Dark Wine at Midnight (A Hill Vampire Novel Book 1)

by Jenna Barwin

  Henry had been on the negotiating committee that drafted the final agreement and refused to argue about it one more time. “Could she be a spy for Leopold?” he asked instead. “Leopold wasn’t happy with the treaty either, but I can’t believe he’s preparing for war again.”

  “I’m glad you said it. I would be accused of paranoia if I had.”

  He glanced over at the mayor’s table again, but the envoy was gone. “Perhaps I should arrange to meet the young lady, so I may evaluate the truth of her intentions.”

  Rolf’s eyes lit up. “An excellent idea. You won’t be taken in by a pretty face and a short skirt. The rest of them seem blinded by her. Zeke practically fell over his dick when he met her.”

  “Rolf, your language—”

  “Is accurate. Everyone at the mayor’s table was flirting with her.”

  “Everyone but you, I presume.” He sighed, scanning the crowd to find her again. There—walking out the door with Gaea. She was a pretty young woman, the rear view as good as the front view.

  “Everyone but me,” Rolf growled. “It was obscene. How could they forget what such competition could lead to?”

  Henry felt the shadow of his past wash over him. “I do not know. But it’s something I will never forget. You may trust in that.”

  Chapter 7

  Gaea’s house—the next morning

  A bright light penetrated Cerissa’s closed eyelids. Why was someone pointing an LED flashlight at her face? She opened her eyes and found the real source—a blinding strip of light where the black-out curtains hung slightly opened. Squinting, she looked away, and red spots danced before her eyes in the dark room. Where am I? She reached for a bedside lamp and switched it on, glancing around the room.

  That’s right—I’m in a guest room at Gaea’s mansion. Last night, the matronly vampire had called it “her little house,” but from its tiled roof to its intricate balcony grilles, Gaea’s home looked like it had been transported from an Italian countryside and dropped onto the Hill.

  The digital clock on the bedstand read 7:30 a.m., and she plopped back onto the pillow. Way too early to be awake—she hadn’t said goodnight to Gaea until three in the morning. Yawning, she sucked it up and rolled out of bed. She needed the bathroom more than she needed sleep.

  The whole room felt alien, like she had awakened in someone’s idea of a hip Victorian boudoir. A crystal chandelier hung over her bed, its curving, branchlike wire supported only a few crystals dangling here and there, reminding her of a dried-out Christmas tree, most of its needles lost. The rest of the room wasn’t any better. Overstuffed chairs. Whitewashed dresser. Fringed lamps. Heavy drapes. All drenched in feminine floral prints with plenty of frills.

  A private bathroom connected to her room. She stepped into the shower, the warm water making her forget the strangeness she felt. Once clean and dry, she rummaged through her suitcase. Whoever searched her luggage had done a lousy job covering it up. They had rearranged stuff, but it didn’t matter—everything she needed was hidden on her body. Rolf just hadn’t known what to look for when he patted her down.

  Contact lenses. No choice; she had to wear them. She put one back in—and resisted the urge to fish it out, hating the slight shock as the lens sent out small, tentacle-like threads, which slid around her eyeball to connect to the optic nerve on the other side.

  A complete microprocessor, etched on each contact lens, allowed her to retrieve data and view it privately. A pinpoint video camera recorded everything she looked at while wearing them, which had come in quite handy last night. Between the camera and face-recognition software, Leopold’s dossiers on politically important vampires came into view each time she neared her subject.

  Once her contacts were in, she slipped on earrings, each hiding a small microphone with a micro-amplifier. Ah, the advantage of secret technology—technology more advanced than what the general public used. As much as she wanted her freedom, being part of the Lux had its perks.

  She held her hands in front of her, and a virtual keyboard appeared. She typed in a summary of what she had learned last night about the current power structure, her fingers tapping at the projection only her mind could see. The information she typed wouldn’t go to Leopold. Her reports and videos were meant for her people—not that she’d made any real progress on her mission. It would take time before Hill residents relaxed around her enough to slip up and reveal anything useful.

