Master of Darkness

by Susan Sizemore

  And now he had his very own hacker. He smiled happily at Eden Faveau. Not only was she attractive and dangerous, she was just what he needed.

  “You are all I could ever ask for.” He really wished that he’d remember that Tribe Primes didn’t ask, they took. So he took her hand, and added, “In a technological sense, that is.”

  Is that all?

  Laurent heard her wistful thought loud and clear. Which surprised him, because he had no sense of her being psychic. Picking up nonpsychic peoples’ thoughts was possible, even fairly easy—but doing it without any deliberate effort was unusual for him.

  He could see that she immediately regretted the thought and pushed it away. It made her feel weak and stupid. He watched her resolve harden, watched her remember who he was, what she was, and what their relationship was supposed to be. Maybe not adversarial at the moment, but—

  “We could turn on each other at any time,” he said.

  Eden was surprised at the bitterness in the vampire’s tone. And she was embarrassed that he could read her so easily. Most people couldn’t; she’d been told that she was hard to get a handle on. Maybe Wolf saw the simple girl that she really was. Or the anti-mind-reading techniques she’d been taught weren’t worth squat.

  “Will we turn on each other?” she asked him.

  “You’re worried about my self-control because I don’t use the daylight drugs.”

  “Yeah,” she admitted.

  “I’ve spent a long lifetime controlling myself without them. I need blood, I need physical release, but I’ve always been in charge of how I get what I need.” He gave her a sharp-toothed smile. “Sex, blood, and rock and roll makes a Prime happy.”

  “We’re not here to be happy. I need to trust that—”

  “I’m in charge,” he reiterated sternly. “And that’s the only promise you need from me.”

  She stood. “Then maybe we better go out and make you happy. You’ve had the blood. You’re not getting the sex—”

  “So I’ll have to settle for the rock and roll.” He tilted an eyebrow and looked knowingly at her. “At least for tonight.” He got up. “We do need to get the computer. It’s likely that there will be Tribe Primes to beat up along the way.” He grinned, and put a bit of fang into it. “I can hardly wait.”

  With a bounce in her step, Eden went to gather her equipment and car keys. She couldn’t help but wonder at why she found the prospect of bashing heads side-by-side with Sid Wolf such an exciting prospect.

  It was clearly way too long since she’d been on a date.

  Chapter Seven

  “Is that why they were attacking you last night? Because of the laptop?” Eden asked.

  “That was my guess,” he answered.

  He was staring out the front windshield of her small car, and glancing at his lean, lovely profile distracted her for a moment.

  “What’s it like?” she wondered. “Being able to see in the dark?”

  “I don’t know. It’s the only way I’ve ever seen. What’s it like walking in the sunshine?”

  “You could find that out anytime you wanted to. But I’ll never see in the dark.”

  She cringed when she heard the wistfulness in her voice. She was prepared for some scathing comment about a vampire hunter envying a vampire, but she received a gentle smile instead.

  “Curiosity is normal,” he said. “At least for our kind.”

  “Our kind?”

  “We’re the ones who know that the world isn’t what most people think it is. We know that we’re different. Me, because I’m not human. You, because you know that I exist. Our knowledge shuts us off from the real world. All we have is each other. We can’t help but be curious.”

  “Don’t your kind want to be part of the real world? Isn’t that why you developed the drugs?”

  “I have no idea why the daylight drugs were developed.”

  “You just don’t personally approve of using them?”

  “I don’t disapprove of those who do. Don’t your people want to let us be part of the real world, so you can have normal lives, too?”

  “Yes,” she answered. “At least I do.”

  Eden hadn’t meant to confide that truth to anyone, ever. The Faveaus had been doing this vampire-hunting crap forever. Some ancestors had taken some kind of Da Vinci Code secret-society vow to protect the world from evil through all their generations, and now she was stuck with it. Nobody had asked her if she wanted in on the family avocation.

