk into the wind, as she’d known she would. There was no way for her to ignore this smell: it was a byproduct of putrefaction—human decay. Someone had died in her neighborhood and the body hadn’t been found yet. Risa hoped that maybe the person was some elderly grandmother who had passed in her sleep or even someone who’d had a fatal accident. But the pessimist and the realist in her somehow knew that it wouldn’t be that simple.
Following the scent, she stopped in front of a two-story row house—one that seemed to be crumbling before her eyes. The building had been boarded up years ago and the stone walls were covered in graffiti. Squatters must have broken in, though, because a large sheet of plywood that blocked a first floor window shook with the wind, as if it were only loosely in place.
Risa made sure that she was alone before knocking the board away and vaulting up into the open window frame. The old, hardwood floor groaned underneath her weight and the wind was loud as it blew relentlessly against the house. For several minutes, she stood motionless, listening for the presence of another person. But she heard nothing.
The smell was strong enough to be detected by humans now and Risa followed it up a set of stairs that were slowly being devoured by termites. With each step up, she half-expected the floor to give out under her, leaving her to be sliced up by shards of wood as she crashed through the stairs. But by some miracle she made it safely to the second floor.
At the top of the stairs there were two bedrooms, one on each side of her, and there was a small bathroom in front of her. Risa pushed open the door to the bedroom on her left and a wave of nausea crashed through her. Every last molecule of air was polluted with the smell of decay. After a second, her stomach settled and Risa forced herself to enter the room.
There was a bloody, bloated mass on the floor. At first, Risa was relieved. There was no way that the huge mess could’ve ever been human. But as she stared, she recognized the shape of two heads, one with blond hair and the other with light brown. One of the bodies was taller and had its arm splayed over the other. Slowly, clothing came into focus, barely identifiable under all of the blood and oozing human matter. Risa saw that both were wearing jeans with flared legs—these were the bodies of two girls.
As if she were in a trance, she crouched over them. It was difficult to be certain, but judging from the stage of decay, Risa guessed that the girls had been dead for at least four days. And it looked as if both of their torsos had been viciously torn open from neck to naval. Humans would probably guess that the girls had been attacked by dogs, but Risa suspected that it had been some kind of shapeshifter.
There was so much damage to the bodies. She could only imagine how brutal the attack must have been. She could picture the older, taller girl throwing herself on top of the younger one, trying to protect her. But whatever defenses they’d mustered against the shifter had been futile—the fight over with almost as soon as it had started.
The wind howled, rattling shutters that were barely attached to the outside of the upstairs windows. Risa wrapped her arms around her knees, swaying on her feet; she sniffed and wiped her nose. She didn’t know what she could do for the girls. In her work, she’d only ever gone after people who were in the middle of committing a crime. Sometimes she also killed because of the crimes she’d seen in their thoughts. Risa had never tried to find a specific person to get justice for a particular victim.
But there wouldn’t be justice for these girls any other way. The police couldn’t investigate a crime like this. She’d never really had a choice: she was going to have to track down the shifter herself.
The air stirred behind her softly. For a moment, Risa thought that it was a draft, but then she realized that the air was too warm to have come from outside. She turned just as the wolf leapt at her.
Part 3
Part 5
Fissure Main Page
Home