by Janet Jones
She slipped out the folded sheet of linen stationery. It had his monogram at the top. Naturally. He seemed like the monogram type. His handwriting was elegant and outrageously old-fashioned, just as unique as he was.
Talisen, I hope you feel rested today. I'm afraid I may be detained this evening. I'll try very hard to meet you downstairs by eight. If I'm not there by then, please give me a rain check. And don't hesitate to ask the Gerards for anything you want. With much affection, Ellory
Talisen's spirits sank like a paper boat. Was he really having a busy day—or second thoughts?
She had spilled her guts to him last night. And for all their talk about being family, they hardly knew each other. He probably thought she was pathetic. How embarrassing.
There was no way she was going to spend another night here as his guest. Not after making herself look like a basket-case. She needed to go back to the park. She could come back to the inn later this evening to see if he showed. Tucking Ellory's note back in its envelope, she put it away in Grandma's briefcase and began to dress.
* * * *
"Whining won't get you Aloisia's old domain, Dylan, and you know it."
Dylan returned the silver-haired leech's jibe with a tolerant shrug. Blazek didn't equal him in power, but he was too influential at the moment to anger. “I only want what's rightfully mine."
Blazek narrowed his eyes. “Those are the words of treason. If Freya hasn't challenged Benedikt's return-rights by now, then she's not going to. There's an end to it."
Dylan took a seat on the sofa in front of Blazek's fire and fixed his gaze on the bevy of vampiresses at the piano in the corner of the den. It was a spacious room, elegantly appointed to match Blazek's ambitions in the enclave—ambitions that were constantly held in check by their queen.
Blazek endured her unearned disfavor with the loyalty of a dog. Dylan knew how that felt. Freya had the same temperament her sister Aloisia had had—including a witless affection for Benedikt.
Blazek dropped himself in an armchair across from Dylan. “Stop ogling my girls. They're not on loan. I know your appetite too well. Besides, you like them young and human. I heard about your fiasco last night with that runaway human. Sloppy."
Dylan squelched the urge to rip Blazek's head off. The night would come when Blazek would offer him his choice of his brood and pray that was all he took. He smiled blandly. “That was business. I mean to make it easy for Benedikt's weakness for fledglings to lead him down the wrong path."
"Don't tell me you've put her in as a spy. Benedikt has probably already spotted your mark."
"Not the way I did it."
Dylan curled his lip. “Well, I'll give you that. You're good at covering your tracks inside a human's mind. But Benedikt will be on to you eventually."
"I'm sure he will, but perhaps by then he'll have shown himself for the liability he is."
Blazek snorted. “Freya turns a blind eye."
"Precisely—so Benedikt's miserable weaklings cross a boundary twice a night, if they like, and no one touches them."
Dylan watched Blazek's pale face flush red. He'd struck the right chord, but Blazek had to grapple with his better judgment, of course, or he'd never fall in with Dylan's plans.
Blazek scowled and turned a sullen gaze on the fire. “Even queens have their weaknesses. Benedikt is one of hers."
"A weakness she shared with her sister. That I can vouch for."
"Don't throw your bitterness in my face. Aloisia chose Benedikt as her favorite and her heir. Nothing you do will ever change that."
"But who was with her in her last moments, Blazek?” Dylan countered. “Who stood with her before she walked into the sun? Freya knows, even though she won't admit it, that I deserve the domain Aloisia left to Benedikt."
Blazek smirked. “I heard all about Aloisia's last night from one who needn't lie to get what he wants."
He would naturally bring up that old viper. The Alchemist knew more than anyone should about the dealings in the enclave.
Dylan dismissed Blazek's challenge with a wave of his hand. “You aren't going to believe the ravings of that maniac, are you? The Alchemist has lost his sanity to hunger, like every Ancient will. They have their night. We will have ours, Blazek. Aloisia was wise enough to take her leave before she destroyed everything she created."
Blazek shook his head. “Aloisia walked into the sun so her sister wouldn't have to end her existence for her, but she never worried about her legacy. She saw to that—by letting Benedikt take her place. And I am not one for questioning the Ancients."
