Darker After Midnight (Midnight Breed 10)

Tavia came up off the balls of her feet and took him down to the floor. As he fell, his head knocked into the edge of the bed frame. A bloodied gash opened up on his grayed scalp, spilling bitter copper red cells. Even with her newly attuned senses, she could smell a foul taint on him. He was human, and yet ... not.

And he wasn't about to give up easily. He tried to stick her with the needle, but Tavia grabbed his wrist. Wrenched it until it snapped. He only grunted, even though the pain must have been excruciating. With a snarl boiling up her throat, Tavia twisted his broken limb and jammed the syringe into the old man's chest, plunging the contents.

Immediately he started to wheeze and cough. He sputtered a thick foam, eyes nearly popping out of his skull as his jaw went slack and spittle crept down onto his chin. The medicine was poison, at least to him. He convulsed into death, his last breath leaving on a choked rattle. Tavia leapt up and bolted for the hallway, frantic. She had to find Aunt Sarah and get them both out of there.

The older woman was on the phone in the kitchen. She spoke in a rush, her voice lowered to a careful whisper, unaware of Tavia's approach or the fact that Tavia could hear her as plainly as anything in this powerful new form that had overtaken her.

" - process has been activated. Yes, Master. Lewis is in with her now. Of course. I understand, Master."

Tavia's legs felt a bit unstable beneath her as she listened to her aunt speak. Strange words. An odd, flat intonation. Servile and unfeeling. Tavia had to work to find her voice. "Aunt Sarah?"

She abruptly hung up and wheeled around. "Tavia! Are you all right? What on Earth was going on in there? Where is Dr. Lewis?"

Tavia didn't even blink. Aunt Sarah's concern felt altogether false now. As false as Dr. Lewis's had proven to be. Sad with a sick, dawning comprehension, she said, "I killed him." "You - you what?"

"Aunt Sarah, who was that on the phone?"

She busied her hand over her cheery Christmas apron, brushing at nonexistent wrinkles. "It was, ah, Dr. Lewis's office. The way things sounded in there a moment ago, I thought I'd better call ... to see about ... having them ... send ..."

The lie died on her lips. Her face relaxed into a strange kind of calm. Emotionless.

Tavia shook her head, noting that Sarah's eyes had taken on the same flat luster that Dr. Lewis's had. She could see it now, her vision clearer than it had ever been. No more medicines to mute this preternaturally powerful part of her that had been living inside her, probably all her life.

Sarah moved back into the kitchen, away from Tavia. She pivoted to return the phone to its cradle.

"You betrayed me," Tavia said to the rounded bulk of her grandmotherly back. "All this time. You and Dr. Lewis both. You've lied to me."

"It wasn't you that we served."

The admission opened a cold pit in Tavia's chest. "What are you talking about? Who do you serve?"

"Our Master." Sarah turned to face her again. She had a butcher knife in her hand.

Dread and sorrow crept up Tavia's spine. "You would actually kill me?"

Sarah gave a small shake of her head. "Whether you live is up to him to decide. He owns you too. He's owned you from the very beginning, child."

"Him, who?" Tavia asked, but already a sickening thought was cleaving into her brain, as cutting as the edge of Sarah's knife. "Dragos."

She thought about Senator Clarence and what Sterling Chase had said about him. That Dragos already owned him. Now Aunt Sarah and Dr. Lewis too?

"Tell me what's going on," she demanded of the old woman. She moved forward, prepared to rattle the truth out of her if she had to.

"I have my instructions," Sarah replied evenly. And with that, with not even the slightest hesitation, she sliced the blade across her own throat.

Her body dropped to the creamy linoleum floor in a lifeless heap, blood pooling in a dark red slick beneath it.

Tavia stood there, numb and shaking, staring down at the corpse of the woman she'd never really known in truth. She felt bereft anyway. She'd just lost the only family she'd ever had. She also knew her house was no longer safe for her. Dr. Lewis and Aunt Sarah were dead, but there had to be others. Others who served this evil named Dragos.

He owns you too.

He's owned you from the very beginning, child.

Tavia shook off the debilitating feeling that rose on the wake of that thought.

She ran out of the house without looking back.

Everything had changed now, and she could never go back. Not to this house that had been the only home she'd ever had, nor to the life she'd been living for all of her twenty-seven years. A life that had been nothing but a terrible, monstrous lie.