Broken Dawn - Dianne Duvall
Chapter One
Nick Belanger strode down the deserted sidewalk, the buildings that composed the University of Houston rising up around him. The night sky above bore thick clouds that hid a crescent moon, deepening the darkness that lurked wherever campus lights didn’t reach.
No students walked the path tonight, having been chased to their dorm rooms or their homes off campus by the heavy rains that had fallen earlier. A few puddles here and there reflected the lights along the sidewalk, their surfaces rippling as drops that collected on the trees above slid off leaves and plunged to the ground.
“It’s weird.”
Nick glanced at the woman beside him. Like him, she wore black cargo pants, a black shirt, and a long black coat that concealed the many blades she carried. About a foot shorter than Nick, she barely reached five foot one with boots on. That, combined with her slender form, lent her a delicate and vulnerable appearance that was mightily deceiving. Eliana was one of the fiercest warriors he’d had the pleasure of hunting with over the centuries.
“What is?” he murmured.
“It’s been so quiet of late.” She glanced around, her long black braid sliding across her back. “We just defeated Gershom. I would think we’d be facing the fallout for quite some time.” That fallout being the dramatically increased vampire population left behind after Gershom’s machinations.
As usual, just the thought of the bastard made anger slither through Nick and curled his hands into fists. The Immortal Guardians had never in his lifetime—hell, never in anyone’s lifetime—faced such a powerful adversary. Both the immortals and the human network that aided them had suffered serious casualties in their quest to identify and defeat their nemesis.
Eliana likely wouldn’t be by his side right now if they hadn’t. She’d been stationed in New York for decades with a number of other immortals, hunting and slaying the psychotic vampires who thrived in the busy city. Then Gershom had started wreaking fucking havoc in North Carolina, setting a plan into motion that had come damned close to launching Armageddon. Twice. Seth, the immensely powerful leader of the Immortal Guardians, had transferred two of Eliana’s closest immortal friends to North Carolina temporarily. Then shit had gone really wrong and… the two had never returned to New York.
Eliana had needed a change after that, so Seth transferred her to Houston. Under Gershom’s leadership, vampires had stopped killing their victims and instead started transforming them. Vampire populations around the globe had swollen to insane numbers. And instead of encountering two or three vampires in a night, Nick and his fellow immortals found themselves battling a dozen or more in one sitting.
He glanced around. Only a couple of weeks or so had passed since they’d defeated Gershom. Like Eliana, he’d thought it would take longer for the vampire population to dwindle. “Maybe the rain chased them away.”
She snorted. “Wusses. When did vampires get to be so damn sensitive?”
He laughed. “I don’t know. But I don’t mind if it gives us a quiet night or two.”
“I suppose.”
“Where’s Rafe tonight?” The immortal male usually hunted in Houston and sometimes partnered with Eliana.
“Puttering around Austin, I think.” The last big battle with Gershom had taken place at a military base not far from the state’s capital.
Nick frowned. “I thought the network tied up all the loose ends there.”
“They did. I think he’s just bored.”
Quiet fell. Or as much quiet as there could be in a city the size of Houston.
“So…” Eliana slid him a look from the corner of her eye.
He arched a brow. “So?”
“How’s the missus?”
He shook his head. The world of the Immortal Guardians could be a dark one, so many of them liked to razz each other to lighten things up a bit.
As Eliana was doing now.
The missus to whom she referred was Nick’s next-door neighbor, Kayla Dorman. Eliana knew he was besotted with the lovely single mother and liked to tease him about it.
But Kayla had gone through a messy divorce a few years earlier and—based on the conversations Nick’s preternatural hearing had allowed him to overhear—had no interest in ever marrying again. No interest in dating either. Throw a teenaged daughter who’d once had a crush on Nick into the mix and… yeah. There was no way he could pursue anything romantic with Kayla.
“She misses Becca.”
Eliana nodded. “Becca started at Duke University this semester, right?”
“Yes.”
“Didn’t you say Kayla homeschooled her?”
“Yes. Kindergarten through twelfth grade.”
“Kudos to her. That must have been hard as hell after the divorce.”
He nodded.
Her brow puckered. “After spending