Dark Light of Mine (17 page)

"Like a party?"

"Oh yes.  Going to a ball was one of my favorite things in the world."

"I hardly know anything about your past.  I'd like to hear about your younger years."

Her smile faded.  "My childhood doesn't make for a wonderful story, Justin.  In fact it's rather grim."

"So you'd rather not talk about it?"

She took my hand in hers.  "I believe I would tell you.  If only because you are the closest thing to a true friend I have in this lonely world."

"Don't talk like that.  Maybe if you play nice, you can be friends with Shelton and Ryland."
Hey, it could happen
.

A giggle burst from her lips.  "You're such the optimist, dear.  If the world worked the way you see it, we'd be living in a fairy tale."

"Jeez, I'm not that delusional am I?"

"No, my lamb, just idealistic."

I glanced back at Ryland.  Smith had just walked out of the store.  I turned to Stacey again.  "Are you trying not to get along with Ryland?  It seems like you two keep saying stuff just to annoy each other.  It's almost like you want him to hate you and vice versa."

Stacey looked at Ryland.  "Wolves and felines do not mix.  I've had nothing but trouble with wolf packs and I don't expect that to change."

"He's not with a pack."

"Ah, a lone wolf.  They are a rare type, but the instincts are still there."

"Have you ever considered you two might be more alike than you think?"

Her eyebrows rose.  "Another fairy tale?"

"You're a loner.  You have your companions, but none of them are your true equal.  Ryland's a loner too.  From the way his story sounds, he's not much for pack politics."

"I prefer to determine my own fate inasmuch as it is under my control."

"He's kind of the same," I said, hoping I wasn't completely misjudging a man I'd only just met.  Sure, he was with the Templars, but the story of him leaving his pack instead of taking leadership made me think he wasn't much for politics either.  Of course the Templars might be consumed by rules and simpering politicians for all I knew.

"I know you just want me to be friends with him, Justin.  You're a sweet person—"

"Ugh, don't call me sweet, girl.  You want to completely ruin my dangerous rep?"

She smiled and took a deep breath.  "For you I will try."

"To be friends with him?"

"To be civil.  Please do not expect more than I can deliver, my knight in shining armor."

"That's all I'm asking, Stace.  I'll ask him to be more civil too.  The comment about you having an empty head was totally uncalled for.  You may be pretty, but you're no ditz.  In fact, I think you're a lot smarter than you let on sometimes."

Her mouth fell open and she drew in a delighted breath.  "You know just how to make a woman feel good, you dear thing."

"Yeah, I'm a real charmer.  Come on."  With that, I made my way back toward Smith.

"I'm having a dilemma," Smith said as he dithered outside the comic book store.

"Why?" I asked.

"I'm sure Shelton told you I'm something of a conspiracy hound.  And I don't usually take strangers to my house."

"How about bags over our heads or blindfolds?"

He laughed.  "Are you kidding?  People would freak out if they saw me leading a group of people with bags over their heads, and I don't doubt for a second your friends here could sniff out the route even blindfolded."

"So what do you suggest?"

"Let's grab some coffee down the block.  You tell me what's going on and we'll go from there."

We walked down the street to Java Hippo and grabbed an outside seat next to a kerosene heater.  I noted with a bit of nervousness we weren't too far from the warehouse-styled lofts the rogue vampires who'd kidnapped my father called home.  Stacey sat across the table from Smith and I sat next to him while Ryland remained standing and leaned against the black metal railing bordering the dining area.  A young girl with tattoos on her arms and a green bandana on her head took our order.

"Do you have a computer with you?" I asked.

Smith nodded and pulled a tablet out of his backpack with a flat icon in the shape of an orange emblazoned on the back.  A stem with a single green leaf protruded atop the orange, and a strip of the peel was gone. It looked a lot like the one Meghan had been using, and reminded me of the familiar Apple logo.  Suppressing a stream of questions about his odd tablet, I handed him the flash drive and waited for him to retrieve the spells on it.  He had a spell program like Shelton's so it displayed the spell script pretty much like it had on Shelton's computer.  Smith blew out a whistle.

"Wow.  Who wrote this?"

"My mom, I think."

