Baines snorted. “You’d be surprised how well they usually hide in plain view.”
Chapter 8
Tuesday, December 28, 11:35 p.m.
Downtown Fairview
Darak tasted the evil that hung in the air and ached to smash it.
Pluto’s balls, some idiot went and got himself a spell book.
Wasn’t that just dandy?
Who the hell in this backwater has that kind of power? For a pinprick on the map, Fairview was just full of surprises. Vampires standing for public office. Entire prison dimensions. And his personal favorite—invisible evil that set stuff on fire.
Come for the election, stay for the magic of mass destruction.
Darak heaved himself to his feet, stiff from crouching on the peak of the cathedral roof like an oversized gargoyle. He dusted away the snow that had collected on his sleeves and scanned the horizon while he took a slug from his flask.
The dark leathers he wore kept out the wind, but the cold seeped through seams and zippers. One of the old Undead, he could ignore it. What bothered him more was the smoke—not the comfortable scent of a hearth fire, but the reek of a burning building. The acrid stink had drawn him to the highest point he could find, and now he could see the source—a glowing maw of flame to the southwest, unnaturally fierce and bright.
Who or what had caused it? Only one way to find out. Go to the source.
Darak balanced on the roof’s ridgeline, walking toe to heel along its length. Pride made him careful. Vampires could fly, but at close to seven feet and three-fifty, Darak was not exactly aerodynamic. Control was important, unless he wanted to drop like an anvil.
When he reached the roofline, he jumped, a streak of shadow against the black sky. The air rushed to meet him, snow stinging his cheeks. He landed lightly enough, boots skating on the frosty sidewalk. Pulling himself upright, he began walking toward the fire.
Darak and his blood-sworn kin were Undead, but they bowed to no queen or king. It had taken them two millennia to gain enough strength for true freedom, and they’d done it by force of arms. The honest way.
Darak didn’t like magic or the people who used it. Weapons were far more reliable. Nevertheless, it took a cartload of power to start a blaze like that.
Power was interesting.
He stopped walking when he came to one of the telephone poles that dotted the street. An election poster jostled for space with ads for lost cats and ska-goth fusion bands. Darak read the poster with a sense of bitter amusement. Elect Michael de Winter
Equality and fairness for all citizens of Fairview!
Choose a candidate with centuries of experience!
It’s time for an interspecies perspective.
The vampire candidate. Like many, Darak’s crew had come to watch the election.
Michael de Winter was backed by the vampire queen, Omara. Her goal was equal rights for the nonhumans—but a lot of vampires were nostalgic for the good old days of crowns and scepters. After all, vampires survived by feeding on the weak. A desire for dominance was natural.
Bottom line: Did the queen want to reign over more than vampires? Half the humans were ready to riot, so apparently they believed the worst. Meanwhile, Omara’s vampire enemies waited and watched for an excuse to topple her throne.
Who said politics wasn’t a blood sport? Among vampires, politics often ended in war—and that meant innocents would die.
Not okay.
That’s when Darak and his brethren voted with cold steel.
He turned away from the poster and began walking toward the fire once more. Yes, it had taken true power to set that blaze.
Maybe Darak could use the fool with the spell book. If election fever turned bad, they might need an extra weapon in reserve.
Or maybe he’d just tear off the fool’s head.
That sort of thing was his specialty.
Tuesday, December 28, 11:40 p.m.
101.5 FM
“Good evening and welcome back to CSUP. For those just joining us, tonight’s program is all about the special bond between lover and beloved, hunter and prey. Where do the two intersect, and what does the battle of the sexes have to do with the battle between species?
“It brings us, my dark faithful, to the topic of slayers. These days, it seems as if any cheerleader with a stake can get into the game, but I’m not talking about the wannabes or even those oh-so-scary mercenaries who accept a bounty on our lives. I’m talking about the crazies, the ones who kill from a sense of devotion.