  A two-beat buzz from her phone signaled a calendar appointment. Her first meeting with a real estate broker was in thirty minutes. She finished dressing, grabbed her purse, and drove down the Hill to Mordida.

  * * *

  Tig stepped close to the wall of her home office. Tonight’s early moonrise meant she was up before sunset, and to avoid the sunlight streaming in, she snaked her arm past the window sill to pull the blinds shut.

  She sat down at her desk, flattening her bare feet on the polished hardwood floor beneath it. The smooth, cool wood felt good. Her husband, when she was still mortal, thought she had the biggest feet of his five wives. You’ll never tip over in a strong wind, he had said, laughing. His words were like a spear through her chest. The scar on her self-esteem still felt tender four hundred years later.

  She clenched her teeth, suppressing the memory, and turned on the computer. First priority: the background check she ordered last night. Cerissa Patel had been on the Hill all day—if the report warned of problems, they had to get her off the Hill now.

  An email from Gaea was first in the queue. The update summarized what the envoy told Gaea after they left the dance. Tig fired off a quick reply: Thanks, Gaea. Please keep Dr. Patel away from anyone of political importance.

  Attached to the next email was the background check. For someone in her twenties, Cerissa had a high FICO score, but nothing else of note. Tig switched screen views and brought up V-Trak, the custom database of all known vampires, their mates, and business associates. She scrolled through the information V-Trak had on the young woman—born in India, educated in the States, nothing unusual.

  According to the gate logs, Cerissa left the Hill midmorning. So Cerissa wasn’t snooping here—at least not yet. Should she have Cerissa followed during the day? She noted it. She would see if the mayor wanted to authorize the funds. Unlikely, she thought with a snort. He was so cheap he refused to replace her clerk, so why would he pay to have Cerissa followed?

  Her mortal records clerk was on sick leave, recovering from back surgery. Maggie had left the station on a rainy evening, walked outside, and, as Jayden put it, went “ass over teakettle.” Tig had found her sprawled on the sidewalk and in pain. Turned out Maggie had a ruptured disk—something even vampire blood couldn’t fix, not without turning the person.

  After Maggie was taken to the hospital, Jayden had investigated. The sidewalk was slick with more than water—a thin layer of clear oil covered it. They still had no clue where the oil came from.

  They couldn’t hire a records clerk from outside the community. Only a mortal who lived on the Hill could be trusted with the job, which wasn’t the problem. There were qualified mates to choose from, but instead of hiring one of them, the council nixed the idea, since Maggie was still drawing sick pay. Cheap bastards.

  Thinking about the council reminded her—they wanted a status report on her only unsolved case, the attack on Yacov. She clicked on a web link to the police department’s multi-user investigation program, and scrolled through the notes and evidence related to the attack. No getaway car was found—it meant a third person was involved. Neither assailant lived locally. Both shooters had criminal histories.

  Hmm, what’s this? Jayden had added a new email message from the state’s Department of Corrections—it must have come in during the day. According to the parole officer responsible for both perps, the shooters served time in the same San Diego prison, and their sentence dates overlapped. In reply, she asked for a copy of their prison history.

  Mordida’s crime lab had examined th
e guns and other evidence, since that was more efficient than wasting Jayden’s time to do it in the Hill’s way-too-small forensics workshop. Other than those of the assailants, the lab reported no fingerprints. The lab technician had looked askance at her when she dropped off the unspent silver bullets for analysis.

  “Nut jobs,” she’d said, in answer to his unasked question. He seemed to accept her two-word summary. Not many people in his position would consider a supernatural explanation—such speculation would be a career killer in police work. The lab reported the unspent bullets were pure silver and custom made. No identifying marks.

  The assailants had used stolen guns, with the registration numbers still visible. The online gun registry traced them to two cold-case burglaries in Oceanside, just north of San Diego.

