Hope lay in bed, mentally tracing her fingers over John’s angular jaw, across his chin, and then over his soft lips as his breath rose, fell, and whispered between them.

The soft blue light of predawn made her feel ridiculous for her mini-breakdown hours earlier.

The painting, which she’d started without any thoughts of what it was or where it would eventually go, had taken a dark turn in recent weeks. It was a non-commissioned piece and not something she planned to show at her friend Sergei’s gallery. She initially thought the new direction was some unrealized artistic desire bubbling up and pushing her to explore her boundaries.

However, as the painting progressed, she began to sense another power at work. Night after night, she was continuously pulled from her sleep, unable to rest until she returned to the canvas, adding bits and pieces of images, compelled to lay them across the canvas as though she were obsessively divining the will of the Gods.

She’d never felt so out of control and without direction, save for the first painting she’d ever professionally shown, Dusk Wanderlust. The one which drew John into Sergei’s art gallery when it first opened in the historic district of St. Augustine nearly two years ago. Just as that painting seemed to draw her and John together as one, this painting seemed more ominous, though she wasn’t quite sure why, as though it would rip them back to two.

The angel didn’t originally start out looking like John. He originally appeared a rather generic, golden-haired heavenly being. Prior to that morning, there was also another person in the painting—the broken body of a red haired woman, her body draped in black. A dark tattoo of a shooting star stained the pale flesh along the nape of her neck.
Hope wasn’t sure how she knew, but she was positive the angel had just killed the woman.

Then, last night, she was roused from her sleep with a sudden, burning desire to return to the canvas and scrub it with changes. Without realizing where her mind was moving her hands, she’d endowed the angel with her lover’s face.

Two hours later, sweat matting the hair on her forehead, she dropped her brush and lost the first of her tears. Shaking, she knelt down and picked it back up, then quickly began to paint over the dead woman’s body in violent strokes of indigo and violet.

Horror was bubbling to the surface of their lives. Hope could feel it burning beneath her skin and in every pore of her body. Well, at least, in the inky shadows of the night.

In the bright light of morning, under the down covers of a warm, soft bed, that fear seemed as out of place as a grandfather clock in the corner of a nightclub. John had talked her down from the ledge last night, helping her examine why she was so upset. She didn’t tell him about the woman in the painting because some part of her felt it had something to do with infidelity and she didn’t want to appear insecure. If there was one thing Hope knew about John without any doubt whatsoever, it was that he was a faithful man.

During his examination of the painting, John told her, with a satisfied smile, that she’d never been so happy for such a long period of time. That realization, in the face of the looming two year milestone of their dating, was bringing some nested fear to the surface and manifesting itself in the form of this unsettling painting.

“The fear will go away,” he’d said, squeezing her shoulder blades beneath his large, strong hands. He turned her around, then pulled her into his embrace, absorbing her tears as they soaked the thick cotton of his nightshirt. “You deserve to be happy.”

While other men in her life had analyzed her only to determine that there was something wrong with her and that it was her fault she was miserable because she must be afraid of happiness, or some such psychobabble, John didn’t search for what was wrong.

He simply told her what was right—them and their love.

And he was right. She deserved to be happy. She just needed to get past the fears.

Even though they’d been together for two years—her longest relationship by at least 14 months—they had never settled into the mundane routine which seemed to poison the wells of so many other relationships around her. She sometimes wondered why this man seemed so different than all the others?

She was far too cynical to believe in things like fate or soul mates. But the inner romantic in her, the one who existed at her core despite all the bad experiences life had seen fit to throw her way, secretly believed that John was the closest thing to a soul mate she would ever know.

They were different in many ways, but their differences seemed to work in harmony. While she was anxious, frenetic and prone to emotional flights and dives, he was calm, laid back and perhaps the most evenly tempered person she’d ever known. However, they also had many things in common, including a love for reading, art, and equally at home discussing philosophy or why there would never be a show on TV better than the X-Files.

John was also the first person who ever took such a deep curiosity in knowing everything about her—from what she was like as a child (a clumsy, scrawny introvert), to the consistency of her dreams (incredibly rare), to her deepest fears (being unable to conceive a child), to what inspired each and every one of her paintings. At times, John appeared like a scholar with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge of the subject of her, no matter how uninteresting she sometimes felt.

Perhaps the biggest reason their love was so intense, even after all this time, was that to her, John was still something of a mystery.

He worked as a cook at an upscale Italian restaurant just a short walk from Sergei’s gallery, and didn’t talk much about his life before moving to Florida, which he said was rather ordinary. With any other man, she would suspect such reticence to be indicative of an unseemly past filled with debauchery and selfish deeds.

John was different, though.

He grew up in more than 20 foster homes after his parents died, drifting from state to state, never really establishing roots in any of them. He spent his time working and reading and sometimes composing music on piano, though he never played for another soul. He had no friends, family or meaningful relationships. John was, in some ways, a blank slate, a guy who seemed to have been waiting for some spark to bring him to life. Hope was that spark, he confessed during one of their few discussions of his past.

Despite his claims to the ordinary, there were times, such as this, when she lay next to him in bed watching him sleep, that she felt there was far more to John than she might ever know. There was a deeper John somewhere inside, a John who had yet to look her in the eye. She suspected that perhaps he had suffered some great hurt which made him the way he was, so remote and distant to everyone other than her.

She moved a bit closer to him in bed, wanting to touch him, but not wake him.

John’s eyes opened and his left eyebrow arched.

“Are you watching me sleep?” he asked, a smile breaking through the surface of his tired face. It wasn’t the first time she’d been busted.

She slid towards him under the sheets, her hand sliding under his shirt and finding his warm chest as her leg wrapped around his groin. She felt his cock stiffen immediately. She smiled.

“Well, good morning,” she said as she climbed on top of him and reached down to slide him into her.

“Wow,” John said, still smiling, “it is a good morning.”

Suddenly, the sound of their doorbell shattered the intimacy of the moment.

“What the hell?” Hope said, climbing off of John and cycling through the possible selections in her mind—who could possibly be showing up on her doorstep at this hour?

John threw on some jeans and then flew downstairs.

He peered through the front door’s peep hole and glanced back at Hope, who stood at the foot of the stairs with the phone in her hand—just in case she needed to call the cops.

She didn’t need to, though. They were standing at her doorstep.

“It’s the cops,” John whispered, a confused look on his face.

He flicked on the porch light and opened the door. Hope, suddenly by his side, wrapped both her arms around his right one.

“Hi, I’m Detective Avery,” said the tall, hawk-nosed, dark-haired cop with raccoon circles under his eyes. “This is Detective Johnson,” he said, gesturing toward his partner, a thin black man with salt and pepper hair and a receding hair line.

“We’re wondering if either of you have seen this woman?”

Avery held out a photo. Hope’s throat closed and her stomach nearly fell through the floorboards. Staring back at her was a glossy image of a red haired woman, a shooting star tattoo leaving a trail of ink across the nape of her neck.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Be sure to check out the Author’s Notes in the comments section following each chapter. Also, please tweet this post and help spread the word about Available Darkness and nurture online fiction.

John and Larry both reached out in a blind attempt to stop the slaughter.

Abigail’s fingers were ten tiny pythons around Lydia’s paling skin. Both bodies shivered and shook, Lydia tangled in death’s inescapable clutches while Abigail feasted on her fleeting life.

