Night Fever (A Rue Darrow Novel Book 3) Read online

  Night Fever

  A Rue Darrow Novel

  Copyright © June 2015, Audrey Claire

  Book cover created by Yocla Designs

  No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, distributed, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, without express written permission from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review purposes.

  This book is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to any person, living or dead, or any events or occurrences, is purely coincidental. The characters and story line are created from the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously.

  OTHER WORKS AVAILABLE:

  A Libby Grace Mystery

  How to Be a Ghost

  How to Blackmail a Ghost

  How to Kill a Ghost

  Rue Darrow Series

  Shift of Time

  Fox in the Quarter (Side Novella)

  Wolf Ties

  Night Fever

  www.authoraudreyclaire.com

  Chapter One

  I scootched down to his level and rested my arms over my knees. For a split second, I almost smiled. Then I recalled that wasn’t such a good idea. Instead, I concentrated on sending out good vibes.

  “So, little fellow…” Imagine me calling anyone little fellow when I was hardly a few inches above five feet tall, “Are you still going to let me in?”

  The person in question was a seven-year-old, and no, if you’re wondering I was not feeling guilty about manipulating him. After all, one must remember I am a creature of the night. Manipulation comes with the territory. I have said before since I turned vampire, I have sensed a darkness within me. There’s no denying the fact, or for that matter resisting it—much.

  I did have an edict from my sire to help and not hurt humans, so you can rest assured despite my influence on the young mind of the boy standing before me, I would not kill him. For that matter, I had no plans to suck his blood either. Just how depraved do you think I am?

  Moving on, I stood outside grounds, which I hoped were the right ones. I had gone through a lot of trouble, research, and favor-promising to get the information about this place, but I was finally here.

  The Meris Corporation was the backer for the home where Arianna Justiss protected and trained humans who were gifted with special abilities. A while ago, I had left a couple young people in her charge. While I was sure Arianna didn’t like or trust me very much, I trusted my instincts to believe she took good care of Shift and Inna. My reasons for coming to the organization had nothing to do with checking up on them. Well, not entirely.

  Arianna had hinted to me no one knew the location of the organization’s grounds, and I had visions of it being shrouded in mystery, existing on another plane. Hey, that wasn’t impossible given I had looked into other planes of existence at my friend Bill’s library. Arianna had indicated this wasn’t the case. I learned she wasn’t just pulling my leg. On one of my rare trips outside of New Orleans, I had arrived in Virginia to visit the school.

  The building appeared more like a medieval castle than just an ordinary boarding school, with stone walls and turrets. Given I had arrived at night, there were deep shadows, and I picked up the sound of footsteps in various corners. I liked to think this was simply humans patrolling as guards, but I couldn’t be sure. Since I had arrived, my senses of the entire place were a tad skewed. If I had to explain it, I couldn’t. My reaction to Meris was as if I had a head cold, which was impossible.

  A ten-foot wall composed of stone surrounded the property to the point where one had to step back from the grounds a few yards to see the upper floors and the turrets. Just how many humans found themselves with special abilities? The night before when I had approached to traverse this wall, I found myself thrown back. At first I thought it was magic. Then I realized it had the same qualities of a barrier when trying to enter a human’s home. Of course, I should have thought of it before. The children and other human adults lived at the school. As such the ancient rule, or whatever it was that governed a vampire’s curse, kicked in. I couldn’t enter without the express permission from a human who lived there.

  In the case of Meris, the barrier extended far from the actual building, across the grounds, and to the gate. Perhaps it had to do with the number of people living on the grounds, but it was a no go for me. Ever the resourceful vampire, I had decided to glamour some unsuspecting person to get them to invite me in. Yes, friends, I have learned to glamour without issue. Go me. In addition, I have been toying with reaching into human minds to—cough—strengthen my personal abilities. Nothing untoward, I assure you. When one existed in New Orleans as a vampire, there were always creatures seeking you out for their own nefarious plans. I had to do what I could to protect myself.

  So you see why I was convincing this little guy to invite me onto the grounds of the Meris Corporation.

  No? You still don’t understand?

  Well, you will soon.

  I raised a motherly hand to his hair and brushed it aside. He was a cute fellow with blond hair and big doe brown eyes. Innocence still ran through him, and I guessed his people had discovered his abilities not long ago and transferred him to Meris. For a moment, I wondered what those abilities were but then focused my mind.

  “Sweetheart, look at me,” I whispered. “Won’t you invite me in?”

  I felt the power go out of me and got a small rush from it, I’m semi-ashamed to say. Not only was the glamour in my eyes to convince him, but it was also in the tone of my voice. From the first moment I spoke, he had little choice. I urge you to see that I wasn’t here for fun and games. I had people to save, and this was the method I believed would get the job done, although there were no guarantees. I was on a mission.

  “Y-yes,” came the gentle reply.

  I cupped both sides of his face between my hands. “Good boy. Will you say the words? I invite you to come into my home.”