  She tried not to resent it, tried to think noble thoughts and do noble deeds. Defending the world was an honor and the right thing to do. Most of the time.

  “I want to go to Hawaii,” she said. “I want to see lava.”

  “But instead you’re stuck hauling my pale ass around town in a VW Beetle hunting some holy grail of a computer, right?”

  “Right.” She glared at him. “How’d you know I was thinking of that holy grail book?”

  “Lucky guess.”

  She doubted it. But if he wasn’t reading her mind, they really were too much alike. Maybe he was right about their being alike, in a world view sense.

  “But your people see mine as prey.”

  “And vice versa.”

  “Okay, I can see how you’d see it that way.”

  He laughed. “If you’d care to check our shared history, you’d find that hunters have taken out far more vampires than vampires have humans.”

  “What about the Kiev Massacre of 1405?”

  “That was done by a crazy lone Prime with some kind of blood sickness.”

  “That’s the cover story the Clans offered. Our records say differently.”

  “Well, neither of us were there, so I doubt we’ll ever know the truth.”

  He sounded a mite testy, and she supposed she did, too. The hot button issue they were talking about certainly wasn’t helpful for their business relationship, so Eden attempted to concentrate on the assignment. It didn’t help that they were sitting so closely together in her small car. The proximity hinted at intimacy.

  She knew that he was uncomfortable because of the strips of silver around the doors and windows and the silver censer filled with garlic hanging from the rearview mirror. The back seat was filled with her equipment. What she wasn’t wearing, that is. There were also a few things tucked under her seat and in pockets on the driver’s-side door.

  Mind you, while the vampire was uncomfortable, he’d smiled approval when he’d gotten into the car last night—well, grimaced as he gingerly took a seat. “Better safe than sorry,” he’d said.

  Last night his comfort hadn’t mattered to her, and maybe it shouldn’t now. But—even if he wasn’t her guest, he was her partner. Last night she’d thought of him only as a dangerous, not-quite-trustworthy temporary ally. Getting to know him a little made him more dangerous than ever, in ambiguous, complicated ways. Last night she’d found his proximity in the small car disturbing simply because of what he was.

  Tonight, layered over the knowledge that she was too close to a vampire was the electric awareness of Wolf as a male. She’d been trained to ignore the potent masculinity of Primes, but the training wasn’t working.

  She tried to clear her mind of the awareness her body couldn’t deny, and get on with the job.

  “So you went up against the Manticores,” she said, in an effort to both have a conversation and gather information. “Are they as nasty as I’ve heard? Was old Justinian involved? They’re daring to show their fangs back in San Diego? Are we likely to be attacked by any sexist pig Manticores? Because I would love to stake them right through their tiny little di—”

  “Turn right at the next light.”

  She didn’t have to be psychic to be aware of how tense he’d become, and how curious.

  “Is there something about the Manticores I don’t know?” Eden asked.

  He was silent for a minute, then he said, “Apparently there’s a lot about the Manticores I don’t know. Tell me about them. And no Prim
e’s dick is that little,” he added.

  Eden had to bite her tongue. “Let’s make this a mutual exchange, shall we? Of information,” she added hastily.

  “Pull in here,” he said, indicating the entrance to a mall parking lot. “Let’s see if anything nasty comes looking for us.”

  “I haven’t detected anyone following.”

  He tapped his forehead. “I’ve got a little telepathic buzz going. Might not be anything, but I’m not about to lead anyone to the laptop. The night’s young enough to exercise a bit of patience and caution.”

  They’d already been driving in circles for over an hour. Ever-widening circles, Eden had to admit, cautiously weaving through areas with heavy traffic and quieter side streets.

  “I wouldn’t mind getting attacked,” Eden told him, but she pulled into a parking space. She killed the engine and lights. “If we take a prisoner, you can read his mind for information about who’s dealing Dawn.”