“There are human tribes from Eastern Europe called the Hunters. They don’t kill for sport or for money. It’s a family tradition handed down from parent to child since the dawn of written history. To them, killing us is the purest act of love for their own kind.
“They’re the ones I worry about when I turn out the light.”
Tuesday, December 28, 11:45 p.m.
Lore’s condo
When she heard Lore leave the condo, Talia curled up on her side, cradling her cuffed wrist in her free hand. Relief drained the last strength from her limbs. He hadn’t hurt her, but she wasn’t convinced he wouldn’t. No one handcuffed a woman—a stranger—without the possibility of harm. That last look he’d given her was the pure, remorseless gaze of a predator.
But at least he was gone for the moment. She’d needed an interval of privacy to gather her wits. Too much had happened since she’d . . . had she really been shopping a few hours ago?
Now that she was alone, her emotions began to unfold from the clenched ball of pain lodged in her gut. Fear. Guilt. Loss. Loneliness.
Talia pressed her face into the coverlet, her feelings too crowded to cry just yet. She’d lost her mother, then her fiancé, and then the rest of her family. It was like a recurring nightmare where pieces of her flesh were torn away, leaving nothing recognizable. After Talia had lost her humanity, she’d thought there was nothing left to take—but the horror had come back again. She’d still had something to lose. Still more pain to endure. One more time.
Perhaps the last time. Michelle was all she had left. Now there was no one. Pink tears began to stain the pillowcase. Grief was finally finding release.
Michelle had been the one to anchor Talia, to patiently remind her that not everything was obliterated because she’d been Turned. She’d helped Talia pick the threads of her true self from the tangled, damaged mess she’d become. If it hadn’t been for her cousin, Talia would never have gone back to teaching.
And she was only one of the many, many people who had loved Michelle. Tonight, a light had gone out of the world. And it was my fault. Talia sobbed in earnest. There was no way to bring her cousin back. Not even an ancient vampire could save someone after their body had been so badly broken.
Talia’s tears slowed, the last thought pushing her from sadness to fear. It should have been me who died. A vampire would have known the difference between a human and one of their own. That meant the murder was either a huge mistake or a warning.
Who wants me dead?
Talia’s stomach cramped as cold terror washed through her. There was her sire, who had reason to hate her. She’d escaped from his clutches and also swiped a small fortune on her way out the door. But would he really risk Queen Omara’s wrath by coming to Fairview and beheading the locals? She had counted on the fact that he would not.
And then there was Talia’s family. Dad.
In his eyes, she was no better than a rabid dog. The Talia he’d raised from a baby had died the moment the vampires took her for their own. If he caught her now, he’d butcher her without mercy.
Strike the monsters before they kill or corrupt an innocent human. That was what her whole neighborhood— the tribe—had believed. When you saw the crossed-blade symbol of the Hunters, you knew you were dealing with monster-killing machines, bred for the job and trained from birth.
Talia pulled up the right sleeve of her sweater. Twin Hunter sabers, crossed at the hilt, were inked on the inside of her forearm. Against pale vampi
re skin, the fine detailing would never fade or blur. Nor could she ever get the damned thing off. Everything she wore, however fashionable, would be long-sleeved. Forever.
She made a fist, the design shifting along her skin. She’d never been big, but she’d always been good with firearms. She’d also been a risk-taker to the point of stupidity. She’d wanted her father’s approval and at sixteen, she’d made her first kill. A ghoul. He’d given Talia the tattoo as a reward.
It was hardly a reward now. Everyone knew the Hunters’ symbol. If the nonhumans ever saw the tattoo, she would be torn to shreds. Of course, now that she was one of the monsters, the Hunters only saw her as something fit to kill. Undeath was filled with interesting ironies.
Talia pulled the sleeve down again. What was she? Hunter? Monster? Teacher?
Prisoner.
