From the light in his eyes, she was fairly certain that was what he was thinking. He looked at Finn. “And what were you up to while she was doing all this freshening and refreshing?”
Finn gave one of his half shrugs. “I took a nap.”
“Is that right?” That one Stefan didn’t seem to buy, but he also didn’t seem too interested in pursuing it further.
Keira decided to steer the conversation back to the matter at hand. “Why do you keep new members under surveillance?”
His upper lip lifted in a sneer. “Because they aren’t always what they seem, that’s why.”
“You mean you’ve had people join who didn’t believe in the cause?” Keira asked. Imagine that.
“Several months ago, as a matter of fact. A vampire joined our ranks, we think at the behest of the council. He managed to be with us for a few weeks before we caught on.” Stefan’s eyes hardened. “He was dealt with.”
By “dealt with” she knew he meant the vamp had been killed. The same thing that would happen to her if they ever found out she had joined in order to bring them down.
“I’m satisfied that you two are genuine in your aspirations,” he said. He stood and walked over to the phone on the wall. Holding the receiver to his ear, he dialed a number and waited. When someone came on the line, he said, “Come see me.” He hung up and walked over to Keira. Ignoring Finn, who stood only a foot away, he cupped her chin and stared into her eyes. “I knew you wouldn’t let me down.” He leaned forward as if to kiss her, and she drew back before he could make contact. He straightened with a frown.
With a flick of her eyes, Keira indicated Finn. She couldn’t fake an attraction to Stefan and really sell it to him, with a protective and disapproving Finn standing behind her. Finn, the man she loved. Even pretending to like Stefan was an affront to what she felt for Finn. It left a sour taste in her mouth.
Thank God the comet was due tomorrow. Then, one way or another, this would all be over. She’d either be victorious and Stefan would be behind bars awaiting execution, or he’d be successful and she’d be halfway around the world in her attempt to evade him.
Or she’d be dead. That possibility was never far from her thoughts.
A knock sounded on the door. “Enter,” Stefan called out.
Keira altered her position so she stood sideways to the door. That way she could keep an eye on Stefan, Finn, and the vampire Javier who had walked in.
He directed a cool glance toward Finn, a much more heated one to Keira, and a subservient, almost docile look at Stefan. “You need me?”
Stefan handed him the money bag. “Secure this. And meet me later at the machine.”
Javier took the money with a nod and left the room.
Stefan stared at Finn. “You may go as well. Thank you for looking out for this lovely lady today.”
“Sure.” Finn hesitated, his gaze going from Keira to Stefan and back again. “You’ll be all right?” he finally asked.
“Your need to protect her is over,” Stefan snapped. “She’s quite safe with me.”
Still Finn didn’t budge. Keira sensed anger roiling up in Stefan, like a cauldron of slippery crude oil about to bubble over. “I’m fine,” she assured Finn. “I’ll call you later.”
He gave a nod and reluctantly left the room.
“As a reward for a job well done,” Stefan said, taking her by the arm, “I’m going to show you the machine that will bring all our schemes to fruition.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Really? How exciting.” This had been one of her goals, and it was finally going to happen! “When?”
“Now.” He escorted her out of the room and headed toward the back entrance.
“Now?” She glanced over her shoulder but there was no one to come to her rescue, even if Stefan would have let them. If he really had bought her act she was in no danger. But she couldn’t stop a shiver that worked its way up her spine.
“Is there a problem?” he asked as they reached the parking lot. The sun had set while she’d been inside, and the lot was illuminated with multiple lamps. She didn’t have a jacket with her, and she shivered again as the cool night air caressed her skin. “Oh, no. No problem. I’m just surprised we’re going now.”
He smiled and helped her into the passenger seat of a large luxury sedan. She watched him as he walked around the front of the car, his wiry frame almost effeminate looking when she mentally compared him to Finn. Looking at him now, if she didn’t know what she knew, she’d never guess how incredibly devious and dangerous he was. He had a fairly nondescript appearance. It was only when his eyes took on that mad light that one began to see his true nature.
She wasn’t sure what had twisted him, but if he’d been working on this plan ever since he’d come through the rift, it had obviously begun in the other dimension. And she thought it must have been something pretty spectacular to cause such a reaction.
He climbed behind the steering wheel and started the car. “Ordinarily I have a driver, but I don’t want to share this moment with anyone else tonight.” He sent her a smoldering look. “No one but you.”
Oh, no. What else did he have planned other than showing her the machine?
She noticed as he drove he kept checking the rearview and driver’s-side mirrors, and the more he did it the more she realized he was checking to make sure they weren’t being followed. She stifled a sigh. If she was in trouble here, she could rely only on herself to get out of it.
An hour later he stopped the car at a trailhead northeast of town. “We’ll have to hike in from here,” he said as he opened his door and illuminated the inside of the car.
Keira glanced down at her feet. She wore her favorite pair of shoes—a bright pink peep toe with a two-inch platform and five-inch spike clear acrylic heels. “Ah, Stefan. I can’t hike in these.” She looked over at him.
