“There was no point in killing him, otherwise,” Luca pointed out.
“True,” Eleanor agreed. She was tiny, as people often had been hundreds of years ago. Being made vampire didn’t make the person suddenly grow taller; rather, they were preserved as they had been when they were turned, which was why the myth that vampires were all beautiful and physically perfect was only that: a myth. If people had been ugly as humans, they were just as ugly as vampires—much stronger, much faster, immune to aging and all diseases, but still ugly.
Eleanor was neither pretty nor ugly. What she was, was alert, wily, and a ruthless enemy. Hector had seemed fond of her, and often relied on her common sense to sway other Council members to his way of thinking. She drummed her nails on the conference table in a quick tattoo. “If these rebels are so organized that they’ve recruited one of us, I’m amazed that no intelligence regarding this has come our way. We all have kindred children, alliances, our own sources of information—” By that she meant “spies,” but that didn’t have to be spelled out. “We should have received warning. I don’t like this at all.”
“Hector wasn’t infallible,” Pablo pointed out. He crossed his arms over his burly chest. “Perhaps he was mistaken.”
“Then why is he dead?” Marie snapped.
Nadia snorted. “We don’t know that he is. All we know is that he isn’t in his quarters, and Luca has assumed that he’s dead because Hector called him in a panic about some rebels that none of us have heard about until now.”
The very idea of Hector in a panic was enough to make several of them roll their eyes and snicker. Nadia set back in her chair, sulking.
Luca hid his annoyance at their behavior, though he’d seen it before. No matter how old or how powerful the vampires, put them in government and their behavior began devolving toward juvenile. He didn’t bother telling them again what he knew to be true. Instead he looked around the table and said, “Well? What do you want me to do? Anything? Nothing?”
Someone sitting at that table would be very relieved that he was evidently willing to let the Council direct him in this, though that someone would be greatly mistaken, because no way in hell would he let this go. Still, let them think they had control of the situation.
No one said anything. After a moment, Marie pushed her chair back and stood. “Obviously no one is going to make any decisions right now, but the one thing we can do is look around Hector’s quarters.” She glanced at Luca, silently asking if that was where he thought Hector had been killed, and he gave a slight nod. “If we find his dust, then we’ll know Luca’s assumptions are on target—as usual,” she added, not above a jab at her fellow Council members.
“Are you in charge now?” Theodore growled, though everyone had risen to their feet, himself included.
“No, she isn’t,” Alma snapped.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Marie muttered. “I said ‘let’s go look,’ not ‘I’m taking over.’”
“That’s what you said,” Pablo observed. “I’m not too certain that’s what you meant.”
There had always been a degree of tension between Marie and the other Council members, perhaps because she was a blood born and they feared her enhanced powers—much as they feared Luca—though of course none of them would ever admit to that. Jealousy came into play, too; blood borns matured until they reached the apex, the optimum physical and mental peak; for Luca, perhaps because of his size and the extra growing time he’d needed, his prime had occurred in his early thirties. For Marie, it had been at roughly age sixteen. Her skin was flawless, her teeth perfect, her hair thick and lustrous, her breasts nice and high. Even Alma, as beautiful as she was, looked like someone’s aunt compared to Marie’s youthfulness. Because of that, they were all alert to any sign of ambition in Marie.
God save him from politics, Luca thought wearily. It reduced ancient, powerful vampires to the emotional maturity of grade-schoolers.
Enoch nervously led the way to Hector’s quarters. When he reached out to open the door, however, Luca said, “Wait,” and he put enough power in his voice that all of them, even Marie, stopped in their tracks. Enoch visibly shivered, his eyes widening as he stared at Luca. Vocal compulsion wasn’t a rare power, but the level of strength needed for it to work on vampires as powerful as the Council members was something that made all of them take notice.