  “But the information on the computer might tell us who is manufacturing the drug, and where. For all we know, the Patron himself might have been selling the drug to vampires, using the money to fund his research. Shutting down the source will get the drug off the streets.”

  “Good plan.”

  “Of course,” he added thoughtfully after a moment, “the drug isn’t actually illegal by any mortal laws, and I haven’t seen any clinical proof that it causes psychotic behavior.”

  “You’re splitting ethical hairs.” Wolf’s attitude was downright disturbing. “If we capture a few Tribe users, your scientists can study them.”

  “Like lab rats.”

  “That’s an insult to rats. The point of this operation is to keep monsters like the Manticores from inhabiting the world twenty-four/seven.”

  Wolf turned to face her. She assumed his psychic senses were on watch for any approaching vampires, while his gaze was turned intently on her.

  “Ah, yes, the Manticores.” His silky tone was practically a purr. He put a hand on her arm, the touch warm and electric. “Tell me all about the Manticores. From the beginning.”

  Eden felt almost hypnotized. Not threatened or anything, but she very much welcomed the opportunity to share a bit of knowledge. She lived in two worlds, and the secrets of her nighttime life were hard to bear. Here was someone from outside her own claustrophobic little circle but still in on it all. Someone new to talk to, someone interested in what she had to say. She and Wolf were—

  “Manticores?” he prompted.

  “Right. Sorry, I think the change in my sleep patterns is making me unfocused,” she finished.

  “And here I thought it was my overwhelmingly sensual effect on you.”

  “No. That’s just irritating.”

  He put a hand on her thigh. “You’re not denying it.”

  Eden had to concentrate hard, but she pretended his touch didn’t affect her, and went on. “The hunters first encountered the Manticores in the Middle Ages, though there are some scanty ancient records preserved in monasteries in the Sinai that link a whole bunch of tribes with names that pertain to dragons to a Middle Eastern god, or demon. They worshipped this dragon god or—”

  “Demon.” He snorted. “Our version is that the dragon-born vampires kept this creature as a pet and used him to extort tribute from mortals. But do go on, the human version is probably much more relevant for hunting Manticores.”

  She hadn’t heard about the pet and extortion theory, but his comment made her think that this dragon of legend might really have existed. And why not? If the world could have vampires in it, it followed that other mythical creatures also existed. Just because her family specialized in one kind of hunting didn’t mean that there weren’t other things to hunt.

  “The night world is bigger than I’ve been led to believe, isn’t it?”

  He grinned. “Oh, the creatures I’ve seen and heard of. No doubt sometime in the future, we’ll all have separate cable channels and equal rights advocates lobbying in Washington. But that’s for the future. You’re giving me a history lesson now.”

  “While we wait to be attacked,” she added, and took a quick glance outside the car’s windows. She didn’t see anything, so she went on. “The one thing we’ve been certain of about the Manticores from the fifteenth century on, is that they specialize in slave dealing, within and outside the vampire community. Mostly they kidnap human women, but they take Family and Clan females when they can. The humans they train as sex slaves, but vampires are used as breeders.”

  “You make it all sound so sleazy. Manticores consider this a valuable service within their community.”

  She gave him a disgusted look. “I wouldn’t think a Clan Prime would joke about such a thing.”

  “Bad taste.” He shrugged. “The Clans do not take losing their females lightly. No vampire does.”

  “You don’t have that many women,” she said. “You have to protect them for self-preservation, even more than the duty, honor, and respect you claim toward your matriarchs.”

  “We do need to keep the species going.”

  “The children you have with mortal women don’t inherit many vampire traits. I’ve heard that they’re called mules by vampires.”

  He lifted his head proudly. “No Clan Prime would ever call his child by such a derogatory name. I’ve heard that hunters call such children abominations.”