John and Larry were dead in their tracks, impotent witnesses to the destruction playing out before them. The child, so sweet just hours before, had been transformed, by them, into a killing machine.

John was frozen. His heart shattered as he stood in the shadow of the sentence he had condemned Abigail to endure. Yes, he had saved her life, but at what cost?

Larry fell back. He wanted to scream, but his mouth filled with vomit instead, which spewed in a fountain, burning bile through his esophagus and onto the cold cement floor of the warehouse. Suddenly, something in Larry snapped. Rage, anger, hate, he wasn’t sure, but it stormed toward the surface and splashed ice water on his inaction. He raised his pistol, aimed directly at the back of Abigail’s head, and marched forward.

John glanced up just in time. He instinctively reached out, and for the second time that night, delivered a blast of energy from his palm, sending Larry to a crumpled heap on the cement. The gun skidded backward across the floor and John descended on Larry in less than a breath. Unlike last time, John wasn’t weakened by the blast he had sent. However, the blast also didn’t do as much damage to Larry, who was on all fours, scrambling away from John and towards the gun that had slid across the floor.

“Stop!” John barked.

Larry turned and glared upward, his face flushed with anger.

John stared down, silent. Unflinching. His message was clear: do not fuck with Abigail.

Larry looked past John and toward Abigail, who hunched over Lydia’s ashen body. The electricity had nearly finished its course through her body and her body was rocking slowly as she murmured something Larry could not make out.

Something in Larry shifted.

Yes, he was still horrified and saddened that Lydia, one of the only women he was ever close to having loved though he’d never uttered the words or even admitted the fact to himself until this very moment––was dead. Yet there were other emotions churning the sick stew in his guts and brain, a blended broth of awe and curiosity. This was the first such transformation he’d ever witnessed. Though he’d known of a few instances where people had become feeders, they were rare, the stuff of whispered legend.

A thousand questions throbbed through his mind. He’d been obsessed with the arcane knowledge of Other World ever since he’d first seen one of the aliens, more than two decades prior.

John watched Larry’s face transform, his flesh fading from raspberry to blush, and finally to its normal doughy hue. He could sense Larry’s heart rate slowing, could even hear the man’s heartbeat, he noted with interest. He glanced over to the gun, which lay a good 10 feet behind Larry.

“We have a problem here?” John asked.

Larry shook his head. His eyes passed John, darting to something behind him. John did a 180 and found Abigail standing, facing them.

John braced for what was to come, for her to break down and cry or scream out in anger at what they’d done to her. His mind scrambled over the possibilities. What he would say to comfort her, to explain what had happened, or at least to say he was sorry. However, she wasn’t crying. She wore a marble slab of emotion.

After a long stretch of silence, her vacant expression changed slightly.

“What happened?” she asked, in barely a whisper.

______________________________

“What are you looking for?” Bob said, repeating the question that had rendered Jack speechless.

While Jack would normally flare up at anyone (no matter how high their ranking) who had the temerity to ask him such a thing, or dared to spy on him, he needed to tread carefully. Something big was happening, and for the first time in his professional career, he was at a disadvantage because he had no idea what was in play.

Jack figured honesty was the best policy since he had no idea how much they knew. “I’m remembering things, Bob. Things that don’t make a whole lot of sense.”

The other side of the line was silent.

Shit, I said too much.

Then, after a long silence, Bob responded. “Let it go, Jack.”

Jack wanted to do anything but let it go. He wanted to jump through the phone and demand for Bob to tell him everything. Right now!

“Listen, Jack, I get that you have more questions than answers right now and that it’s frustrating. However, I need your head in the game. We have a killer to catch. The man who, I might remind you just in case you’ve forgotten killed your wife.”

“I haven’t forgotten a thing,” Jack said, pissed that Bob would play that card. He was also somewhat pleased. If Bob was getting desperate enough to try such a cheap tactic, it meant one thing, Jack was closing in on something that they, whoever they were, didn’t want him to know.

“We’ll help you make sense of things, soon, Jack, I promise. But right now, I need to know you’re not going to be sidetracked. I need to know you’re not going to botch this up.”

Jack measured Bob’s words. If he responded too quickly, Bob wouldn’t buy the change of heart. Moreover, he’d likely lock down Jack’s ability to get any information at all, if he’d not already done so. Jack pulled a sigh from the depths of his belly and unscrewed the bottle of whiskey he kept on his nightstand. He took a deep swig and sighed a second time, half enjoying the show he was putting on for Bob.

“I’m just so tired,” Jack said, broadcasting utter exhaustion, “I just want to close this case and put an end to the nightmare.”

“I know,” Bob said, his voice soothing.

“You know, I haven’t cried since the funeral,” Jack said, in a moment of spontaneous honesty, surprising himself with his confession.

Bob was now the quiet one.

Jack continued, “My head hasn’t been right in a while, Bob. I’m not eating or sleeping. It’s no wonder I’m having such fucked up dreams. I just want to catch this guy, Bob, nail him to the fucking wall so my wife can finally rest in peace.”

“Do you need some time off?”

“No, Bob. Just let me get this monster and then we can deal with whatever else we need to deal with.”

“If you ever need anything, Jack, anything at all,” Bob said, “just ask.”

“Thank you,” Jack said, taking another sip, “Right now, I’m just gonna get some sleep so I can hit this tomorrow with fresh eyes.”

They hung up. Jack turned out his light and stared at the computer, wondering how else they might be monitoring him. He glanced at his window, the curtains closed, as they always were. He then rolled off the bed, dropped softly to the carpet, crawled toward the wall, and slowly pulled the bottom corner of the curtain aside just enough to steal a glimpse. There, about half a block down, he saw a van nearly swallowed by darkness.

“Well, hello there,” Jack whispered to his watcher.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Be sure to check out the Author’s Notes in the comments section following each chapter. Also, please tweet this post and help spread the word about Available Darkness and nurture online fiction.

Jack kneaded his temples and stared at the screen. On a safari for clues to his foggy past, he’d accessed a database in the bureau computer, wound his way through a series of gateways, and finally located his full file. While he’d pieced together many puzzles via public and classified records during his years with the agency—lives collected neatly in folders filled with facts, photos and crime scene reports—it was another thing altogether, attempting to quilt the fragments of his own scattered existence.

Facts stared back at Baldwin; things remembered and forgotten, both seeming as ancient as he was feeling. He saw nothing which indicated that his parents, William and Elizabeth Winslow, died in a violent crime. Their deaths were listed as a car accident, just as he recalled. Driving home one rainy night, their car lost control on a slick road and wrapped around a light post.

Death on impact. Survived by one son, Jack. No mention of another.

Shortly following the accident, Jack was adopted by Ed and Myriam Baldwin. Ed was an agent with the FBI, leaving a career’s worth of footsteps for Jack to eventually follow. According to the gospel which Jack had never thought to question, Ed and Myriam were a freshly married couple, unable to conceive. Ed had been on his way home from work when he arrived at the scene of the accident, Jack’s parents hugging the lamppost, twisted inside a couple tons of metal. After a long talk with Myriam, they decided to adopt Jack. They got their child and saved the world from one more orphan.

Jack sighed and put his elbows on the desk. He’d already searched for records of his birth parents, but turned up nothing. Not too surprising. If they died in a car accident, they shouldn’t have been in the database unless they had been flagged for some reason, or were victims of a crime the bureau was investigating.

