Dawn's Darkest Hour

David shook free of Rachael. She was defending this jackass? How many guys

had he roughed up to keep his sister's fragile innocence intact over the years? Theresa never got to date much in high school, because of him. Would be boyfriends were afraid of him, and rightfully so. The one thing Theresa resented him for above all others was his constant interference in her life. It drove a wedge between them and created a gulf so big that neither one of them could bridge its width. Rachael wasn't Theresa. Huffing, David opened his fist and let Cole go, to slide down the wall, gasping for breath.

"David," Rachael rested a hand on his bicep. "I wanted Cole to kiss me." She smiled furtively at the dissipating clouds of rage. "I wanted a lot more, but Cole put on the brakes," she admitted, blushing.

She wedged between David and Cole to put more space between them. Kneeling on one knee, she checked on Cole. He was ok. Dazed from the impact with the wall, but otherwise, fine. "We need to get some ice on this knot," she said, feeling the goose egg beginning to form on the back of Cole's head. With a grunt and a lot of help, Cole hoisted himself up onto his feet. Rachael's knees almost buckled from the additional burden of his weight. Unceremoniously, he flopped on the bed while David slid out of the room to fill the ice bucket. "You ok?"

Cole waved off Rachael's fluttering hands. "Fine. Why did you do that?" he asked, utterly confused by her willingness to place herself in jeopardy for him. Pain shot bolts of lightening through his head. On the fringes of a concussion, the jolts were enough to keep him focused. Any and all thoughts about sex were utterly crushed, for the time being. Just trying to keep from puking in Rachael's lap took a huge amount of effort.

Rachael shook her head sympathetically and brushed the hair from Cole's brow. "You have a lot to learn about me. Nobody's going to hurt anybody I care about and get away with it." She shot a pointed scowl at David as he dropped the ice bucket on the bathroom counter and filled a towel with ice.

Rachael's concern for Cole raised David's ire. The gentle way she placed the towel on the dark purple lump sickened him. Obviously, she didn't know what kind of game this guy played. How he used people to get what he wanted. David shuddered at the thought of what might have happened between them if he hadn't gotten here when he did. "He should be lucky I didn't aim for something a little lower. And I mean little."

"Stop it!" Rachael huffed. "You two have to learn to get along if we're going to make this work. You both need each other. I suggest you get over yourselves and deal with it." Cole whimpered pitifully when the ice touched his scalp. She worried that David might have hurt him worse than she thought or he let on. "You could have killed him," she chastised.

David glowered at Rachael from across the room. Put in his place by a seventeen year-old girl. "If I wanted him dead, he would be," he retorted.

"Stop being such a bully." Rachael timidly felt the lump and watched the color drain out of Cole's face. "I think you've really hurt him, bad." Hesitantly, she considered her question. Surely, some of the facts in her books were accurate. "Is it true, what your blood can do? Can you heal Cole?"

David nodded, dreading what was to come next. He didn't share his blood. True, he needed Cole fully functional by tomorrow night. True, he had been the one to cause the injury. Just seeing Rachael burning in a fire ignited by Cole, the one person that could damage her worse than one of his kind ever could, had thrown him into a fit of protective rage. Cole would break her heart, which in ways was worse than dying. He'd been out of his mind at the thought of it. "It will work."

Cole faded in and out of awareness. Teetering on the edge of consciousness.

"No," he managed to croak. God, his head hurt. Rachael's fingers were a comfort. The ice did nothing, but make the lump throb worse and worse. He was hurt. Bad. But, take the blood. To be patched back together only to be killed tomorrow night. Not his idea of fun times. He'd be all right. Rachael would take care of him.

"Cole, I don't know what else to do for you. Please," Rachael begged. "David, how does it work? Tell him that you're not going to hurt him again. Make him understand."

"I know what he's afraid of. He's seen the addicts, some of his very best customers. My blood doesn't work like that. Vampire blood corrupts when it hits open air. The cells change and become something different. Something toxic. This is straight from the tap.

"I can't turn you, and I wouldn't if I could. A few drops isn't enough for that. You'll sense me, if I'm near, for a while afterward. The blood does have some similar effects to pink. Increased strength and energy. Heightened awareness. Euphoria. The buzz doesn't last but a few seconds. The physical abilities, maybe a day or two. But, it's painful. You'll wish you were dead. Don't worry, it'll pass and you'll be back to your normal asshole self." David sat on the edge of the bed and pulled up his sleeve. Shocked and disbelieving what he was about to do.