He moved ahead of all of them, and Enoch stepped back as he approached. Deliberately he opened Hector’s door and stepped inside. The first room, for the sake of camouflage should any intruder be able to enter the building, was a rather nondescript office. There was a desk and a long leather sofa, both well-used, with a thick rug covering the floor between them. One painting hung behind the desk; Botticelli, Luca noted, and likely not a copy. There were no plants, real or artificial, no knickknacks, just a jumble of papers and some files.
If any outsider were to stumble upon this particular room, it would give them no pause at all—unless they had an eye for art.
Hector’s suite of private rooms sprawled beyond this square, austere office, but as he had before, Luca immediately sensed the swirl of recent and deadly energy here, in this room.
“Is this necessary?” Nadia asked. “If he’s merely elsewhere, we’re invading his privacy—”
Ignoring her, Luca moved farther into the room. Hector had died here; he felt as if he were drowning in Hector’s life force, in his very essence. He allowed his mind to clear, to open, and then he thought of Hector. He captured and controlled the energy that danced here. There were many memories of the old vampire to call upon, and within those memories there was a particular energy that was Hector, his essence, his power.
There were energy pictures in this very room, as if Hector had taken a photo of his death and spat it upon the air. The murderer hadn’t been working alone; death lurked in the room—and in the hallway. The danger that Hector had sensed had carefully remained hidden. Luca knew who had taken Hector’s life, but still wasn’t able to discern the power in command.
Hector hadn’t gone easily; he’d fought for his life. The violence Luca sensed would have overturned furniture, broken lamps … but there was nothing out of place. He looked around, taking the time to notice every detail. The office had been straightened, the broken items removed and replaced. Lines in the thick pile of the rug revealed a recent vacuuming.
Vacuumed? Of course—remove Hector’s dust, and there was no real proof that he was dead.
Luca crouched and touched one finger to the rug. The faint remnants of Hector seemed to shout at him, the impression was so strong. He looked over his shoulder, met the eyes of the one Council member he knew had a sense that was related to his, though not as strong. He was well aware that she could be the traitor, but so could any of the other seven. “Darnell,” he said quietly. “Tell me what you feel.”
She came to him, sank bonelessly to a crouch beside him. As he had done, she reached out one finger, dragged it through the pile of the rug. Lifting her finger, she stared at the gray dust coating it. Her large dark eyes were somber.
For a long moment she was silent, then she said, “Hector.”
Behind them Theodore asked heavily, “You have no doubt?”
“No,” she said. “None. Hector is dead. Here, on this rug.”
“It’s been vacuumed,” Luca said, pointing to the track marks on the pile.
“So the rest of him is in a vacuum-cleaner bag somewhere?” Alma asked, not quite eliminating the snicker from her voice.
Luca slowly turned his head and pinned her with his pale gaze. The humor vanished from her face and she moved as if to step back before she remembered that she was a Council member and stopped herself. Anger and resentment flashed hot in her eyes.
Silence fell in the room. There was nothing else he could do here at the moment, and plans he needed to put into motion. Rising to his full height, Luca caught Theodore’s eye. “You know how to reach me,” he said. “Let me know what the Council decides.”
> Theodore gave a small, brusque nod of his head.
Luca strode from the room, down the hall to the elevator. The doors opened as soon as he punched the button.
“Luca … wait!”
It was Marie, striding toward him with a confidence that her small stature could neither diminish nor disguise. Her expression was a mixture of determination and exasperation. “I’ll see you out,” she said, for the benefit of any listening ears, and stepped into the elevator with him. No sooner had the doors closed than she muttered, “Morons.”
“Anyone in particular?” he asked.
She looked up at him, her gaze narrowed and sharp. “Don’t pretend you don’t think the same thing.”
Though they were both blood born, had known each other for hundreds of years, Marie had never been a confidante and Luca couldn’t see making her one now. He shrugged and didn’t answer.
“What are you going to do?”
He lied without hesitation. “Depends on the Council.” He’d do what he wanted to do regardless of how the Council voted, if they ever got around to voting. He could almost see it now: First they’d have to elect a new member to replace Hector, then they’d have to elect a new Head of Council, then they’d have to discuss and debate the issue.
