Dreams of a Dark Warrior

SEVEN

Declan rolled off the chit onto his back, staring up at the rotting warehouse ceiling above his mattress.

Maybe he wouldn’t have it this time. That feelin’ in the pit of me gut, in me chest.

Waiting …

The girl—he didn’t remember her name—slurred, “Ah, Dekko, that was just grand.”

Bullshite.

She was some loose bird who hung with the junkie gang he’d fallen in with three years ago. Their city was unforgiving. Since then, half had died. The other half were like him: hankering for the next score, fleecing anything and anyone.

“Though for a spell,” she muttered, “I thought ye weren’t to come a’tall. …” Then she passed out.

Declan yanked off his empty condom. I didn’t. Already anticipating the misery to follow, he’d gnashed his teeth, struggling to finish like a man. And couldn’t.

He gazed over at her, feeling the strain build. Wrong. Wrong girl beside him, wrong time, wrong place. He rubbed the medallion hanging from his neck, frantically circling his thumb over it—

He shot upright, shoving his fist against his mouth to hold down whatever meager slop he’d forced himself to eat during the day. Chills seized him, his muscles shaking.

He felt this way every time he was with a woman.

Hell, he felt a measure of the strain constantly. Whenever Declan woke, his anxiety was worse than the day before, as if acid seethed in his belly and barbed wire cinched around his heart.

Tracks lined his arms; he could take or leave food even though he was still growing like a weed; bouts of nightmares plagued him.

For as long as he could remember, he’d had a frenzied sense that he was supposed to be doing something. No matter where he was, he felt like he was supposed to be some-where else.

And that strain was killing him.

After sex, it grew stronger, like a beast lived inside him, clawing at his insides to get free. Though only seventeen, he was ready to give up women altogether.

For now, he’d numb the feeling the only way he knew how. He reached toward the battered crate beside his mattress on the floor and plucked up the syringe that lay ready.

Why did he always expect to feel different after sex? When he knew better?

Because, Dekko, ye’re not ready to admit ye’re done as a man.

He frowned at the weight of the syringe in his hand. He’d been shooting heroin for three years, and knew it was too light. Dread seized him as he gazed down. Empty.

Rage building, he hurled the syringe across the room, then turned on the girl. Jostling her awake, he yelled, “Ye feckin’ slag! Ye stoled it?” That was all he’d had. No money to buy more.

She woke, mumbling, “Needed a wee bump—”

“Get out!” he roared, shoving her up and out on her arse, tossing her clothes at her before slamming the door in her face.

He punched the wall, moldy plaster exploding. Tonight he’d have the nightmares again. A monster at his back. Burning pain slicing through his chest. A woman’s grief-stricken screams.

Those screams …

Desperate to avoid those dreams, to numb the strain, he yanked on his pants and threw on a jacket, readying to leave. On his way out, he passed the bitch in the hallway, spat in her direction.

Half an hour later, he pleaded his case to his dealer: “Just a couple of quid’s worth. Give me the shite now, and I’ll fleece ye some of me mam’s jewelry if I have to.” Would he actually steal from his own mother?

Oh, aye. But it’d take time to get to his parents’ house and back.

The verdict: “Cash first, Dekko.”

Declan would need even more time to fence the jewelry. Might take him a day to get back here with the scratch. He didn’t have that long.

“I’m beggin’.” He was about to vomit. The dealer clearly thought it was from withdrawal. No, from madness, more like. He’d do anything to avoid what awaited him. Anything. Others in his gang had no problem giving to get. With that in mind, he said, “There’s got to be something I can give ye?”

His dealer’s eyes widened with surprise. He hadn’t known Declan Chase would suck for it.

I hadn’t either. Could anything be worse than this feeling?

“Hie yer arse out o’ me sight, Dekko.” The man booted him in the back, sending him reeling out the door.

Unsure whether he was relieved or not, Declan scuffed back out into the streets.

When a biting wind blew in from the sea, his chills worsened until his teeth chattered. With a despairing eye, he gazed around, tempted to break into a house right off the main strip, but everywhere he turned, bars covered the windows.

No choice but to set off for his parents’ place. They were working-class; any jewelry of his mother’s had been either handed down from her own mam or hard-earned by his da.

But she can’t need it like I do.

An hour into his journey, Declan passed the run-down cathedral where he’d been an altar boy. At fourteen, he’d confessed his constant gut pains and tensions to the parish priest—a stern old codger who’d told him to keep his ailment to himself and find a vocation.

Declan had found heroin instead. He’d never told another what he grappled with every day. Not even his brother, Colm—not even before their falling-out.

His mam wouldn’t be the first family member Declan had stolen from.