“Of course you can’t.” He got out of the car and came around to her side. After he swung open the door, he held out his hand, palm up in invitation. “Come with me.”
She accepted his help to get out of the car and followed him back to the trunk, which he opened using his remote. Inside the trunk was a shoe box. He bent and flipped off the lid, then straightened with the box in his hands. Inside was a pair of brown hiking boots with a pair of white socks lying on top of them. “These should fit.”
Keira raised her eyebrows but took the shoes out of the box without comment. She went back to the passenger side of the car and sat sideways on the seat. Taking off her heels, she dropped them onto the floorboard. She rolled the socks onto her feet then pushed her right foot into the hiking boot. So far, so good. She laced it up and then put on the other one. She stood and stomped her feet, walked around in circles a bit, then stopped and looked at Stefan. “They fit.”
His smile was pleased. “I thought they would.” He reached into the car and took a flashlight from the glove compartment. He shut the door and flicked on the light. “I’m an excellent judge of size.”
She’d known many men who could look at a woman and guess her dress size. But shoe size? That was something new.
Setting an easy pace, Stefan took the lead, telling her to stay close. “It’s cold enough at night now that snakes aren’t out,” he said. “But there are always mountain lions to be concerned about.”
She blew out a breath and hurried to close the distance between them. After an hour, she was beginning to puff a little. “How much farther?”
“We have at least another hour’s walk.” He stopped and looked at her. “Do you need a rest?”
She stopped and put her hands on her hips, dragging in deep lungs full of air. “No, but I wish we’d brought some water. My mouth is so dry.”
“There’s plenty of water at the mine,” he said. “Let’s go.”
“We’re going to a mine?” She started walking again, this time at his side.
He gave a nod. The beam of the flashlight threw shadows onto his face, giving him a devilish appearance. “It
’s a copper mine that played out over a hundred years ago. It’s deserted, and the main shaft has a spot that’s large enough for the machine.”
“And whatever it is that this machine does, it can do it even though it’s essentially encased in rocks?” She wasn’t an engineer by any stretch of the imagination, but she knew her cell phone cut out whenever she went through a tunnel.
“We have an amplifier that points the radio waves toward the opening of the cave. There is a certain degradation of the signal, but it’s still strong enough to get the job done. Once we have the numbers we need, we can dismantle the machine and reassemble it out in the open.”
“Why would you need to do that?” She frowned and accepted his help over a rough patch.
He took on that creepy serial killer expression. “I mean for every human being on the planet to become preternatural. With this machine I can open the rift any time I want to.”
Her heart rate increased, and not merely from exertion. The climb got steeper and they fell silent. Keira struggled to make sense of what he’d said. He really planned to have prets take over the world.
He was insane.
Finally they stood in front of what appeared to be an abandoned mine, complete with crisscrossed boards blocking the entrance and a sign that read DANGER! DO NOT ENTER attached to them.
Stefan tugged on one side and the boards swung open like a gate. He grinned at her start of surprise. “This way,” he murmured. He pulled the gate closed after them and led the way down the mine shaft. They reached a dead end, and with a frown she looked around. Her heart started beating faster, even though she willed it to be normal. She knew Stefan’s vampire hearing would pick up on her increased pulse, but she couldn’t completely suppress her rising panic. He’d brought her into a mine with only one exit. He knew she was a fraud and was going to kill her, and leave her body up here for the coyotes to scavenge.
“Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “We’re not trapped.”
Thank the gods he’d misinterpreted her agitation.
He pressed a protrusion of rock and the wall in front of her slid open.
“It’s just like in the movies,” she said, wonder in her voice.
“Isn’t it, though?” He grinned, his glee like that of a nerdy schoolboy. If he wasn’t such a complete whack job, she thought they could have been friends. She wondered what could have happened in the past to have turned a seemingly ordinary guy into a madman. “Come on.”
The rock face closed behind them, and lights flickered on, showing a tunnel that headed into the mountain hundreds of yards deep. “This way,” Stefan said.
Finn padded on four paws around a mesquite tree. He’d followed Liuz and Keira, at first on his motorcycle and then, after they’d started up the trail, he’d drawn on his chameleon abilities and shapeshifted into a mountain lion. He’d made sure to stay downwind of them so Liuz with his superior vampire sense of smell wouldn’t detect him. Finn didn’t know how Liuz would react if he thought he was being stalked by a mountain lion or, rather, a shapeshifter in the form of a mountain lion.
At first Finn had followed the two because he’d been jealous. He was certain Liuz had been about to take Keira home with him. He wasn’t sure what he would have done if that had been the case. He really hadn’t thought it through. But when the vampire had turned the car off the freeway and headed up into the mountains, curiosity had overtaken jealousy. When Keira changed her shoes it became apparent to him there was going to be walking involved. He knew he’d have an easier time of it going four-footed, so he’d shifted. That had been two hours ago, and he was having a hard time maintaining this form.
He’d slipped down to the mouth of the cave in time to see the rock face slide away to reveal the rest of the tunnel. He knew he couldn’t move fast enough to get there before it closed, so he’d decided to reconnoiter the area. Liuz was a lot of things, but he wasn’t stupid. There would be guards posted. Finn needed to see how many, and where.