Another few seconds in front of the screen and the corners of Jack’s mouth suddenly twitched. He leaned forward and let his fingers dance across the keyboard. He typed John Winslow in the search box, and then ENTER.

Four names, three of them with no relation to him; the fourth, a huge question mark.

When Jack clicked on the fourth name, he received a message window. ACCESS DENIED, the red letters said. PROPER CLEARANCE REQUIRED, the green ones agreed. Below the lines, a message showed his IP address and mentioned that his search and failure to meet clearance had been noted. Great.

What the hell is going on? Why would John Winslow, possibly his brother, be a secret FBI file?

Jack continued to stare at the monitor, the corners of his mouth curled in frustration. He had no memories of a brother, yet something in the name tickled the deep recesses of his brain.

Could he have completely forgotten having a brother? He’d known of people forgetting things and blocking things out after traumatic events. Hell, he could understand wanting to forget your parents’ murders and burning the reels of the mind movie. But this, if it were true, went well beyond forgetting. There was a paper trail noting his parents’ death in a car accident, implicating lie as truth. That meant conspiracy.

But why?

Why cover up a murder? Why cover up the existence of a brother? Could the government really have rinsed his memories, not only of murder but of a younger brother as well?

A week ago he would’ve thought it was impossible or at least downright lunacy. But it had been a long week, even without the dream. The dream! Jack shuddered at the involuntary image of his father’s burned heap of a body; a sack of ashy flesh no different from those which had littered the last few of his days; no different than his wife, Julia’s.

Something brought Jack to life, out of his drugged fog, like an animal perking to a strange and sudden scent.

The monster in his dream had claimed to be his brother, Jacob.

Two brothers, one nightmare.

Jack entered the name Jacob Winslow.

ACCESS DENIED, PROPER CLEARANCE REQUIRED

Jack thought of the killer he was tracking. The killer, who finally had a name, thanks to Bob’s information—John Sullivan. He entered the name and held his breath.

ACCESS DENIED, PROPER CLEARANCE REQUIRED

What the hell?

Jack’s mind was crackling, connections slowly clicking into place. Something inside him shuddered. What if the killer, John, was also his brother? It didn’t make sense, of course. According to Bob, the killer wasn’t from this planet. The killer also seemed younger, though Bob said he was in fact, much older.

The boy in the dream was distinctly younger than Jack.

Yet when Jack thought of the damage Jacob had done to his father’s body, and the damage this John Sullivan was doing to others right now, the connections, as crazy as they seemed, almost arranged themselves with an impossible sort of certainty. If both brothers were real and both some sort of otherworldly feeders, then …

What in the hell does that make me?

Jack leaned back in his chair and pondered the question. His cell phone rang. His boss, Bob.

“Hello?” Jack said, feigning grogginess so Bob would think he was still asleep rather than launching an investigation into some half-cocked tapestry of deception, based on a dream, more likely inspired by his drugs than actual memories.

“What are you looking for, Jack?” Bob said.

Jack’s heart started pounding. They’re monitoring me? Why? He swallowed, “What do you mean, Bob?”

“Don’t make me drag it out of you, Jack. Why are you accessing department databases and dredging up ancient history? What is it you’re trying to find?”

Jack, normally quick with a lie, was frozen.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Be sure to check out the Author’s Notes in the comments section following each chapter. Also, please tweet this post and help spread the word about Available Darkness and nurture online fiction.

Larry swung the black van into the chop shop. The unassuming warehouse sat in the middle of a dozen others, nearly invisible, in a broken row in a rundown neighborhood just two miles south of their next port of call.

Lydia was waiting outside, alone as he’d requested. Most hours, she’d have a crew of at least six to help ensure her safety, but their amorous past was a solid promise of safety. She raised the bay door and Larry pulled inside, parking beside the white Ford Econoline she’d readied for him. The van was modified inside, with a spacious cargo area sealed off from the front to prevent any light from seeping inside. Larry would transfer John and Abigail, and then be on his way. Lydia would take care of the black van and all its tracking systems.

Larry hopped from the van. Lydia pulled the bay door down and turned to him, her infectious smile lighting the room, “Hey, stranger.”

He laughed. “Not by choice. You still seeing Tony?”

“Hell no, he’s back with his little bitch Jessi.” Lydia sidled towards Larry, then leaned in and gave him a peck on the cheek. “You asking for any particular reason?”

Larry grinned. It had been a while since he’d been laid. Even longer since he’d been with a kinky little minx like Lydia. He felt the usual stir, and then ignored the wish that was turning to a want which time wouldn’t allow. Lydia’s eyes danced; hands in her pocket, head sideways, a lock of chestnut curls teasing the nape of her neck. Larry swallowed.

“No reason, just wanted to make sure the hairs on my neck weren’t rising because of an asshole behind me.”

Lydia laughed. “Nope, just you and me … and whoever you have in the van.”

“Thanks for this,” Larry said, reaching into his pocket for an envelope of cash which found her fingers in a whisper, with the fluidity of a man used to greasing palms and paying for those items or services which were unavailable on the open market.

“Nothing but a thing,” Lydia said, peering over Larry’s shoulder at the black van. “So, what are we about to unwrap?”

“I need to get these people to safety,” Larry said as he led her to the side door. He slid it open. Inside, an especially large looking John with a still sleeping Abigail like a rag doll in the nook of his body.

“Oh shit!” Lydia’s eyes widened. She took an involuntary step back from the van.

“So you get the news in this city too, huh?” Larry made a weak attempt at humor. It didn’t work.

“Dude, what the hell are you into? I’m not into helping a kidnapping, no way.” Lydia took another step back, this one on purpose.

Larry had seconds to calm her. Lydia’s blood was always hot and it didn’t take much to roll it to a boil. She may have run a chop shop with a regular clientele of thugs, thieves, and organized crime, many which had blood on their hands, but kidnapping, or any crime involving a child, was something she wasn’t willing to take part in.

He spoke calmly.

“Come on, you know me better than that. Don‘t believe any of that shit you saw on TV. There are some people after her, bad people. We’re protecting her.”

John crawled from the van and nodded to Lydia.

“What about him?” she said, “I saw what he did on TV. What the hell is he?”

“You trust me?” Larry asked, his voice climbing an octave like a guy in a fight with his girlfriend.

Lydia looked past John and at Abigail, who was starting to stir. “You okay, sweetie?”

Abigail looked up at Lydia. The child’s eyes were cloudy and distant. Larry could only imagine the accusations barreling through Lydia’s mind. They drugged this girl!

Larry had always been able to count on Lydia in a pinch, but they hadn’t spoken in more than half a year, since the “Tony situation” came out of nowhere and took over everything. Who knew where her loyalties lay now?

Larry eyed her up and down, while her attention was on the child. He was certain she was packing heat; something small like a snub nosed Ruger, probably in the small of her back. Lydia might not have run with the lowest of the low, but she was, like Larry, always prepared for any eventuality. He didn’t want to get into a gunfight, so he’d have to act quickly to disarm her the moment before she reached for her piece.

“Where are we?” Abigail asked, her syllables slurring through the slosh of a thick tongue and vacant expression.

Something looked off about the girl, Larry thought. Same doll, different batteries.

“You okay, honey?” Lydia asked, edging towards her.

John leaned over, blocking access to Abigail, and growled. “Don’t touch her!”