  Okay, she’d baited him, he’d baited back. She let it go. “A pack or two of Manticores came to America in the early 1800s. They settled in the Five Points area of New York City, where they fed and preyed on the poverty-stricken immigrant community. Then the Family Caeg moved in and drove them out of New York. They moved south to New Orleans, and out to the Californian gold fields. Wherever they went, people disappeared, especially young women. In the wilder parts of the country, those women were openly used as prostitutes. By the end of the century they operated brothels in several California cities, as well as dealing slaves to other tribes. Over several months at the turn of the twentieth century, the hunters burned down the Manticores’ brothels and freed the women.”

  “Didn’t the newspapers of the time report all this as some sort of gang warfare? Criminal elements at war with each other? And they editorialized about how both sides needed to be stopped,” he said.

  “And weren’t some of the newspapers of the time owned by Clan members?”

  “That I know nothing about. Really. Go on; tell me all about old Justinian.”

  He had that seductive tone again, as if he was urging her on to some sin. Eden wondered if that was a Prime thing, or if it was just him. And his hand was still on her thigh. She was exquisitely aware of his touch, of his presence. She had to take a deep, steadying breath, but at least that didn’t draw a smug chuckle from him. She began to suspect that he wasn’t noticing being hot.

  “Justinian is old,” she finally went on. “We have reports about him killing and raping going back at least three hundred years. He has a lot of followers, even though he’s never been officially the king Prime of the tribe. His exploits have made him popular among his peers.”

  “Oh, yeah? Like what?”

  The Clan vampire’s almost admiring tone confused her. “You guys claim to loathe the likes of Justinian.”

  “We give points for style.”

  “He’s a slimy, slippery, altogether putrid excuse for a semi-sentient living being. He ran the Manticore sex slave operation. He breaks women and turns them out. He’s been a pimp for centuries.”

  “Is that how he built up the fortune stolen by Garrison?”

  “It would have to be. You do know that he started a war between the Manticores and local clans, including yours, back in the 1880s? In fact, it was over his stealing a female from the Wolf Clan, wasn’t it? We hunters don’t know many of the details, even though we helped run the tribes out of town. Did you ever get her back?”

  He had gone very still. He was staring out the windshield, his expression blank. “No.”

  For
all that his answer was brusque and cold, it made her aware that in some way he was hurting and vulnerable. It occurred to Eden that Sid Wolf was likely related to the kidnapped Wolf female. What was somebody else’s ancient history for her might be a recent tragedy for the long-lived Clan.

  “Did you know her?”

  He gave her a look that made her wish she’d kept her mouth shut.

  “Do you know that you’re hurting me?” she asked.

  Chapter Eight

  Laurent hadn’t realized his claws were out. Or that he had such a tight grip on the mortal’s leg. He wished he could get some pleasure from hurting her, but it didn’t ease his own pain at all. So he let her go.

  He even said, “Sorry.”

  Her words echoed around in his head.

  Did you ever get her back?

  “I never saw her again.”

  “What?”

  Laurent realized that he must have spoken aloud, because the woman beside him was no telepath. She did have a talent, though. She was cursed with the ability to make him remember things he’d deliberately buried—things best left buried.

  Not that he wasn’t to blame as well. He’d been the one who’d given in to sudden curiosity about his sire. His possible sire. Justinian had teased him about the connection all the years Laurent spent under the pack leader’s thumb. Laurent had even let the old bastard use the promise of truth at last to get under his skin again a few weeks ago. It was one of the reasons he’d gone along with the scheme to retrieve the Manticore fortune from the Patron.

  Justinian used knowledge as punishment, reward, and torture. Laurent had seen Justinian break the women he trained with words as much as with beatings. The pack leader wasn’t any kinder to the vampires he ruled.

  Laurent fell for it, briefly. Then he learned that Justinian wanted revenge against the Garrison family even more than he wanted the money, while Laurent was strictly in it for the money.

  Laurent shook his head. He had to get away from the pack. He had to get on with his life. Nostalgia was stupid. Curiosity was stupid. How had he allowed himself to be so self-indulgent?