  He repeated after me, and I took a quick peek along the road in case we were seen. While I scanned our surroundings, the boy tugged my arm. “This way. There’s a hole in the back wall that hasn’t been fixed yet. It’s how me and the guys get out. You might fit.”

  He had the audacity to look me up and down, me who was a pretty cute woman with flaming red hair and a very trim figure. The idea that I might fit? How insulting. After I calmed down and wrestled my indignity under control, I set him straight.

  “Thank you, darling, but I can take it from here. I won’t be squeezing into any tight spaces.” I touched a finger to my lips for an instant. “Also, let’s keep my visit between us, shall we? No one needs to know about it.”

  He agreed, and I sent him on his way. I was confident I had nothing to fear, and when I approached the stone wall and touched it, I discovered I was right. No barrier pushed me back.

  I strode along the exterior of the grounds, listening for footsteps. When the nearest ones faded, I leaped up to the top of the wall, landed on it for half a beat, and then dropped to the other side. That’s when the fanfare began.

  I’ll take this moment to remind you with as few words as possible that as a vampire, I had the ability to dispel magic. Not all magic, and some spells were so intricate it would take me a while. Surface casting, like say a warning system, well, they reacted to me in the way bubble wrap responds to finger pressure—with a pop.

  When I landed on the opposite side of the wall, I set off a series of lovely sparkles and pops that alerted the entire school that I had arrived. So much for stealth. Other alarms went off, ordinary ones that were human constructed. I froze for
an instant, crouched low and began running toward the building. Giving up wasn’t an option.

  Rather than go full tilt with my super speed, I moved in short bursts. I saw the layout of the grounds without issue, despite the moon having disappeared behind clouds. The lawns were manicured, and various smaller structures had been built on it, such as a gazebo and a statue in the midst of what looked like a maze. Foliage covered the expanse, and tall trees with thick trunks and reaching leaf-covered limbs almost covered the lower windows of the main building. I wasn’t sure if more powerful magic or other traps were set along my path, so I had to take my time. Not that I worried about being caught. The worst that could happen was one of the traps caused me to be injured and therefore lose blood. Losing even a minute amount of blood could be dangerous with so many humans only feet away. My edict to care for humans did not counter all-out blood lust because it was the one of the original curses associated with vampirism.

  I reached the base of one of the trees without incident and paused to listen. The humans were running in my direction, but I leaped to the highest bough and pressed myself against the trunk. One of the good qualities of a vampire is we don’t breathe, and we can stay as still as the dead whenever we choose. Oh, right, we are dead.

  I waited until the men passed by and then turned to look toward the windows. The spot I had chosen at random looked onto a hall. Boring in that a few kids strolled along, gesturing to each other and laughing. Hadn’t they heard the alarms? Or maybe this incident happened often enough that they didn’t react?

  I sniffed the air, and now I picked up Inna’s scent. Being closer to the interior must have either taken me out of the odd effect that skewed my senses, or I had disabled it. Either way, I needed to work my way in the direction I smelled Inna. The eighteen-year-old wasn’t the one I was there to visit, but I wouldn’t miss the opportunity to see her.

  After jumping from tree to tree and keeping one ear on the movements at ground level, I spotted Inna. The room she occupied was designed like a gym but was massive with plenty of floor space in the middle and training equipment around the walls. Bars hung at odd angles from the ceiling. They seemed pretty high up to me, but I supposed the humans knew what they were doing.

  Inna, dressed in all black, and her short-cropped hair looking like it had been hacked off even shorter, stood poised as if ready to attack. I glanced across to her opponent, a tall young man about her age who carried the air of one adored for his good looks all his life. He flashed a bright confident smile, and Inna dropped her chin low, mouth tight. Either she was angry he thought he could beat her, or she concentrated hard to impress him. Perhaps a little bit of both, I thought when Inna ran at him.

  I soon got the gist of the skill level difference when no matter how many times Inna swung at him or threw perfectly executed kicks, she couldn’t land a blow. The young man was good and fast. Not inhumanly fast, but he moved as if he had honed instincts. As I watched the fight, I didn’t see any display of power. That is until the pretty boy leaped toward the bars overhead.

  “Good job, kid,” I whispered.

  He swung his head in my direction as he hung from the ceiling, and I blinked in surprise. Had he heard me? Not to be outdone, Inna ran at the wall, leaped onto it at a certain spot, and somehow managed to grab a lower bar toward the sides of the room. Like a little spider monkey, she traversed the ceiling toward the boy, and the two of them continued their fight. I still thought poor Inna had no chance whatsoever until she got a hold of the boy’s ankle. Then I figured it was over. Everything the boy had in his ability would be hers because Inna’s gift came in the form of temporarily stealing others’ gifts.

  To my surprise, the boy shook his head and laughed. He broke free of Inna’s hold and swung backward away from her. Then he changed his mind and swung forward again. This time, he caught her around the waist and dragged her down. She lost hold of the bars and hung from his legs. I could almost imagine the poor girl taking her defeat without grace. She pounded at his legs with her fists, shouting something to him.

