Dominion (10 page)

If hell existed, so did heaven.

But Bridget shook her head and all her hopes vanished in a puff. “Not hell, but another place. The world has many different layers—like an onion. We can only see the top layer, so most people don’t even question the possibility of more. But, just because we can’t see the other layers doesn’t mean they don’t exist. They look like our world, but all the things that aren’t allowed to exist here are in control down there. The opportunity doesn’t present itself often, but if they get a chance to take someone from our world down into
theirs
,
they will take it.”

“Why?”

“The creatures living on the other levels are jealous of our world. They can’t inhabit this level independently, but they can pull beings down to join them. To eventually turn them into one of them.”

Serenity’s stomach dropped out of itself, leaving a hole she thought she might tumble into and never climb out of.

“What can you do to help him?” Her words came out tight and strangled, spoken past a painful knot at the back of her throat.

Bridget shook her head, her eyes downcast. A fresh bubble of worry seemed to swell inside Serenity’s chest, ready to burst and swallow her. She didn’t think she was going to like what Bridget had to say.

“I don’t have the strength to deal with this,” the older woman continued. “This is dark magic, something I have no experience with.”

“Do you know anyone who does?”

“I do, but …” She paused.

“But what?”

“Sebastian is a vampire, Serenity. Witches aren’t exactly known for their propensity toward helping vampires.”

“You were willing to help a vampire.”

“I’m different. My son is a vampire.”

“But we have to try!” She couldn’t hide the panic building in her voice.

Bridget reached out and took hold of Serenity’s hand again. Her skin felt soft, dry and warm. Serenity was grateful for the contact. “Yes, and we will, I promise. First of all, we need to figure out who would want to do this to Sebastian. Unless he has been creating enemies over the past year, I can think of
only one person.”

“Natasha,” Serenity whispered.

The vampire had been Demitri’s child. After Serenity had killed Demitri, Sebastian had allowed Natasha to run, a mistake it seemed he would pay for.

Bridget nodded. “My guess is she was pretty upset with you for killing her maker. This is her way of getting back at you.”

“No. She’s hurting Sebastian, not me. He was the one who let her go.”

“She’s probably using Sebastian as a way of hurting all of you. The more he loses control, the more likely he’ll cause you both harm.”

“He’d never hurt us.”

“Perhaps
he
wouldn’t, but the thing inside him might.”

Serenity remembered what she’d glimpsed in Sebastian’s face and shuddered.
Pure malice, hatred, fury.
Those were the emotions she’d sensed from the creature when it had opened Sebastian’s mouth and roared.

Not a creature,
she reminded herself.
A demon.

“So, assuming Natasha
is responsible, how do we go about finding her?” Serenity asked, wanting to get hold of something tangible, something practical they could do to help him.

“There is a sorceress who may be able to help. She’s a traveler, so I’ll need to try to locate her. She could be anywhere in the country. Even if I find her, I’ll still need to persuade her to meet with you. I won’t say anything about Sebastian being a vampire, not yet. I’ll tell her the father of your child has had a demon placed inside him and that we believe a vampire to be responsible. She might help us then.”

“She’ll know what Sebastian is as soon as she sets eyes on him.”

“Hopefully, by then, she’ll already have taken some steps to help us locate Natasha and find out what she’s up to. I suspect Natasha has employed the help of witches of her own; I don’t think she’d be able to do this without some help from dark wiccans.”

“But you said witches wouldn’t help a vampire!”

“
Good
witches wouldn’t, but plenty of bad ones are out there.”

“What do I do about Sebastian in the meantime?”

“That’s up to you, Serenity. Do you still trust that he wouldn’t hurt you—hurt Elizabeth—despite what you’ve seen?”

Her heart twisted in pain.
Sebastian hurting Elizabeth.
The possibility of such a thing happening tore her in two.

How could she restrain Sebastian, even if she wanted to? Drape him in silver chains? Surround him in garlic? Hell, she’d never seen him show any repulsion toward garlic, though she knew silver would work. But what her decision came down to was how much she trusted Sebastian to be stronger than the thing inside him and not hurt them.

Sebastian was strong, physically and mentally. He would fight this thing. He would never let anything hurt them. Besides, even if she did own such a thing as
yards
of silver chains—which she didn’t—would she
be
able to bring herself to drape them over his body? Would she be able to watch them burn his beautiful skin, stand by while he writhed in pain, trapped on the bed?

If anything, taking such extreme measures might only anger the demon inside him. It might make him more dangerous than if they just left well enough alone.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I trust him. We’ll be safe until you get back. How long will you be,” she added, nervously.