Talia blinked, tears of frustration and sadness misting the lights into a blurry wash. The pillow felt cool against her cheek. She’d been in that room, on that bed, almost long enough that it was starting to smell more like her than the hellhound.
It smelled like grief.
Then grow a spine, will ya? She took a long, shaky breath, fumbling for enough anger to push her into action. Half her instincts screamed to hop the first night bus heading out of town. The other half was crying out for vengeance.
Either way, she had to get out of Lore’s bedroom. What would happen if he found out I was a Hunter? Ground vampire patties with extra ketchup, probably.
No one was going to save her but herself. Heroes on white horses were a myth. I am not a victim. She rolled onto her back, scanning the room for escape possibilities.
First, she needed a tool to get out of the cuffs. She wiggled toward the bedside table, stretching as far as the handcuffs would allow. There was just enough play to let her slide the drawer open and feel inside. Not much there—just a library book on how to fix kitchen appliances and a pack of spearmint gum. She pushed the drawer shut.
On top of the nightstand were a bedside light, an alarm clock, and some tattered paperback books. She turned the spines of the books toward her. Lore’s reading tastes leaned toward Westerns of the lone-gunmansaves-the-town variety. It suited him.
Despite her fear, she’d noticed a few choice details about her captor. The broad spread of his chest, the slim hips, the skin shades darker than her own, as if he’d labored outdoors in the hot sun. A working man.
But not just a muscled body. Those dark eyes held an entire universe of sorrow. Lore was the sort of puzzle a woman could get lost in solving. She knew the type of guy. Just one more piece, and the picture—or his soul—would reveal itself.
Yeah, right. The guy had chained her up. She was so out of there. She would not waste time dissecting his psyche.
Instead, she was going to dismantle his alarm clock. Talia’s hand closed over it, feeling the vibration of its ticks. It was one of the old wind-up ones, the kind with a round face and twin bells on top. There should be something inside she could use to pick the lock of the handcuffs. She’d learned the whole Houdini skill set as a kid, along with every kind of combat drill going. Who needed summer camp when you had Dad and Uncle Yuri?
She dragged the clock onto the bed and turned it over. It seemed a shame to break it, but oh well. She popped the brass case off its back and watched the gears tick for a moment. There was a pin at the top that connected the hammer that rang the alarm to a spring. It looked almost like a hairpin. It would do, as long as the metal was neither too soft nor too brittle.
Holding the clock down as best she could with her cuffed hand, she dismantled the gears with the other. Once she had the pin out, she spent some time bending it so that it had a slight curve at the end, almost a hook. Holding it parallel to the cuff, she slid it just inside the lock, where there was a tiny notch in the keyhole. Applying even pressure to the pin, she levered it away from her. The lock gave a satisfying snick. She twisted her cuffed wrist at the same time, grinning with satisfaction as the mechanism gave way. She rubbed her wrists, glad to finally be free of the silver. The cuffs had scraped her skin raw.
Talia rolled off the bed, crossing to the window and looking out. Cold air seeped through the glass, a rim of ice forming at the bottom of the pane. With no breath to fog the window, Talia was able to lean in, her vision unobstructed.
Snow was falling at a brisk pace. That was going to add an interesting wrinkle to her escape. Before long, the roads would be clogged. She had to get moving.
She didn’t want to ever see the place where she’d found her cousin’s body again, but there was no way around it. She would just have to figure out how to get past the cops. She wasn’t going anywhere without her weapons, cash, and decent boots. The dainty ankle boots she had on would be useless in this much snow.
And if the dog got in her way, she’d send him to obedience school. No one caught Talia Rostova twice.
Chapter 9
Tuesday, December 28, 11:55 p.m.
Downtown Fairview
Darak had followed the evil to the fire, but there wasn’t a lot to see once he got there. Bystanders, police, a city pound’s worth of hellhounds were all doing what needed to be done—but none of that interested him.
The fire itself was okay, but he’d seen better sorcery. This one was a little heavy on the whole melting-walls thing. Showy and dramatic, but a lot of energy wasted to get a simple job done.
