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That realization rushed at him like a gust of wind. Within moments, the fog cleared from his mind, his vision sharpened, and his limbs grew strong. Leaping out into the pool of fire, he grabbed the wrist of the man unzipping the second bag. “Arrêtez.Stop.”
The officer looked up in open-mouthed surprise. “Step back immediately,” he said and tried to jerk his hand free, only to drop to his knees with a strangled shriek when his bones cracked in Dominique’s grip.
His partner drew his sidearm. “Hands up and get on your knees,” he barked. The two officers who had been on their way to retrieve another bag turned back, hands going to their weapons as well.
Dominique zipped the bag back up and forced compulsion into his voice. “Put your guns away and listen carefully.” The weapons lowered slowly. “You have found nothing here. You stopped no one. You are having an uneventful day and will continue on your way.” They exchanged puzzled glances. Another compulsion had a hold of them, a powerful one, and Dominique was nowhere near strong enough right now to counter it. He had seconds before they forgot he ever spoke and would hear nothing else he had to say.
At which point, he would have to kill them.
Dominique closed his burning eyes and lowered his head. Sunlight beat against him in white-hot waves. But he wasn’t burning. The pain wasn’t real. It was merely what he imagined he should feel, what his vampire self dreaded the most. Grinding his teeth in concentration, he crushed the panic in his chest and pulled his most powerful self out of the very marrow of his bones.
Then he cast a psychic cloak around himself.
Around the body bags.
Around the RV.
“What the—” one officer said.
“Where did he go?”
Several seconds later, “Where did who go, Josh?”
“What? I—nobody. What are you talking about?”
“Shit. My wrist is killing me.”
“That’s what you get for punching random trees,” chided the only woman in the group. “If you boys are done with your pissing contest, I have a patrol to finish.”
Within a minute, all four of them had retreated to their various vehicles and pulled out. Only when they were out of sight did Dominique release the cloak.
A blanket settled over him. “Here. Looks like you could use this.”
Dominique gathered the fabric around his shoulders, hiding his hands and cowling his head in shadow. The illusion of pain faded and his thoughts cleared. He touched the body bag before him, relieved to feel the round lump of a solid head. The occupant would survive.
The same could not be said for the blood-drinker in the first bag, which had been unzipped and spread open from top to bottom. Tendrils of dark gray skittered across Carly’s blistered and smoking skin. They widened into tracks of ash that spidered all over her bare arms, shoulders, neck and sweetly childish face. Even her bi-colored hair wilted away to sooty dust. There was no trace of this morning’s terror. She was dead.
“Jesus,” Garrett muttered as he joined Dominique and Jackson. “Poor kid.”
Dominique held out his hand to cast a shadow over the disintegrating body. His skin prickled but stayed pristine, blazing white at the end of his black sleeve. He was immune, at least for this day, and could walk in the sun to bear witness to the fate he cheated.
“Sorry,” Jackson said. “I know this was the last thing you wanted today.”
“Au contraire.This is the one thing I have always wanted.” Even when he decided he would never have this again, he had still craved it. Even when he tried to drown his hunger for the sun in the same abyss into which he had plunged his hunger for terror, he knew it would never leave him.
Not until now.
He could see the heat shimmer in the late afternoon sunlight that slanted through the woods and across the road. He could hear the sun thunder in the sky. It beat against his body with tangible force.
No, this wasn’t the world he remembered, or the sun he once loved. He no longer belonged here. In body, mind and spirit, he truly was a creature of the night.
“How do you feel?” Garrett asked.
Dominique pulled his hand back beneath the blanket. “Like an impostor.”
“We should pack these up and keep going before we run out of daylight,” Jackson said. He leaned down to zip up Carly’s remains.
“Are you certain this is what you want, Garrett?” Dominique said quietly. “To be this vulnerable?”