Lydia drew back, and before Larry could make a move, she had a gun in hand, a Ruger, indeed, Larry noted, and aimed it at John. Oh fuck, Larry thought, this is gonna get ugly.

“What the hell is going on here?” Lydia asked, gun trained on John, but eyes on Larry; wide, wild, and dilating in a fear that was full yet unflinching.

“Put the gun away,” Larry said, his voice a glassy calm, “You saw what this guy did to those people, right? He may not be human, BUT, he’s not the bad guy here. And this girl here, Abigail, isn’t human either. These government fucks are after them both. They want to capture them, experiment on them and God knows what else. All that shit on TV is a giant spin by the media machine, Lydia. You have to believe me.”

Something in Lydia’s eyes softened and Larry could see she was starting to buy what he was selling. He might have even believed they would get out of the entire mess unscathed if Abigail hadn’t started to scream at that moment, her body convulsing in a wicked rhythm of spasms, eyes rolling into the top of her head. A low predatory snarl started to spill from her throat.

“What the fuck?” Lydia said, gun back on John.

John’s face turned gray as he turned to Larry, “What’s happening?”

Abigail echoed the question in broken gasps, her fingernails digging into John’s arm. “Wh… what’s hap…pening to me?”

Abigail’s back arched upward, her body a circus freak of twisted contortions as anguished cries erupted from her lungs.

Tears poured down Lydia’s face, “What’s happening?”

She put the gun back behind her back and moved towards Abigail, reaching out to help somehow. Neither Larry nor John were able to stop her before Abigail’s flailing hand seized Lydia’s forearm and locked.

And the feeding began.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Be sure to check out the Author’s Notes in the comments section following each chapter. Also, please tweet this post and help spread the word about Available Darkness and nurture online fiction.

The black van rolled along the highway beneath the bruised tangerine sky of early dawn. Larry looked in the rear-view for the third time in two minutes, searching for cops, feds or more gunmen, then stepped down harder on the gas pedal.

They were heading towards one of the many secret spots he kept scattered throughout the region. No doubt an entire team of feds was currently turning over the motel, scouring through every hair and fiber as they sorted through what was easily the biggest mass murder the area had seen in decades. Since most of the bodies were burnt to a crisp, the murders would be tied to John, intensifying an already white hot manhunt. Larry wasn’t too concerned about what was left behind. The motel and van (and even the van’s tag) were bought through an assumed name and neither his DNA or fingerprints were in any database, so it was doubtful that he left much of a trail.

While circumstance had forced Larry to abandon his surveillance equipment, which would no doubt raise a battery of questions as to who was living there and what in the raging fires of hell they were doing, he’d managed to retrieve the bank of hard drives where he kept nearly all his research. Of course, he had also grabbed the plastic totes from his van, which were essentially his portable survival kits, loaded with weapons, cash and a few other items of contraband he didn’t dare leave behind.

Though the motel looked like homeless people were squatting there, Larry was always organized and prepared to leave the second that the shit hit the fan.

Larry now had two main concerns—switching the van he was in for another, and hoping he’d eliminated enough of the bastards to prevent them from regrouping too quickly. He was certain they were living on borrowed time. Sure as shit, the van he was driving probably had a half dozen tracking systems enabled, with red dots blinking on a monitor or ten somewhere. Fortunately, they were only a mile away from a chop shop where he placed an emergency order the minute they left the hotel.

Sometimes it paid to keep the right company.

__________________

In the darkened rear of the van, Abigail’s breath rose and fell, her body curled against John. No windows meant the heat John was feeling through the indented panels was mostly in his imagination. He was safe from the sun, and thankfully, Abigail was safe from his parasitic touch.

John had become so used to avoiding unintentional human contact that he flinched when Abigail had first leaned so lovingly against him. However, as she relaxed, then passed out almost immediately, he wrapped an arm around her, receiving as much comfort as he was providing. John’s sad eyes, swollen with salt, lost a tear to the top of Abigail’s head.

Her gunshot had stitched together entirely, the skin where the bullet had torn through her flesh was no less smooth than that of her cheek. A part of John was glad that Abigail had remained groggy; not yet lucid enough to receive an explanation of how he had managed to save her.

Larry had grabbed two fistfuls of pillows and a pile of blankets to make their accommodations a bit more comfortable, but John was too distracted, or perhaps too scared, to close his eyes. He didn’t mind turning over the recent events in his mind. It was necessary to try and pull order from the chaos, but closing his eyes seemed to give the images teeth.

From the bits of memories John had managed to extract from the agents, he knew the gunmen were part of a unit called Harbinger. Harbinger of what, though? The agents were as in the dark about their end game as John was, though crystal clear on how much their boss Jacob had paid them to kill enemies, silence opposition and unearth various artifacts with mythical properties.

Artifacts from Otherworld.

Why they wanted him, though, John wasn’t certain. At least not beyond anything outside the bristle of instinct. Perhaps he was the ultimate artifact, a man who once walked on another world’s soil.

John looked down at Abigail and felt a fierce need to protect her. Like a paternal drive, he imagined, to inoculate her from all danger. However, that aching need embittered the palette of his thought, tainted with wave after wave of unforgiving guilt. He had delivered his curse unto her, even if it had saved her life. He turned her into a vampire.

What would that mean for her? Would she also need to feast in order to survive? Had he turned an innocent child into an eager killer? Was she now immortal? Would her soul grow old as she remained fixed behind the mask of a child forever?

An endless underpass of questions tortured his insides as Abigail’s cool skin soothed his outer shell.

The only person with any answers was sitting up front, punishing the drivetrain of the cargo van. The only thing John knew with certainty was that there was nothing in the world he wouldn’t do to ensure Abigail’s safety.

Soon as Larry killed the engine, John would find out everything he knew, whether Larry wanted to tell him or not.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Be sure to check out the Author’s Notes in the comments section following each chapter. Also, please tweet this post and help spread the word about Available Darkness and nurture online fiction.

Swallow enough pills and sleep eventually finds you. For Jack, it came quickly. His breathing relaxed and he found himself deep in his dreams, though he wasn’t in the bedroom of his youth. He was somewhere else.

Jack stood on a deck overlooking a pristine white shore, familiar, though only through the hazy fog of fragmented memory. He was more relaxed than he’d remembered feeling in a while. Chasing criminals has a way of owning you even when off duty. Prior to their mutual “I do’s,” Julia used to continually complain, both with words and dancing eyes, about his inability to unplug from work and just be happy.

Julia!

He remembered the shoreline; the pristine white sands of Aruba, where he and Julia spent three amazing weeks on their honeymoon. Which was, oddly enough, probably the last time he’d felt at peace. Julia had made him promise to take three weeks off from work, a luxury he’d never experienced, even though he’d probably built up a half year’s worth of vacation time. He didn’t want to. He had too much work and knew it would pile up without his constant attention.

“The world will still turn and the job will get done without you,” Julia had said.

And she was right. For the first time in as long as he could remember, he found his shoulders relaxing long enough to let him enjoy life. An epiphany, Jack returned home with renewed purpose. Life was his to create. Family first, a husband’s duty.

That vow lasted almost until the end of his first week back until Jack found himself buried alive with a case that kept him hostage to the office from early light to mocking moon. One case turned to two, then weeks to months and months to years until just like that, he found that he’d slowly surrendered his limbs to the shackles of fate without even realizing it.