By the time he reached his parents’ at three in the morning, he was quaking so hard his vision blurred. He’d already vomited twice, laden with strain. Those screams …

The front door was open, the house quiet. He eased inside, going straightaway to the kitchen, to the bottle of whiskey he knew he’d find in one of the cabinets. Might help him get through the next couple of hours. He lifted it, chugging—

He lowered the bottle, peering into the dark. In a murky corner of the kitchen, someone lay on the floor. Was his brother passed out? “Jaysus, Colm. Ye’re too young. Ye want to end up like me?” Declan would beat his arse for this. “Colm?” he demanded, striding over. “What the bloody—”

His brother’s sightless eyes were opened wide, fixed on the ceiling. His throat was slashed down to the spine.

“C-Colm?” he rasped. Dead? Someone had murdered his little brother? He stared dumbly, tears welling. Until muffled screams sounded from the living room.

Somebody’s hurting me parents too! Fury ignited within him, burning away the tears. In a daze, Declan slipped into his parents’ bedroom, grabbed the bat propped by his da’s side of the bed.

When he entered the living room, he faltered, barely able to comprehend what he saw. Red-eyed beings with fangs and claws filled the area. And those were the creatures with humanlike bodies. Others were winged monsters with bulging eyes and limbs jutting out all over.

The winged ones had gagged and tied up his parents on the floor so they could … slowly feed. Their deformed mouths peeled away one strip of flesh at a time—while his mam and da still lived, screaming in agony against their gags.

Me mind’s going to break, can’t do this, can’t believe this is happening. But just when Declan thought he’d pass out from the crazy pounding of his heart, one monster’s head rose up from his da, and blood dribbled from its mouth.

Da’s blood.

A mindless wrath overwhelmed Declan, and he attacked them. All he could hear was his thundering heart, his bellows, the bat connecting with bone over and over. He didn’t know where this frantic strength was coming from, but he crumpled the metal bat against their skulls.

Yet as powerful as he was, they were more so. They kept coming and coming until they overpowered him, pinning his thrashing body to the floor. Even as he flailed, he spied a glimpse of some eerie kind of intelligence in the hideous eyes of a winged monster, and Declan had an instant of clarity.

Colm was the lucky one. …

As ever, Declan’s mind wasn’t ready to relive what those creatures had done to him—the unimaginable torment until he’d blacked out; twenty years later, his dream easily flickered past, picking up at the time when consciousness had trickled in once more. From outside his parents’ house, he’d heard voices, and finally the blackness wavered.

He felt the biting tension on his bound wrists and ankles ease, nearly screaming as circulation coursed to his hands and feet once more. How long ago had he been tied up?

Days. …

He was aware of a man’s voice telling him that he would live, that help was here. “Those things have been slaughtered, son. They’ll never hurt anyone again.”

“Da?” Declan rasped before the blackness took him once more.

In a kind of twilight, he felt his bones being set, his skin pierced again and again as his numerous wounds were stitched.

When he woke, he was in a hospital, covered in bandages and casts. A tall, dark-haired man sat beside his bed.

“I’m Commander Webb,” he said, his Yank accent marked. “You’re in a private hospital. You’re safe now.”

Declan recognized the voice of the man who’d saved his life. He was middle-aged, his hair closely cropped. He wore what looked like a military uniform, but Declan had never seen one like it. “Wh-what happened?”

“I’m sure you’re in a state of shock right now. The docs are amazed you survived—”

“And me family?” He hated the way his voice broke.

“I’m sorry, Declan, but they’re all dead.”

He’d known, but he’d still held out hope. “You’re the one who got me out of there?”

“My team and I did. I belong to an organization called the Order, and it’s our job to protect people from those miscreats. Unfortunately, our scouts didn’t locate this pack until too late.”

“Miscreats? Pack?” Declan pinched his forehead, wincing as the skin on the back of his hand pulled tight under a bandage.

Webb nodded. “Miscreations. They’re immortal beings. Just about anything you thought was a myth is out there walking the streets. Sometimes various species band together in leagues.”

Declan’s lips parted. He’d also held out hope that they hadn’t been real. That he’d gone crazy. Now someone, a man with authority, was staring him in the face, confirming what his eyes had seen. Declan’s mind reluctantly accepted it. “You killed them?”

“Yes, a complete extermination. Again, too late for your parents and brother and …”

And you, the man hadn’t needed to say.

The things those monsters had done to him, to his skin. The blood in my mouth, blood that wasn’t my own …

Declan looked away in shame, his face flushing. “They … they fed.”

“Those were the Neoptera, some of the most nightmarish of them all.”

