Nightshade

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Teaser chapter

  Shot in the dark

  Declan’s iron grip on me went a little more lax as he tucked the phone back into the pocket of his black jeans. It was enough to let me sink my teeth into his arm. He pushed me back so hard I whacked my head against the wall and fell to the ground. I’d managed to draw blood on his forearm, which was already riddled with other scars.

  I scrambled up to my feet, adrenaline coursing through my body. I was ready to do whatever I had to in order to fight for my life, but another curtain of agony descended over me.

  “What’s happening to me?” I managed to say through clenched teeth. “What the hell was in that syringe?”

  He grabbed me by the front of my sweater and brought me very close to his scarred face. “Poison.”

  “Oh my God. What kind of poison?”

  “The kind that will kill you,” he said simply. “Which is why you have to come with me.”

  I shook my head erratically. “I have to get to a hospital.”

  “No.” He grabbed me tighter. “Death now or death later. That’s your only choice.”

  It was a choice I didn’t want to make. It was one I wouldn’t have to make. More pain erupted inside of me and the world went totally and completely black.

  PRAISE FOR THE PARANORMAL ROMANCES OF MICHELLE ROWEN

  “The twists come thick and fast.” —Publishers Weekly

  “Michelle Rowen never disappoints! I love her work!”

  —Gena Showalter, New York Times bestselling author

  Berkley Sensation titles by Michelle Rowen

  THE DEMON IN ME

  SOMETHING WICKED

  NIGHTSHADE

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

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  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

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  South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  NIGHTSHADE

  A Berkley Sensation Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley Sensation mass-market edition / February 2011

  Copyright © 2011 by Michelle Rouillard.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-47777-9

  BERKLEY® SENSATION

  Berkley Sensation Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  BERKLEY® SENSATION and the “B” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you so much to my brilliant editor, Cindy Hwang, and my fabulous agent, Jim McCarthy, for giving me the chance to show my undying love for vampires in this book.

  Thank you to my bodacious betareaders:

  Eve Silver, my writing buddy through both the highs and lows, who entices me to have stress-relieving powdered mini donuts far too often.

  Bonnie Staring, my amazing friend, cat lover, cheer-leader, rock star. Well, not really a rock star, but she’s done some reality TV. And she literally has pom-poms to cheer various events. Which totally helps.

  And thank you to my awesome readers who enjoyed my funny vampires in the past ... I hope you like the scary ones, too!

  1

  LIFE AS I KNEW IT ENDED AT HALF PAST ELEVEN ON A Tuesday morning.

  There were currently thirty minutes left.

  “What’s your poison?” I asked my friend and coworker Stacy on my way out of the office on a coffee break.

  She looked up at me from a spreadsheet on her computer screen, her eyes practically crossed from crunching numbers all morning. “You’re a serious lifesaver, Jill, you know that?”

  “Well aware.” I grinned at her, then shifted my purse to my other shoulder and took the five-dollar-bill she thrust at me.

  “I’ll take a latte, extra foam. And one of those white chocolate chunk cookies. My stomach’s growling happily just thinking about it.”

  Stacy didn’t normally go for the cookie action. “No diet today?”

  “Fuck diets.”

  “Can I quote you?”

  She laughed. “I’ll have it printed on a T-shirt. Hey, Steve! Jill’s headed to the coffee shop. You want anything?”

  I groaned inwardly. I hadn’t wanted to make a big production out of it since I hated making change. Unlike Stacy, math was not my friend.

  By the time I finally made it out of the office I had a yellow sticky note clenched in my fist scrawled with four different coffee orders.

  Twenty minutes left.

  The line at Starbucks was, as usual, ridiculous. I waited. I ordered. I waited some more. I juggled my wallet and my purse along with the bag of pastries and take-out tray of steaming caffeine and finally left the shop, passing an electronics store on my way back. It had a bunch of televisions in the window set to CNN. Some plane crash in Europe was blazing. No survivors. I shivered despite the heat of the day and continued walking.

  Five minutes left.

  I returned to my office building, which not only housed Lambert Capital, the investment and financial analysis company where I currently temped, but also a small pharmaceutical research company, a marketing firm, and a modeling agency.

 
; “Hold the elevator,” I called out as I crossed the lobby. My heels clicked against the shiny black marble floor. Despite my request, the elevator was not held. The doors closed when I was only a couple of steps away from it, a look of bemusement on the sole occupant’s face who hadn’t done me the honor of waiting.

