by Carmen Caine
“Impossible!” Emilio spat. “I will know who did this! Send for the keeper.”
“I can’t,” Lucian retorted, expelling a long breath of unmasked contempt. “He’s occupied. There’s a Fallen One loose, if you care to remember. He’s attempting to trap it before it collects its payment.”
At that response, Emilio actually ripped his eyes away from me and latched them onto Lucian’s, his face filling with scorn. “Impossible. Solo una perdita di tempo. A waste of time. Nothing will keep a Fallen One from its price. A little delay. That is all he’ll accomplish. It is more important to have him here.”
Nothing will keep a Fallen One from its price. Yeah, not what I really wanted to hear right now. I had enough problems.
“Mannaggia,” I swore softly.
I jerked, startled at the Italian leaving my lips. Again? Why was I emulating a mentally disturbed vampire’s speech patterns? Surely, non era normale … normal!
But even more surprising than my own reaction was the corresponding expression of outright relief spreading over Emilio’s visage. His ire vanished at once.
“As you say, Lucian, as you say,” he said suddenly contrite. “Perhaps the book is misplaced, eh?” Moving to the heavy drapery drawn over his windows, he drew the curtains aside and stood there, surveying the twinkling lights of New York City laid out at his feet. “And the investigation?” he asked in a much calmer tone, clasping his hands behind his back. “Progress?”
“Yes,” Lucian answered curtly. He was clearly irritated with Emilio’s erratic behavior. “You’ll have your answer soon.”
“So sparse on details,” the vampire commented. “No hint, no morsel to sate one’s curiosity? Not even a crumb, eh?”
Lucian lifted a scathing brow. “There are hundreds of Terzi that despise the very air you breathe. Take your pick on who might have motivation and cause to free their legendary champion,” he ridiculed with a careless shrug. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve more pressing matters elsewhere.”
“Not yet,” Emilio said, staying him with a raised hand. “The mana. The vials from the two sites. Did you bring them?”
“Yes,” Lucian admitted, removing the vials from his pocket and placing them on Emilio’s desk, a safe distance from the ebony-eyed watchers.
“Ah, bene,” The vampire smiled and zipped over to place the vials between the watchers before anyone could move. “This. This will keep them safe. I will know who betrayed me. I will know.”
Crud.
Lucian didn’t seem to care. With a crisp nod, he merely murmured, “As you wish.” But a dark gleam entered his eye and searching in his jacket once again, he removed the nano containers and set them down upon the desk.
The vampire recoiled, his fangs extending once again. “No! No, no, no. No! I tell you. No.” Genuine, raw anger suffused his face. “A mighty Rowle warlock can’t be hindered by such minor roadblocks. You cannot use them. No, no, no! Insisto!”
They began to fight in earnest then. Emilio moved to the window to pace and Lucian joined him.
It was my time. I knew it.
I maneuvered to the desk. Yeah, I couldn’t switch out the mana yet. The watchers put a crimp in that one, but Emilio was a vampire. I really didn’t see what stopped me from sneaking up here in the morning, throwing the curtains wide to let the sunshine in so I could replace the contents at my leisure. Who cared how loud the watchers wailed then?
But the nanos. Yes, now was my time to snag the little suckers for a reprogramming.
Lucian and Emilio still fought by the window, completely ignoring me. I’d never realized before just how much I could appreciate their contentious relationship.
With a yawn, I stretched and leaned over the nano containers.
Lucian suddenly turned my way.
I didn’t move. Didn’t want to look guilty. Instead, I just sent him a commiserating smile.
After a second, he turned back to Emilio and began swearing.
But that interaction dampened my enthusiasm over stealing the nano containers at the moment. Crud. Well, maybe I could spend the time perfecting my programming skills. Yeah, I’d release one from each container and make some excuse to visit my mom before the nanos ate too much of me. There, I could potentially reprogram them and get a handle on how to execute a massive update on the rest, before they began their morbid march to dine on my flesh.