He gave me a look from the corner of his eye.  "I suppose I should have found out a little more during the intro stage but it's never too late to be polite.  Who exactly is your mother?"

I hesitated, unsure how much I should tell him.  Then again, this guy seemed pretty tight-lipped.  "Alice Conroy."

His mouth dropped open.  "It's you."

I nodded.  "Uh, yeah, it's me all right."

"You and your father have some hefty bounties on your heads."

"Tell me something I don't know."

"There would probably be a lot to tell."

I chuckled.  "I'm sure.  Can you reverse engineer this code?"

He touched two fingers to one of the question marks where a rune should have been and spread the fingers apart.  The view expanded into a mind-numbing array of gibberish.  He scrolled through it for a few minutes, muttering to himself.  "This thing doesn't play around."  He looked at me.  "This spell is designed to kill en masse.  It would require a hell of a lot of power and some DNA from the affected parties, so it wouldn't be easy by any means."  He shook his head.  "But it could wipe out an entire species."

"Do you mean supernatural species?"

He scrolled back and forth through the lines of code for several more minutes before answering.  "If I had to guess, I'd say these missing runes relate to the traits of a specific super."  He closed one spell, opened another.  Checked it, and moved to another spell.  "Each one of these is aimed at taking out a different type."

"Which ones?"

He shrugged.  "I won't know without figuring out the missing runes.  Every super has a weakness so you'd have to supply a rune exploiting the weakness."

I slumped, pressing a hand to my forehead as a wave of depression settled into me.  "Just when I think things can't get worse, I find out my mom wants to commit genocide."

"I'm sorry.  I wish I could say different."  Smith pursed his lips.  "I should probably reverse-engineer the thing before we jump to conclusions though."

A female voice from behind me interrupted my pity party.  "Hey bro, sorry to bother you but I need some cash."

Stacey's eyes shot wide and a hiss escaped her lips.  Ryland shot up from his casual position against the fence, his eyes locked onto something behind me.

I turned and looked into the eyes of a girl I knew.  Not just a girl, a vampire.  And not just any vampire, but one who'd not only helped kidnap my dad but tried to kill me and Elyssa.

Chapter 16

Felicia the geek-chic vampire sucked in a breath the second she saw my face.  Her eyes expanded until the whites of her eyes were huge against crimson irises.  She turned to run but Ryland had her almost at the same time Stacey vaulted over the table and twisted the vampire's arms behind her back.

"What the hell are you doing to my sister?" Smith said once he turned around enough to see what was going on.

"Felicia is your sister?" I asked, shock nailing me in the stomach.

His face crumpled when he saw the panicked expression on Felicia's face.  "Oh crap, sis.  Please tell me you didn't do something even more stupid than going vampire."

"It wasn't my fault!" she said, wriggling uselessly against Ryland and Stacey.  "Maximus made me do it."

The waitress came out of the restaurant with our coffee, saw Felicia.  Instead of looking alarmed, she groaned.  "Felicia, who'd you piss off now?"

I gave Smith a look.  "Does your sister know where you live?"

"Do you think I'm stupid?" he said.  "My little sister is about as trustworthy as a crack addict."

"I heard that," Felicia said.

"I'm sure you did."  Smith turned to me.  "Mind telling me what she did?"

I glanced at the time.  Making school today was going to be impossible.  I was too weak for football practice anyway.  "I hope you have some time."

"Plenty."

Stacey and Ryland pinned Felicia between them on the bench opposite of me and Smith.  She wriggled and squirmed, but she might as well have been boxed in by concrete.

"Just keep still you bloody little fool," Stacey said when Felicia tried to bite her, fangs extended.

"Or I might show you what biting really is," Ryland said from the other side, his eyes flashing wickedly, upper and lower canines lengthening with dark menace.

Felicia gulped and slumped, defeated.

With her settled down, I told Smith all about his sister's complicity in my dad's kidnapping, though I started more or less from the beginning.  I told him how Shelton tried to bag us in an alleyway so he could claim the bounty only to have Felicia and a group of vampires jump us and make off with my dad.  How me and Elyssa, Stacey and Shelton had rescued him, fought off a horde of vamplings, and captured a few vampires for bounty to the Red Syndicate, the ruling body of the vampires.  He looked absolutely incredulous by the end of the story.