  One minute left.

  I nudged the up button with my elbow and waited, watching as the number above the doors stopped at the tenth floor, ISB Pharmaceuticals, paused for what felt like an eternity, and then slowly descended back to the lobby. The other elevator seemed eternally stuck at the fifteenth. Another bank of elevators were located around the corner, but I chose to stay where I was and try my best to be patient.

  Finally, the doors slid open to reveal a man who wore a white lab coat and a security badge that bore his name: Carl Anderson. His eyes were shifty and there was a noticeable sheen of sweat on his brow. My gaze dropped to his right hand in which he tightly held a syringe—the sharp needle uncapped.

  That was a safety hazard I wasn’t getting anywhere near. What the hell was he thinking, carrying something like that around?

  Glaring at him, I waited for him to get out of the elevator so I could get on, but he didn’t budge an inch.

  Behind thick glasses, his eyes were steadily widening with what looked like fear, and totally focused on something behind me. Curious about what would earn this dramatic reaction, I turned to see another man enter the lobby. He was tall, had a black patch over his left eye, and wasn’t smiling. Aside from that, I noticed the gun he held. The big gun. The one he now had trained on the man in the elevator.

  “Leaving so soon, Anderson? Why am I not surprised?” the man with the gun growled. “No more fucking games. Give it to me right now.”

  I gasped as Carl Anderson clamped his arm around my neck. The tray of coffees went flying as I clawed at him, but my struggling did nothing. I couldn’t even scream; he held me so tightly that it cut off my breath.

  “Why are you here?” Anderson demanded. “I was supposed to be the one to make contact.”

  The gunman’s icy gaze never wavered. “Let go of the woman.”

  My eyes watered. I couldn’t breathe. My larynx was being crushed.

  “But she’s the only thing standing between me and your direct orders right now, isn’t she?”

  “And why would you think I care if you grab some random hostage?” the gunman growled.

  Random hostage?

  Panic swelled further inside of me. I scanned the lobby to see that this altercation hadn’t gone unnoticed. Several people with shocked looks on their faces had cell phones pressed to their ears. Were they calling 911? Where was security? No guards approached with guns drawn.

  Fear coursed through me, closing my throat. My hands, which gripped Anderson’s arm, were shaking.

  “We can talk about this,” Anderson said.

  “It’s too late for negotiations. There’s more at risk than the life of one civilian.”

  “I thought we were supposed to be working together.”

  “Sure. Until you decided to sell elsewhere. Hand over the formula.”

  “I destroyed the rest.” Anderson’s voice trembled. “One prototype is all that’s left.”

  “That was a mistake.” The gunman’s tone was flat.

  “It was a mistake creating it in the first place. It’s dangerous.”

  “Isn’t that the whole point?”

  “You’d defend something that would just as easily kill you, Declan? Even though you can walk in the sunlight, you’re not much better than the other bloodsuckers.” The man who held me prone sounded disgusted. And scared shitless—almost as scared as I felt.

  Bloodsuckers? What the hell was he talking about? How did I get in the middle of this? I’d only gone out for coffee—coffee that was now splattered all over the clean lobby floor. It was just a normal workday—a normal Tuesday.

  More people had gathered around us, moving backward toward the walls and door, away from this unexpected standoff, hands held to their mouths in shock at what they were witnessing. I spotted someone from the office to my left rounding the corner where the other elevators were located—it was Stacy with an armful of file folders, her eyes wide as saucers as she saw me. She took a step closer, mouthing my name.

  No, please don’t come any closer, I thought frantically. Don’t get hurt.

  Where the hell was security?

  I shrieked when I felt a painful jab at my throat.

  “Don’t do that,” the man with the gun, Declan, snapped.

  “You know what will happen if I inject her with this, don’t you?” Anderson’s voice held an edge of something—panic, fear, desperation. I didn’t have to be the helpless hostage in this situation to realize that was a really bad mix.

  He had the syringe up against my throat, the sharp tip of the needle stabbing deep into my flesh. I stopped struggling and tried not to move, tried not to breathe. My vision blurred with tears as I waited for the man with the gun to do something to save me. He was my only hope.

  “I don’t give a shit about her,” my only hope said evenly. “All I care about is that formula. Now hand it over and maybe you get to live.”

