In the Dark (42 page)

A soft rap on my
door pulled me away from that unpleasant thought. I ignored it. I
didn’t want to face anyone right now.

After a minute,
the door opened. Amanda slid in, her face as white as a new piece of
paper, her eyes glowing like an animal in headlights.

I wiped my eyes.
“What?” I said, before could get a better question put
together.

She flinched. I
quietly fantasized smacking myself.

“I can’t
. . .” she licked her lips. “I’m hungry.”

The tone of her
voice sliced into me. Sad and scared and desperate.

“Come
here.” I sat up on the bed, wiping my face. Amanda flinched
when I spoke and didn’t move an inch. She acted like she wished
she could melt into the door, she was pressed that hard against it.

“Amanda?”
I said. Her eyes met mine, flying to me and away like frightened
birds. I sighed. “Amanda, come here. It’s all right.”
That last was a lie. I hoped she didn’t notice.

She slunk over
to the side of the bed, watching me. I held my arm out to her. She
was getting a slightly feral look on her face. I didn’t
remember that happening to me. Then again, Kent had worked hard to
keep me fed my first few weeks, and he hadn’t had a pack of
angry vampires trying to kill him while he did it.

Amanda dropped
to her knees beside me. She took hold of my wrist and helped herself
without waiting for me to bite for her.

I gasped as her
fangs sank in, suddenly afraid –

–
Emily’s
double, holding me down, biting me –

But this was
Amanda, just Amanda, my sister who was hungry as hell.

She jerked her
fangs out of me and drank deeply. It stung, but like every other time
I’d been bitten, it felt amazing, too. It took everything I had
to sit still and not pull away. I watched the side of her face while
she drank, to distract myself from her teeth in me. From my own
terrified arousal. She closed her eyes, holding my wrist to her mouth
in a grip like a vise. The blood flowed down my arm, tingling,
leaving empty space inside me.

Amanda kept
drinking. Her cheeks had filled out some. She looked less gaunt. That
was good enough for me.

“Stop,”
I said, harsher than I meant to.

She let go of my
arm like she’d been caught stealing.

“I can’t
give you any more, or I’ll lose it.” I tucked my arm
against my chest. The wound stung like a deep, wide paper cut. The
intensity of kissing Emily’s double came to mind with the
sting, upstaged by the slimy feeling of realizing who he really was.
I shuddered and felt that icy panic rising. Tried to hide it.

Amanda didn’t
catch the shudder. She was staring at me like she didn’t
recognize me, her eyes faintly glowing in the dim light. Her face
looked too slack.

Very slowly, she
reached up a hand and touched it to her mouth. Her fingers came away
bloodied, of course. She held them in front of her face for a long
couple of seconds.

My panic died,
distracted by her expression. “’Manda,” I started.

She jerked as if
I’d slapped her.

She stared at
me, no recognition on her face. Then back down at the blood on her
fingers. Before I could move or say anything, she scrambled away from
me. On the floor again, her back to the wall.

“Amanda?”
I asked, quietly. Her face pulled into a horrible grimace, baring her
fangs at me. She shoved herself away from me along the wall, growling
like an angry dog. Her eyes never left me, one hand out to ward me
off.

“Amanda?”
I said again, shifting to put my feet on the floor. Her growl
deepened. That hadn’t come out of her last time. It was creepy.

I waited for
some kind of human reaction, words, recognition, something, anything.
All she did was glare at me and keep growling. The message she gave
off was clear – stay the hell away. I didn’t know what to
do. This seemed more intense than just a panic attack. She was
scared, obviously. Probably mostly of me.

“Amanda,
calm down,” I said, lowering my voice – my stressed
breathing sort of interfered with talking, but the lowered tone
didn’t make her growl at me. “Amanda, everything’s
going to be fine, okay? Just listen to me, listen to my voice, calm
down, take it easy, I won’t hurt you, I won’t hurt you .
. .” I kept murmuring the same sort of nonsense over and over,
like I used on Gypsy when she freaked out. People said cats didn’t
understand your words, but they could get your tone. Maybe Amanda
would, too.