Waves lapped. Jack took a sip of wine. Behind him, he heard a muffled voice from the other side of the double French doors of their honeymoon villa. Though he was deep into dream and memory, a part of him was also aware of the waking life in which his wife was long since dead. His eager heart sped in his chest.

It had been so long since she had visited his dreams. Even though he’d wake up sad, these brief moments were better than nothing. He opened the door and…

…was again a child, back in the middle of that awful night which had been blotted from his memory ever since, stepping gingerly into the darkened hallway. Downstairs, his father was still screaming at his mother. The shadow man was just ahead of him, at the landing of the stairs. He turned back and in that dissonant voice, warned Jack to wait.

And Jack did.

Moments later, he heard his father cry out, “What the fuck?”

The end of fuck was severed by a ripping sound followed by a wet thud and a splash which sent chills down Jack’s spine.

He’s dead.

While a part of him should have been happy that the man who tormented he and his mother would no longer do so, the reality of murder did not bring the relief he’d sought. Panicked tears welled inside and warm piss trickled down Jack’s leg.

His mother screamed. At first Jack assigned the sound to the horror of seeing her husband murdered. Yet the scream held an elevated fear which went far beyond the terror of a frightened witness, sharp as it was with the acid panic of self preservation.

“Hello, mother,” the man in shadows said in a voice of boots crunching atop vomit soaked gravel.

Then, the sound of ripping flesh and gurgling, followed by silence.

Jack waited, fear circling the drain of his throat.

She’s dead, you killed her!

The adult part of Jack was frozen as well. He remembered nothing of this night from his youth, these memories were not the ones of how he knew his parents to have died, yet he knew it wasn’t a dream. This was a truth he’d been hiding from, or … which had removed from his mind. Entombed memories were no less real for their burial. He urged his dream self to take a step forward, to unravel the rest of the mystery.

“Mommy!” young Jack screamed, bolting down the stairs and into the living room.

He saw the still smoldering corpse of his father, flesh still bubbling as his headless body twitched. Wherever his father’s head was, it wasn’t anywhere next to his body.

The next two things he noticed in unison.

The shadow man, now looking slightly more human in form, stood in the center of the living room with his arms outstretched, while his mother, throat slashed and blood soaking through the thin gauze of her night shirt, danced. Her arms were raised, her lifeless head rolling back and forth barely there and maybe only by a thread. Her feet hovered inches above the ground. The shadow man moved his arms wildly like a crazed marionette as Jack’s mother danced some perverse jig. The shadow man continued to vent a smog of chilling laughter during the macabre recital.

Jack screamed. The shadow man turned to him, surprised, and allowed his mother to collapse in an inanimate heap.

“Forgive me, a son should have one final dance with his mother, yes?” The trailing S, a serpent’s hiss.

Jack was confused. He longed to run at the monster, pound him, tear him apart, anything. But fear bolted his ankles to the floor.

“You don’t remember me, do you Jackie?” the monster said, drifting closer.

Jack wanted to turn and run. The adult Jack also wanted to turn away, tears streaming down his sleeping cheeks. Neither Jack could do anything but watch the mind movie that had no pause.

Finally, the child spoke.

“Why did you kill her?”

“Because!” the monster yelled, his voice sounding more boyish and human than before, “she left me. You all left me behind.”

“She’s not your mother!” Jack cried out.

“Ah, what have they done to you, brother? You really don’t remember me, do you? It’s me … Jacob.”

And just like that, the shape of the shadow man dissipated like spider webs in a tornado, and standing before Jack was a boy, not much older than he, wearing a black shirt and pants, coated in the fresh blood of Jack’s parents.

Jack was torn between confusion, anger and a sudden, incredible sadness. None of this was making any sense and his head felt as if it were going to split and spill its contents.

“She made you forget,” Jacob said, “but I,” and he pointed at his head and spread his lips in a lunatic’s smile, “I NEVER forget!”

The monster boy stepped forward and Jack took a step back, shaking.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to kill you two. You‘re my brothers.”

Brothers? Two? Who else is he talking about? Adult Jack was puzzled, though his mind was too entrenched in the dream to work out the logic at play.

The monster headed to the front door, opened it, and disappeared into the night.

This was all too much for young Jack, what was he supposed to do now? His head hurt and more than anything, he wanted to march behind his mother right into the arms of death. Adult Jack was feeling the same feelings as he was experiencing this, in some way, for the first time. Part of him wanted to die right there in his dream. To spare him of not only this, but of living alone in this cold world without Julia.

But he couldn’t.

A tiny voice called from upstairs, “Is he gone?”

Jack glanced up at the four year old peering back between the banisters. A boy so young should not see such things.

Adult Jack was dumbstruck. I have a brother?

“Go back in your room, Johnny!” Jack shouted, tears twisting his voice into a gasp.

Confusion, shock and pain were twined like hair in a braid, but he couldn’t allow himself to shut down. Though he were just a child himself, he had to protect John. Family first, a brother’s duty.

__________

Jack snapped awake.

“John?”

TO BE CONTINUED…

Be sure to check out the Author’s Notes in the comments section following each chapter. Also, please tweet this post and help spread the word about Available Darkness and nurture online fiction.

“You need to come with me,” the man said to John.

“No fucking way.” Larry lifted his rifle, aimed it at the man’s head and said, “Let her go.”

“If you shoot me,” the gunman said, “my finger will twitch, this gun will go off and she will die. It’s all very simple, really. Or … we can end this peacefully, John comes with me, you take the girl and this never happened.”

The man was Brock, John recalled from a sliver of memory he’d stolen from one of the squad. A real badass. He wasn’t bluffing – he would shoot Abigail without flinching if he thought all was lost. He had no compunctions about killing – anybody. Brock worked for the same man he saw in his vision. The one who took Abigail and then let her go.

Jacob.

“Put the gun down,” John told Larry.

Larry didn’t budge. “No way you’re going with him, John. Trust me, it won’t end well for you.”

Brock looked down at Abigail, smiled a sickly sweet smile, “Tell them Abigail, do you want to die today?”

She looked up at John, eyes now flooding in tears, and whimpered, “No.”

John, heartbroken, turned to Larry, stepping between Larry and Brock and placing himself directly in Larry’s line of fire. John looked his old friend in the eyes, they were wild and a bit scared, but also angry. Sweat drenched his brow and hairline. A single drop dangled from his ear.

“Let me go with him,” John said, “you take Abigail and watch over her till I come back.”

“I can’t let you do that,” Larry shook his head, looking past John and at the gunman, “the minute you go, they get what they want. And I can’t let that happen. YOU can’t let that happen. This is more important than one person’s life.”

John couldn’t believe what Larry was saying. How could he be so cold? Whatever the gunmen wanted, it wasn’t worth a child’s life, especially not Abigail’s! Pondering her death for even a second twisted something deep inside John’s heart.

“Larry,” John said, trying to influence whatever compassion might be resting in the man’s core. “She’s just a kid.”

Larry blinked the sweat from his eyes, doing his best not to look away from the gunman and Abigail.

“You don’t get it John, you would choose the same thing. You chose burial to protect this, to keep it from them.”

John wished he could remember something from his past life, anything. It was hell on earth wondering what was so important; serious enough to trade for the life of a child. He couldn’t imagine anything important enough, except … Hope.

“Is it … Hope?” he asked, mentioning his love’s name to Larry for the first time.

Larry’s eyes widened in recognition then froze on John for a moment as though trying to taste the right answer.