  Other leads turned into dead ends. Too many people knew about Yacov’s travel plans, and no evidence pointed her in any one direction. She’d made a few discreet inquiries with the Fairfax community, but Yacov was on good terms with everyone there.

  Leopold’s envoy, arriving so soon after the shooting…Tig didn’t like coincidences. It was worth a phone call to Yacov. After a few pleasantries, she asked him, “Have you had any recent business dealings with Leopold?”

  “Not since I left New York when the Draft Act was passed,” he said. “The Civil War, you know. I decided it was best to move out west.”

  Good reason. He wouldn’t be able to hide his vampire nature fighting side by side with mortals—and they’d notice he wasn’t available during the day.

  “But you were in business with Leopold before you left New York?” she asked.

  “I was part of the group who invested in Henry’s first restaurant—Enrique’s. So was Leopold.”

  “Really?” She had heard the tales about Henry’s restaurant, but not Yacov’s involvement.

  “There was a small group of us who backed Henry’s experiment with, well, passing himself off as mortal. In those days, most of us kept to ourselves. We didn’t run businesses, at least, not ones that required daily contact with our prey. Henry broke that taboo.”

  “Was there any animosity between you and Leopold when the venture closed?”

  There was no answer from the other end of the line. Tig quickly lifted the phone from her ear, checking her cell signal. “Yacov, are you there?” she asked.

  “Yes, Tig, I’m here. Why do you ask about Leopold?”

  “The arrival of his envoy—any reason Leopold might be behind the attack?”

  “None I can think of.”

  She said goodbye and noted the conversation in the file. Dead end.

  She frowned to herself. Nights like this she wished she was back doing mercenary work for Phat—much less frustrating than police work. Phat had run a unit of vampire assassins in the Middle East during the height of European imperialism. The Egyptian vampire never revealed to mortals the nature of his forces—he just delivered what they wanted, for a price.

  She became part of his special forces through a misunderstanding. Her tribe in Kenya had been known for being fierce warriors. Only later did Phat learn Maasai women weren’t warriors, and the elders thought he was looking for a wife. A widow who had seen thirty-five winters—they were glad to get rid of her for the bride price he paid: five head of cattle.

  After turning her vampire, Phat was shocked to learn she had no fighting skills—but she did have a flair for languages, quickly adopting local accents. It made her a valuable asset. Besides, Phat saw to her martial arts training. He later commented that, unlike his other students, she didn’t have any bad habits to unlearn.

  A few centuries later, she and Phat parted ways. She was freelancing in 1951 when she received Sierra Escondida’s offer to lead their military forces at the start of the North American Conflict. Too bad it took a war to convince some that zero population growth was the only way for vampires to survive.

  Idiots. Science didn’t care what people believed. While the statistical calculus was beyond her, she didn’t need higher math to understand the conclusion. Left unchecked, vampires would outnumber their prey in less than fifty years, and then all hell would break loose. Wholesale slaughter, vampire against vampire, as they fought over a limited food supply—something she never wanted to witness. Thank the ancestors that war was averted without too much bloodshed and the treaty was signed.

  Wait, was that it? With zero population growth now the law, Yacov’s death would create an opening on the Hill. Did someone put out the hit, wanting to turn a mate? She made a note in the investigation plan: Ask the town clerk for any pending petitions.

  Since the treaty was signed, no mortal had been turned in Sierra Escondida, and she should know—she’d been chief of police the entire time. The vampire ability to gradually age and then reverse the process made it possible for her to stay chief for thirty years before she had to change her name and start over. She’d shorten Tigisi—her birth name—to Tig, and picked “Anderson” for a last name because it sounded American to her. The neighboring cities never questioned why the Hill had two successive black female chiefs. Go figure.