“Why us?” Declan’s voice was raw with bitterness. He realized he’d never grasped what bitterness was until this exact moment. Hatred that burns cold.

“As near as we can tell, you were picked at random. They attack simply because they can. Some of them feed on humans like cattle. Some play with us, torment us,” he said. “That’s why we hunt them down and kill them without mercy.”

Declan faced him once more, his attention fully engaged. To be able to hunt them …

“They call themselves Loreans,” Webb continued. “We just like to call them dead sons-of-bitches.” He dug into his jacket pocket, then held up Declan’s charm. “We found this. Is it yours?”

“Aye, it’s mine.” Hanging from a cord of leather was a thin medallion imprinted with two birds. His da had gotten it for him at a fair.

My father’s dead.

Declan’s hand shot out to snatch the medallion, the stitches up and down his body straining. Clutching it in his fist, he grated, “I want in.”

“I thought you might say that. But it’s not so simple. You’re not even eighteen. Maybe if you were older, with some military training under your belt—”

“Now.” Declan bit out the word. “Now, goddamn it!”

“And what about the drugs? I read your tox screen.”

Declan flushed again. “I’ll get clean.”

“Even if we made exceptions for you, not everyone gets inducted into the Order. You’d have to be combat-trained, and it’s grueling. Rangers and marines have told us that their training was a cakewalk compared to ours.”

“I don’t give a shite.”

Webb’s eyes bored into his own. “You’d be dealt pain on a daily basis to harden you, so that you could fight these fiends. And at every second, you would have to demonstrate a single-minded purpose, the obsession to eradicate immortals.”

“This is mine by right, Webb. More than anyone’s. Ye ken it is.”

“You think about this. Long and hard. Because to fight these monsters, son, you’ll have to become one. …”

Declan shot upright, waking drenched in sweat. Drops of it trailed down his chest, past his dog tags, over his raised scars.

With a shudder, he stared down at the wounds that had been carved into his body from neck to waist. More covered his back and down both his arms to his fingers.

He dropped his head in his hands. The Neoptera had taken his flesh and made him drink the blood of the ones he’d killed. Why? And how much of that blood had tainted his own that night?

Maybe that was how Declan had gotten his strength and speed, his heightened senses. Maybe the drugs kept his change at bay all this time. What else could explain it?

God, to become a thing like that …

Nothing that a Glock to the mouth can’t cure, Dekko.

He forced himself to lie back, to control the mad drumming of his heart. It was too soon for another injection.

Twenty years later, and I’m still shooting up.

But the dream had been so realistic, gripping him harder than it had in memory. He stared at the ceiling, recalling those ensuing years, focusing his mind on all the work he’d done to get where he was now. …

After his detox—a bleak period of unrelenting nausea and bone-jarring tremors—and four months of physical rehab for his injuries, the Order had taken him to their compound.

The training had been as punishing as Webb had promised. Pain came daily, but it did harden Declan. The commanders who hurt him the most were the ones he respected above all others.

When he’d heard other recruits complaining about “brainwashing techniques,” Declan had been astounded that anyone might disagree with—or resist—what the commanders were instilling in them.

How could Declan be brainwashed into hating the detrus more than he already did?

Physically, Declan had every advantage over the other recruits. Even at seventeen, he was bigger, swifter, more powerful. Webb attributed it to kicking heroin, the training, the vitamins, and diet.

For once in his life, Declan had excelled, even thrived.

And while he’d learned weapons, hunting tactics, and military strategy, he’d begun educating himself and disguising his accent; he hadn’t wanted his enemies to determine anything about him.

He buried all traces of his past so that no one could ever connect him to the ignorant seventeen-year-old junkie who’d begged for death while his tormentors laughed around mouthfuls of his blood and skin.

After his initiation into the Order, Declan had hunted down the offspring and forebears of the creatures who’d butchered his own family. Yet that hadn’t been enough to satisfy him. He’d become obsessed with tracking more and erasing them from the face of the earth.

And no matter how much the detrus begged—he always made them beg—he’d slaughtered them. Nothing pleased him more.

But then two things had changed.

His abilities had become too noticeable; enter Dixon with her shots.

Webb had given him control of this installation, charging him with capturing and imprisoning the creatures Declan wanted only to kill.

Of course, Declan had obeyed the command, ignoring his own deep-seated needs. After all, the man had saved his life, then given him purpose.

Reminded of all Webb had done for him, Declan vowed to try harder to control himself, his … impulses.

I know of no man more disciplined than me. He peered over at the monitor, saw the glowing Valkyrie on one of the bunks with her long blond hair spread out around her head. Like a halo.

I will crush this interest.

Eyes narrowed with hate, he rose and turned off the screen.