“I’
ll try to be back before dark.”

She nodded, but said, “I’m not even sure that will make a difference.”

Chapter Ten

Sebastian walked through the streets
of the
dark, deserted city, every sense
alert
for a sign of life. So far, he’d come across nothing else, only the strange, faceless men, and the creatures that lived in the shadows. He found himself darting between patches of light whenever possible, staying within the illuminated parts of the street.

How p
eculiar to think
he—
a vampire, a creature of the night—
now sought the light.

At a loss of where else to go, he headed across the city, toward their house in the hills. Even this decision made him nervous. What would he find when he got there? Would Serenity and Elizabeth be waiting for him? If so, would they look like those two humanoid things he’d tried to approach—faceless and terrifying. He imagined walking through the front door to find his small family sitting on the couch, facing away from him. How, when he walked in, they would turn, their features replaced with yawning black holes.

The stuff of nightmares.

Sebastian felt torn about whether he even wanted them to be at the house. While part of him yearned to be with them, the other part hoped they would never even have to learn this place existed.

The conviction he was dreaming still lurked in the back of his mind. How did one wake from a dream? He knew people sometimes attempted to hurt themselves in order to wake up, but his sleep was not one of humankind. It took a lot to rouse him from his unnatural rest. An actual threat to his existence would be needed and putting himself in such peril worried him. Enough danger existed around him without increasing
his fragility. Plus, with his abilities
fading, he was concerned that, if this wasn’t a dream and he caused himself harm, he wouldn’t be able to heal.

As he walked, the high-rises around him gave way to smaller apartment blocks. Lights shone from every window, spilling out onto the streets. Despite the extra light, the shadows here increased in depth, each building creating its own pools of darkness, spots hidden in doorways and beneath the cars. The tall palm trees lining the sidewalk held their own menace, darkness caught between their fronds and branches, potentially hiding creatures Sebastian didn’t even want to think about. Though the sky still churned and rippled above his head, no wind blew to stir the branches, yet as he walked close, the leaves trembled and shook. A kind of chattered whispering filled the silence, as though something watched him pass and related the news to a companion.

Ahead, a shape darted out onto the street.

Sebastian froze.

Another of the monkey-like creatures with the pointy teeth ran across the road. This time, the thing walked on two legs, back hunched over as it walked backward. It wasn’t alone. Its long arms were wrapped around the throat of an unconscious man, dragging him by the neck as he
lay
face-up on the ground. But something about the man wasn’t right. Cast in shadow, Sebastian could make out the texture of the road through the man’s body, as though he was transparent or a ghost.

The thing lifted its face to Sebastian, blood-red eyes focusing on his, and hissed at him. Sebastian knew exactly what the thing was telling him.
Stay away. Mine.

Who was that man? What was he doing here?

Sebastian couldn’t say for sure, but he suspected the man came from his world, that somehow he’d been brought here too. Would he end up the same way if he stayed here too long? Would he start to fade away until he was too weak to defend himself against all the strange
things
hiding in the dark?

Sebastian shivered.

He needed to get away from the shadows.

I’ll get
on
the Hollywood Freeway.
At least on the freeway, although he’d be exposed, there weren’t the same number of hiding places as here in the city.

Sebastian wondered about the time. How long had he been here now? He had no sense of the pull of the sun or moon in this place. Did the sun ever even rise? Somehow, he doubted it. Even if daytime did arrive, the sun would never be able to penetrate whatever thick cloud coverage painted the sky. For that at least, he should be thankful. He didn’t like the idea of having to find somewhere dark to shut himself away when the sun came up. He didn’t even want to imagine what sort of creatures he would be shutting himself away with.

Breaking through a line of trees, the hissed chattering above his head increased. He expected something to reach out of the branches and swipe at him, though nothing did, and he stepped out onto the deserted freeway. No cars dotted the road. The huge expanse of concrete and asphalt stretched out, heading both north and south. Ahead, a huge green sign hung across the road giving the directions to Ventura and, veering off, Hollywood Boulevard.

Sebastian began to run once again. He
tried to apply a burst of speed,
but nothing happened. True, he wasn’t as slow as a human, but his pace was nothing compared to normal. He gritted his teeth in frustration. He’d never experienced this before. As long as he’d been a vampire, he’d always been fast and strong.

Without his vampire speed, he had no idea how much time it would take him to reach his home.

Ahead of him, a bridge of concrete carrying another road crossed the freeway. A thick darkness shrouded the area beneath the bridge, so black Sebastian struggled to see beyond.