I kept babbling.
Slowly, she started to relax. Well, not really relax so much as tense
up less, but it still seemed like an improvement. Her growl gradually
quieted. Not stopped, just quieted. Still talking, I put my feet on
the floor again. She flinched and the growl kicked up for a second,
but it faded again.

“’Manda,
I’m gonna come on the floor with you, okay? I’m really
worried about you and I want to make sure you’re okay, is that
all right? I won’t touch you if you don’t want me to, but
I want to get down here so I can see you’re all right, okay,
don’t be scared . . .” I slid off the bed, still
blithering. The string of nonsense had done one thing, anyway: I
managed to stop panting. I was still breathing, but it was less hard
and pronounced.

Amanda watched
me slide onto the floor. She didn’t lunge or even growl a
little louder. Just watched. I inched across the floor, talking,
talking, until I was only a few feet away from her.

By then her eyes
had lost almost all their glow. She’d stopped growling, though
she was still tense and pushed up against the wall. I sat where I
was, talking, then slowly let the string of blather die out, just
sitting, looking at her. Waiting to see what happened next.

She watched me
back. Waiting for the same thing, I thought. After a few minutes of
sitting there staring at each other, she blinked. A long, slow blink.

“Jen?”
she said, her voice shaky and soft.

Well, no. I was
Ian, but somehow I thought this might be a bad time to correct her.
“Yeah, ’Manda, it’s me,” I said.

She burst into
tears.

I wanted to go
to her, comfort her. Didn’t want to scare her. So I sat,
waiting. When she kept crying, I scooted closer, then opened my arms
without actually touching her. She fell into them. My own tears
welled up in my eyes as she settled into my hug. I stroked her hair
and held her, rocking softly back and forth and letting her cry blood
all over me.

“I’m
scared,” she murmured.

“Yeah,”
I said.

I couldn’t
really say anything else.

We sat like that
on the floor of my room for a while, neither of us saying anything. I
just kept smoothing her hair away from her face, rocking her, holding
her.

I didn’t
know how much time had passed when she moved to sit up. I let her.
She stood and crossed the room, rubbing at reddened eyes and not
meeting my gaze. At the door she paused and looked over her shoulder
at me. I waited, silent.

She just looked
at me. She seemed confused and scared.

After a few
seconds, she left, pulling the door shut behind her.

My stomach sank.

I thought about
going out to Josephine, talking to her. Instead I decided to spend
the rest of the evening wallowing in self pity and worrying about
Sebastian and Amanda.

It wasn’t
hard.

T
he
Vector waited in the parking ramp exactly as he’d left it. He
disarmed it, unlocked it, and started it from the remote. When
nothing happened as the engine roared to life, he came close enough
to open the doors. His sword went behind the front seats, hilt facing
his side. He got in as rain broke loose and spattered the city,
echoing through the parking ramp. Another storm. Sebastian pulled out
into it, and found himself suddenly thinking how Sarah had always
loved the rain. Perhaps the reason this place had drawn him to begin
with.

He shook his
head uneasily. He needed to focus, keep his wits about him. At the
same time, he had not thought of Sarah in far too long – not
since he joined the pack. Whenever her face had come to mind he had
pushed it out, hoping he could push out the pain with it. That was,
he knew, why he had forgotten so much. He did not want to remember
only to push her out again.

Remembering was
torture. Her absence had not hurt him so much in centuries. But he
wanted the memories, wanted more moments of her, even if he could
only have her in his own mind. He craved them more than blood. So he
thought of her while he drove, what he could recall. Her shining
eyes, her quick wit, the way she cared for the lambs as if she had
borne them herself . . . When he reached the Pike-Pine corridor, he
had to pause to blot his eyes on his sleeve.

Focus. Hunting.
He must search out Specter’s lair, find its weaknesses, and
destroy his former leader. Sebastian stepped out of the Vector and
withdrew his sword, strapping it on quickly. Now was not the time for
memories. He set out to hunt, setting up a circuit of the area,
keeping to shadows and alleys, the tops of buildings.