Worst case, if I failed—which I wouldn’t—I could always zip back and hit the big red deactivate button embedded on the top of each container.
Yeah, risky, but really, what was the alternative?
With Emilio still ranting in front of the window, and Lucian swearing behind him, now seemed as good a time as any.
Moving as quickly as I could, I set each display to ‘1’ and, switching into specter-vision, hit the green button without a moment’s hesitation.
I coughed to hide the sound of the metal tray opening, casting a quick glance at Emilio and Lucian, but neither had noticed.
Good.
I squinted back at the nanos and saw them at once. Well, not the nanos. They were actually too small, but I saw their little, barely visible filaments of mana, waving back and forth. Mana-feelers. They hopped from the tray and skittered across the surface of the desk, their feelers extended, apparently listening for a matching vibration. Interesting. How was I going to pluck such a tiny string and retune it to search for a new frequency? It was so much tinier than I’d imagined.
Lucian and Emilio were shouting now. Fine with me. I had problems of my own. The nanos seemed confused, from what I could tell. They moved in circles across the desk’s surface, almost as if lost. Hmmm. Maybe they weren’t primed yet?
Allowing my hearing to focus within my specter state, I listened for their soft vibrations, ignoring all other noises in the room.
There it was. Tiny. Metallic. High-pitched.
The filaments were far too delicate to be touched. I knew that. But what if I were to do the equivalent of breathe on them … touch them with a sound wave of my own? Letting instinct have free reign, I blew a soft air-whistle their way, forcing my own mana to vibrate over them.
I held my breath.
The nanos didn’t respond at first. But on the third attempt, they quivered, their pitches lowering to match mine, but only for a few seconds before switching back to the original, high-pitched metallic chime.
Nifty.
So, I could change the frequency to Samuel’s mana easily enough. I just hoped that by whistling longer I could make the new frequency stick.
Before trying again, I took a breath and feeling a surge of confidence, began to relax—at precisely the wrong moment.
In unison, the nanos sprang to life, glomming onto my finger like leeches—make that itty-bitty piranhas—and they buried their feelers deep into my flesh.
It hurt. Like hell.
Gut instinct took over. In one of those Sheesh!-A-spider-landed-on-me-I’m-going-to-die-(even though I’m orders of magnitude larger than they could ever dream of being) reactions, I flicked the nanos off before their feelers could really take hold.
The spelled little monsters arced away.
I really didn’t know where they landed.
Crud. Fail. Time to deactivate. I couldn’t have nanoparticles loose in the room, prepping for a beeline assault to feast upon my flesh and light me up like a flambé.
I reached for the red button when something incredible happened.
“What was that?” Emilio whirled, baring his fangs.
“What?” Came Lucian’s dry and very put-out response.
“What?” I obligingly asked in turn, crossing my fingers behind my back and hoping beyond all hope the nanos’ little mana-feelers had broken off in the fall.
Cripes. I needed to hit that red button. And fast.
The Italian vampire sheathed his fangs, murmuring. “Nothing. Nothing, perhaps.”
“Well, I’m done,” Lucian said then, moving to the window to peer out into the night.
“I’ve nothing more to say, Emilio.”
Scratching the back of his neck, Emilio moved to join Lucian once more.
It was then that I saw it.
I couldn’t even move.
The back of Emilio’s neck … was … glowing.
Puzzle of Horror
Dumbstruck, I watched my finger depress the red button on each nano container—just to see if the glow would disappear from the vampire’s neck.
It did.
Still, I couldn’t acknowledge it. I just … couldn’t. I caught my breath … and then caught my breath again, overwhelmed by a rising sense of nausea.
It had to be a mistake. Had to be. But I knew it wasn’t.
It actually answered … everything. Everything.
Beginning with the ring, and the headaches. No wonder I’d been speaking Italian. Emilio must have been using that ring to rip through my mind and influence me somehow.
The mysterious smiles in his study … no, not the gestures of a madman—well, maybe a madman still, but I now saw the smiles for what they were: the smiles of satisfaction over having achieved success. The mind games of an evil genius.
