by CJ Flynn
“This is your chase, now. What's next?”
I crossed my arms. “I think she's taking the long way around. She's headed for Antakya, but she's going overland.”
“Why do you believe she is headed to Antakya?”
“I think it's obvious that she's trying to hide from me, and so far, the only people capable of making that happen are witches. The Coven of the Crows only have so much influence, and Antakya is close to the home of the Coven of the Nazar. I think she might go to them for help.”
“This is logical for her,” Daniel replied. “Though usually witches don't rush to help vampires. What do you think is in it for them?”
“I have no idea. Money?”
Daniel shook his head. “Doubtful. Most witches do not value it as much as vampires do.”
“Power?”
He was silent for several moments. “Possibly. There has always been a struggle amongst... well, all of us. The various supernatural creatures. And usually within our own power structures as well. There are many ideas about how to govern, how to use our abilities.”
“If it is power, though, what is she offering them?” I stared at my laptop screen and tried to come up with a reason any of the witches would be willing to help her as Rafe had.
“The same thing we always have to offer.”
“Immortality.”
Daniel nodded. “There are a great many stories about what happened with the former Queen. Her telepathic abilities are now common knowledge, and I would not be surprised to learn that many others are wondering if they too can enjoy both their own abilities and the immortality of the vampire.”
“It seems like the cost is too high, though.”
“Perhaps. This is all conjecture, of course. We need to focus on what we do know.”
I took a deep breath and nodded. I could spend the next ten years analyzing the vampires, the witches, and still get nowhere fast. I picked up my laptop and handed it across to him. “The browser window has my map. She'll have to coordinate stops along the way. Even if she has one of the SUVs and a team of day drivers, there will still be breaks and safe houses along the way.”
Daniel nodded. “I doubt she has a team of anything. She likely has one human that she can trust, and that person isn't going to be able to drive constantly during the day. She has limited resources, or practically none at all, and may be just calling in favors whenever she can.”
“So you think we can catch up?”
He frowned at the map. “I think they will mostly travel at night. It could take her as many as five or six nights of travel to get there.” He tapped the screen. “What's this mark?”
I'd placed a little purple flag over Budapest.
“The caves.”
Daniel frowned. “I do not understand.”
I could see the passage in my notes clearly in my head and decided it was better to show Daniel what I had.
The first record of Imala is at the caves in Buda in 1672, where she appeared in Lillith's retinue.
The silence in the room was deafening. “How do you have this information?”
“It's part of my database. I learned it several months ago.”
Daniel stared at me. “Is there more?”
I nodded.
“It must be destroyed. When this is over.”
I didn't respond. I had worked too hard for my knowledge to ever destroy it.
“Why do you think this is important? Is there a reason for her to return to Budapest?”
I shrugged. “I'm not sure. I just can't shake it, I guess, so I marked it. What if it's important to her?”
He stared at me, his gaze unreadable. “Imala was a gift to the Queen, from an English vampire who had just returned from the Americas. Lillith kept her court there at the time, as the Ottomans were friendlier than the Habsburgs. Imala was turned at Buda.”
My vision clouded as I took in this new information. My hunch about Imala was right, even as dread blossomed in my chest. She might very well be headed to Budapest instead of going straight to Turkey. I knew that there was very real power for vampires at the place of their change.
Daniel consulted the clock on the nightstand. “We have about five hours until sunrise. We can be in Buda—”
I held up my hand. “I think I need to do this alone, Daniel. I can move during the day, and I won't attract as much attention. Private flights, using the SUVs... it's all too easily tracked.”
“You believe we have a mole?”
I shrugged. “I really don't know, and I don't know if it even matters, to be honest. I have no idea what Imala's involvement with Ben is at this point, but she's on the run. The only chance I have is to get ahead of her.”
“Fine. We will do it your way. Let us make travel arrangements, and we'll try to intercept her in Budapest.”
I let my mind wander to Imala. She had stopped moving, somewhere in northern Italy. Two more vampires were with her now, but I didn't recognize them.
“She's in Italy, now.”
Daniel nodded. “I do not believe she is able to rely on Lillith's network anymore. Loyalties fade fast from the old Queen, and Imala is not well-liked. She could be staying anywhere.”
“We can take a train,” I said, my fingers flying over the keys. “If we rent a cabin, I can keep you safe, even in the daylight. We can make it to Budapest...” I trailed off as I did the math. It wouldn't work.
“We need to drive,” he said, looking at the map once more. “It'll take about eighteen hours to get to Budapest. If we left at sunrise, you'd catch up to her, and possibly ahead of her. It's our only chance.”
“But the SUV—”
“We won't take one. We can create a secure space in the trunk of a car.”