It was Hope, John decided. Dark despair dug its talons deeper into John’s brain. Something horrible was about to happen. He could feel it racing towards him like a runaway train, and he, fate’s passenger, with no control.

“Doesn’t matter, Abigail needs me. Needs us. Now.” John said. He turned to Brock, “What do you want me to do?”

“Get in the back of the van,” Brock said, pointing to one of the identical black-windowed black vans behind him, “there’s a special cell to ensure you won’t … well, you know,” he said nodding his head in reference to the dead bodies between them. “Once you’re inside, and I’m in the driver’s seat, I will let the girl go and bring you home. You will be perfectly safe. If we wanted you dead, we would’ve struck during daylight.” Brock glanced up at the sky. “The sun is going to rise any minute, we need to get on with it.”

“How do I know you’ll let her go?” John asked.

“If we wanted the girl dead, she would never have left our custody,” Brock sighed, losing patience with the exchange. “Shall we?”

John glanced back at Larry, who almost imperceptibly nodded his head yes, with great reservation.

John tried to signal to Larry not to worry. He would find a way out of this, he was certain, despite the overwhelming sense of dread pumping through his veins. Right now, this was their only card. Despite his powers, even if he could duplicate the energy blast he had managed to hurl at Larry earlier, he doubted he could do it any more quickly than Larry firing a round at Brock. Either way, Abigail would end up taking a bullet.

John began to walk towards the van. He glanced down at Abigail, who was sucking back a small sea of tears and snot. He winked, as if to say everything would be okay. The lie made her smile, for a moment anyway. Seeing the glint in her beautiful eyes, made him smile.

He prayed this would not be the last time he’d ever see her. In the past 48 hours she was the only person for which he felt anything remotely close to love. Without memories of his own life, she was his everything. Without her, he was adrift with reality’s compass broken and more alone than God.

__________________

Abigail watched as John approached the van. She knew she should be brave and do something, but what could she do? The soldier already warned her that if she tried to do anything stupid, a team of 12 more men, snipers, he called them, would, on his command, kill everyone in sight. She didn’t know if he was lying or not, but she didn’t want to take any chances.

“He can die, you know,” the soldier told her as they walked towards the motel a few minutes earlier, “if they shoot him in the head enough times, he won’t come back to life.”

So she remained silent. What little fight she had stayed dormant. And as John walked towards the van, she wondered if she’d made the right decision. Wondered if there was anything she could do to make a difference. In a few moments, they would have him. God only knew what they wanted, but she couldn’t see it ending well for John. These men looked like government soldiers who might experiment on him or … worse. The gun tightened against her head, as if the soldier could tell what she was thinking and meant to dissuade her.
____________________

Larry watched as John walked towards the van. The fact that he trusted these men, was further indication of how much of his memory remained blank. Larry could think of at least five different things the old John would have done to neutralize the situation. But Larry wasn’t about what could have been, he was about being prepared and making things happen.

And he still had one ace up his sleeve he was eager to lay down.

Prior to getting out of the van, Larry retrieved a watch he’d made and strapped it to his left hand. While it looked and functioned like any other digital watch, it was also a trigger to detonate a nearby series of explosives. The gunman briefly lifted his hand from Abigail’s shoulder to retrieve something from his pants. A remote which opened the side of one of the black van’s side doors. He instructed John to climb inside.

Larry saw something stirring in Abigail, like she had her own ace she was itching to play. Shit, he had one shot at this and couldn’t afford to have another variable in motion. He narrowed his glare at her, and when she looked into his eyes, he shook his head no.

John climbed into the van and looked back at Larry, a vow of I’ll figure something out written on his face. The odds of that happening were much dimmer once they had him, though. John had no idea about the power of the forces he was dealing with. The door slid mechanically shut and the lock clicked into place.

“Okay,” the gunman said, “we’re walking back to the van. Once I’m inside, I’ll let her go. The inside of the van is lined with ultraviolet lights. If you try anything, I will end John’s life in an instant.”

Shit. Larry figured the soldier had something up his sleeve, but had no idea what. His window to act was about to slam shut.

_____________________

Abigail followed the soldier’s instructions carefully, walking backwards slowly, his hand—the one with the remote—on her shoulder and gun now at her back. As she attempted to keep her balance, her mind raced, searching for anything she could do. She watched Larry’s face in search of another subtle glance or shake of the head to indicate direction, but his face was a stone mask.

The soldier instructed her to turn with him as they drew closer to the van, navigated around it and towards the driver’s side door, which had been left open. Abigail’s nerves were frayed, waiting for whatever was about to unfold. Dread, fear and hope were waging war inside her body, her head growing dizzy and her stomach swimming in a stew of sick.

Suddenly, Abigail stumbled backward, her foot getting caught up with the soldier’s. Rather than breaking her fall, the soldier stepped back, as she spun her arms, trying to find some balance before hitting the ground hard. The soldier aimed his gun down at her, his eyes narrow slits.

The chance she’d been waiting for, a moment to help her beloved angel, happened amid an instant outburst of tangled noise and rolling waves of sudden heat.

The motel room door behind them exploded open in a fiery blast. A second door, further back, detonated in a blazing echo. The soldier, stumbled forward then spun around, diverted briefly by the eruptions. Abigail took her chance, scrambled to her feet and ran towards Larry as gunshots rang from behind.

“Goddammit!” the soldier yelled.

Larry was also taking his chance and fired repeatedly at the soldier. Almost instantly Abigail realized the error of placing herself in the crossfire. Breathless, and heart pounding, she didn’t know what else to do but run as fast as she could to Larry as bullets whizzed past her, slamming into the pavement and spitting up chunks of asphalt.

And then one found her.

Pain splintered her chest as she was thrust backwards to the ground.

Oh God, no.

The pain was intense, like wet fire spreading through her chest. She writhed on the ground, attempting to get up before giving up. It was all she could do to turn and look back towards the van, praying that John remained safe from harm. After that, she could not move, laying stomach down on the ground, head frozen in place, eyes on the van.

The pain was soon gone. As if she’d reached whatever limits of anguish a person were allowed before something in their minds finally flipped the shut-off switch. Abigail’s eyes caught glimpse of the spreading pool of blood coming from her like ink in the darkness of pre-dawn. She wondered how so much blood could spill from a single body.

Shots continued to ring out, then stopped altogether. Abigail watched as the soldier fell to the ground. She tried to turn to see Larry, but her body wouldn’t cooperate. Darkness crept in at the edges of her vision, and it was all she could do to keep her focus on the only thing she could see—the van. It shook wildly, a mostly muffled scream from John. Did the soldier make good on his threat?

Something else entered her field of vision. Larry, crouching down, looking at her. His eyes harbored deep sorrow—as though he was looking at a dead girl breathing.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, reaching out to touch her cheek, though she felt nothing.

He leapt up and raced towards the van, his footsteps like echoes from somewhere far away as sound dissolved along with her other senses. Darkness, like a gauze, distorted almost everything in her vision as her life bled out onto the ground of the motel. She watched as Larry ran first to the fallen soldier and then to the van’s door.

Open the door. Please…

All she wanted was to see her angel a final time before she died. She fought to hold tight to the world, to keep her focus.

As Larry opened the van door, Abigail lost the battle and succumbed to the darkness.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Be sure to check out our new feature, Author’s Notes in the comments section following each chapter. Also, please tweet this post and help spread the word about Available Darkness and nurture online fiction.

