Master of Darkness

by Susan Sizemore

  “Werewolves are honest, loyal, and true. Shame on you for thinking one would do anything but bite a Manticore on the ankle if they got the chance. Joe just wanted me to help him find—someone for him.”

  “The real Sid Wolf.”

  “Yeah.” His voice was tight, and his expression had gone blank.

  “But why did he ask you for help? Why did he mistake you for a Wolf?”

  Eden wanted desperately to know, to really know, Laurent. If only to learn how she’d gone so very wrong in coming to care for him.

  He didn’t answer her immediately, and she saw a sadness and fear in his eyes that couldn’t be an act.

  Ridiculously, foolishly, she wanted to throw her arms around him. But she didn’t move; she waited for him to make up his mind. About what? Whether or not to trust her? She was his prisoner; he owed her nothing. And yet…

  He’d said he loved her.

  “Love means trust,” she said.

  Laurent cleared his throat, twice, and took a long, deep breath. “My mother,” he said. “Was … is Wolf Clan.”

  Eden suddenly, vividly, recalled a conversation they’d had in her car. He’d asked her to tell him all she knew about Justinian.

  “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 if we did help run the Tribes out of town. Did you ever get her back?”

  He had gone very still. Once again he was staring out the windshield, and his expression was 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?”

  “Your mother,” she said now. “She’s the Wolf Justinian took. Oh, God, I’m sorry, I—”

  He held up a hand to silence her. And gave one of his fatalistic shrugs. “How is it so many people know more about my history than I do?”

  She hesitated for a moment, then replied, “I don’t. The hunters don’t know about what happened to—your mother.”

  She’d almost said Clan female in the depersonalizing way she’d been trained to think about vampires. If there was one thing Laurent whateverhecalledhimself had taught her, it was that vampires were people, too. Whatever other deceptions he practiced on her, she couldn’t see vampires as just soulless monsters anymore.

  “Not that some of us don’t still need killing.” He picked up on her thoughts.

  “You said your mother is Wolf Clan? Is she all right? Does Justinian still—”

  “He sold her a long time ago.”

  Eden was repulsed by this answer, but she was not surprised.

  “I thought she was dead,” Laurent went on. “I spent years looking for her.” He gave a soft, bitter laugh. “Justinian never understood why I was always running away. Until I heard she died in a fire. I didn’t think there was any more reason to search for her then. I guess I was wrong. We’re telepaths,” he went on. “I don’t understand why she didn’t—” He shook his head. “Never mind.”

  “Maybe she couldn’t,” Eden said.

  She hated the way Laurent stood there, as both a heartbroken child and a confused, embittered adult. She couldn’t believe that this was some sort of ploy, no matter how good an actor he claimed to be. She couldn’t help but try to help.

  “Maybe she was hurt in this fire. Maybe she suffered post-traumatic stress from what was done to her and her psychic powers don’t work anymore. Are you even sure she’s still alive?”

  “Joe tells me he has her number on speed dial. And—there’s other evidence.”

  “What?”

  “Her daughter. Her name’s Sid.” He shook his head, looking thoroughly disgusted. “Why do I always tell you too much?”

  Eden could have easily disputed this statement, but instead she said, “Sid’s your sister?” She threw up her hands in frustration. “Why did you pretend to be her? What’s with the computer? Where do I come into this? Why did you leave?” She cringed. “I didn’t mean to ask that.” The answer to her last question was deeply important to her, even though she hadn’t known she was thinking it until she blurted it out.

  “I’m an opportunist. It’s a healthy survival trait, so I don’t apologize.”

  “You used me from the first.”

  “I did help with your investigation, now didn’t I? I had your back in all those fights.”

  All true, she admitted. But there was a sting in it, wasn’t there? “Why?”

  “You know, you are my prisoner. I don’t have to explain myself to you.”

  He was infuriating, but Laurent made her laugh. “Oh, come on, there’s nothing worse than a pouting villain. Explain your evil plan to me. Gloat a little. A Tribe prince needs the practice,” she added.

  Her words seemed to hurt him, and she almost apologized. Then she remembered that she was a prisoner. She wanted to suspect that Laurent hadn’t deliberately gotten her into this mess, but he had gotten her into it. She didn’t owe him apologies. But that urge to comfort him…

  Damn.

  She didn’t think she was going to be able to get rid of it. She ached for him. She cared for him. It made no sense, but she wasn’t going to try to deny it.

  “You’ve messed me up, you, you, Wolf/Manticore hybrid.”

  “The feeling is mutual, Faveau. I mean, getting involved with a hunter? That’s just wrong.”

  She noticed that they were standing near each other, and had no idea how it had happened. When they’d started this heated conversation, the width of the room had been between them.

  He was wearing a black shirt, with the cuffs turned up, and she noticed something about his wrists that she hadn’t before. His arms were long, elegantly muscled, his hands long-fingered, his wrists graceful. And the pale skin on the inside of them was completely blank.

  “No tattoo,” she realized.

  “No tattoo,” he affirmed. He pointed a finger at her. “You should have noticed sooner. Especially with all the times you’ve seen me naked.”

