All I saw was blood. Blood soaked my
hands and coated the walls. It stained the concrete flooring of the abandoned
warehouse and dripped from fixtures that hung from the ceiling, trickling like
a slow rain. My vision blurred as anguish filled me. How could this have
happened? How could I have been too late?
I stared down at the lifeless body of a child. A boy. Kneeling in a pool
of congealing blood, I ran my fingers through his chestnut hair, ignoring the
now-cool moisture seeping into the denim of my pants. His face was
unrecognizable. Gone was the child with the dimpled cheek and brilliant blue
eyes. Left behind was a mass of flesh and bone--a ruined body drained of its life force at such a young age.
Reality snapped like an elastic band,
bringing me back to the present as I sat at my desk in Sanborn Place. Ripped
from the haunted memories of finding Daniel’s body.
The world was a cruel place. It was a
fact of life and even though I knew it was true, I still had a hard time coming
to terms with the atrocities people committed. The cruelties that for some
god-forsaken reason, people thought were okay. Staring down at the wallet-sized
photo now crumpled in my hands, I was greeted by a crown of chestnut hair,
bright blue eyes, a heart-shaped face, and a brilliant smile; a single dimple
on his left cheek. The face of an innocent seven-year-old boy, cut down like he
was little more than a calf brought to slaughter. I found myself struggling to
link the image of this smiling boy to that of the ruined body I’d found less
than forty-eight hours ago.
Inside, a small part of me burned. My
blood heated and a turbulent rage rolled through me, one I had to fight to
contain.
“Ari, you’ve got to stop staring at the
kid. He’s gone. Let it go,” I heard Mike say.
I couldn’t let it go. I didn’t
understand how he could either. I looked up from the photograph and stared Mike
straight in the eyes. He cringed but held my gaze.
“He was seven-years-old, Mike,” I said
through clenched teeth. “Seven!”
I shook my head, the poor kid had
barely lived, barely tasted what the world had to offer. I take that back, he’d
tasted too much of what the world could give and it had cost him.
Ever since the Awakening six years ago
when all things that went bump in the night decided to come out of the woodwork
and play, safety had been tenuous at best and kids like this, like
seven-year-old Daniel Blackmore, were suffering the price.
Vampires, shifters, mages, witches and
many more creatures of the night so to speak had seemingly popped out of
nowhere, deciding they were ready to integrate themselves into everyday, or
night, society.
Daniel had been abducted by a rogue
vampire. I’d found his mangled body, broken and discarded as if he were nothing
more than a piece of trash and I was going to find the bastard that had killed
him and make him pay.
“Ari, I know what you’re thinking and
the answer is no.”
I looked Mike up and down. He was an older man
in his late forties with a streak of silver in his otherwise midnight colored
hair. The wrinkles around his eyes would lead you to believe he smiled a lot
but I knew better. Those lines were from his ever-present frown. Dressed in
black slacks and a grey button up shirt, his mid-section strained against the
buttons looking like they could pop off at any moment, likely taking someone’s
eye out in the process.
“I wasn’t asking for your permission,”
I told him, my gaze going back to the photo.
“I don’t give a rat’s ass if you were
asking. I’m telling you, Ari, let it go! You can’t help him anymore. All you’ll
end up doing is getting yourself hurt or worse, killed for your trouble.”
That was the problem with people who
had lived through the Awakening. Their only concern was self-preservation.
Nothing else mattered. Well, screw that because this little boy, he mattered.
His life mattered and he deserved justice. I had scrubbed my hands after
finding his broken body but couldn’t scrub the stain his death left on my soul.
I stood up from my desk and grabbed my
keys and daggers. I sheathed the twin blades on either side of my waist,
grabbed my leather jacket, and made a beeline for the door. Mike crossed the
room to intercept me, arms folded over his chest blocking my way.
“Move,” I bit out.
“No.”
“I can move you.”
“You can, but you won’t.”
I ground my teeth together. He was
being ridiculous. This entire situation was ridiculous.
“Mike, this isn’t some game. A little
boy died. He died! Does that even matter to you? I couldn’t live with myself if
I let this one go.”
“What’s your plan, Ari, you going to
just storm into the coven and force them to tell you who did it? They won’t
tell you. They protect their own and you’re one person against an entire Coven
of bloodthirsty vampires. Even the kid’s parents know it’s a lost cause.
