The Chosen Sin (3 page)

She shot him a look of impatience through the shaded visor. “Let's go. I want to get this thing over with.” Almost imperceptibly, she shivered.

Alejandro knew it was probably because she was contemplating the Choosing that was to come. He could smell the little spike of fear in her even from a distance.

She shouldn't be doing this. She didn't want it and she wasn't ready for it.

He walked over and took his place on his own dune bike, the wide, silver machine that could speed over the heated sand of Darpong like a jet-powered cloud.

Before starting his bike, Alejandro studied her. Small lines of displeasure creased the skin between her midnight blue eyes. She'd set her shoulders, and every muscle in her body looked stiff. “How long has it been, Daria?”

She rolled her eyes. “How long for what?”

“Since you've been laid. You're a little bit on the cranky side.”

“Shut up, Alejandro. Let's get going.”

“A good three years, I'd say.”

“Why do men always think every little thing revolves around them? My mood doesn't have anything to do with men or my sex life.”

He put his helmet on, laid his thumb flat onto the starter, and revved his bike to life. “Sure, Daria,” he shot back once his bike's engine had quieted. “Whatever you say.”

“Alejandro—”

He kicked the throttle in and took off fast. His bike sped off over the stretch of desert. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Daria coming up right beside him.

They sped over the sand at a rate that made speech impossible. It snatched their words straight from their lungs and scattered them to the wind. That was probably a good thing, considering the looks of death Daria shot him.

His bike hovered about three feet off the ground and clung to the contours of the sand dunes. Alejandro angled the bike toward his temporary abode deep in the desert. It wasn't very far from their final destination, the lair of the Shining Way.

Alejandro turned his head to watch her. Her hands were curled tight on the handles of her bike, her pulser tucked securely in the holster around her waist. He let his gaze travel down her shapely legs, clad in snug-fitting cream-colored pants. His body tightened at the sight of her, and he shook his head at the realization.

She still affected him.

Even after all these years. Of all the women he'd ever known, she was the one who had touched him the most. She'd always been tough, and he'd admired that in her, but she hadn't always been this
hard
. He remembered how huge and luminous her eyes had been after Sante's treachery had been discovered.

That night, so many years ago, Alejandro had wanted to take all that hurt away and bring back the fiery idealism that Sante had snatched away. Alejandro had pulled her aside to talk to her after all the
mierda
had gone down. He'd done it as a fellow patroller and without any ulterior motive. When she'd pushed him back in his chair and started kissing him he'd tried to stop himself, but his control had been shredded by her aggression and their shared attraction.

The morning had brought swift change for both of them. Disgraced and reprimanded for inadvertently aiding Sante in his masquerade as a patroller, Daria had been put on leave without pay, pending a further investigation. She'd left Angel One for a while in order to get her head together.

Alejandro had discovered soon after that he was one of the marked ones, a human with the genetic predisposition to vampirism, meant to be Chosen.

After that he'd had a short nightmarish period enslaved to his blood mother, Lucinda Valentini. When he'd been strong enough to break from her, he'd gone to work for the GBC. He'd had the perfect background to become a peacekeeper, one who took care of the vampires who violated Chosen law. It was a difficult job, and had brought out the darker side of his personality.

Finally, they reached his temporary dwelling, consisting of two tents, one large and one small, each of them camouflaged to look like a mound of sand when viewed from the air. The material of the tents concealed body heat to fool detectors.

Alejandro pulled his bike into the smaller tent to hide it from view and Daria followed. They grabbed their gear off the back of their bikes and headed into the larger tent.

“Hmmm . . . camping,” murmured Daria with a raised eyebrow as she entered. She tossed her pack into a corner and removed her holster as she let her gaze flick over their surroundings.

He glanced around. The inside of the tent consisted of an inflatable bed in one corner and a smokeless kitchenette in the other, something he didn't have much use for beyond the small refrigerator that kept his supply of synthetic blood cold.

Multicolored pillows were scattered over the floor in one area, in front of a solar-powered commview. In the back was an enclosed area with an old-fashioned water shower, a sink, and a mirror. The heavy canvas floor covered the sand, and the sides of the tent rustled with the wind.

Yes, their surroundings were pretty meager, but you had to marvel at the tech that made the structure possible. All the appliances were freestanding and self-contained, powered by wind or the sun. The sinks in the kitchen and the bathroom were hooked up to a small water tank at the back of the tent.

“Home sweet home for now,” he answered.

He popped out his PComp unit and Daria did the same. They wouldn't need them for a while since they couldn't take the communication devices into the Shining Way.

They put the units, about the size of his thumbnail, into a drawer in the kitchen. PComps fit into the bio-relay ports they both had at the base of their skulls. They downloaded information from the ABI or the GBC, or where they had uplinks, straight into their minds. The name for the device was a play on the name for the ancient device called a
personal computer
.

She turned to face him, one hand on her slim hip. “Do you even have a home? I remember you being quite the drifter. And now that you're working for the Governing Body of the Chosen . . .” She trailed off.

“I keep an apartment in New Chicago and a place on the dark side of Songset.” It was true that his work didn't leave him a lot of time to spend at any one residence. They were places to stay, not homes.

“Songset? Near the dig?”

The colonists had wondered if they'd find alien life beyond Earth. They'd only found flora and fauna, no evolved beings. But not long after, there'd been an archaeological find on the night side of Songset, one that proved they weren't alone out here in the dark.

“My place is about one hundred clicks from there.”

She nodded and kept looking around her.

He knew Daria had been born on Earth and had spent her childhood dreaming of the day she could become a Galactic Patroller, just like her father had been before he'd died. That's why she'd moved out to the Angel System. What she wanted Alejandro to do right now could destroy the career she cared about more than anything else.