  She slapped the flat of her palm against her forehead. “I am such an idiot!”

  All Clan Primes, or at least the ones who claimed to serve and protect humankind, wore a tattoo of their clan’s heraldic symbol on their wrist. In Laurent’s case it should be a wolf’s head. It was the first thing she should have asked to see.

  Not that his taking advantage of her was her own fault, but she should have been more observant.

  “Never mind seeing you naked,” she said. “Why did you hang around? Why did you help me?”

  “At first I was just looking for a place to hide.”

  “Justinian was after you?”

  “Not for the first time. And I had something he wanted.”

  “The computer.”

  “Which might very well hold information about the Dawn drug. I didn’t lie to you about that. I don’t know for sure, but it seems likely that Garrison was involved in its development.”

  “So helping me seemed like a fair trade for shelter?” He nodded. “What else is on the laptop? Let me guess: something you needed a hacker’s help to access. When you found out about my day job, you decided to hang around to persuade me to break into the system.”

  “Precisely.”

  Yet for some reason he had decided to turn the laptop over to Justinian. It wasn’t his fault she’d gotten captured. He had tried to keep her out of it when he walked out. He’d told her he didn’t need her expertise.

  Why?

  The answer was easy to guess: Sid.

  Aw.

  “Why are you smiling at me like that, Faveau?”

  “You traded the computer for your captured sister.”

  He grimaced. “It sounds so—”<
br />
  “Heroic.”

  “—stupid when you put it like that.”

  “It’s not stupid. You were trying to do a good thing.”

  He sighed. “Yeah. Trying. When I try to do good things, they generally turn out stupid. I’m not a hero, but every now and then I get this—impulse. It’s got to be the Wolf genetics working to mess me up. I’m no good at being good.” He wiped a hand wearily across his face. “And I’m too lazy to make a good bad guy. And I’m tired. Can we stop fighting for a while?” he asked. “I could really use a good day’s sleep.”

  She was pretty tired herself. And bruised. And she supposed the headache she’d tried valiantly to ignore was aftershock from her forehead banging into the steering wheel of her car. And then there’d been the Taser. And all the stormy emotional mess.

  “I’m still angry with you,” she told him. “But I guess we can pick it up later.”

  Laurent moved closer to her. She should have tried to step away when he took her in his arms, but she found comfort in his embrace. She found strength and reassurance, and felt his need for the same. Maybe it was a lie, a lie they told themselves if not each other, but being in his arms felt right.

  “Later,” he whispered in her ear.

  Then he carried her to the bed and wrapped his body protectively around hers.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  “There have got to be vampires involved in this,” Joe said to Daniel. “I wouldn’t have so much trouble tracking otherwise, if there weren’t vampires involved. Their psychic energy cancels out mine, and messes up my nose—at least in large groups. I’ve been to enough vampire parties and come home feeling like I had a full sensory head cold,” he went on. “Sid must have run afoul of the druggie Tribe guys that are in town.”

  “My guess is that you’ve figured that from the first, but didn’t want to think about it.”

  He and Daniel were in the office. Joe was sitting with his feet up on his desk, a mug of coffee cradled in his hands, and he was really, really tired. And the exhaustion was nothing in comparison to the dread growing in him. He had to find a way to help his best friend, and soon.

  Before the hell that had happened to her mother began to happen to her.

  “It’s too bad I couldn’t get Laurent to be of some use,” Joe muttered angrily. “Jerk.”

  Daniel was seated at Sid’s desk, his gaze on her glass paperweight. He looked up. He wasn’t any more rested than Joe. “There are other vampires we can call,” he reminded Joe. “Good vampires—to fight the bad ones.”

  “I know. I’ve been avoiding thinking about that, too. It’s the last thing Sid would want.”

  Daniel gave a tense nod. “I don’t like to think about her Clan’s reaction, either. But isn’t it better for her to be a prisoner of people who love her?”

  Sidonie Wolf was the hardest thing for a vampire female to be. She was free. This was the twenty-first century, and more and more of the young females were demanding changes to the sheltered, restricted, pampered way Clan women had always lived. This change had started back in the 1960s, but the movement was building up steam now.

  Some females were going out to live on their own for years at a time until their matris called them back home. Sid was the first who’d openly declared that if her matri called, she’d only return home to mate if she wanted to. The Primes, the Matri, and the elders were uncomfortable at best with these changes. Some saw Sid as a rebel. Many were downright hostile. And Sidonie Wolf blithely ignored them and lived on her own, worked at a dangerous profession, and had always insisted that she was free to do anything any other American woman could. She was a source of major controversy among her kind.

  There were plenty of vampires who would love to see her get in trouble, to need rescuing. And there’d be a terrible price for her to pay for it. Joe hated the thought of seeing his friend’s wings clipped, to see her only allowed out surrounded by a band of smug Prime bodyguards.

  So he still hesitated in making a call to Wolf Clan for assistance.

  All in all, it was much easier to be of the werefolk than of vampire kind. While they had plenty of problems within and without their culture, at least gender equality wasn’t something they had trouble with.

