Immortals After Dark 05 - Dark Needs at Nights Edge

door with a wide-eyed Néomi right behind him. Though his speed was still superhuman, he was slower than he’d been last night—even with his ankles free. They’d already weakened him drastically.
    As Nikolai lumbered to his feet, Sebastian stood on the stairs, arms outstretched. But Conrad planted his chained hands on the railing and leapt down, evading any contact. When he turned toward the front entry, he found Murdoch barring his way.
    Nikolai yelled, “Conrad, it’s impossible for you to leave! Damn it, the sun!”
    What would happen to Conrad in the direct light of day? She gasped when he charged Murdoch, tackling him into the mahogany front doors. They wrenched one completely free of its hinges, flattening it onto the front porch.
    Just before they surged into the morning sun, Murdoch traced back to the protective cover of the porch; Conrad continued. Should she try to stop him?
    Nikolai started to follow, but Sebastian snatched his shirt and lugged him back to the shade. “He won’t get far, Nikolai.”
    Néomi stood beside the brothers. Out of habit, she shaded her eyes as the four of them watched Conrad racing down the drive. I didn’t mean to drop him like that. He must be so bewildered.
    “He’s going to burn,” Nikolai said, sounding in pain.
    Just as Néomi had, Murdoch put his hand to his forehead. “And then he’s going to learn.”

    The sun sears his eyes as if they’ve been doused with acid. Fight on. The bayou is just down the drive, then across the road. He can scent the dark water.
    His skin begins to burn. He grits his teeth against the pain.
    Bayou just across the road. He can make it, could survive in the shade there. Flames growing.
    He nears the property line. Gaining distance away from whatever entity seems bent on tormenting him. A being he can’t see to fight, with no throat to savage. A disembodied voice had echoed all around him.
    Almost there... Burning... burning...
    Suddenly his sight goes black; a force shoves him back on his ass. Once his vision clears, his eyes widen. Crumbling blue walls surround him. He yells in disbelief. Confusion wells.
    The same bedroom! He’s in... the same goddamned room.
    Crouched on the floor, he knocks his head against the wall again and again until the needle pierces his arm.

4

    Something is happening to the patient.
    Over the last week, Néomi had begun noticing an eerie awareness in those red eyes that wasn’t there before, the blankness in his gaze receding with each day.
    And she would know. She’d done little else but study him since his bizarre return, seldom retiring to her own room—her secret studio, hidden downstairs. Even now as Conrad lay in the bed once more, sleeping, she floated above the end of his mattress, continuing her vigil.
    When he’d returned that first morning, he’d been raging, banging his head against the wall as if to blunt whatever was inside his mind. Plaster had snowed down on him and stuck to his bloody cheeks. Once the brothers had rechained him—tethering him to the bed this time—Conrad had been unreachable, drugged and muttering foreign words in his low, harsh voice.
    To be fair, she would’ve been addled, too. One moment she’d been watching him running, the next she’d heard his unholy roar just upstairs.
    No longer was Néomi the only one trapped here. Apparently, witches truly had put a boundary spell on Elancourt. As long as Conrad wore those chains, he couldn’t cross the property line. The chains also rendered it impossible for him to teleport—or trace, as they called it.
    Néomi couldn’t put her finger on exactly when she’d first sensed a change in him. Whenever his brothers had spoken to him, Conrad had muttered incoherently, and yet she’d begun to get the feeling that he was... coherent. At least intermittently.
    Sometimes it seemed as if he was trying to filter a million thoughts in order to speak only one, and that was why he had difficulty talking normally. On occasion, even his accent changed... .
    He began twisting then, his head thrashing, no doubt caught in the grip of a horrific nightmare. Conrad routinely suffered them. With his fangs seeming to sharpen at intervals, he writhed, muscles straining, the chains cutting into his skin. She frowned. She didn’t like to see that.
    Even though everything about him should repel her, she found herself striving to be impassive. He’d destroyed parts of her house. He was a killer. He continued to have flashes of violent