Rachael turned away, trembling with innate terror, as David plunged his fangs deep into his own wrist. "Does it hurt?" she gasped, catching glimpses of dark crimson blood as they welled to the surface of the twin puncture wounds.

"Yes." David held his wrist at an angle to provide Cole with easier access. He held the edge of the bed in a death grip. Remembering the last person he'd shared his precious gift with. Theresa. He'd done it to save her and in the end, he'd failed. He wondered if Cole and Rachael would become another failed attempt his salvation. Pawns used selfishly and in the end tossed aside in the scrap heap of his life when he failed to save them, just as he had Theresa. A hiss escaped his lips as Cole locked on and took his first greedy pull.

Tears streamed down Rachael's cheeks. Tears for David's pain. Lines of stress were etched across his face as Cole swallowed down gulp after gulp. What this act, this one gesture of contrition had cost David on the inside, where nobody saw it, she didn't know. All she knew was that it had cost him something. Another line of hot tears rolled off the tip of her chin for Cole. He was so fiercely independent, had fought long and hard to be who he was. Suckling life out of David, relying on the strength of another went against the grain of his innermost being.

She held onto Cole tightly, his fingers digging into her spine as he bucked and writhed in agony in her arms. He thrashed and moaned, grinding his teeth against the surges of pain. "David is this normal?" she asked in panic.

"Yes. It'll pass in a moment," David answered, slumping against a far wall. Refusing to watch. The memories were too fresh: his sister wriggling in his arms, the smell of his blood and the taste of hers on his tongue, the bitter sting of Bianca's bite and the spiral into oblivion as she drained the life out of him and delivered him to his rebirth, agonizing and horrifying. David kicked his head back to rest against the wall and closed his eyes. The pain in his wrist faded, running his thumb over the pristine edges of the wound, kept him anchored in the present instead of disappearing into the many terrors of his past.

Cole thought for a horrifying second that David had tricked him. Wishing he were dead would have been putting it mildly, Cole wouldn't have bet a plug nickel on the fact that he was dying. The pain! His limbs seized with cold, agonizingly numb. Unable to hold back against the assault, he whimpered and screamed like a girl. Nothing mattered, but making it to the next breath and the next heartbeat. Blackness surrounded him and crushed in on him until there was nothing left but the bleak stillness of oblivion.

The next onslaught was just as agonizing as the first. Light and sound in palpable waves engulfed him. Smells, unlike anything he'd ever smelled before bore into his brain. He could hear the comforter underneath him. Pick out the individual fibers as they rustled against one another. He could taste Rachael's breath as she held it out of worry for him. God, she was hot, searing to the touch, felt so good, so soothing to his frozen body. A command, soft as a whisper, compelled him and he fell headlong into the suggestion. Sleep.

Rachael wiggled from under Cole and positioned him in what she thought was a comfortable position. He was all dead weight, oblivious to the world as he slumbered. "Is he ok?"

"He's sleeping." David stretched out his legs and cracked his neck. He was so drained. Before much longer, he'd have to leave them to go hunting. Keeping them alive was his job and he had to be at one hundred percent to do it.

Rachael climbed off the bed, casting a worried glance over her shoulder at Cole. At least, he was resting. In his sleep, Cole looked harmless. Innocent as the day he was born. As if the troubles of the world were far, far away. She lowered her body on the floor and leaned against the wall, next to David. "Was it like that for you? When you turned?"

"No. It was much worse. Hell pales by comparison." David closed his eyes, blocking her out. The scent of her blood, so close and readily at hand, teased him. Making his fangs, the cursed things, impossible to retract.

"Will you tell me about it?" Rachael asked. Her eyes, she realized had been shielded by the pretty pictures painted about vampires. Tales she read and reread in her books. For the first time, she saw David for who and what he was. Tormented. Immortal. And yet, so very human, fallible and imperfect, just like anybody else. Unafraid, she held out her hand. He clasped it hard in his trembling fingers and grabbed on as if he were petrified he'd be swept away by an unseen wind if he let go.

