He kept his chin high, though a spark of something showed in his eyes. “I wouldn’t call it a failure as much as the target neglecting to take us seriously. She’s still digging into things.”
She looked down at her nails as if bored, even though inside she was boiling. She expected nothing short of success from him. “In any language, that is the definition of failure.”
“Fine,” he snapped. “Then I fucking failed. The dumb bitch is plunging forward as if nothing happened. And, if that’s not bad enough, she’s calling in for help from knowledgeable friends.”
This did surprise her, and she snapped her head up. How could this information have slipped by her? “I didn’t know she was in that loop.”
“Come on, Katrina. You know as well as I do that everybody’s in that loop if they press hard enough.”
He had a point, and it was possible. Even though the human population knowledgeable of their existence was small, she might knowingly or unknowingly be acquainted with one of those humans. “Who?”
He tossed a printout onto her desk with the picture of an attractive woman. “A psychic named Prima Moon.”
Staring down at the picture, she blew out a long breath. “Prima Moon. God, where do they come up with such silly names?” As long as she’d been around, those who possessed the second sight also seemed to possess a propensity to give themselves what she was certain they believed were mystic names. Prima. Astral. Moonbeam. She could recite at least a dozen more off the top of her head. To Katrina they were trite and ridiculous.
“No argument there, dumb name. The problem is she’s the real thing, Boss. A true psychic.”
Actually, questioning her validity had never entered Katrina’s mind because it wasn’t important. She didn’t care if any of them were real, and living a long life had taught her that many who called themselves psychics were authentic. Just because most of the human population wrote them off as fakes didn’t mean they were. If this Prima Moon psychic bitch knew of the existence of the preternaturals, it was a moot point. What did concern her was that she might be talking to the writer. They didn’t need to be comparing notes, especially right now, when so much was at stake. “We need to find her.”
“Already on it. I sent the boys to that writer’s house and to track down the psychic she’s been talking to.”
That didn’t make her feel any better. “It’s daylight.” They were inside and protected from the rays of the sun that could burn their skin and turn them to dust if they were exposed to it for too long. They couldn’t risk going out.
He nodded. “Noted. I meant, I’m sending the boys in at sunset.”
“A lot of damage can be done by then.”
“We’ll get them.”
“And if we don’t?”
“We will.”
“You’re so sure.”
“I am.”
“Why?”
He gave her a smile that was far from jovial. In fact it was the opposite and accurately mirrored the darkness that passed for Eli’s soul. That was precisely why he was the perfect lieutenant for a leader like her. No questions. No hesitation. No remorse.
He slapped his hands together and then pulled them far apart as he said, “Kaboom!”
For a moment she couldn’t decipher his meaning. When she did, her smile matched his.
Chapter Four
As much as Sasha wanted to head directly to Rodney’s bat cave, the ordeal it would require was more than she wanted to deal with, even if she was old enough to tolerate some daylight. Unlike the youngsters, she wouldn’t burst into immediate flame, though it had taken nearly a hundred years to become tolerant.
It wasn’t comfortable. There was a big difference between tolerance and comfort, and she felt the sun five minutes after exposing herself to its rays. In another hundred years she’d be as tough as those they referred to as the Elders. They had evaded wooden stakes, silver, and holy water, the things none of them could survive, long enough that they developed short-term immunity to the touch of the sun. It could still destroy them. It just took a little longer.
Even when she was able to move about more freely, she was smart enough to know that it didn’t change what she was or when she was at her most powerful. The night was their natural environment and where they garnered the powers that gave them supernatural strength. Yes, they could endure the daylight for extended periods of time once they matured, but in that golden light, their strength was suppressed, as if the universe was reminding them that they ruled only the darkness. The folktales about vampires and sunlight weren’t a complete exaggeration.
Though she hated what she’d been turned into, she had vowed on the night that truth had been revealed to her that she would embrace her new reality and use it to accomplish two goals: make sure vampires never took over the day and take her revenge on the one who had done this to her.
The former had been in the works for decades, and she was pleased with how much they’d been able to accomplish. It surprised her that in the darkness, she found light in other souls who shared her goal. Not every vampire was evil. That realization did come as a shock. Sasha had grown up listening to stories of the rulers of the night and how they could drain the blood from little girls who didn’t say prayers and wear their crosses. To find out many were like her—unwilling victims whose lives were forever altered—was empowering.
The latter had also been in the works for decades but, despite her dedicated research, had lacked one piece to make it a reality. Until recently, that is. It was exciting to finally feel the surge of adrenaline that came with her long-awaited discovery and to know that soon she would be looking into the face that had haunted her rest for far too much of her life.
She now anticipated that rest rather than dreaded it. Anyone who thought vampires lay deathlike in coffins was quite mistaken. She’d never slept in a coffin and never planned to. No, she spent her daylight hours prone in a luxury bed with blackout blinds and dreaming just as she’d done when she was a child. Granted, the subjects of her current dreams were quite different, but she still dreamt. And one face came to her over and over and over again. Before the month was out, she planned to wipe that visage not only from her dreams but from the world.