"Yes, as you've shown everyone only too well.” Dylan sneered. “Do you know what Benedikt is up to now?"
Blazek stood and paced to the fire. “It doesn't matter until Freya says it does."
"Freya needn't state the obvious for you, I hope. She'd never condone the keeping of human concubines. You call yourself a vanguard of the enclave, the first to form up a death squad when needed. What good are you to our queen, if you can't see what's about to happen beyond your boundaries?"
Dylan waited. He watched Blazek turn slowly. There on Blazek's face was the expression he'd waited for. All he had to do was goad a little.
"Benedikt's taken a human?” whispered Blazek.
"He's working up to it. Let's just say, if he doesn't go through with it, he has placed himself—and the enclave—in a dangerous position. If he does go through with it, Freya will almost certainly wash her hands of him. Imagine her relief, if we take care of the problem before it becomes one."
Blazek's eyes glinted with a simpleton's fury. He crept back to his chair, wiping his mouth with a scented handkerchief before meeting Dylan's gaze. “I'll bring this to the queen's attention and see what she says."
Dylan curled his hands into fists. “She'll give Benedikt a chance to explain himself and let it go with a slap on the wrist, Blazek. Is that what we want?"
"She must have time to deal with this as she pleases, you fool, before we make a move on Benedikt—or we're dead."
Dylan feigned consideration. He nodded slowly. “You know her mind better than anyone else."
"Except the Alchemist."
"Which isn't saying much, is it?” Dylan laughed. “She has entirely underestimated you, Blazek. I know how frustrating that is. Aloisia underestimated me."
And that had been her fatal mistake.
Of course, no one in this enclave had the guts to conceive of what he'd done. They were too staid and complacent, and their queen too tolerant and attached to the old ways.
Only the Alchemist could suspect how he'd done it, and he'd played his own part in Aloisia's demise. With his potions, chants and experiments, he'd left too many dead vampires in his wake to be a credible witness against anyone.
"We'll have to move carefully on this,” Blazek murmured. “Freya won't hear a bad word against Benedikt."
"That's only because he does things the old-fashioned way,” Dylan said in a reasonable tone. “Freya likes that. It's a wonder you haven't tried it yourself, since you're so hard-up for her approval."
His jibe almost wrung a growl out of Blazek. “There's a limit to what I'll do to keep on her good side. Everyone knows we've survived because we've let go of peripheral niceties. That's all Benedikt's fledglings are—that, and a drain on the Enclave. They couldn't survive on their own as humans, and they can't as vampires."
"Precisely my point. Have you ever heard of rearing a houseful of fledglings under the same roof with humans? Freya protects Benedikt from the rest of us. Just like Aloisia did."
He saw sympathy in Blazek's gaze, now. Excellent. The silver-haired vampire gave a prosaic nod. “Aloisia created Benedikt for mere pleasure. And Meical Grabian? He was a whim. She never could see beyond her appetites. But she created you to be her servant."
"Therefore, Benedikt has no real right to Aloisia's domain. I'm not afraid to cross his boundaries. He's the trespasser."
"But you're not thinking of approaching his prey, I h
ope."
"I intend to see if Benedikt has marked her yet."
"Good thinking. If he has marked the woman, we've nothing to accuse him of."
"And if I mark her first, I've alleviated the danger to the Enclave. Freya will have to condemn Benedikt's lack of wisdom or lose the respect of the Enclave. She doesn't want a civil war. If I push Benedikt a little, he'll explode."
"And God help you."
"But Freya will have to take sides, you see. Solidarity or her favorite. You know which one she has to choose."
Blazek smiled slowly. “She'll be forced to deny Benedikt her protection."
"Exactly. And there will be nowhere for him to go, then."
* * * *
Even in the downpour, Talisen's tent looked cozy and familiar. After Jeff dropped her off at her campsite, she changed into her black sweats, used the last of her butane to fire up her stove and made coffee. Settling down on a pillow near the open doorway, she drank her coffee and watched afternoon wane to twilight.