  I straightened. Enough sitting around. Concentrating on Inna, I decided to try speaking to her in mind. The soundproofing or whatever it was that kept me from hearing their voices might not stop mind-to-mind communication.

  “Inna, can you hear me?”

  At first it was as if I spoke into a void. Nothing at all, not even an echo back to myself. I pushed harder and narrowed my eyes as I stared at her face, willing her to hear.

  “Inna, it’s Rue Darrow.”

  This time I was sure I got through, or almost. Just before I entered her mind, something slipped up between us, something dark and dangerous. The thing, entity, power, or whatever meant harm—to me. Pain followed the block, sharp and needlelike that went from zero to sixty in nanoseconds. I ground my teeth hard but still screamed a little. I tore at my hair and leaned back to fall straight down to the ground. New pain ricocheted across my backside, but it was gone in an instant. Thank goodness, so was the cruel attack up above.

  I lay confused in the grass, wondering what just happened. Beyond my own receding suffering, I picked up the sound of footsteps. Alarm didn’t surface because I already knew who it was. The boyish chuckle and the impish young face leaning over me confirmed it.

  “Did you try something vampiry just now?” Shift asked.

  “I’m not aware vampiry is a word,” I snarked and sat up.

  He shrugged narrow shoulders, and I took in the familiar face, the ash blond hair and bright blue eyes. Somehow, in the last few months, the boy had gotten taller. In fact, now that I thought of it, Shift might have had a birthday and turned thirteen and Inna nineteen. Who knew?

  “Hello, Shift. How are you, sweetheart?”

  He appeared startled and then grinned. “I forgot everyone called me that before I came here.”

  “I can call you by the name they gave you.”

  “I like Shift. It’s the name I had when I was little. You can use it.”

  A note of sadness came over him, but it flitted away to be replaced by his natural joy. “There are protections everywhere here, and they’re set up to trigger from anything nonhuman. Even if you just stand here, the wards will come after you. They’re like alive or something, and they seek you out.”

  “Lovely.” I stood and brushed leaves and dirt from my bum. “I’m glad you’re okay. Is this like a prison then? Are they treating you well?”

  Shift rocked on his heels and stuck his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. I wasn’t getting the vibe of a prisoner off him. “If you take me for a ride and a milkshake, I’ll tell you more.”

  “A ride?”

  “You know. Moving really fast until I can hardly breathe.”

  I shook my head. “You’re a far cry from the little boy who was frightened by the vampire, and should you be selling your people out to one such as me?”

  “I don’t know anything important that could hurt humans. Come on. Please, Rue? I want to have some fun. All I’ve done lately is study and spar. The sparring is great, but the studying. Ugh! I don’t even get to see Inna as much as I want, and that stupid kid who thinks he’s so special…”

  I smirked. He must mean the impressive one from the second floor. The first time I met Shift, he’d been trying to get Inna to pay him attention. The passage of time hadn’t weakened the boy’s crush, and now he had solid competition. Oh the pains of youth.

  “I don’t know if I should take you off these grounds, Shift. You didn’t say you wouldn’t tell me anything useful to protect your own. You just said you didn’t know. I’m a big proponent of guarding your circle of family and friends. They are more important than anything.”

  He baulked at my mini-lecture, but I was no longer thinking of him or his choice of words. Speaking of guarding your own, something had just turned the corner at the far end of the building, and it wasn’t human. The presence wasn’t a person by any stretch, but all the same it was coming like a being—an angry being.

>   I gaped into the darkness trying to get a visual, but nothing other than mist and darkness met my gaze. “Shift,” I croaked. “You said the wards are sort of alive?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They won’t hurt you? You’re sure about that?”

  “Positive.” He sounded sulky as he looked at the ground and continued to rock. “Saw it plenty of times. There’s always some nonhuman trying to start trouble. The wards never hurt the humans, but they get the nonhumans every time.”

  He chuckled, but I was not amused. Shift didn’t seem to have the ability to sense the ward, maybe not until it attacked.

  “If I take you with me for a little while, will it chase us?”

  “No, they’re bound to this property.”

  “Great!” I snatched him around the waist with one arm. “Time to go.”

  We zipped across the lawn at my highest speed. Now was not the time to worry about whether I would slam into another trap. Not until I was hurtling toward a second of the living wards. Changing course took some effort, but Shift and I zigzagged all over the place, staying one step ahead of an attack. I recalled the pain that entered my head while I tried to get into Inna’s and wondered if the block of darkness that had slid between us was the ward. If so, I wanted no more parts of it.

  Common sense said to leave Shift there and abandon my crazy plan, but this wasn’t about Shift’s safety. I couldn’t afford to give up. I wouldn’t. Not until I had reached my objective, and Orin and Pammie were free.

  Chapter Two

  “That was so cool!” Shift exclaimed, bounding on his toes and dancing along beside me. Such a typical kid, so carefree.

  “I’m glad you enjoyed the adventure,” I said on a dry note. “You realize if those things had caught me I would be dead right now?”

  He screwed his young face at me in confusion. “Aren’t you already dead?”