True was so wrong. Emilio Marchesi was so very, very far from unhinged.
My knees felt weak. I gripped the edge of the desk to steady myself. As I did so, my gaze fell on the nano containers. No wonder he didn’t want millions of them loose. He knew his mana swirled in one of those vials.
We really shared the same signature, Emilio … and I. With both of us in his favorite room, the place must have reeked of our scent. No wonder the nanos had wandered aimlessly around the desk’s surface. There was so much matching mana saturating the place, they hadn’t known where to start before glomming onto my finger and then his neck.
I felt stunned. Wasn’t he a vampire?
I’d been told, time and again, that the dead couldn’t give life … but … was he really dead if he’d retrieved two portions of his power from the Fallen Ones—maybe even more?
The obvious relish he took when drinking his Scotch had been a clue. I shouldn’t have shrugged it away so easily. Vampires didn’t behave that way. The fact that Emilio wasn’t a pure vampire anymore had been staring me in the face, hiding in plain sight the entire time. Whatever he’d recovered from the Fallen Ones had obviously restored his vitality, enough to father a baby.
So … it really had been him standing in the sunlight.
Crud. And he wasn’t limited to the night hours.
His fleeting image in the hallway when I’d stolen the sketchbook? He must have left the room. I’d just assumed he hadn’t. I’d caught him two times tailing me in the city already. How long had he been following me around, watching me? My entire life?
There was no doppelganger. Just Emilio. The Mindbreaker … my father. And it matched. Homicidal maniac, war criminal. Yep, it matched.
I wanted to vomit.
They’d been searching for the Mindbreaker for hundreds of years.
He’d been hiding under their very noses as a mad Italian vampire, giving himself years to retrieve his powers from the Fallen Ones at his leisure. Time meant nothing to him. He was beyond patient.
The Night Terror, True, had wondered if the Mindbreaker knew of my existence … well, I could answer that question now. Of course he did.
And looking back at our interactions … they were so different now.
He’d thrown me off that building, sending me to the Nether Reaches on purpose. To wake my specter soul? To give piggyback rides to the Fallen Ones? To see if I was his child? All of the above?
What a sick twist of fate. He’d been calling me bambina. His eyes had gleamed with paternal pride when I’d called him papa.
I’d called him papa!
I’d been playing that angle to gain an advantage—not because I thought it could ever actually be true!
And Blair?
Oh, I saw his reason for keeping her so close in an entirely different light now. He knew she was my weak spot. Clearly, he wasn’t above using her to get to me.
My whole life … none of it was by accident. The dots had all been there—glaringly obvious dots—the entire time. I could see that now. Was he ticking items off a checklist? Training me? Using me? For what purpose?
And Lucian? Was meeting him another Mindbreaker maneuver?
Gloria? Just what did she really know? Had there been other reasons she’d tried to kill me, sending me to the Nether Reaches, again and again? Was she really in cahoots with him? Had been? Still was? I couldn’t tell.
Cripes! Did he know I’d consumed part of his power? Somehow, I didn’t think so. He’d expressed genuine surprise over the power surges in the cemetery. He hadn’t expected both locations to show the same signature. In fact, maybe he didn’t believe it, even now.
I had to keep that thread of doubt alive. I couldn’t let him know I shared his signature, he’d discover I’d leeched his power as an infant. The Emilio I knew wouldn’t hesitate to reap his powers out of me, a reaping I was certain I wouldn’t survive.
Now, it was even more important that I avoid detection. I couldn’t let the nanos verify the second power surge. I couldn’t provide that evidence to Emilio. He’d know what it meant. I had to save myself from those nanos—even if that meant saving him as well.
I really did vomit then. Bile mostly. Heaving it all over Emilio’s desk.
That brought Lucian, rushing to my side. “What’s wrong?” he asked, concerned written all over his handsome face.
“Ah, bambina,” came Emilio’s voice. “You’re ill. Sei malata. And tired. Perhaps, you should rest, eh?”