  The gunman’s face was oddly emotionless considering this situation. He wore black jeans and a black T-shirt, which bared thick, sinewy biceps. His face didn’t have an ounce of humanity to it. Around the black eye patch, scar tissue branched out like a spiderweb up over his forehead and down his left cheek, all the way to his neck. He was as scary-looking as he was ugly.

  “I knew they’d send you to retrieve this, Declan.” Anderson’s mouth was so close to my ear that I could feel his hot breath. His shaky voice held a mocking edge. “Who better for this job?”

  “I’ll give you five seconds to release the woman and hand over that syringe with its contents intact,” Declan said. “Or I’ll kill both of you where you stand. Five ... four ...”

  “Think about this, will you?” Anderson dug the needle further into my flesh, prompting another wheeze of a shriek from me. “You need to open your fucking eyes and see the truth before it’s too late. I’m trying to stop this the only way I can. It’s wrong. All of it’s wrong. You’re just as brainwashed as the rest of them, aren’t you?”

  With his chest pressed against my back, I could feel his erratic heartbeat. He feared for his life. A mental flash of memories of my family, my friends, sped past my eyes. I didn’t want to die—no, please, not like this.

  “Three ... two ...” Declan continued, undeterred. The laser sighter from his gun fixed on my chest.

  Several onlookers ran for the glass doors, and screams sounded out.

  “You want the abomination I created that goddamned much?” Anderson yelled. “Here! You can have it!”

  A second later, I felt a burning pain, hot as fire, as he injected me with the syringe’s contents. It was a worse pain than the stabbing itself. Then he raggedly ripped the needle out and pushed me away hard enough that I went sprawling to the floor. I clamped my hand against the side of my neck and started to scream.

  The sound of a gunshot, even louder than my screams, pierced my eardrums. I turned to look at the man who’d just injected me. He now lay sprawled out on the marble floor, his eyes open and glassy. There was a large hole in Anderson’s forehead, red and wet and sickening. He had a gun in his left hand, which he must have pulled from his lab coat when he let go of me. The empty syringe lay next to him.

  Declan went directly to him, gun still trained on the dead man for another moment before he tucked it away, squatted, and then silently and methodically began going through the pockets of the white coat.

  My entire body shook, but otherwise I was frozen in place. There were more screams now from the others who’d witnessed the shooting as they scattered in all directions.

  Declan swore under his breath and then turned to look directly at me for the very first time. The iris of his right eye was pale gray and soulless, and the look he gave me froze m
y insides.

  My throat felt like it had been slit wide open, but I was still breathing. Still thinking. A quick, erratic scan of the lobby showed where I’d dropped my purse and the coffees and pastries six feet to my right. Most of the people in the lobby were now running for the doors to escape to the street outside. A security alarm finally began to wail, adding to the chaos.

  “You—” Declan rose fluidly to his feet. He was easily a full foot taller than my five-four. “—come here.”

  Like hell I would.

  The elevator to the left of me opened and a man pushing an empty mail cart got off. The murderer’s attention went to it. I took it as the only chance I might ever get. I scrambled to my feet and ran.

  “Jill!” I heard Stacy yell, but it didn’t slow me down. I had to get away, far away from the office. My mind had switched into survival mode. Stacy couldn’t get anywhere near me right now; it would only put her in danger, too.

  I left my purse behind—the contents of my life scattered on the smooth, cold floor next to the spilled coffee and spreading pool of blood. I pushed through the front doors, fully expecting Declan to shoot me in my back. But he didn’t.

  Yanking my hand from my wounded neck, I saw that it was covered in blood. My stomach lurched and I almost vomited. What was in that syringe? It burned like lava sliding through my veins.

  I was badly hurt. Jesus, I’d been stabbed in the throat with a needle by a stranger. If I wasn’t in such pain, I’d think I was having a nightmare.

  This was a nightmare—a waking one.

  A look behind me confirmed that Declan, whoever the hell he was, had exited the office building. He scanned one side of the street before honing in on me.

  I clutched at a few people’s arms as I stumbled past them. They recoiled from me, faceless strangers who weren’t willing to help a woman with a bleeding neck wound.

  My heart slammed against my rib cage as I tried to run, but I couldn’t manage more than a stagger. I wanted to pass out. The world was blurry and shifting around me.