They’ve dropped the case and are focusing on burying their kid. They’re coming
to terms with his death. It’s over.”
I’d been hired by Jessica Blackmore,
Daniel’s mother, a little over two weeks ago to find her son who’d gone missing
one afternoon. He had been walking home from a friend’s, only five houses down
from his own, but never made it to the front door. She’d thought it safe enough
to allow him the small bit of independence but with paranormals about, it was
never truly safe.
Mike knows I’m different. He knows I
have pyrokinetic abilities and he knows I can take care of myself. This wasn’t
reason talking, this was him being overprotective. Feeling the temperature in
the room begin to rise I forced myself to inhale and exhale slowly. Trying to
calm down and keep my pyrokinesis locked up tight. It wouldn’t help the
situation to start a fire. All it would do is prove to Mike that I wasn’t in
control and right now I was in no mood for a lecture.
“Look, Ari, you’re a mercenary. You
take on a job when you have a client. There is no client so there is no job.
We’re not the police. We don’t try to clean up the streets or bag the bad guys.
We’re mercs.”
I couldn’t blame him for his way of
thinking. Hell, two weeks ago I would have said the same thing, but this was
different. He was just a kid and I couldn’t believe everyone was so willing to
leave his murderer out there.
“Why don’t—”
Mid-sentence I heard the distinct buzz
of a cell phone. Mike dug his phone out of his left pocket and answered it
without looking at the screen.
“Hello,” he said. Mike’s face scrunched
in confusion, a furrow forming between his brows. He listened for several
moments and then with a grunt he hung up and stared me down. At six feet tall,
he towered over me by a good five inches, but I didn’t back down. Lifting my
chin and giving him my best try me
stare. The one I knew drove him crazy.
“Looks like you’re getting exactly what
you asked for,” he said.
“And what exactly is that?”
“That was Declan Valkenaar on the
phone.”
Holy shit, the Pack Alpha. What the
hell was he doing calling Mike?
The light began to fade from his eyes
as I crawled across the floor in an effort to reach my father. My nails were
raw and bloody as I struggled to carry myself closer to him, digging into the
rough wooden floors with each drag of my body.
“I’m
coming,” I panted in between breaths. “Just hang on, Papa, I’m coming.”
I woke gasping for breath, drenched
in a cold sweat, clutching the hilt of my dagger as if my life depended on it.
I frantically looked around the room in search of our attacker while also
taking stock of any injuries. I was perfectly whole.
“It was just a
nightmare,” I told myself, though that did little
to ease the ache in my chest over the remembered pain. I miss you so much.
Rubbing my hands over my face, I pushed
back the wet, loose tendrils of hair that had escaped my braid during my fitful
rest and returned my dagger to its resting place beneath my pillow. Taking
another deep breath I registered a hint of smoke.
Shit!
My eyes roamed over the room,
frantically looking for the source of fire.
“You have got to be kidding me!”
I untangled my body from the sheets,
tripping and falling into a heap on the floor before I was able to crawl out of
my covers and retrieve an old shirt. I frenziedly swatted at the bedroom
curtains with the old t-shirt but the flames continued to rise. Deciding there
was no other choice, I ripped the curtains from the window and rushed to the
kitchen.
Throwing the curtains into the sink and
turning the faucet on all the way, I watched as the flames were snuffed and
steam began to rise. The curtains ruined.
Turning the water off, I allowed my
body to slide down the smooth wooden cabinets until my bottom met the cool tile
floor. I folded my arms across my knees and rested my forehead against them.
Closing my eyes I took several deep breaths, my heart still racing from the
effects of the recurring nightmare. This was getting out of hand. I had thought
the nightmares were fading, but something was bringing the memories back with a
screaming vengeance and this was the third time this week they’d plagued me. I
missed my parents but it’d been over six years now. They weren’t coming back
and I needed to let it go. My subconscious needed to let it go and I needed to
let Daniel’s death go. Not the case, no, I wouldn’t let that go. But his death
was affecting me in ways I couldn’t allow to continue.
I breathed deeply in an effort to calm
my nerves. Small tremors racked my body, the nightmare had shaken me more that
I’d like to admit. My skin was covered in a fine sheen of sweat. A physical
reminder that I needed to relax before I accidentally caught something else on
fire.