"I always knew TP was an ass, but he really went off the deep end with the bounty hunters stuff."  Smith turned to Felicia.  "And you!  Kidnapping is bad enough, but who in the hell is creating vamplings?  Maximus?  Does that poser have a clue what he's doing?"

"He's got plans, Adam."  Her brow furrowed with zealous sincerity.  "He wants to help all of us and offer immortality to anyone who deserves it."

Smith pounded the table.  "Dammit, you stupid girl."  He seemed ready to lay into her with a sermon, instead pulling off his glasses and pinching the bridge of his nose.  "What do you plan to do with her?"

Felicia's surprised gaze shifted to me, though she kept her mouth shut.

I raised an eyebrow.  I really hadn't planned on doing anything with her even if she was a vicious little brat who'd sicced a bunch of vamplings on me and Elyssa.  It wasn't like I could turn her in to the Templars.  I didn't know much of anything about the supernatural community either.  But maybe I could use her to get Smith to trust me more.

"I'd be happy to leave her with you once we're done here."

Smith shook his head.  "I don't want anything to do with her anymore, especially after hearing what you've told me."

"How can you say that?" Felicia asked, tears brimming in her eyes.  "I'm your sister."

Smith clenched his teeth and glared at her, a thousand unspoken words passing between them.  I had no idea what their history was like, but it couldn't be good.  He took a deep breath and seemed to calm before looking at me.  "I feel as though I owe you something for the ordeal my sister put you through."

I almost blurted back that he didn't owe me a thing for the bad behavior of his sibling, but I really wanted his help.  Maybe he would have helped me anyway, but a little insurance couldn't hurt.  "If you can help Sheltonremove the tracker from my dad and figure out these runes, that would totally rock."

"You got it."  He looked at Felicia for a long moment.  "Where is the Templar you mentioned?  Can she maybe lock up my sister for safekeeping?"

Felicia lunged across the table at him fangs bared and hissing, barely making it halfway before Ryland and Stacey jerked her back.  "Don't you dare, Adam.  I swear to god I'll kill you if you make them lock me up again."

He threw his hands up in the air.  "Make them?  Make them?  I had nothing to do with the last time.  You did that all on your own.  But Maximus has brainwashed you to the point you don't even think for yourself anymore.  It'd be doing you a favor."

Now that Smith mentioned it, I'd love for Elyssa to toss Felicia in Templar prison complete with a pretty orange jumpsuit.  Unfortunately, I wasn't sure when I'd see Elyssa again after the disastrous meeting with her father.  Just thinking about it sent my heart plunging to the bottom of DepressionBay.  It made me want to hurt somebody.  And if I'd had my strength right then, the 'somebody' would have been Felicia.  On the other hand, Ryland could probably take her in, though I hadn't told Smith the werewolf was a Templar.

"We can take her with us to Shelton's hideout.  I'm sure there's something we can do to hold her in the meantime."

Smith nodded and pulled out what looked like a brass smartphone.  Once I looked at it closer, I realized it was a regular smartphone modified with a steampunk theme.

"Shelton told me you don't use a cell phone or email," I said.

Smith chuckled.  "I don't have any one phone number or email address.  It took me a long time, but I wrote a spell allowing this device to spoof other phones at random."

"So the number you use changes each time," I said.  "Wow, now that's cool."

"More like freaky," Felicia said.  "In case you didn't know, my brother is a total nut-job who thinks there's a conspiracy behind everything.  He even thinks someone in the Conclave killed our—"

"Shut it, Felicia," Smith said, smacking the flat of his palm on the table.

"What's the matter?" she said in a whiny mocking voice.  "Don't want them to know how crazy you are?"

He took a deep breath and calmed himself.  "I may be a conspiracy nut, but I'm not crazy."

I looked at Felicia.  "Do yourself a favor and stop trying to tick off your brother.  Otherwise I may ask Stacey or Ryland to knock you out."

"I might even do it myself," Smith grumbled.

I looked around and noticed more people coming into the restaurant.  It was time to get a move-on.  "We should go to Shelton's now."

Smith nodded.  "Meet me at your car.  I need to grab a few things from my place."