It was probably the most difficult thing I’d ever done in my entire life: facing Emilio and knowing who he really was. I stood there, knees shaking, analyzing his face in spite of myself. We did share the same cheekbones. There were similarities in the jawline and build. But the similarities ended there.
They ended there.
They had to.
“Come, Cassidy.” Lucian was drawing me away. “You should rest.”
I scarcely noticed. My eyes had locked onto Emilio’s. He was watching me. Like a hawk. There was suspicion there. Curiosity. Pride. Anger. And a certain sense of knowing.
And then, the door closed between us.
The next thing I knew, I stood in my kitchen once again with Lucian looking down at me from under furrowed brows. “You should rest,” he repeated.
I shook my head, struggling to clear my thoughts. I wasn’t out of the woods yet. I had to save my butt not only from Tabitha’s investigation but from my father’s evil designs as well. A lifetime of discipline rose to bolster me. I hoped it would get me through the next few hours. I could freak out later, after it was all over.
“Yeah,” I said, making my mind up all at once and taking him up on the offer. “Think I’ll bow out of the Nano Release party at the cemetery.” I’d be free to reprogram the nanos before they got to me that way, somewhere off in the distance, without Tabitha breathing down my neck. “I don’t feel so hot.”
The concern on Lucian’s face was genuine. “Should I send True?” he asked.
“I’ll call him in a bit, if I don’t feel better,” I said, suddenly anxious to have him gone.
It took longer than I expected, getting him out the door. In the end, he only left because he noticed he’d left the nanos behind in Emilio’s penthouse. Swearing softly under his breath, he promised to return a bit later to check on me, and spinning on his heel, strode purposefully out my front door.
I zipped up to my bedroom, avoiding all thoughts other than those needed to execute my next task. It was time for precision-laser focus.
Clothes? Change them.
Knives? Take them all.
Imp? Useless. Leave him.
Exiting the apartment building, I hailed a cab and headed for the cemetery, refusing to even think and blocking Dorian, who’d just begun to chatter in my head.
Nano-Party
After tossing a wad o
f cash at the taxi driver and ordering him to stay put, I flashed through the park bordering the cemetery at near vampire speed. Scaling the iron fence, I darted between the tombstones and as I approached Tabitha and Heath’s presumed location, slowed my pace and lowered myself to my belly amongst the trees ringing the cemetery. It was cold. Wet. All in all, pretty miserable. Which was good. It kept my brain busy complaining about piddly things rather than thinking of the night’s momentous events.
A shaft of moonlight pierced the clouds roving across the night sky. I suppose it lent an extra sense of eeriness to the night as I concentrated on the mana vibrations around me. At first, it was a bit hard to filter out Dorian’s relentless rambling, but that’s the beauty about someone nagging overly much—they turn into white noise.
Unscrewing the turmeric jar, I focused on Samuel’s whiney tremors and after a few deep breaths, felt as ready as I’d ever be.
Soon, millions of nanos would come crawling my way.
My mission? Send them packing in another direction.
I lay low in the wet leaves and waited, zoned into the right frequency.
After a couple of minutes, I spied Lucian storming down the cemetery path, his black coat billowing out behind him. He was shouting. Tabitha and Heath ran out from the Rowle family crypt to greet him.
A prickling crept up the nape of my neck then, followed by the overwhelming urge to run. Fear. Disgust. Repulsion. I recognized the wave of fear as it rolled over me. Dark. Sinister.
The soft whisperings of a multi-chorded voice sounded then.
I knew what it was. I’d heard and felt it before, behind the dumpster where I’d found Ricky, and in the warehouse.
The Fallen One.
I sprang to my feet, glancing in all directions as another cold wave of fear washed over me.
I sensed it was close and closing in on me fast.
Of course, I should’ve known it would be here. No doubt, it could sense my presence as well. Apparently, it’d been hanging around after having delivered its payload to the Mindbreaker, and most likely because it hadn’t been paid. Or … as Strix had warned me before, it really was haunting my every waking step. I didn’t like either explanation.