Someone moved on the edge of the clearing, then vanished.
Talisen rose and peered through the rain and darkness. Probably just a camper making a dash for his tent. She turned to set her cup aside and then looked again—right into a long, angular face as cold as the rain. The man grinned. “You didn't hear me knock?"
* * * *
Ellory's heart stuttered to life, wrenching him awake. After two centuries, one would think he'd be used to the agonies of reviving. He focused on accepting the pain. The ice-burn of still, cold blood pumping through his veins. The crawling skin. The cramping muscles. The quivering organs that woke to thirst. The hunger in every cell.
The hunger in his soul.
His lungs expanded. His first breath came like the shuddering gasp of a drowning man. Not that he needed oxygen. But it was the nature of a vampire's body to cast off the shackles of the day-death like a person shaking a fist at mortality. Once again, the relentless thrust of life in his chest pulsed, pounded and settled into its normal rhythm, warming his body.
Talisen. He reached for her mind.
And found she wasn't where she was supposed to be. Ellory scowled. Why was she back at the park?
After dropping off his note to her at the inn, he'd set a relay of squirrels on-guard at the Benedikt and ordered them to pass the word among their kind to keep her in sight throughout the day. Now came their reports, silent pictures in his mind, replaying her day's events.
He sifted through the park squirrels's squeaky thought-voices. Too many pictures. One at a time, please.
An aging gray squirrel silenced his clan and distilled their information. He sent a stark black-and-white image of the forest, the tent far below, the smell of sodden leaves and bark, the soft, warm bodies of his pups pressed close to him. His vantage point was a knothole about the size of Ellory's fist, high in an old oak that stood ten yards from Talisen's tent.
It wasn't what the squirrel saw that made its tiny heart race. It was what he sensed and couldn't see, what should be there, plain to his busy, black eyes, keen nose and sensitive ears. An ominous emptiness radiated from within Talisen's tent. No scent. No sound. No visual sign of it. It was pure energy, a pulsation that disturbed nature's rhythm.
Another vampire.
Ellory hissed, bared his fangs in the darkness, and shot out of his four-poster bed, dissolving into mist before he passed through the wall and emerged outside in the night.
No one would touch Talisen and live.
* * * *
Why couldn't she scream?
Talisen gasped as the man clutched her wrist and yanked her close. His fingers were icy. There was a fleshy, sweet odor on his breath. Talisen felt evil in him as tangibly as the wet wind blowing in behind him.
"Someone's being careless with you,” he whispered. “That's a pity. For you."
He tangled his free hand in her hair, and Talisen felt his long fingers close over the back of her neck. He lowered his head. She felt his putrid breath on her throat and gagged, but she couldn't turn her head away.
A clap of thunder and a blazing bolt of lightning blinded her and left her ears ringing. She heard the man keen like an animal caught in a trap. When he let go of her, he staggered out of the tent with his hands clasped to his face. A second later, the ringing in her ears exploded, and she tumbled into nothingness.
* * * *
Ellory caught Talisen before she hit the floor of the tent and lifted her onto her cot. He hated having to use such heavy-handed tactics, but there'd been no time for finesse. Few vampires could bear a bolt of lightning in the face. It would be a few nights before Dylan grew his nose and eyes back.
A quick plundering of Talisen's mind relieved Ellory's fear that he'd reached her too late. Dylan had only managed to frighten her. This time.
He put a hand on her white face and reached deep into her memory, obliterating everything that had happened in the last few minutes and replacing it with the notion that she'd nodded off to sleep on her cot.
She came awake with a gasp but grinned when she saw it was him. “What are you doing here?"
"I was just about to ask you that.” He smiled and helped her sit up. “We had a date, remember? You want to rummage around in the Captain's whatnots."
She gave him a teasing grin that told him the whatnots she'd like to rummage in weren't in his attic, but when she glanced at the open door of the tent, a look of confusion crossed her face. “That's weird."
"What?” he prodded.