He threw down his pack. “Why do you want to do this? It's obvious you don't have anything but contempt for the Chosen. Why do you want to become one?”

“I want into the Shining Way, Alejandro.” Her eyes flashed angrily. “I want to take Sante down. I want—”

“To make him pay for what he did?”

“He deceived me and used me. He saw a brand-new patroller and he conned her. He made me love him, the bastard.” Her voice shook with anger. “Then he used my connections to gain information and kill one of my friends. He ruined my reputation. He almost ruined my career. What? Have you forgotten all this? Yeah, I want to make him pay.”

“He deceived all of us.”

“Me worst of all.” She looked away from him, and he saw her lower lip tremble. That glimpse of vulnerability was a telling sign. “He killed Julia,” she said in a softer voice. “He killed her and he never saw a day of punishment.”

He tried to make his voice comforting. “I know.”

Sante was an old vampire skilled at hiding what he was. He'd become a patroller with the sole ambition of obtaining information regarding a witness who had been scheduled to testify against his blood mother, Maria Gillante, in a case of trafficking in blood slaves.

Specifically, Sante had used Daria to get the information, and he'd had a good time doing it. He'd wooed her and seduced her. He'd entered into a serious relationship with her under false pretenses. That had made what came next even more of a betrayal.

On the night Sante had finally obtained his information and located the house where the witness was being held, he'd killed Daria's best friend, Julia Harding. Julia had been one of three patrollers assigned to guard the witness that night.

Alejandro frowned. “You said he almost ruined your career, but I thought you were cleared of wrongdoing in that deal.”

“I was, eventually. That still didn't stop everyone from blaming me for what happened. That still didn't stop them from thinking I was naïve and incompetent. It's taken me years to rebuild my reputation to an acceptable level.”

Her eyes hardened. “He got away with it.
He got away with murdering
three patrollers and a witness. Do you remember their names, Alejandro? I do. Vincent Almeda, Trudy Horowitz, Stephen Miller . . .” Her voice shook with emotion. “And Julia Harding.”

Alejandro sighed. “I know, Daria. I remember the trial.”

They'd had no evidence to link Sante directly to the murder. He'd done a little time for impersonating a human, which was all the prosecutors could prove. It had been a slap in the face to both himself and Daria.

She turned away from him and crossed her arms over her chest. “And it was my fault,” she finished in a whisper. “If it hadn't been for me, he never would've shown up at the house. Julia would still be alive.”

Alejandro resisted the urge to comfort her. “It's not your—”

She whirled on him. “He's not getting away with this one,” she said in a steely voice. “This time, we're getting him. I'm going to make sure we do.”

Alejandro pushed a hand through his hair. “You know you're throwing your life away for this . . . for him? He was supposedly my partner. He betrayed me, too. I also want revenge, but I still wouldn't give up my life for the bastard.”

Her eyes shuttered. “I'm not you.”

“You're not marked, Daria. You have no genetic predisposition for this. That makes me Choosing you a risky proposition. You could end up succubare, forever feeding off sex, instead of life force. Worse, the Choosing could kill you.”

“You ought to know I'm stronger than that. I'll push through the succubare and become a fully Chosen vampire.”

Only a very small percentage of humans could push through. The odds were against her. “Okay. Let's say you do. What then? You hate the Chosen.”

She turned and stalked away from him, to the bunch of throw pillows and back. “This may be my only chance. I might not get another. Sante fucked up bad this time. He's got the whole Interstellar Alliance pissed at him right now. They think he kidnapped Ari Templeton and they'll let us do anything to get her back.”

Richard Templeton, Ari's father, was the head of The New Covenant Church, the largest religious organization in the quad planets. Templeton had been fighting to gain enough support to force the government to exterminate the Chosen. As radical as Templeton's views were, he was a powerful social and religious figure.

Templeton claimed his daughter had been abducted by Christopher Sante and taken to the Shining Way, the well-guarded fortress that was called a
community of Chosen
, but many thought was simply some kind of cult. The ABI thought perhaps Sante had done it in retaliation against Templeton and his hate-motivated movement targeting the Chosen.

Alejandro and Daria had been tasked with going undercover and investigating Templeton's claims. If they found they were true, their orders were to bring Ari home and Sante in, if possible. Kill him if it wasn't.

“The cost is too high,” he answered.

She whirled. “Look, I want Sante. I'll do anything . . .
anything
to get him.”

“That's good you'll do anything, because you know the other thing you're going to have to do in order to fool the Shining Way into accepting you as one of their own.”

She turned toward him. Her big, midnight blue eyes shone with apprehension. “Yeah, I know.”

Alejandro walked toward her. To her credit, she didn't back away. “You're going to have to be with me, Daria.” He reached out and cupped her cheek against his palm. “Every inch of you from the top of your head to your pretty little toes will be mine once we reach the Shining Way.”

The Shining Way was very restrictive about who they let in. Sante was allowing Alejandro in based on their past relationship. Sante had no idea that Alejandro was now a GBC employee. That information was secret. Alejandro had told Sante that “Valerie” was his mate and that he wouldn't come without her.

She clenched her jaw and swallowed hard, like she'd gulped down a bug, before speaking. He tried not to let his ego take a hit, but it was hard. “I can fake it.” Her voice shook just a little. Only a Chosen would be able to hear that slight quaver.

He brushed his thumb over her lower lip. “You know as well as I do that we won't be able to fake it. We're going to have to make it real,
all
of it, for this operation. They have to be able to scent you on me and vice versa.”

“Nice try, Alejandro. We don't necessarily have to have sex to accomplish that.” Contrary to her words, desire flickered through her eyes. It rippled through his body and made his cock hard.