Damn. He hadn’t considered the overpass

He glanced up to the top of the bridge. Could he jump up and cross over the top of the road and leap down the other side? He didn’t like the idea of walking into the black beneath with no idea of what hid within its depths. But his vampire’s speed had all but left him and he imaged the same would be said for his ability to soar. He needed to try, though. It was either that or scale one of the banks on the side of the freeway and walk around. If he needed to go around each time he reached a
n
overpass, it was going to take him a hell of a long time to reach the Hollywood Hills.

Suddenly, something burst out of the black beneath the bridge and ran at him, yelling. The scent of life rushed over him—blood, heat, breath. The first time he’d come into contact with any of those things in this place. The man was human, he felt certain, but he was racing at Sebastian with fury in his eyes, his face snarled in anger. Young—early twenties Sebastian guessed—the man had a thin, gaunt face and hollowed cheeks and eyes. But he didn’t get any time to consider his attacker further. The man launched himself and collided with him, knocking him backward.

Sebastian reacted. In this world of shadows and nothingness, the scent and heat of blood overwhelmed his senses, blinding him to rational thought. The musculature of his jaw changed, becoming strong and prominent, and his fangs protruded. He whipped his head around and caught the man by the throat, sinking his teeth into warm flesh. Blood flowed over his tongue and he fed with ferocity, hard deep sucks. He held the man tight, one arm locked around his neck. His other hand held the man’s wrists, pinning them behind his back. The skinny man scrabbled at him, his feet kicking the ground, but he didn’t stand a chance.

Sebastian’s eyes closed, taking in the pleasure of fresh blood, feeling some of his strength coming back to him. He needed this—this grounding to reality of what he was, the familiar sensation of blood racing through his veins, charging his body …

He opened his eyes to
blinding light—a light he’d not experienced directly for several hundred years—and searing pain. The blare of a car horn snatched his attention and he jumped back as a vehicle sped past him, followed by another and another. He looked down to find the backs of his hands smoking and, clutched in his arms, the man he’d just killed.

Another car sped past, the wind it created blowing Sebastian’s hair back from his face. His exposed skin began to crinkle
and turn black, like overheated plastic. The
volume of smoke increased and small flames began to lick at the cuffs of his shirt and jacket.

Sebastian realized three things at once:  he was back in the real world, the man he’d killed had come with him, and he stood in broad daylight—burning.

He stood in exactly the same position as he’d been in the other world, with the darkness of the overpass now blessedly ahead. Using his speed, which had returned—if only temporarily—and taking the body with him, he darted into the shadows, away from the burning sun.

Even here in the shadows, sunlight burst off every surface like sharp daggers of light—the road, the windshields of passing cars. He lifted his arm to cover his face, and as he did so, caught the wide-eyed stare of a child in the back of a passing car. This wasn’t a hiding place he could stay in. With the dead body slumped at his side, passing drivers might assum
e
them to be a couple of hobos. A vampire’s kill was always clean—they didn’t spill blood—so to an outsider, the man could be mistaken for a passed-out drunk.

But he was still too exposed. If the sunlight didn’t erode his strengths and eventually kill him, someone would report him to the police. If he had to run from the cops, out in direct sunlight, he wouldn’t survive.

Sebastian lifted his face and roared. He was trapped; caught between a world of murderous sunlight and one of terrifying darkness. He had no choice but to go back there. He wouldn’t live here in broad daylight. If he went back to the other world, would his body go as well? He didn’t know. How had he gotten into the middle of the freeway anyway? When he was in the other place, did his physical body still exist here?

He had too many questions he had no answers for.

The main thing he needed to know right now was how to get back to that other place. The answer came to him as though someone had placed the thought in his head. He simply needed to
want
to be there. He needed to want to give up his life in the real world and join that of shadows and darkness.

His heart clenched. If he did, would he be able to get back again? Would he be leaving Serenity and Elizabeth forever? But if he didn’t do it, he
would die anyway—smolder while caught here for the rest of the day until he eventually turned into a pile of ashes.

Sebastian yelled and leapt to his feet. He turned and punched the wall in three short, sharp jabs, a crack appearing in the concrete. The burned and fragile skin on his knuckles split and flayed down the back of his hand, exposing flesh.

He roared again, but this time for a different reason. Pain soared up through his arm. The wound didn’t bind, as it normally would, but remained open and raw. He wasn’t healing.

I’ll go
, he shouted in his head.
Whatever you need from me, I’ll go.

Because after all, if he was alive there, he’d at least stand a chance at getting back again.

For the moment, that was the best he could hope for.