She watched as John attacked a soldier, sinking his teeth into his throat and then leaving the man a burned heap. Abigail sat paralyzed, horrified and fascinated all at once. Though she’d seen the aftermath of John’s feeding, this was the first time she’d actually seen … it.

Pain crawled up her throat as her eyes fought back tears. For the first time, Abigail was not only afraid for John, but seeing his unbridled glee for the feast, some part of her was afraid of him.

The gun in her hand suddenly felt powerless against the narrow-eyed juggernaut of fate.

_______________

Brock was now 40 yards behind the girl in the car. He lowered the night vision goggles on his mask, confirming she was indeed alone, her attention bolted on the old motel. Brock bit his lower lip, flipped up the goggles and crept slowly towards the car.

____________________

John stood over the two corpses, invigorated and oddly … euphoric. His hungry eyes wandered the parking lot for a second before his ears pricked to the sound of a few gunmen approaching from behind. He lifted his hands in the air and slowly turned around, a predatory smile spreading on his face. John threw his head back and quietly dared them as if he, not them with their assault rifles and deadeye aim, held all the cards.

“I’ll give you the same chance as the others,” he leaned forward and whispered, “run.”

One of the men barked into an unseen radio, “Alpha Seven to Alpha One, do you copy?”

The radio’s silence washed the man’s face in sudden worry. There was a small fissure in the cool of his voice when he repeated the call.

“He’s dead,” John said without emotion, though he had no idea if Alpha One was indeed one of the men he’d taken, one was named Sergei and the other Christian. Bits of their memories now intermingled with his own, a too-confusing brew that had yet to settle. “I killed him. And you’re next unless you run.”

Two of the men that flanked Alpha Seven stepped forward, one yelled, “Hands behind your head, drop down to the ground!”

Though part of John was still very afraid, there was something in him, a bloodlust, which thrust him forward without regard for his life. The gunmen’s bodies were so warm and appetizing. Their fear excited John, making their desire to take their lives even more intoxicating. Hunger, twisting like a dark parasite, coiled then expanded somewhere inside his guts. Wisps of blue and magenta aura surrounded the men, beckoning John to draw from their wells. His fingers tingled in anticipation.

John stepped forward, staring down Alpha Seven, almost daring the man to take a shot. The man refused to break his stare even as John stood just inches from him.

A shot rang out, and one of the two flankers was hit in the back of the neck and fell to the ground screaming. The remaining gunmen spun around, each facing a different direction, weapons aimed into the fading darkness, searching for the shooter. They both flicked down goggles on their masks but not in time. Two more shots rang out and the top half of Alpha Seven’s head disappeared in a splash of blood which missed John by a drop. The other man was hit in the leg and fell to the ground, still clutching his gun, and looking for the gunman.

Suddenly Larry appeared, climbing over the top of his van, which was turned on its side. He jumped down, rifle slung over his shoulder, hair as wild as the look in his eyes. Apparently John wasn’t the only one invigorated by death dealing.

“Hot damn, that was some shooting,” Larry said as he quickly ran forward, paused with a slight grin, then finished the two wounded gunmen with a pair of head shots.

John dropped quickly to the ground, laying hands on one of the men’s corpses to capture the last bit of life as it fled his body. The stream was different, weaker and not as satisfying as the others. It was also full of pain. John flinched as he felt the first gunshot which hit the man in the leg. He tried to pull away, but couldn’t break the connection as he continued to feed on the last of the man’s life, his memories and his pain. As the corpse burned, John continued to twitch, pain splintering his entire body.

He relived the man’s final moments, seeing through the dead man’s eyes. He saw Larry barreling towards him, gun drawn, aimed and…

An explosion went off in John’s mind as he jumped back from the corpse, broke the connection, pain twisting through his body as something else, far darker and lonelier wrapped itself around his mind. He felt himself falling into a void, his body finding velocity as it crashed towards an unknown doom.

Suddenly, a tether snapped him back to reality. Larry’s hand on his shoulder, his voice in his ear, “Hey buddy, you okay?”

John nodded. He was not okay. An overwhelming sense of doom had taken root in his head, pressing on him from outside and within. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something horrible was going to happen.

“Abigail?” Larry said, looking up and past John.

“Where’s Abigail?” John asked, still groggy.

“Here,” a voice said from behind.

John turned to see one last gunman standing about 10 yards away, one hand gripping her shoulder tightly, the other holding a pistol dug into Abigail’s temple.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Be sure to check out our new feature, Author’s Notes in the comments section following each chapter. Also, please tweet this post and help spread the word about Available Darkness and nurture online fiction.

“How about that one?” Larry waved his finger at an old man slowly peddling an ancient-looking 10-speed in the dark, likely on his way to a job that had been swallowing his soul one sip at a time. Two plastic grocery bags dangled from the handlebars, heavy with a cheap prepared lunch or perhaps pages to turn while whittling away a break.

“No,” Abigail said, sitting beside Larry in the van, clearly uncomfortable.

They were parked beside two other cars, both broken down by the looks of it, at the far end of a gas station/convenience store still about an hour away from lighting its canopy. From their position, they could see the station and a small strip plaza, which was also not yet open. They’d hoped to find some wayward soul up to no good.

Unlike Larry’s disastrous motel headquarters, the van was immaculately clean and well organized, despite its outer appearance. Along one wall of the van stood a built-in table with a few monitors and onboard computers and a chair. The opposite wall held a long row of dark heavy duty plastic totes which drew Abigail’s curiosity, though she’d refrained from asking about their contents.

Larry had allowed Abigail to continue holding the gun, while also giving her a quick lesson in aim and handling. He had both a .45 of his own and a stun gun, which he was ready to use as soon as they found the right person to accompany them back to the motel.

They’d been sitting in the parking lot for nearly 20 minutes, but the bicyclist was only the second person they’d seen. The first had been a heavyset woman in her late 40’s, out for an early morning run. Considering that the nearest residential area was at least a mile away, Larry suspected she was on her way to the all night doughnut shop a bit further up the road. Abigail had cast a vote against her as well. Fortunately for the jogger, the wages of sin by way of donuts was not worthy of execution via vampire.

Abigail had hoped this would be easier, half expecting they’d catch someone committing some sort of heinous sin that she and Larry could stop in the nick of time, knocking the bad guy cold and bringing him back for John to feed on. Unfortunately, there was never a bad guy around when you needed one.

“We’re gonna need to find someone soon,” Larry said.

“Fine, but not him,” Abigail said pointing at the old man as he slowly faded from one patch of light on the deserted highway and into darkness.

“It’s okay,” Larry said, “He’s too old anyway. He probably wouldn’t have done much to quench John’s hunger. Younger people have a lot more life force to feed on.”

“So,” Abigail said, “I’d be an ideal meal, then?”

Larry wasn’t sure if she were making a dark joke or verbalizing her fear.

“Yeah,” he agreed, matter-of-factly.

Abigail swallowed the knot in her throat.

“I don’t suppose you know anyone around here who needs to die, do you?” Larry asked, “Maybe an old boyfriend who pissed you off?”

“Boyfriends?” Abigail laughed.

A pair of headlights swirled into view and grabbed their attention, as a white van rolled into the station and idled beside one of the station’s doors. A short man hopped out, tufts of brown and gray hair curling around his balding dome. He wore khaki knee-length shorts and a faded yellow tee shirt with black spots peppering the front. He slid his van’s side door open, retrieved a bundle of newspapers, then dropped the pile next to the gas station doorway.