Chapter 55

Carter sat in front of the fireplace, absorbing the warmth of the merrily dancing flames deep into his frozen marrow. He could feel O'Sullivan, analyzing him. Evaluating the angle he'd use next. Considering what he thought would make him talk. Bile rose up in Carter's throat. He had one simple task. One. And he was going to fail. O'Sullivan now knew about the secret Carter had vowed with his life to protect. Once O'Sullivan got a whiff of something he wanted. He sank his fangs in and never let go. Carter felt what little of the private place he had left in his soul shrink away. It was obvious to him that O'Sullivan wanted the wolves.

He was disgusted with himself. He'd failed Shayla on so many levels: as a man, as a lover, and now, as a protector. Would he never stop hurting the people he loved? Yessette was a prime example of how deeply his failures ran. He was a vampire and he couldn't even get killing one human being right. She should have died that night, and oh how he wished she had. How he wished he had the strength to make that, his greatest failure, right.

Yessette worried the wounds in the flesh with her fangs. Trying desperately to extract every last drop from the limp figure slumped in her arms. She was still starving. With a grumbling sigh, she let the man drop to the floor. Carter hated it when she killed. Nothing made him more furious than the sight of a freshly drained corpse. Something she simply did not understand. Wasn't clearing your plate the ultimate sign of respect to the host? She looked up at Carter and smiled, frowning when he glared at her.

Carter looked at Yessette in revulsion. The woman was a user, taking everything and offering nothing in return. She did nothing for humanity, except drink from them. She did nothing, anywhere. Her rooms were filled to the point of bursting with trinkets and baubles, every closet, shelf, and drawer stuffed to excess. Yet, she always wanted more. She ate with the same wild abandon. Even now, the gleam of hunger sparked in her eye. If left unchecked, she'd drain the entire city in less than a week. She sat on the edge of the wingback chair with a drained corpse at her feet daintily dabbing the corners of her mouth with a white linen handkerchief without remorse or guilt over what she'd done. She disgusted him utterly. "Yessette, leave us," he gritted, biting back his rage.

With a huff, Yessette flounced out of the room making her displeasure known. Yessette was a fragile bird with gilt wings. O'Sullivan grinned at his creation. Where Carter looked on her with disgust. Her glory filled him with pride. If only, he'd made Carter so perfectly instead. Shame. Perhaps, if Yessette's intellect had survived the transformation as well as her body had, she might be of greater use to him. Carter's wit had survived intact. But, he did not inherit his father's zest for killing. Individually, Carter and Yessette were liabilities. Only together, were they of any value.

"Surely, you've come to the realization that she is what she is. You can't change her," O'Sullivan said. Nudging the corpse out of the way with the toe of his boot he took a seat on the wingback chair she'd abandoned. A smudge of rust colored blood dried on the arm, ruining the silk upholstery. He followed Carter's eyes to the crumpled body, "Don't worry about that. I'm used to cleaning up after Yessette. Quite the angel of death isn't she."

Carter trembled with fury. Outraged at Yessette and O'Sullivan's dismissive regard for murder. Eric sat on the wingback, casually, almost relaxed in posture, studying him with the cool, removed gaze of a cat. But, Carter knew O'Sullivan was completely aware, coiled and ready to spring to action at less than a blink of an eye. Carter hated himself more than he ever could O'Sullivan. All O'Sullivan had ever done was give him the tools. Carter was the one who picked them up and used them.

He couldn't blame everything he was on his maker, only, that he was at all. The coppery scent of human blood underneath the cloying stench of death, teased at his fangs. And that, repulsed him most of all. That for all the ways he had tried to subdue his nature, evolve into greater understanding, in his deepest heart of hearts, he was no better than Yessette or O'Sullivan. He was a killer just like them.

"You could rid the world of her. I won't intervene. She is yours to do with what you will," O'Sullivan said, dangling the carrot of temptation under Carter's nose. Carter wouldn't do it. He was too soft. He'd rather fall upon his own sword than kill Yessette.

Carter's muscles stiffened. O'Sullivan knew he wouldn't-couldn't kill Yessette. If O'Sullivan wanted her dead, he'd do it himself. "If I did, then what would you have to bind me to you?"

O'Sullivan rested his elbows on the arms of the chair and steepled his fingers, balancing the weight of his chin on the points of his fingertips. On that, Carter was wrong. O'Sullivan did have something more valuable than Yessette to keep him under control. Perhaps, it was time to remind his protégé of exactly what pieces were on the board. "Let's discuss the wolves, shall we?"