  She got up and went downstairs to the kitchen. Fresh blood had been delivered during the day, and she began the steps to warm it gently, heating a pot of water to 102 degrees Fahrenheit, using a candy thermometer to get the temperature just right, and then turned off the flame, gently adding the bag to the water. The heat transfer would bring it up to body temperature. She had tried using a microwave once—what a clumpy mess that made.

  Jayden would be reporting in soon after he wrapped up his daytime duties. He was her second in command, her daytime eyes. She counted on him to keep the peace while she slept. But he was more than a colleague—he was her mortal mate. The kitchen timer dinged, and she poured the heated blood into a tall insulated tumbler, smiling to herself. She wanted to feed before he returned, so she’d be ready for him.

  Chapter 8

  Cerissa’s room—later that evening

  The small glass table in Gaea’s guest bedroom, covered by a floral cloth trimmed with eyelet lace, provided an adequate work area. Cerissa typed a quick email to Leopold the old-fashioned way, using her computer tablet. It included a short summary listing the parcels she’d seen today.

  She then turned her attention to a large bound document labeled “Covenants, Conditions, and Restrictions (the ‘Covenant’)” that had been waiting for her when she returned to her room. Oh yeah, some light reading. She skimmed through it, the rules and regulations for living on the Hill. Somehow they’d managed to write it without using the V-word. “Permanent residents” must mean vampires. This was more than “don’t paint your house purple and no parking on the lawn.” They had a rule for just about everything, most of it regulating interactions between “permanent residents” and “guest residents.”

  Hmm. What Zeke attempted last night violated the Covenant. Vampires were forbidden from dating an unmated mortal within the Hill’s walls. Now she had an easy way out to deal with any untoward advances from him.

  But that meant she couldn’t date the ponytailed vampire with the magnetic eyes either. Probably for the best. What she felt for him was just lust, and she never trusted lust, especially lust for a vampire. She’d heard too many stories of love affairs gone wrong while in New York.

  She skimmed through a few more provisions of the Covenant. Dueling wasn’t permitted either; the winner risked banishment if they started it. Wow. Did they really solve disputes through violence? That seemed so last century. And hunting mortals within a hundred-mile radius of the Hill was forbidden. She closed the book and dumped it onto the nightstand. She’d pass the Covenant on to Ari when she turned in her next report. It was certainly different from the rules the Collective used—less progressive, to say the least.

  The sound of someone at her door caught her attention, and she turned to see who’d entered the room.

  “You’re in luck,” Gaea said, sailing through the open door. “A group of younger vampires are
headed out to gamble at the local Yokumash casino. You and Blanche can drive together.”

  “Blanche?”

  “I mentioned her last night. She’s staying here while she applies for Hill residency. Her sitting room is just down the hall from your bedroom, remember? And Seaton’s staying here as my guest for the time being, but he doesn’t get out much, so he won’t be joining you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Oh, Seaton’s, well, how should I put it…his maker had only been a vampire for twenty-five years. Much too young. Everyone knows you should at least wait until you’re two hundred before becoming a maker, but that didn’t stop Jane.” Gaea shook her head, a look of disapproval in her eyes. “Anyway, it left Seaton, well, a little bit off. He doesn’t connect well with mortals, and the council doesn’t want him wandering around on his own now that Jane has moved on.”

  So Jane wasn’t a resident. Cerissa would get the scoop from Leopold later.

  Gaea started to leave. “Wait,” Cerissa said. “I thought we were going to set up meetings so I could introduce Leopold’s project to potential investors.”

  Gaea smiled indulgently over her shoulder, continuing toward the door. “You’ll have plenty of time to meet with investors on another night.”

  Should she go to the casino? Watch and observe was her mandate. Well, this would give her an opportunity to do some of that while meeting other Hill vampires. And she wasn’t concerned for her own safety. As an envoy, they wouldn’t try to hurt her—the penalties were severe if they did.

  “Ah, one more question,” she said.

  The vampire matron gave a small huff of annoyance and turned around. “Yes, dear?”