I scoffed. “What if I get pulled over?”
He shrugged. “Don't.”
* * *
Honestly, I wasn't at all sure that Daniel could breathe in the space we rigged up. The innermost layer was some sort of thick plastic, and he would be wrapped up in it, and then hidden underneath two duffle bags and some blankets he was flagrantly stealing from the hotel. He assembled everything in the trunk of a rented gray luxury sedan while I slept in the blanket-less room upstairs. About forty minutes before sunrise, he backed the car into a narrow service alley, and settled himself under the plastic tarp.
I arranged the bags and blankets on top, grabbed my purse and walked around to the driver's door. I wouldn't let myself think too hard about his comfort levels. He was perfectly capable of figuring out what worked for him.
I set the GPS in the dash and pulled onto the brick street just as the sky started to turn a dusky pink.
* * *
We had made a plan to stop in Piancenza to reconvene after sunset, and by the time I pulled into a petrol station, I was more than ready to turn over driving duties for a bit. We were halfway to Budapest, and I was exhausted from driving and occasionally tracing Imala's whereabouts. She had stopped traveling at daylight, exactly as Daniel had expected, and had been somewhere in northern Italy until sunset. They weren't on the move yet, and we were very nearly caught up to them. I was still holding out hope that we'd make it to Budapest before Imala.
Instead of piloting the car back to the A21, Daniel turned down a side street, and parked the car in front of a small storefront that cowered between two taller buildings.
He cut the ignition and turned to me. “Lock the doors and keep a low profile. I'll be back shortly.”
I did as he said and burrowed down inside my coat. I was beyond exhausted, and knew that sunrise would come before I knew it. Sleep was the most important thing, even if I was starving.
I closed my eyes, confident no one would be all that interested in me, and let my mind drift. The red glow of Imala still had not moved from the place it had been for over twelve hours.
The sweet smell of tomatoes, cheese and yeasty dough filled my mind. I opened my eyes, wondering if I'd been so hungry that I'd really dreamed of pizza in Italy, and saw D
aniel resting a flat, brown box on the driver's seat. He tossed his jacket into the backseat before lifting the box again and settling into the car.
“I thought you might be hungry,” he said, lifting the lid and showing off a gloriously simple pizza, complete with charred edges of the crust, golden mozzarella, and a few curls of basil.
My stomach growled and I reached over to relieve him of the pizza. “Thank you,” I managed to squeak out, as I looked down at it. It smelled perfect, ten times better than anything I could get stateside.
My eyes started to water, and I knew it was more than the exhaustion from the day's long drive. I missed being... home. I wasn't even sure where that really was, but it definitely wasn't on the road to Budapest, in the front seat of a rental car, or at a witch's cottage near the English Channel.
I let the box rest on my knees and pressed my hands into my face. The events of the past several days rolled over me, and I tried to push them away. I needed to keep my emotions in check, keep my head on straight. I had let my feelings get the best of me in the Coven's cottage, and I couldn't afford another mistake.
Even with my best efforts to keep them at bay, the tears still started the slow trek down my cheeks. I sucked in a deep breath.
“Allie.” Daniel's voice was quiet and softer than I'd ever heard. He put his hand on my chin and gently turned my face toward him. “We'll find Benjamin.”
I nodded. “I know. This is the closest we've been. I just...” I trailed off, not sure what it was I wanted to say. My feelings for Ben were a nasty snarl in my chest, full of fear and rejection and... anger. I hadn't had time to process everything that had happened in such a short period of time. Harding's death, meeting Anita, and learning about my half-sisters and my father's other life. Ben had rejected me that night in Paris, and here I was, tearing across Europe in a desperate attempt to find him. But everything else was boiling at the edges of my mind, the grief of losing my best friend and the bittersweet joy of learning that his fiancé—my other best friend—was carrying his child.
I just needed a minute. Just one fucking minute to breath and think and cry. I needed to find an outlet for the pressure building behind my eyelids.
But Daniel's soft look didn't give me that freedom.
It gave me resolve. This man, who had seen atrocities I probably couldn't imagine, had brought me pizza and met my gaze with something that looked like a shade of sympathy.
It forged the steel in my spine, and reminded me that I had witnessed my own share of terror.
And I was still standing.
Chapter 16
My face was dry, and I was anxious to get moving. I had given Daniel a nod, finished my dinner and forced my eyes closed. I knew, deep down, that the hardest miles were ahead of me. I knew Imala's whereabouts, and we couldn't afford to lose what we had gained. If we were going to make it to Budapest before she did, I would need to take over just before sunrise, and I would need my wits about me.