“The Council would be more decisive if you were on it.”
He shook his head. “You don’t give up, do you? Not just ‘no,’ but ‘no way in hell.’” Not that she didn’t have a point, considering what he’d just been thinking, but he didn’t want to be a part of their decision-making.
The elevator stopped and the doors opened to a soft ping. They left the car, and Marie put a hand on his arm as he started toward the front door. “Luca … think about it. Don’t automatically say no. I had to be persuaded to accept a Council position, too. Once you’re on it, it’s different from what you expected. And together, you and I could shape the Council the way we wanted. What you did with your Voice …”
“That was the upper limit of my power in Voice,” he said wryly, again lying without compunction. “And all the other Council members, including yourself, will immediately begin working to strengthen their resistance to Voice, so don’t bother stroking my ego.”
Her dark eyes flashed, and in that millisecond the Council member was replaced by the woman; her look said she wouldn’t mind stroking something else. For the most part, sex to a vampire was a casual, voracious appetite, frequently fed but seldom significant. Young vampires were prone to forming relationships, but older vampires generally knew better.
Having sex with Marie wasn’t on his list of things he wanted to do, though. She was a Council member, and thus a suspect. He had fought wars and battles his entire life, and he looked at everything, even sex, from a strategic point of view. She was very old and very powerful, and the act of sex might provide a moment—such as during orgasm—that would leave him vulnerable. He didn’t believe in vulnerability, especially when it involved someone as arrogant and powerful as she was.
Then the moment was gone as fast as it had appeared and she was her usual focused, determined self. “Do you have to leave immediately? I want to show you something,” she said abruptly.
He needed to get some rest. He needed to feed. He’d been traveling all night, the sunlight was draining, and he hadn’t fed in several days now, something he needed to do more often when he was exerting this much effort. Hunger was gnawing at him, fraying his self-control. The last thing he wanted to do was to put off feeding so long that he went into a frenzy. But his curiosity was sparked, maybe because he caught an air of banked … excitement? self-satisfaction? about her, and he wondered what could have brought that on. He said, “No, I can stay for a while.”
“This way,” she said, and led him through a door toward the back of the building, then up a flight of stairs. He wondered why they didn’t take the elevator, but he preferred the stairs anyway—there wasn’t enough room in an elevator to really fight, if he needed to—so he didn’t ask. As they climbed she said with a sigh, “You are so stubborn. Together, you and I could easily rule the Council. Two blood born vampires, with our combined power and age—no one would dare to challenge us.”
“I have enough power to suit me,” Luca said easily. “I like my life as it is.”
“You’re a hired gun!” Marie argued. “We send you after rogue vampires and you dispose of them like any capable garbage man. You’re better than that. You deserve more.”
Luca smiled. He wasn’t going to allow Marie to get a rise out of him, as she obviously intended. “Maybe I like being a hired gun. No worries and plenty of money.”
“You have no idea of the amount of money you could have. Look at Valerik.”
Valerik was one of the vampire senators. He’d changed his name, established all the proper records, and he was capable of withstanding daylight. Maybe he’d glamoured people into voting for him, but that wasn’t Luca’s problem.
“Valerik is a twit, and he always has been.”
“That’s beside the point. Now that he’s in office, he’s become a very rich twit.”
They’d reached the second floor, and from there took a long hallway that led to a plain door that opened onto another stairway. The building was like a maze, purposefully confusing, with doors that led nowhere and other doors that led in circles. No one had ever invaded the Council headquarters, but if they ever did, finding what they were searching for wouldn’t be easy.
“Where are we going?” Luca asked, looking around to note the details of this part of the building, where he’d never been before. He reached out to touch her energy, to read her, but she was too strong and too guarded for him to see beyond the surface.
