Gravel popped as Darien pulled to a stop at the side of the road.
Loren gave the dog a gentle shake. “Singer,” she whispered. The single word was a plea. A prayer. She began rocking him again. “If that…looking glass…gets broke,” she tried to sing, but the words were cut off by a muffled sob as she pressed one bloodied hand to her lips, her mouth opening with a silent scream.
Darien heard it the same time he felt it—the heart that went quiet and still. Those brown eyes that had so lovingly looked at Loren a moment ago went blank as the flame that was Singer’s soul guttered…
And went out.
The dog had died.
Singer was dead.
Loren’s words were barely discernable whimpers. “No. No—please.”She pressed her ear against the dog’s chest and gave him another gentle shake, as if it might convince his heart to start again. One arm tightening around the dog’s body, the other stroking his floppy ears, she gasped to no one, except maybe a god, “Wait…please. Don’t do this. Don’t take him from me.Wait.”She buried her face in his fur as sobs wracked her body.
Darien said nothing as he leaned over and held her as best as he could in the limited space in the vehicle. Words had no sway here; nothing could fix this. This was something beyond anything he could ever say or do.
She’d lost a friend. A dog, of all things—the one creature in the world that would never do anything to hurt the person they loved.
Except for when they died.
Loren leaned over far enough to rest her head against Darien’s shoulder, her arms still squeezing her dog tight to her chest. Despite that she’d leaned into him, he wasn’t sure if being held was what she wanted at this time.
But it was all he could think to do.
—
Darien paced before his bed.
Hours had passed, and Loren hadn’t come out of her suite. When they’d got back to Hell’s Gate and he’d tried to help her out of the car, something in her had snapped. She’d screamed and thrashed and nearly clawed his face off. It’d taken her a long time to come back from that wild place where she’d lost herself, and when she finally did, he’d helped her bury Singer in the yard.
For a long time, she’d knelt before the dog’s grave. Darien stood beside her, not saying anything, simply being there in case she needed him. When she’d finally allowed Darien to bring her inside, he’d dressed her wounds. She hadn’t responded to anything he said, her eyes expressionless. It was an awful, empty contrast to the lovely, high-spirited girl he’d come to know.
Something inside her had died; had passed on with the animal she loved. The girl who’d disappeared into that suite hours ago was a shell of her former self, and Darien had the dreadful feeling that he was responsible for all of this.
As the clock neared five in the morning, he ended up sinking to the floor at the foot of his bed and falling asleep in a sitting position, head resting back against the bedframe.
When he jerked awake four hours later, he hardly felt rested. He took a shower and got ready for his next target.
On his way to the ground floor, he paused outside Loren’s door. His hearing picked up on her heartbeat, the rhythm slow and steady enough to suggest that she was still sleeping.
He found Tanner downstairs, where he gave him the audio recorder and asked him to upload the clip and run it through the voice recognition software. The moment the messenger used her cellphone again, no matter how far away in the city, they would be able to trace the call and figure out who she was—and more importantly, who she worked for.
As he made his way to his car and pulled up a mugshot that would allow him to track his next asshat of a target, he found himself staring at the windows that were aglow with light on the third floor. He wanted nothing more than to stay here in case Loren decided she needed his company when she woke up, but he knew he shouldn’t kid himself. After what happened last night—after her dog had died because ofhim—she would hate him now more than she had before.
And he deserved it. What he didn’t deserve washer.He’d never deserved her, and he’d been stupid to think he did.
He supposed that made two of them.
For he now hated himself more than he ever had in his extremely long and painful life.
—
The nomadic vampire begged long and hard for Darien not to kill him.
He didn’t listen. Darkslayers didn’t listen, and they sure as hell didn’t deign to bargain with their targets.
Darien took his time breaking him, slowly and thoroughly, as per the request of the faceless person who’d hired him last week. Although that person would never know whether it’d been done quickly—whether he had simply slit the target’s throat or had taken his sweet time pulling him apart over the course of several hours—he followed his orders. Because he was every bit a monster as those who hired him.
But even though he tried to pretend it didn’t bother him, every scream, every word whimpered as his target begged him to stop, gnawed a little at what was left of his soul. The black scrap of it he was convinced would soon flutter away, leaving him every bit the diabolic shell rumor claimed him to be.