Sleep came surprisingly easy, and for the first night in many, I was not tortured by visions of what I had seen.
There was only darkness.
Chapter 17
The slowing of the car woke me up, and through blurry vision, I saw that Daniel was exiting the E71 onto a narrow road that seemed to stretch all the way to the edge of the inky horizon. There weren't many lights, but I could see a cloud of light in the east.
“Where are we?” I asked, rubbing my hands over my eyes.
“We are west of Siofok. I know a safe place to stop here, for fuel and any other supplies we might need.”
I nodded. We had briefly discussed stopping along the Balaton so I could take over driving duties. My efforts to sleep had been more successful than I thought possible, but I had missed the entirety of Slovenia.
We were on a straight road with narrow lanes and no shoulder. The leafless skeletons of short, brushy trees lined the roadside, giving me a strange, gray tunnel vision.
“Is it a safe house?” I asked.
Daniel shook his head. “Not exactly. Just an old friend. A man named Jeno. He runs a small shop and fuel station near the beach.”
I smirked. It was hard to imagine Daniel having non-vampire friends. Especially non-vampire friends that operated small shops in beach towns.
My humor gave way to unease as the reality of our location set in. I had slept for nearly seven hours, and Daniel had no way of knowing Imala's location. I took a deep breath, afraid of what I would find. My guess that Imala would head for Budapest was nothing more than a whim.
I closed my eyes and concentrated, seeking out the energy that had become as familiar as my own consciousness. I would never, for the rest of my days, forget the feel of Imala's aura.
It filled my mind, the angry red she shared with every vampire I had ever met etching every synapse that fired. I bit back a scream; it had never felt like that before.
She was close.
I forced myself to shove away all that extra energy that seemed to be rolling off her in waves, but as I worked to figure out exactly where she was, I began to notice that there were edges of an aura I hadn't seen before.
I struggled to puzzle it out when I heard the roar of an engine close behind us. A steady rain had begun falling not long after I'd awakened, but I had ignored it. Now, as I heard that roar coming closer, I mentally shoved back the aura and glanced out at the road in front of us. Slick, shiny, and black.
“Daniel.”
“I know.”
The bright glare of high beams filled the car and I saw Daniel's eyes flicker towards the rearview mirror.
“You are wearing your seat belt?” he asked, his voice tense.
“Yes—”
I heard the crash before I felt the ripple of energy through my rib cage and neck. My head rolled forward just as the airbag in front of me burst out of the dash. I could feel the car start to spin and through a blur, I saw the angry snarl of the barren tree branches just as my head snapped to the side.
The world went black around me, finally pushing away the edges of Imala's red aura.
Chapter 18
I wasn't out for more than a minute or two, but when I finally came to, Daniel had already left the car and was nowhere to be seen. The still-bright light from the other car's headlights filled the interior, and I shook myself as I groped for the handle and shoved my door happen.
I heard the wild hiss of a vampire, a noise that I become intimately familiar with during our time at Lillith's castle. I kept my profile low, sticking close to the car door as I sought out the source of the noise.
Daniel was crouched a few paces into the trees, squaring off with a deranged and haggard-looking Imala.
When I had last seen her at Lillith's castle, she had still been standing tall and proud, a Native American with deep russet skin and obsidian hair that seemed to move even when she wasn't. Even with that odd pallor that all vampires seemed to have, Imala had been a nightmarish warrior standing next to her queen.
Now, her hair had grown stringy and her pallor had grown so deep that her skin looked alien. Her eyes glowed red, and her fangs glinted in the glare of the headlights. She was letting out a long, low hiss that echoed the strange sounds coming from the gray sedan.
I turned away from the fighting vampires and the strange aura from Imala filtered back into my vision. It was everywhere, and she didn't seem like the only source.
I crouched and felt my way along the side of the car, towards the big SUV that had collided with us. The rear passenger door was flung open, and a human driver was draped over the steering wheel, a trickle of blood coming from his ear down past two puncture wounds on his neck.
The SUV looked sort of like the vehicles Sorrell's people used, and the rear cargo area was still sealed against daylight, even though sunset had long passed and sunrise was still a few hours away.
I turned once more to look back at Daniel and Imala. Still squaring off. Typical vampires... so much bluster before the bloodletting begins.
<
br /> I looked at the panels that separated the cab from the cargo area. They were black, some kind of metal, with an outline of large black rivets. I knew from experience that there were rear cameras accessible from the center dash, with views of both the interior of the compartment and the rear exterior of the car. I didn't dare climb into the passenger seat to access the cameras—the only way to find out if Imala was alone was to access that compartment. I tried zeroing my own focus in on it, trying to block out Imala's searing aura, but I couldn't get away from it.