Abigail and Larry exchanged glances.

“Too high profile,” Larry said, “he’d be reported missing before the hour was up, soon as the cops at the donut shop down the street realize their coffees are cold and they don’t have their papers yet.”

“No,” Abigail said, “I don’t want to take him. I have an idea. Can you give me some money?”

“For a paper?” Larry shook his head. “No way, missy. You’re picture is all over page 1 A, I can guarantee you that. That dude gets one look at you and the cops will be here in minutes. We wait until he leaves.”

“Oh yeah,” she said with a frown. She began tapping her feet on the floorboard and Larry rolled his eyes. Kids.

The delivery man left and Larry sprinted to the station, grabbed two papers and returned to the van.

“Okay, what’s your big idea?”

Abigail was frozen, the pictures on the front page sending a chill through her body. One clearly showed her wide eyed terror as she stood by the side of the freeway, the other far more blurry shot had been snapped just as John was moving from one victim to the next.

“Earth to Abi,” Larry said, snapping his fingers, “what’s your idea?”

She shook the moment away and started to explain, “It’s like what you said before. Let’s find someone who really deserves to die. I mean, people do bad stuff all the time, right? And most of them don’t go to jail, I bet.”

Larry looked at her, wondering what kind of hell a kid goes through to become this jaded so early in life.

“Well, chances are good that if they’re in the paper, they’re probably in jail, or maybe hard to get to.”

Abigail glared, “You have a better idea?”

“Not really,” Larry said.

“Then let’s find someone who needs to die,” Abigail said, clenching her jaw and unfolding the paper across her lap.

__________

Four black vans with their lights off rolled out of the darkness and into the parking lot of the motel simultaneously, quiet save for the sound of tires crunching over debris on the littered pavement.

Squad leader Brock Tyler was anxious to get the ball rolling. “We’re here,” he radioed his boss. “It looks like he’s alone.”

“Good,” Jacob responded, “then go in and bring him home.”

Brock gave the command and at once, all the van doors slid open and 12 men in black paramilitary body armor prepared to descend onto John’s hotel room, weapons drawn.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Be sure to check out our new feature, Author’s Notes in the comments section following each chapter. Also, please tweet this post and help spread the word about Available Darkness and nurture online fiction.

Baldwin stumbled through the doorway and into his darkened house; a cavernous hollow in the deep dead of night. It was close to dawn and he was exhausted. While Bob waved the carrot of promotion, he’d not been nearly as forthcoming with details as Baldwin would’ve liked. There was a process, Bob said, which would be starting soon – though not until this case was officially closed. In other words, if Baldwin wanted to know everything, he had to catch the killer he was already hunting.

Baldwin wasn’t sure why Bob had bothered to call the meeting. Sure he filled him in with some sensitive details – that he was in fact hunting something not human. A pretty big fucking deal, no doubt. But something wasn’t adding up. Why withhold other pertinent information? Why promise him a promotion he wasn’t bucking for? Bob was putting the squeeze on him, a gentle one, but a squeeze nonetheless. But why? It wasn’t as if he needed more motivation than catching the man who murdered his wife.

Five minutes from Bob’s estate, Baldwin called his second in charge and said he’d be out of commission for the day. Not exactly the best way to kick the investigation into overdrive, but it had to be done. He was falling apart and needed time to mend, a few hours to do nothing but lower his lids and surrender to the dark.

He fell into bed, not even bothering to get undressed, reached into his pants pocket and retrieved the only tether he had to peace of mind. The pills that made all his thoughts disappear… at least for a little while.

Jack Baldwin quickly fell into a peaceful slumber, a blissful smile on his face.

_______________

“It’s not that big of a deal,” Larry said, shrugging his shoulders.

“Killing someone isn’t a big deal?” Abigail asked, not quite believing what she was hearing. They’d been debating his proposal for nearly half an hour already.

“It’s no different than feeding a snake. Sure, you don’t want to kill the mice or rats because they’re cute, but you know if you don’t put the cute and fuzzies in the tank, your snake is going to die. Same thing here, we just need to bring someone here for when John gets hungry.”

“I don’t like snakes,” Abigail said, her arms crossed, “and people aren’t rats.”

“Apparently, we don’t hang in the same circles,” Larry joked, but the joke fell flat; Abigail giving him the silent treatment.

Finally, she said, “There has to be another way.”

Larry suddenly rushed Abigail, wrapped his arms around her from behind, closed his hands over hers and pulled the gun up, aiming it straight at John’s head.

“No!” she screamed, tears flooding her eyes as she tried to free herself from Larry’s sudden grip.

“This is the only other way,” Larry whispered in a soothing voice that seemed at odds with his quick, abrasive actions. “If you want John to die, then pull the trigger now so he doesn’t suffer.”

Abigail trembled, unable to say anything, as she looked at her angel’s face, so calm and peaceful. His eyes moved again under their lids and she wondered again what dreams he was dreaming and if, perhaps, she was in them?

_________________

The boy clutched his pillow tightly as the shadow in the corner subtly shifted, dark charcoal barely outlined against the inky black backdrop.

“I’m sorry I took so long,” the shadow said, its voice strained and fragile as if it were made of fibers which might crumble to nothing in the slightest of breezes. Despite the voice’s brittle quality, the shadow seemed to exude an incredible force of undiluted strength, which gathered in his room like a slowly churning funnel cloud, absorbing every available shadow and casting itself into an impossible shroud of darkness.

“Wh.. What?” was all the boy could manage.

Downstairs, his father piped up again, screaming incoherent curses at the boy’s mom.

The shadow’s head, if it indeed had one, spun quickly towards the boy’s bedroom door.

“Ah, father is quite mad tonight, eh?”

The boy’s bottom lip trembled as the shadow swirled even faster, as if gathering a solid mass of twisted knots of sinew, forming into something.

“You … won’t need to … worry any long … er,” the voice said. The shadow man drifted towards the doorway, shadows trailing him along the walls, floor and ceiling like floating streamers tied to an automobile.

“No!” the boy cried out, “don’t…”

The shadow stopped and turned, fixing its eyes, if it had such things, on the boy.

“Surely … you want him to stop … hurting you … yes?” it asked.

A million thoughts raced through the boy’s mind – what was this thing? Why did it apologize for being so late? Was it The Devil who had come to answer his many silent prayers for his father’s death? The boy was awash in guilt, fear and confusion. The monster waited, its shadows swirling around it like wisps of inky smoke caught in a holding pattern … waiting for the boy to give the command.

“It can … all … be … over,” the thing said, its voice seemingly weaker, giving the boy the impression that if he didn’t act now, this thing, whatever it was, would go away forever.

“You stupid cunt!” his father screamed, followed by a sickening thump of his fist on the boy’s mother.

Now or never.

“Kill him,” the boy said, his eyes suddenly steel marbles of clarity and conviction.

The monster flew from the room, its form tightening into an ever more human shape until the boy could clearly make out the features of a face, and two, impossibly blue eyes. It turned to the boy, the shadows of its face rising in a smile.

“You w … won‘t regret this … Jack.”

TO BE CONTINUED…

Be sure to check out our new feature, Author’s Notes in the comments section following each chapter. Also, please tweet this post and help spread the word about Available Darkness and nurture online fiction.