Dark Heart of the Sun (Dark Destinies Book 1) Read Online Free Page A

braced himself at the base of the polished oak staircase. He wouldn’t take no for an answer this time. He couldn’t afford to. Neither could Cassidy.
    He closed his eyes, gathering himself. This should have been so simple.
    Cassidy all but fleeing from him the morning after being bitten could mean only one thing. She was compelled. She had to be. Compelled to rush into the vampire’s arms and certain death.
    Jackson had been unprepared for the blood-sucking vagrant that surprised them on the beach last night. The small full-spectrum flashlight he always kept in his pocket had only managed to surprise the creature and chase it away, not kill it, saving Cassidy’s life at great risk to his own. But even then he doubted he’d seen the last of this demon.
    The serum its bite left in her bloodstream made her easy to manipulate, even at a distance. The vampire would be able to find her or summon her and place into her head anything it wished, as it already had since she remembered none of what happened and was bound and determined to leave him. The only way to stop her would have been to physically restrain her, but that would have done irreparable damage to their already-shaky relationship.
    So he’d let her go.
    Following her and putting the bloodsucker down well before sunset should have been a straightforward operation. He should have scored his first kill. It would have taken a couple of weeks after that for the serum to leave her system and the compulsion to wear off, but then Cassidy would have been back to normal, remembering little if anything. Simple.
    Except it wasn’t.
    Instead of bee-lining to a vampire’s lair, she spent hours checking out every hotel and motel in town, apparently at a genuine loss as to where to stay. By the time Jackson lost her at a red light on US 1, frustration boiled in his gut like a vat of acid.
    He waited until well after dark to call her. She was by no means excited to hear his voice. He tried to get a sense of her whereabouts through background noises. A microwave beeped. Drawers slammed.
    “Just making sure you’re all right, babe,” he said, smiling at her clipped tones of lingering anger. No hint of distraction or the radical personality change typical of someone under a vampire’s influence. She was fine, at least for the time being.
    But that still left a vampire hunting Orchard Beach, one that could decide to finish what it started with Cassidy. The faster Jackson put the creature out of its eternal misery, the better. There was, however, only one way to accomplish this now—straight up these stairs.
    Resolve in place, he ascended to the Striker Foundation’s inner sanctum, a windowless room on the mansion’s third floor, guarded by an electronically sealed steel-core door. He jammed his thumb to the reader, willing the indicator to turn green with a pleasant warble. Instead it buzzed red. His fist curled tight, and he knocked. Hard.
    As Jackson hoped—and feared—it was Uncle Garrett who tore open the door, looking like a thundercloud preparing to hurl lightning. Garrett’s scowl eased a bit when he saw his nephew. After giving him an assessing look, he turned away, letting Jackson catch the door and enter before it shut in his face.
    Dry, super-cooled air enveloped him, permeated with the aromas of ancient paper and oiled leather. A hint of blood, too, he imagined, the scent of secret history. Between the towering, well-stocked bookcases hung the stoic portraits of generations of Striker patriarchs, keepers of the Foundation, his father and uncle among them. Their eyes appeared to follow him, judging, and finding him lacking. The way his father had found him lacking earlier. Why else would Warren refuse to intercede with his brother on his son’s behalf if not because he didn’t believe Jackson was ready to do the job he was born to?
    “I’m still not on the Grid?” Jackson ventured, taking a tight hold of his nerves.
    “Nothing gets by you, does