She would do it once the sun set and the darkness gave her the strength she would need to go up against an elder. Stupid wasn’t her natural habitat, and she would be smart in order to be successful.
She didn’t feel dread as she lay down this morning. It was anticipation. She closed her eyes and let the deep slumber take her away. For once, she didn’t dream, and when she rose it was well past seven, the sun dipping behind the mountains to the west. From the small refrigerator designed to look like a rich piece of bedroom furniture, she took a plastic packet of blood. It was nasty cold. At the moment she didn’t care. She emptied the packet and appreciated the rush of energy it brought. The pleasure she felt from doing something so abhorrent never ceased to amaze. She didn’t want it to make her feel invincible, but there it was.
In the beginning, she had resisted the need to nourish herself with human blood to the point it had nearly destroyed her. Then she’d had an epiphany: if she ended her existence, revenge would never be hers. The need for that trumped everything else, and she gave in to the urges that were inescapable if she wanted to go forward. Modern times had made feeding the beast within much easier and less distasteful. She was never into killing needlessly, particularly not those who were innocent. Those who were not…well, she’d made peace with her God about them.
Her trademark since the moment she’d realized her existence was forever altered had been to protect the innocent. It was part of the philosophy that had led her to found a successful enterprise that brought her everything she needed to survive: wealth, sustenance, and unlimited resources. Her security firm gave her eyes-on all over the world. It gave her the resources to uncover the evil that lurked in more souls than most of the population wanted to believe. And those evil souls gave her what she ne
eded to survive, their demise making the world a better place. Her business allowed her to protect the innocent.
Wealth, on the other hand, wasn’t new to her. She’d been born into it and had taken for granted growing up a daughter of privilege. Actually, that didn’t even describe it. She had been born into royalty and had enjoyed more than mere privilege during her early years. When it was all gone and she was reduced to total poverty, first in captivity and then after she’d been turned, she’d had to dig deep to find a strength she’d been unaware she even possessed. Growing up, she’d believed she existed in the real world, while in reality she’d been clueless. She never forgot those lessons, and thus finding her own success was both novel and fulfilling. She’d done it, and her father would be immensely proud. Through the years, that assurance had been a great source of comfort.
Now it was time to start making final plans, and Rodney was waiting to assist her. She dressed, as she always did, in unremarkable casual wear. Gone were the cloud-like dresses, strings of pearls, and large-brimmed hats festooned with flowers and ribbons. It was hard to even remember the young woman who took such delight in frills and flounces. Tonight she sported black jeans, leather boots, and a button-down shirt with the Imperial Investigations logo. Her hair pulled back into a ponytail that hung down her back, she looked nothing like the young woman she used to be. Probably a good thing. She could never be that woman again even if she wanted to.
An hour later, with her car parked a good mile away in a grove of aspens and pines, she ran through the darkened woods until she stood next to a hillside and a large, unremarkable tree.
***
At Prima’s words, Dee’s hand had begun to shake, causing her latte to spill over the rim and a wave of creamy liquid to flow over her hands. Without giving it much thought she tried to set it on the table and missed. It crashed to the floor. She hadn’t given the mess a second thought or moved to get a rag. She’d let it puddle on the hardwood laminate. Prima’s words were a bad joke, right? Prima was messing with her and setting up a good laugh at her expense.
Prima had put off her barrage of questions as she’d dropped her hand from Dee’s shoulder and left the kitchen, waving on her way out the door. “I’ve got classes to teach, but tell you what. Pull out a bottle of that marvelous wine you keep stashed away, and I’ll be back at sevenish to finish this conversation. I’ve got a lot to tell you, and we’ll need more time than I have right now.”
After Prima had left, Dee finally gathered enough energy to clean up her mess. She took the roll of paper towels off the rack and began soaking up the liquid. The whole time she worked she’d thought about how fucking crazy it was that Prima would even float something like real-life vampires. She’d always believed in her friend and never for a second thought Prima anything but legit. This morning she started questioning her solid belief. In fact, the rest of the day she kept mulling over the comment Prima had made about real walking, talking, blood-drinking vampires. She wanted to believe Prima was simply playing her, but then she’d recall what she’d discovered about Imre and Katrina, and a chill washed over her.
Now, she and Prima sat at the kitchen table staring across at each other. Instead of holding hot mugs of lattes, they held stemless wineglasses filled with a luscious merlot. She’d pulled out one of her best bottles. No soft and gentle wine for this conversation. No, it called for bold, strong, and biting. If they were going to crazy-town, she was going to do it with something that tasted really good.
She took a big sip and let the alcohol fuel her with a buzz all the way to her fingertips. Yeah, she was ready now. They picked up where they’d left off in the morning. “Vampires? I’ve been trying to figure out all day if you’re screwing with me. You’re messing with me, right?”
Prima shook her head. “No, my beautiful friend, I am not.” She picked up her own glass to take a sip. Hers was a little more delicate than the swig Dee had taken a second ago. She slowly set the glass back on the table, and her eyes met Dee’s. “Vampires are real.” The eyes that held hers were clear and steady.