"I slept all day long."
"Good."
"But why in the world did I fall asleep just now? I don't even remember falling asleep."
"You must be exhausted.” Ellory held his breath.
Talisen stared into the darkness beyond the tent. She was really reaching for it. “There was a guy."
"You were having a hell of a dream when I got here,” he said smoothly. “I thought you were going to jump out of your skin when I woke you up."
She met his gaze, and he took the opportunity to back up his suggestion that she'd had a nightmare.
She wasn't entirely convinced, but she shrugged and let it go. “It figures. I haven't slept well. Anyway, I left the inn because—"
"Never mind. I heard all about it from the Gerards. You checked out. You and your Rudyard pride."
She smiled ruefully. “I'm sorry."
"How sorry?"
She laughed. “Hmmm. Maybe I won't answer that. Let's go have a look at your Benedikt stuff. Are you parked at the visitor's center?"
"No, I had Sean drop me off there and I walked."
"In the rain? Without an umbrella? A rich dude like you, and you don't even carry an umbrella? Maybe you'd better call Sean and have him come pick us up. On nights like this, I have trouble getting my engine going."
Ellory gave her a wicked grin. “We don't need Sean's help for that. Pop your hood and let me have a look."
She rolled her eyes. “It's my truck that needs fixing."
Ellory followed her out into the rain to her old Toyota. While she got behind the wheel and pulled the hood release, he stepped around to the front of the vehicle and lifted the hood, idly wondering how mad she'd be if he bought her a new car. It was so tempting to total this one.
But that was no way to handle a Rudyard.
Concealed from her view by the hood, he held his hand over the engine. “Stop giving her grief, you bucket of bolts."
He felt the tingle of power leave him and pour into the choked car parts. Satisfied, he closed it up and joined her, shaking the rain out of his hair. “Try it."
Talisen turned the key again, and the truck started. “How'd you do that?"
He tried to look smug. “It's a secret."
"You seem to have a lot of those."
"You have no idea."
She shifted the gear into place and revved the engine until explosion seemed imminent. Easing the clutch back, she let the vehicle jerk its way in a forward direction through the dark.
<
br /> "Transmission's going,” she explained.
"Transmission's gone,” he retorted.
She patted the dashboard. “It'll last me. It has to."
He stretched his arm across the back of the seat and rested his hand behind her shoulder. “How was your day?"
Was she going to tell him the truth? A cursory examination of her thoughts told him she'd spent the day thinking of him. He smiled at her cool shrug. “I can't wait to see what you've got on the Captain. I feel like I'm finally getting closer to the truth about him."
Ellory grimaced. She had no idea how right she was. “I hope he's worth the effort you've gone to."
He sensed the heat of Talisen's ongoing struggle with the same question. He felt as if a piece of him hung in the balance. Then a new burst of determination rose inside of her, flooding out of her and into him, before he heard it in her voice.
"I used to say that to Grandma. She'd tell me, ‘If Madeline Rudyard didn't give up on him, I'm not going to.’ I guess I feel the same way."
Poor Maddie. Out of pride, she'd faced down the rumors and called them lies, even when people reported seeing him in Europe with Aloisia on his arm, only weeks after his disappearance.
Ellory ripped through a backlog of memories, times when he was too hungry to be careful. He hadn't a thought in those days for avoiding people who might recognize him.
Dimly-lit salons, glittering ballrooms, blood-scented alleyways, thousands of nights, thousands of faces, from one end of the Continent to the other—all he could remember was quenching his thirst for blood and sating Aloisia. That had been his world.
"In spite of all the stories people tell about how hard Madeline was to get along with,” Talisen murmured, “she must have loved Benedikt a lot. I'm glad they at least had a few months together before he disappeared."
Ellory clenched his mouth shut. It was useless to regret the precious time he'd spent with Maddie. He'd bent over backwards to keep her happy, to please her and to help her see the goodness in others. But like her father, she'd been opinionated, suspicious and cruel. Unlike her gentle, overshadowed cousin.