“Here,” she said, stopping before a door and fishing a key from the pocket of her black capri pants. “I have just what you need. She’s pretty, young, and tasty.” She looked over her shoulder and smiled at him. “And she likes it.”
The door opened on a small studio apartment. There was a tiny kitchenette, a living area with a long couch and a flat-screen TV, and a full-sized bed butted up against one wall and set apart by a lacquered Chinese screen. A pretty, dark-haired young woman looked up when the door opened, and smiled as she got to her feet. Naturally, there were no windows—no threat of sunlight, no way for the pretty girl to signal for help, if she ever decided she didn’t “like it.”
“Kristi, darling, this is Luca. He’s hungry.”
Instead of being afraid, as most humans would’ve been, Kristi turned that beaming smile on Luca and began to unbutton her blouse. For a moment, Luca wondered why she was so accommodating, and then he saw her eyes.
“You’ve drugged her,” he said, his tone flat. He didn’t like that Marie had somehow known how hungry he was, and he didn’t like the risk of kidnapping a human and using her against her will.
“I have not,” Marie responded sharply. “Kristi has simply been glamoured.”
“For how long?” Luca asked.
“Just a few weeks. When she goes home all she’ll remember is this lovely villa and the view of the ocean, and the man with whom she had a short, but passionate summer affair. She might wonder why he doesn’t call, she might try to find him, but other than that she’ll be fine.”
“She’ll be a vegetable.” Being glamoured wasn’t without its side effects. A one-time, short-term glamour wouldn’t cause any noticeable brain damage, but something this continuous would leave the girl a drooling idiot. It wasn’t new, to keep food on-site, particularly where the Council was concerned. In the old days, it hadn’t been hard to find and keep willing donors for many years. These days, with communication so widespread, that simply wasn’t possible. When people went missing, the authorities mounted massive searches, unless the missing human was one of the homeless, which pretty much meant no self-respecting vampire wanted to feed from them anyway.
That left drugging and glamouring, but drugs left the blood bitter-tasting. Usually a human was kept only a short while, and glamoured into forget
ting.
“No, she won’t. I’ve been working on this, refining my touch. I use barely a breath of power. When we release her, she’ll have suffered very little damage. Trust me,” she added in a low voice, “she’s better off here than she was where we found her.”
Kristi shrugged off her blouse and unfastened her jeans. Luca held up a hand to stop her. He wasn’t about to fuck and feed on an empty-headed girl who had given up her free will—or had it taken from her—and had probably spread her legs for every Council member, and probably the on-site staff as well, who was interested in having her. Certainly her blood had been taken; if anyone had given her blood as well, during sex, then she was on her way to being bonded and he didn’t want to be the one who went over that threshold with her. The last thing he needed was to find himself bonded to a mentally handicapped blood donor. Marie might say Kristi would be all right, but that didn’t automatically translate to reality.
Damn her, anyway. He needed to feed, and somehow she’d known that, dangling this helpless fruit in front of him. In the end, though, Kristi’s lack of will helped him hold back.
“I like the hunt,” he said, motioning for the girl to be seated. She sank back, her expression disappointed and even hurt.
“Don’t we all,” Marie snapped, then she shook her head and made a motion as if to wipe away her ill temper. “I miss it,” she said wistfully, “the days when we could move around without having to worry about computers and identification and all of the other things we have to deal with now.” She heaved a sigh, then gestured toward Kristi. “Command her to fight, if that’s what you want. She’ll do whatever you tell her.”
“Knowing that kind of takes the fun out of it. Thanks, but no thanks. How many others have you kept glamoured this long?”
She shrugged. “It’s been an ongoing project of mine, to minimize the risk we run when we bring food here. The less often it has to be done, the less likely we are to have difficulties. Intense, long-lasting glamour has always been one of my gifts, but for the past twenty years or so—not very long, really—I’ve been fine-tuning my touch. It’s very delicate, like touching a butterfly with a feather. Their minds are so weak, the ordinary glamour is a sledgehammer to their brains.”
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