“Come on. That’s insane. They don’t exist.” She really wanted to hold on to the idea that the world was as she always believed it to be. Sure, she was writing a book with paranormal elements, but it was fiction pure and simple. Her pages were going to be filled with fantasy and make-believe.
“Really? Look deep inside, Dee, really deep. Tell me what you find there, and be honest. You truly believe it’s impossible for vampires to exist?”
Dee didn’t even hesitate. “Of course I do. Anybody in their right mind believes it. Creatures like that are nothing more than folklore, a way for those who didn’t have the scientific knowledge we possess today to make sense of the world.”
Prima picked up her glass once more and took another sip. A slight smile crossed her lips, and tiny wrinkles appeared around her eyes. It might have been the wine, or it might have been something else that made her eyes shine. “You mean kind of like there’s no such thing as a real psychic?”
Clearly it was the something else. “That’s different.” Lame but the best she had.
“How? And how exactly?” Prima turned her glass in her hands, making the ruby liquid swirl and move inside it. It sent a sweet scent floating into the air. “There are no rational explanations for what I can do. Scientists have been trying for centuries to explain people like me. So far, nada.”
She did have to think about that for a second, and then it hit her. “What you do is more like enhanced senses. You’re not some supernatural creature. Just because science can’t explain it doesn’t mean it’s not real, unlike a vampire, which is a creature of folklore. The living dead are not possible. In this day and age everyone knows that, and any good history buff can explain how the legends came to be.”
“I disagree. Not about the basis for the folk legends. On that I agree, and there’s validity to it. It’s the difference between me and vampires that defies explanation by science or history. Think about it, Dee. In many ways a vampire isn’t very different from me. It’s just degrees on a spectrum.” She held her hands about two feet apart. “I happen to have what my grandma always called second sight. A vampire is simply farther along the spectrum.”
She wasn’t buying it. Not with her whole heart anyway. “Oh, come on. You can’t possibly believe in vampires. What’s next, werewolves?” Despite her protests, the names Imre and Katrina kept echoing in the back of her mind.
“They exist,” Prima said in the same calm voice. It was like she was explaining a simple concept to a particularly dense student.
Dee found it surprising that her friend was this adamant. It was impossible, flat-out. No other way to explain it. She’d been a researcher since she started writing in middle school. While her most recent research had turned up a few anomalies in the life and lack of death in a few names, somewhere buried in there had to be a rational explanation. It certainly wasn’t that those names belonged to vampires. All she had to do was dig in deeper, and she’d find the answer.
“Legend,” she said simply as Prima said nothing while staring across the table at her. “What?” she finally asked.
Prima reached across the table and took her hands. “Look into my eyes and tell me if you think I’m not telling you the truth, if I’m trying to sell you a line of crap.”
Regardless of what else she might think, Prima wasn’t the kind to mess with her. It wasn’t her style. She was gentle and kind and gifted. Lying wasn’t in her DNA. She didn’t play games. Dee pulled her hands free and put both of them around her glass. She turned it between her hands a dozen times before she looked back over at Prima. She sighed and said, “I believe you believe what you’re telling me.”
Prima patted her hand. “I can prove it to you.”
She believed that Prima believed what she was saying. Prove it to her? Not likely. “Bullshit.”
A smile turned up the corners of Prima’s mouth, and a mischievous look glinted from her eyes. “Get ready for
your world to be rocked.”
***
Katrina didn’t like waiting, and so she didn’t. Though she left the continuing problem of the psychic and the writer in Eli’s capable hands, she opted to keep her own hand on the pulse of Sasha Rudin. She’d been waiting a very long time to pin her down, and now that she knew her name and where she was, things were going to be made right that should have been years ago.
Personal insult was not something Katrina tolerated, ever. Sasha—the name tasted like poison on her tongue—had delivered the one and only unanswered insult of her long life. Soon, she would be able to look that bitch in the face and make her pay.
At one level, it gave her a rush of excitement that even draining a gorgeous woman couldn’t provide. This was going to be so much sweeter. Time and frustration were very effective stimulants. This was personal, and so too would be Sasha’s death. She couldn’t wait to grip her around the neck and stare into her eyes as she ended her life.
Closing her eyes, Katrina easily called up that face. She’d been enthralled by many women over the years. Beautiful, exotic, alluring women. No one had ever captured her heart except one, and she had been nothing like the others. She’d been quiet and gentle and lovely. She had made Katrina a believer in love.
That had been her mistake, for that lovely woman who stole her heart in turn had betrayed her. No one knew. No one ever would. She would carry that secret forever, and it would also fester year after year. She embraced that rage because it sustained her, almost.
She ran her hands over her face and on this rare occasion acknowledged the truth. As much as she wanted to hate Sasha completely, she never could. Even after all this time and heartache, she still longed to hold her and kiss her, and pass the night with passion as they had in the mansion’s gardens at Tobolsk. Katrina shook off the moment. It had been a year of passion and love that would never come again. Betrayal had that effect. Now, death would come calling without a single kiss.
Drawing Down the Mist Page 5
