Those monsters had preyed on humanity for millennia, committing senseless, brutal murders. Like the rest of my colleagues at the Occult Bureau, I looked forward to a world where we could all sleep at night—where constant cover-up jobs were no longer required to keep the public calm and unaware.
But the end of vampires wasn’t the end of our problems. It was only the beginning.
Other blood-sucking creatures began to lurk in the night. As soon as I turned twenty-one, I became a ground agent at the Bureau because I wanted—no, needed—to join the fight.
And then Dorian Clave burst into my life—turning everything I thought I knew into quicksand. Vampires like him were killers who devoured humanity’s inner darkness until shadows danced beneath their skin. Yet there was more to him than that.
He showed me that light cannot exist without the dark, and that trying to fight this balance would have consequences our human minds couldn’t even comprehend.
Because sometimes darkness needs to exist.
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Darklight Chapter 1
I focused on the five dark silhouettes perched atop the Ferris wheel of Navy Pier Park. The ride was closed for renovation, but crowds of tourists bustled on either side of its boarded-up enclosure: a steady stream of warm targets.
“Team A, be ready,” I breathed into my comm, and glanced to my teammates behind me within the wheel’s perimeter. Six helmeted heads nodded back, their hands tightening around silver barrels.
“Team B is going in,” came the low, confident voice of my brother and second-in-command.
A large helicopter whirred overhead, drawing closer to the wheel and slowly circling it.
I glanced at my watch. “Greta, you should be in position.”
“Yup, and waiting for your command, Lyra,” came the clipped voice of Team C’s leader.
“Start the haze,” I replied.
The hiss of decompressing gas filled the cool spring night, and Greta boomed through a megaphone: “Please evacuate the pier. This is an emergency. Head for the children’s museum. You will receive further information there. I repeat, please evacuate the pier.”
Beyond the enclosure’s walls, a semi-dense fog billowed from the ground, covering the crowd. Shouts and cries rang out, followed by a stampede of panicked footsteps. I refocused on the wheel’s apex, ignoring the guilt that panged in my chest at the sounds of alarm and confusion. The smokescreen could be inconvenient and frightening, but ultimately it would prevent the tourists from being targeted.
The silhouettes started shifting, clearly noticing the helicopter and the commotion. I caught the rustle of an opening wing.
Placing some distance between myself and the base of the wheel, I raised my gun, and my colleagues did the same. “All right, Team A. On my count. Three, two, one…”
I aimed for the largest shadow and fired, my entire body vibrating from the force of the bullet’s release. I heard the creature’s rasping cry, as guttural and grating as a vulture’s, followed by four others as my teammates hit their marks.
But the shadows barely jerked. Instead, their massive wings shot out, and they launched into the air so fast that I lost them in the darkness.
It was far from my first encounter with the strange avian species, but I still shivered when the light from the nearby Wave Swinger attraction touched their sleek, ink-black forms. In many ways, each resembled the common stork—long and graceful, with an extended beak, broad wings, and thin, dangling legs. But these weren’t the kind you’d see carrying babies on greeting cards.
At least three times larger than the biggest earthly stork, they soared through the sky like dark omens, propelled by unnatural speed and a craving for blood. Their talons resembled an eagle’s, while their beaks were sharp and strong enough to puncture metal—they could suckle a human dry in three minutes if they found a main artery.
There was a reason we called them “redbills.”
“Zach, get to work!” I yelled.
Gunfire exploded from the helicopter, peppering the birds with artillery. It took more than a single shot to bring them down—even with bullets specifically designed to deliver their death.
“Spread out!” I ordered my team. “Don’t let them dive!”
The redbills began to circle the aircraft. The chopper was their greatest source of aggravation, and, judging from the way their beaks angled toward it, they were preparing to strike back. I leapt onto the wheel’s frame and pulled myself up the metal skeleton for a better angle. I fired a round at the largest predator.
“Focus on the biggest!” I shouted. “But don’t let the others get close enough for a snatch-n-fly.” Rookie mistake of the year.
My team fired, angry streaks of laser-blue cutting through the darkness. At least ten bullets struck the creature from my team’s direction, in addition to a round fired by one of the chopper’s gunmen. The redbill’s wings beat violently but held its flight. I’d never seen one so large, and with its massive size came extra resilience.
After another onslaught, it finally floundered, an unearthly shriek ripping from its throat and spurts of dark blood raining from its body. It backed down, swerving shakily toward the water at the end of the pier. It would probably be underwater in moments.
My team’s focus switched to the next target, a redbill spitting nasty hissing sounds which reminded me uncannily of curses. It darted right up to the aircraft, its powerful beak close to ramming the tail.
Cursing, I pulled myself higher up the wheel and leaned a little farther out of my comfort zone to get a better shot. I fired, my artillery joining my team’s focused stream. Shots pummeled the bird’s underbelly, but it didn’t falter. It took two intense rounds before it fell away, hissing loudly as it plummeted with a crash into the roof of a snack joint.
“Good job!” I shouted. “Three more to go!”
