Free Darkness Dawns by Dianne Duvall

swiftly.”
    Roland watched Sarah until she entered the bedroom and left their sight, then allowed his shoulders to slump and some of the pain he was feeling to show in his face.
    Marcus’s lighthearted facade evaporated. “Hope I didn’t irritate you too much. I was trying to keep her attention focused on me so she wouldn’t notice your eyes.” Slipping an arm around Roland, he practically carried him to the bathroom.
    Roland sat on the side of the bathtub as Marcus closed the door. “Are they glowing again?”
    “Yes.”
    “She’s already seen them. Please tell me you brought sustenance.”
    Marcus unzipped the duffle bag and withdrew a small cooler. Inside were half a dozen bags of much-needed blood.
    With great relief, Roland allowed his fangs to descend and plunged them into the first bag, draining it swiftly. His body was so depleted it took a second, then a third before his wounds began to heal. His hunger ebbed, as did some of the pain.
    Marcus waited patiently, exchanging each empty bag fora full one until Roland was glutted. Putting the cooler away, he handed Roland the clothes he had brought. “Now tell me what happened.”
    Roland did so in tones too low for Sarah to overhear, pulling on a pair of black cargo pants and a long-sleeved black T-shirt that would hide the fact that some of the cuts Sarah had tended would soon be gone.
    “I’ve never heard of such a large group hunting together,” Marcus commented as Roland sat on the tub again to pull on socks and boots.
    “Nor have I and I was definitely their prey. This was no random incident.”
    “Why would they take your blood?”
    “I don’t know. There have been vamps over the centuries who thought they could avoid the madness that afflicts their brethren by subsisting entirely on the blood of one of us.”
    “But if that had been their goal, they would have taken
you,
not a sample.”
    Roland shook his head. “I don’t know their goal. I just know Sarah saved my life and is now caught in the middle, so we need to dispatch these assholes as quickly as possible.”
    “She thinks your eyes and photosensitivity are the result of porphyria?”
    “Yes.”
    The wood floor outside the bathroom door creaked. “It’s awfully quiet in there,” Sarah called worriedly. “Is everything okay?”
    “Yes,” Marcus replied loudly.
    “Roland?”
    He smiled. “I’m all right, Sarah. We’ll be out in a minute. Marcus is just giving me a few stitches.”
    “Okay. Feel free to yell if it hurts too much.”
    “Marcus would mock me if I did.”
    “Not if I hit him with my trusty shovel.”
    Both men laughed.
    “Beautiful, brave, and possessed of violent tendencies. I like her,” Marcus declared.
    Beyond the door, Sarah laughed.
    “Speaking of beautiful, brave, and violent women,” Roland broached hesitantly, “I was surprised to learn you were in North Carolina. I didn’t think anything could drag you away from Texas.”
    All levity fled as Marcus’s face turned to stone. “There’s nothing there for me now.”
    “What happened?” Roland asked, fearing he knew the answer.
    Marcus’s dark eyes filled with grief. “It’s over. Bethany is gone.”
    A deep sorrow invaded Roland. He had only met Bethany Bennett once, curious to see the woman who had held Marcus’s heart for eight hundred years.
    She had been all that his friend had described. Small. Smart. Strong, both physically and emotionally. Brave. Beautiful. Possessed of a great wit and a tendency to tease. (All words and phrases he might use to describe Sarah, now that he thought of it.) Roland had liked her. And didn’t know what Marcus was going to do now that she was gone.
    “When?” he asked softly.
    Marcus’s throat worked. “Seven years ago.”
    Roland closed his eyes. “I’m such a bastard. I didn’t know.” And he should have. Marcus had told him the year he would have to say goodbye to her, but the time had slipped past unnoticed.
    “I knew all along how it would