What got his attention was what the spell slinger had targeted. Campaign office—well, why not hit the most controversial location in town? But a medical clinic—that made Darak mad. It was always the ordinary folk who got it in the neck when the powerful began throwing their weight around.
He paced the sidewalk beyond the perimeter set by the fire brigade. Smuts fell from the sky with the snow, looking as if the flakes themselves were burning. One fell on his cuff and he flicked it away, feeling a hot kiss of embers.
There was no trace of the spell caster here. The sense of evil was dying from the scene along with the flames, burning down into a gray ash of wilted magic. By morning, it would be no more than a shiver up the spine.
That didn’t do him a bit of good. Frustrated, Darak turned and stalked back along the sidewalk again. There should have been more. He wasn’t a magic user, but he knew something about it. A sorcerer didn’t just pull this kind of energy out of his ass. It had to come from somewhere: a sacred object, a ley line, or maybe a sacrifice.
There was nothing here. Whoever had cast the spell had raised the energy someplace else and redirected it. Darak glared back at the fire and its halo of snow and ash.
It was then he saw the woman. She was standing a few feet away, wearing nothing but a blouse and navy blue skirt. Her brown hair was neatly cut at shoulder length. She was shivering, clutching her arms because she had no coat.
Oh, no. He had a bad feeling, but he walked over anyway.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She looked up at him, frowning the way some people did because they had to look up, and then up some more to find his face. “I’m not sure how I got here,” she said, her voice holding both fear and annoyance. “It’s snowing. It never snows here.”
Darak took off his jacket and draped it over her shoulders. “Here.”
Its size drowned her, but she looked grateful. Pausing to look around again, she seemed to notice the fire. “Is that the clinic?”
“Yeah. Too bad about that.” He was wearing a pullover, but the wind bit through the loose weave. The whole chivalry thing obviously came from warmer climates.
“I hope the nurses don’t lose their jobs.” She looked confused. “You know, I think I need to go home.”
He’d been expecting it. “Want me to walk you?”
“Please. I’d like that.”
He offered her his arm. He was the last thing from a gentleman and most of the time was barely polite, but there was a time and a place to show respect. “Where do you live?”
She hesitated, searching the streets around
them, then seemed to get her bearings. “Over this way.”
Dread settled into his bones. He wondered how far it was, and how much time he had to talk to her. This sort of thing never got easier, no matter how many centuries rolled past.
They set off in silence, taking shortcuts through an alley and a schoolyard. The chain-link fence around the playground sparkled with frost. Darak stayed close to her side, careful not to let her out of his sight for even a second.
“I just got home tonight,” the woman said.
He noticed she was pretty in a fresh, simple way. In other circumstances, she would have been pleasant to look at for hours on end.
“I was going to spend the night with my cousin,” she added.
“Yeah?”
“She’s like you.”
“Like me?”
“You know. A vampire.” She gave him a shy glance. “Sorry. I seem to be saying whatever pops into my head. I’m usually a better conversationalist than this.”
“Don’t worry about it.” He wasn’t much good at small talk at the best of times. “So your cousin’s a vampire?”
“I was kind of afraid, but if no one ever gave Talia a break.. . . ” She trailed off, then stopped, turning to Darak. With a pleading gesture, she put one hand on his chest. “You’ve got to make sure she’s okay.”
They always made a request. It usually came near the end, so they had to be close to where it had happened.
He looked around. There were a lot of nice buildings, a few houses. Where would a woman like this live? Of course. Cop cars, over there. It looked like the kind of street that should have been quiet, but tonight it was jammed with ominous flashing lights and men with uniforms.
She was still looking at him, her eyes dark with worry. She barely came up to his collar bone. It’s surprising how many ask to keep their loved ones safe.
“Of course,” he said. “I’ll check on her. Talia, right?” One vampire shouldn’t be hard to find.
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