It felt odd, seeing the world through the eyes of a large cat. While colors didn’t seem as bright, things were much more defined, and he could see farther and over a wider field of view than he could even with the sharp vision of a demon.
Things smelled differently, too. To take advantage of the superior smell of the cat, he dropped his jaw and wrinkled his muzzle, opening the passage to the sensitive Jacobson’s organ at the roof of his mouth. He smelled mesquite, a jackrabbit not that far away, a few deer closer to the foot of the mountain, and there, finally, a waft of preternatural. There seemed to be three distinct types—a werewolf, a vampire, and something else, some sort of shapeshifter he’d never smelled before.
He sidled around a few barrel cacti, made his way past a small group of scrub trees and stopped, straining to see in the darkness to find what his nose told him was just up ahead.
After a few minutes he saw him. The guard, cradling a high-powered rifle complete with scope, was high above the mine, at least two hundred feet up on a rocky ledge. Finn stared at him, trying to figure out how in the hell the guy had gotten up there. He must have rappelled down, he finally decided, because even in his cat form Finn would have a hard time with that terrain. That guard wouldn’t be easy to take out, and he had a bird’s-eye view of everyone who approached the mine.
Which meant Finn had been spotted, but he didn’t sense any alarm on the parts of the guards, so mountain lion sightings around here must be common. He circled around and found the other two prets he’d smelled earlier, one on either side of the cave. Both of them held the same type of weapon as the first man. Their preternatural abilities wouldn’t help them take out threats from a distance, but these rifles surely could.
With Keira inside, he didn’t want to kill the guards and alert Liuz there was trouble. The vampire would most likely assume Keira had something to do with it and immediately strike out at her. Finn would have to wait and remove the threat when he came back to destroy the machine.
The next time he was here, he’d have reinforcements, and they’d make sure Liuz never completed his plans.
“My comrades in arms in the other dimension have been using the Detention Center to hide criminals who are sympathetic to our cause.” Stefan stooped to avoid a low-hanging protrusion. “I set things up with a couple of friends before I used the rift to escape the law all those years ago. I didn’t know technology in this dimension would be so primitive. Our people are long lived in the other dimension, but not immortal. So I am now working with the next generation. The sons and daughters of my original friends. Children who were raised to believe in the cause.”
Keira didn’t respond, willing to let him continue his delusional ranting so she could gather the information she needed.
He seemed happy she was hanging on to his every word. The more he talked, the more full of himself he grew. On her part, she became more and more alarmed at how insane he was.
As they reached a widening of the tunnel, Stefan swept out his arms and said, “Here it is.”
Keira stepped around him and stopped to stare at the machine in front of her. It was larger than she’d expected, nearly van size, gunmetal in color with something that looked like an antenna array on one end. Lots of knobs and dials took up the side she could see. Lights blinked, yellow and green, and one button gleamed red.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” Admiration colored Stefan’s tones in broad strokes.
“I’ve never really thought of machines as being beautiful,” Keira replied. “Though I do think my car is pretty,” she allowed.
He laughed. “See? You do think they can be beautiful.” He crossed his arms and stared at the rift machine like a proud papa. “This thing is the key to my plan. It will keep the rift open for as long as it’s running. My comrades on the other side have assured me that there is quadruple the number of prets ready to come through the rift.” He glanced at her. “Right now preternaturals are only about three percent of the population in the U.S. According to my comrades’ records, every s
eventy-three years approximately twenty thousand people are stripped of their bodies and sent through the rift.”
Those were not exactly staggering numbers. “Three percent of the population is something like…” She did a rough calculation in her head. “A little over nine million?”
“Right.” He looked impressed with her mathematical skills. “Imagine with this Influx that we can multiply that number by four. That puts us up to ten percent.” He stepped closer to the machine and ran his hand over the metal. “As soon as my friends have more preternaturals ready, we can activate this machine and open the rift on our own, any time we need to. Any time we want to.”
Keira walked a little closer, too. “Does the rift work both ways?”
Puzzlement dropped his brows low over his eyes.
“I mean, can you fix it so entities can be sent from this dimension to the other one?” Maybe one way to help save humanity would be to send the entities from the other dimension right back to where they’d come from. Perhaps the souls could be salvaged without lasting damage, letting humans continue to live out their lives as they were meant to.
He cocked his head. “I suppose it could be done to make the rift available to either side. But we don’t have the technology available for the body-stripping process,” he said. “And, besides, why would any of us want to go back? There we would grow old and die. Here, once our essence combines with our human hosts, we can live forever.” He stroked his hand across the machine again. “It won’t be long before we outnumber humans, or at least aren’t as much of a minority. Then we’ll see who has the power.”
Keira turned around and made a pretense out of studying the rest of the roomlike structure they were in. As soon as she was able to get out of here, she had to contact Caladh and let him know the location of this mine. She also had to make it clear to him that, whatever happened, Finn was not to be hurt. As long as she stuck close to him she might be able to keep him out of harm’s way. With everything they’d been through, it had to count for something.
Heart of the Demon Page 20