Chapter 56

Cole gradually came awake. His brain took a minute to process the sound of voices, softly chatting from across the room. Faking unconsciousness, he listened in. David's story unfolded in confession from his own lips. Cole didn't have a thing in his own experience to compare it to. He'd always been a natural when it came to the opposite sex. The knowledge that David had been a huge loser as a teenager made him snicker under his breath.

As David wound his tale, Cole could almost see the geek behind the brown leather and fangs. Cole had girls lining up for a turn with him. He held his breath to keep from laughing at the honesty of David's confession to Rachael. A prostitute? Really? Oh well, a guy had to pop his cherry somehow, Cole supposed. The fact that David had the hots for some teenage sweetie somehow made him seem almost, ALMOST, human, for a minute.

Cole gripped the sheets beneath him. Listening intently and uninvited, as David told the story of his conversion. THAT. Being snacked on against his will, Cole could relate to. His body stiffened at the memory of the pain of a few drops. What David must have suffered in those last lingering moments as a human was completely unimaginable. Cole rolled onto his back and struggled into an upright position on the pillows. "What was her name?"

"Nora." David answered almost wistfully. He wasn't aware that Cole was awake and listening in. He should have noticed the subtle changes in Cole's breathing, the slight movement of arms and legs, the flutter of an eyelash, but he was too involved in reliving the last moments of his stolen innocence to clue in.

"Have you seen her since?" Rachael asked. She soaked in every detail of David's story, even the gory parts, with enthusiasm. At this point, she considered him her friend, perhaps her best friend. Nothing she could ever do or every say would bring down judgment from him. Perhaps, in being a vampire, he understood human nature better than anyone else.

"Everyday in English class."

Rachael's mouth formed into a little "O" as realization struck. Of course! Ms. Temple. She'd graduated from her school. Ms. Temple, only she wasn't Ms. Temple when he'd been there as a student. The timing was right. David went missing in 2001 and Ms. Temple was roughly thirty years old. The same age David should be, if he'd gotten to live. David had a crush on Ms. Temple, before she was Ms. Temple and he'd died without ever getting the opportunity to tell her.

David made a little more sense to her now. He was the stuff of legends, at least high school lore. Rachael struggled to put the whispered rumors together. Stories about the kid that had gone missing ten years ago she'd heard over the years. She'd thought they were bunk and never really paid much attention. People claimed to have seen his ghost wandering around the school late at night, haunting its grounds and hallways. It must have been, had to be, David!

Cole assumed that David was the same age as he was or relatively close. In reality, David was ten years older. A cold chill ran through him as he pondered the facts. David was as trapped as a rat in a cage within his own body. He'd never be old enough to drink or to vote legally. He'd never have a thick five-o-clock shadow. He'd grown up on the inside, but never, ever on the outside. He could never date, at least anyone who didn't have to be home by curfew. He'd never have a family or make babies. So much of growing up that Cole had always taken for granted someday would happen for him. Would never happen for David. "Man, that sucks," he said sympathetically.

David nodded. Who would have thought Cole had an intuitive bone in his body? But, he got the crux of David's predicament. Trapped as a teenager while time marched on. Nora was grown up and had a woman's experiences. Everyone he'd ever known had. He stayed in a state of suspended animation, never changing.

He could have Nora temporarily. Eventually, she'd grow weary of him. Of having everyone assume, as she aged, that he was her son, and in time, her grandson. For a while, they could play the cougar angle, but sooner or later, even that would wear thin. He though, could never willingly take the risk with her that he had with his sister. Bring death to her doorstep just to keep from losing her. He nodded and accepted Cole's understanding and Rachael's sympathy. "It does."

Rachael leaned back against the wall and blew out a breath. She ran a hand through her hair and thought about the guys' silent exchange. Being young forever wasn't so bad, was it? Never having to wrinkle, deal with gray hair, arthritis, do nothing but wither day by day and wait for death to come. Didn't sound bad to her. Wasn't being an eternal teenager a fair exchange? She thought about it and put herself in his shoes. Never getting a woman's curves, never filling out a B cup, having only the jaded glimmer of experience visible in your eyes to give hint of your age. To want so much and get so little in return. Maybe, just maybe, it wasn't an even trade at all.