  Joe drained his coffee. “I’m thinking too much. I need an action plan.” He watched as Daniel delicately lowered a finger to touch the paperweight, then grimaced. “What are you doing?”

  Daniel slowly retracted his touch from the glass and focused his gaze on Joe, while rubbing his finger as though it ached. “I think Justinian is involved in this.”

  “Daniel, you see into the past,” Joe reminded his seer friend.

  “I have been seeing into the past with the glass ball,” Daniel answered. “The strongest impression I’ve been getting from it is of a house. A house here in town, I’m sure of that. I keep seeing it over and over.”

  “The house where Lady Antonia was held,” Joe said. “The paperweight was hers—”

  “Justinian’s house,” Daniel interrupted. “I believe that is where he’s holding Sid. I can’t explain all the impressions I’m getting—it’s sort of like in the past, but with shadows from the present sort of smoking up the vision.”

  Joe thought about it for a while. “If Justinian came back to his old lair—” He nodded. “Maybe you are picking up on Sid. I sure as hell hope so. It’s a start. A place to look. Do you think you could find—”

  “You could ask Lady Antonia,” Lady Antonia said from the doorway.

  Both men stood as the tall woman who looked so much like a slightly older version of Sid closed the office door and came up to Joe’s desk.

  “Neither of you noticed me come in,” she said. “I’m not sure if that’s a sign I might finally be getting some of my psychic powers back, or if the two of you are too distracted for your own good. It’s probably the latter.”

  “How’d you get here?” Joe blurted out. He’d never seen her anywhere but inside the safe confines of Clan Wolf’s La Jolla compound.

  “I borrowed a car,” she answered. “Sid taught me to drive.” She waved for them to sit back down. “I’ve heard most of what you said, so there’s no need to fill me in.”

  She took the seat next to Joe’s desk while he remained on his feet, unsure what to do or say. There was something about Antonia, head of House Antonia of Clan Wolf that always left Joe stunned—in a good way. She had this regal—something. A calm assurance, a core of serene strength. He knew her history, but he’d never seen anything that even hinted of the wounded bird about her. There was sadness in her, but nothing of the victim.

  The truth was, Joe had a terrible crush on Lady Antonia. It was something Sid teased him about. But it wasn’t a romantic thing, vampire and werewolf biology just didn’t work that way. He admired her greatly—and now she had him all flustered.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” he told her.

  “I don’t see why not. My daughter needs me. And you are absolutely correct about not wanting to call in the Clan Primes to help with the rescue.” She folded her hands in her lap. “If Sidonie needs rescuing, we have adequate troops for the mission right here. I’m a vampire,” she reminded him with a brief but impressive show of fangs and claws. “I might not have our kind’s full mental strength, but I can make up for it in brute force if I have to. And if it is Justinian that has my little girl, there is no way I can be stopped from going after him.”

  Joe considered arguing, but he was a werewolf, not a vampire. From his kind’s point of view, a mother’s protecting her cub was not only a right, it was sacred duty.

  “The pack protects the pack,” he said.

  “Just so.” She went very still for a moment, then she asked, “Did you mention Laurent?”

  She sounded so calm, so matter-of-fact, but Joe saw the flicker of hunger in her eyes.

  “I—” Joe scrubbed his hands across his face. “He … He is in town,” was all Joe could manage to say.

  “We don’t think h
e’s involved with Justinian,” Daniel spoke up. “Not directly. He doesn’t have anything to do with Sid’s disappearance.”

  “Really?” Whatever her true feelings, her tone was merely curious. “I wonder. It could well be that Justinian and Sidonie have each woven their own schemes around gaining possession of Laurent.” She gave a faint, steely smile. “That would make for an interesting clash of wills. Fortunately, Sid’s smarter than Justinian. Hopefully, Laurent is as well. Never mind the underlying cause of this crisis.” She turned her attention fully on Joe. “You were in the military. What’s our plan of attack?”

  Joe had remembered something while she’d been speaking. “Laurent’s been hanging out with a hunter that’s taken on the drug problem.”

  “Really? Well that bodes well for him, don’t you think?”

  Joe was skeptical, but he didn’t comment. “The hunter has some specialized equipment called a zapper that we’re going to acquire,” he went on. “I think it gives vampires very bad headaches. Because of your damaged telepathy it probably won’t hurt you,” he told Antonia. “That’ll be one advantage. Another is the drug some of the Tribe boys are using. I was able to take down one that was using. So it’ll level the playing field a bit for me and Cathy when we take them on.”

  “Cathy?” Daniel jumped to his feet. “Cathy’s—indisposed.”

  “She’s locked in total full-moon freakout,” Joe clarified. “Which means she needs to kill things. If we aim her at the right things, it will be good for her. Take my word as a werewolf on this. Besides, Sid’s her bud. She’d be really pissed off if she morphed back a couple of days from now and found out we left her out of the fun. And you,” he pointed at Daniel. “You have your choice of a gun or a crossbow.”

  Daniel sighed. “I’ll take the gun.”

  “Good.” Joe rubbed his hands together. “Lady Antonia, please tell us you remember how to find this house.”