Available Darkness Season 1

her pulse, faint and barely there, against his fevered lips. Something pulled him, commanded him, compelled him. He opened his mouth. Pain splintered through his entire jaw as John’s teeth seemed to grind, twist and churn beneath his gums as his canines grew longer and sharper, piercing the edges of his tongue. Blood flooded his mouth with the acrid taste of metal.
    Bite her.
    Rationality and doubt pleaded with him to stop. This is insane, you’re going to finish her off right here!
    John closed his eyes tighter, ignoring the doubt, and put his mouth on Abigail’s neck. His instincts screamed to just bite, but fear held him in check, wondering how hard to bite, what if he bit in the wrong place?
    Do it!
    Instinct flipped a switch.
    John bit down without thought or hesitation. Blood flooded his mouth, warm and bitter. He drank and swallowed in two reluctant gulps, then breathed into her wound. Only it wasn’t a breath from his lungs, but something else entirely — essence delivered as elixir. A current, different and less intense than the kind he stole from the lives of so many, flowed, this time from him, and into her.
    Abigail’s body started to convulse as a painful scream burst from her mouth.
    John pulled back, afraid his touch had started a fire which would quickly consume her. Her fingers splayed as her legs shot out, completely stiff. Her back arched at an unnatural angle. Her mouth opened wide, twisted in seeming agony as she fought for breath, her chest rising and falling rapidly. Her eyes opened, showing nothing but white as her pupils rolling into the back of her head.
    John took another step back, his heart on the precipice of either fear that these were her final spastic death throes, or joy that he’d managed to save her. Then…
    Her body fell limp as if whatever puppeteer holding the strings had cut them all at once.
    John dropped to his knees, his breath and heart on pause.
    Her hair hung in tangles over her pale face — he couldn’t tell if she were dead or alive.
    Then a silent moan escaped her open mouth as she lifted her head, hair falling from her waxen face and eyes blinking open. Though barely there, Abigail smiled and spoke in a voice so frail, the gathering wind nearly tore it asunder.
    “My angel.”

    * * * *

CHAPTER 6 — Caleb Baldwin

    Swallow enough pills and sleep eventually finds you.
    Caleb found himself deep in his dreams, though he wasn’t in the bedroom of his youth. He was somewhere else.
    He stood on a deck overlooking a pristine white shore, familiar, though only through the hazy fog of fragmented memory. He was more relaxed than he’d remembered feeling in a while. Chasing criminals had a way of owning you even when off duty. Before their mutual “I do’s,” Julia used to continually complain, both with words and dancing eyes, about his inability to unplug from work and just be happy.
    Julia!
    He remembered the shoreline; the pristine white sands of Aruba, where they spent three amazing weeks on their honeymoon. Which was, oddly enough, probably the last time he’d felt at peace. She’d made him promise to take three weeks off from work, a luxury he’d never experienced, even though he’d probably built up a half year’s worth of vacation time. He didn’t want to. He had too much work and knew it would pile up without his constant attention.
    “The world will still turn and the job will get done without you,” Julia had said.
    She was right. For the first time in as long as he could remember, he found his shoulders relaxing long enough to let him enjoy life. An epiphany, Caleb returned home with renewed purpose. Life was his to create.
    Family first, a husband’s duty.
    That vow lasted almost until the end of his first week back, when Caleb found himself buried alive with a case that kept him hostage to the office from early light to mocking moon. One case turned to two, then weeks to months and months to years until just like that, he found that he’d slowly surrendered to the shackles of fate without even realizing it.
    Waves lapped. Caleb took a sip of wine. Behind him, he heard a muffled voice from the other side of the double French doors of their honeymoon villa. Though he was deep into dream and memory, a part of him was also aware of the waking life in which his wife was long since dead. His eager heart sped in his chest.
    It had been so long since she had visited his dreams. Even though he’d wake up mourning her fresh, these brief visits