The search, he
soon learned, would be to no avail. The human spies he had set up
reported nothing, except for one, She told him she had seen a
vampire, but when she tried to follow, the vampire had simply
vanished in a crowd of people. It had not been Specter, and she had
not seen any immortals again. Sebastian told them all to go back to
their posts and continue watching.

The late hours
of the night found him pacing, jaw clenched, sword still sheathed.
The dark, damp streets remained inhabited, mortals walking past in
pairs or small groups, very few of them affording Sebastian more than
a passing glance. He walked on, continuing the circuit he had set up
with long, quick steps. And still saw no one.

Specter had not
had the advantage of a fortune teller when Sebastian last ran with
the pack, but then, he had not had a shape-changer, either. Perhaps
he knew Sebastian had meant to return, meant to track him down and
destroy him secretly from the shadows. Known and retreated.

Which made no
sense. Traitors were dealt with harshly. If Specter had any hint that
Sebastian meant to murder him, he should have been setting up to do
the same to him, thus leaving clues to his own whereabouts. At the
very least, Sebastian should have been able to find evidence of the
pack spies.

Perhaps they
retreated when they learned of my coming for them, and Specter
destroyed them all for their cowardice.

Unlikely.
Sebastian entertained the notion not for the sake of its truth, but
for the moment of amusement it offered. More likely his quarry had
orders to watch only Ian, not himself. With no sign of Ian, they went
about their business and did not bother showing themselves to him.

Except Sebastian
had found no sign of them at all. No lingering smell of blood hanging
in the air, no dark shadows watching him from protected crevices. The
only unease he sensed about the mortals he passed certainly came from
his own presence, and upon asking, they told him just that. He had
spent the last several hours searching thoroughly, with no reward for
his efforts.

He paused in an
alley, watching the mortals pass, allowing himself to lean one
shoulder against the brick wall. It was an easy stance he had taken
many times, but tonight the position triggered another memory.

There had been a
rainy evening like this once, and he had frowned in this exact way,
vexed, in the same position he held now. Looking up to see –

She stood before
him.

Sarah.

Sebastian waited
for the memory to back away, to leave him in the world he knew, alone
once more. It did not. She stood, watching him, her arms folded
around herself. Her hair spun away from her in the wind, strands
plastered to her face with rain. He blinked, and still she stood
there –
there,
on the grassy hill beside their home –
in the dress he remembered her wearing.

“Sarah?”
he said aloud. For a moment, he dared to believe she had somehow
survived, dared to think she might have found him after so long –
or that perhaps Sebastian Cain had only been a horrible nightmare
from which he could now awaken –

Only for a
moment. He remembered the truth too clearly. He had watched Sarah
die. She had not moved for nights, until decay had set in and he had
fled watching her crumble before his eyes. And become Cain.

This was only a
vision. A memory.

The memory
raised a hand to him, smiling. The familiarity of her smile hit him
like a blow to the chest, making him gasp. She raised that hand, a
farewell gesture – one he had never seen her make toward him,
not in the brief time they had had together. So this was not a memory
– or, not quite. And despite being unsure what he saw, he could
not help responding to her. “Don’t go,” he said,
quietly, knowing that nothing he said would stop her.

As suddenly as
it had come, the vision disappeared.

The sounds of
the street surrounded him. Traffic, rain, music from the buildings
around him. The only people on the street were mortal, and solid, and
not Sarah at all.

“I am
cursed,” Sebastian murmured under his breath. He looked around,
but the street remained. No hint that a young wife had stood there,
waving goodbye to her husband.

Sebastian shook
his head once, wiping at moistened eyes.

The decision to
give up and go home for the evening had barely formed in his mind
when the faint scent of blood wafted by on the breeze. Sebastian
stilled himself, ears open, estimating their numbers by the smell of
them. Only one. So far.

“Cain.”

Not a voice
Sebastian had expected to hear. Ears still sharpened for the sounds
of others, Sebastian turned to face Alec.