He couldn’t imagine that she really was a terrible cook. She ate her own food, after all. It was probably just his palate. He hoped so, or she might just be poisoning herself every day.
Walking onto his balcony through the sliding-glass doors, Garrett breathed in the fresh air and let the darkness whip around him instead of invade him. He’d loved this building far longer than he’d lived here. It had been standing for almost a hundred years and was rich with history. As soon as an apartment had opened up, he’d snatched it up without a second thought. Then the unit above him had been vacated after he’d anonymously offered to pay for the old lady who rented it to live in the same retirement home as her sister. The construction business was good to him, but he would never have been able to maintain both apartments without the money his grandmother had left him instead of leaving it to his mother.
It had been a long day, and the last thing he wanted to do was think about the woman who had given him life, but she invaded his thoughts nonetheless. Margery Blackwell had a way of doing that. A hard woman and a terrible mother, she had been instrumental to the development of his powers. He’d thank her for them if they didn’t require so much sacrifice on his part.
She’d known exactly what she was doing when she took her sixteen-year-old son to Lissa to have the first tattoo etched on his lower back. She hadn’t bothered to clue him in. He’d been naive enough to think his mother was cool for letting him get a tattoo before he was of legal age. He still wasn’t sure how she’d figured out that he was different. Unfortunately, she had…and she’d had him marked in the custom of their ancestors, thinking it would give her the ability to control the powers that were unleashed inside him for her own gain. Instead, it had broken him in a way he was still struggling to repair.
He tried to shake off thoughts of Margery, who had ended her life by her own hand long ago, but other dark memories reared up to take their place. A black-haired girl, fierce and lovely. And dead. Morgan. The two women were intertwined in his mind, because without Margery’s interference, Morgan would still be alive. She was the first girl he’d ever touched, and the first who had ever touched him. He wouldn’t have called it love, but they’d been close, or at least as close as he’d been to anyone while the darkness had reigned free inside him. What was left of his heart had shattered the night he’d left her dead in a gutter. A gang war he never should have started had ended her life, transforming his in the process.
He went back to checking the vibes of his surrounding, feeling for dark energy as he did each and every night, looking for innocents to protect and evil to battle, all to atone for his many sins. Morgan and her untimely death were the reason for his vigil more than any other defining moment in his life.
Now this was his home and his territory, and it was no longer safe. That did not sit well with him. He had hoped the two incidences over the past week with the single mother and the stripper had just been odd coincidences, but with this third attack, the truth was becoming impossible to deny. Someone or something was targeting him. He was certain of it. He had God to thank for putting him in the right place at the right time to save all three women. Perhaps now that he had drawn real blood tonight, whoever was messing with him would realize what they were up against.
Patrolling the area during the night might not be a bad idea, though. He’d never done that on a frequent basis, relying instead on his heightened instinct for detecting evil. Like called to like, after all. He mentally put it on the list of things to do tomorrow, then closed his eyes and made himself feel the chill in the air, the slight gust of wind, the sleepy rustle of birds on the roof of the fourth floor. After slipping into a meditative trance, he brought up all the calm images of flowing water he could envision, allowing them to wash over his soul and his consciousness.
He took a step back and fell into the chair he’d set out on the balcony. Suddenly, his pretty neighbor wandered into his thoughts, laughing and twirling in a flirty little dress he seriously doubted she would own, much less wear.
It was enough to knock him out of his trance. Damn.
But it was a blessing in disguise, because down below another woman was being dragged into the alley. He jerked to his feet, ready for action. Under normal circumstances he tried to stay out of sight, do his vigilante thing on the sly. But the violence was escalating and he could not let another woman be harmed on his watch, much less in his territory. Stealth could take a flying leap, just like he was about to do. He didn’t need to be Superman this time.
Whereas before he had let the night hang dormant around him, now he actively sought it, pulling it into him. It sang in his blood and his ears, mixing within him to form a cocktail that was powerful beyond most people’s imaginations. The night itself was not evil, but the murky things, shadows and thoughts he drew from it were more than enough to send his POW army tattoo tingling down his arm until it flashed into a grappling hook.
Securing the equipment to the top of the balcony, he climbed over the railing and rappelled down the side of the building, trying hard to keep to the shadows. He certainly didn’t want to scare any of his neighbors by flashing past them as they sat watching television. But it couldn’t be helped. The two thugs below him held a cloth over the woman’s mouth. By the time he dropped the three stories to the ground, she had gone limp.
Recognition flashed through him as he approached the woman and her attackers. Marta Handel was an attorney who painted and listened to classical music in the evenings. Garrett often heard it as he ran up and down the stairs past her apartment in 2A to stay in shape. He liked to keep tabs on the people living around him, and he wasn’t big on gyms, where most of the guys on the weight machines were brimming over with inner darkness.
Now these assholes were dragging her down the alley like she was a rag doll. His conversation with Dory flashed into his mind, how the violence in their neighborhood had made her afraid of being outside after dark. He knew Marta and Dory talked often. Sometimes they’d wave to him as his did his exercises. Dory would be devastated if something happened to Marta.
Garrett didn’t bother to land quietly. He wanted them to know he was there, and he wanted them to be scared. The shadows were already working inside him when he tapped into the evil in the two men’s hearts, using it to power up for what must be done.
One of the men laughed as Garrett came in at a full run. But his laughter was choked off when Garrett circled his neck with a black rope fueled by hate and anger. Garrett rode the man down to the ground like he was a pony and Garrett the circus ringmaster.
He did not want the man’s blood on his hands, so he left him on the ground after he went limp from lack of oxygen. Which left one more asshole to take down.
“You think you’re going to get this one, pretty boy? You think you’re going to save her like you did the others? Well, think again. This one is mine.” The menacingly soft voice didn’t seem to fit the guy who could blot out the sun with his back, but Garrett didn’t let that put a hitch in his stride.
“Just give her to me and get the hell out of here. Don’t come back.” He struggled to get the words out. All Garrett really wanted to do was take the guy apart limb by limb, mangling him so badly that even his dental work wouldn’t help identify him. The blackness swelled inside him with each passing minute. He fought with everything he had to keep it stored away for making more weapons. If he let it leak out, he would no longer be in control.
“You think this is over? We’re just getting started, my man. Why don’t you just walk away, and we’ll see if we see you another day?”
Garrett barely had a chance to will a new weapon into being before the large gargoyle on his back contorted as if coming to life and ran straight to his hand. The huge sword emerged with little thought on his part. It shot into his hand and rang like a chime as he banged it against the brick
