“Of course, Cyn,” Raphael responded smoothly, seeming quite entertained by the whole thing.
Cynthia crossed the squares carefully, very aware of the smooth surface beneath the leather soles of her boots. There was no point in lingering here. It was a certainty the kidnappers hadn’t come in this way. If they had, Alexandra would never have been kidnapped. She would have been too busy laughing as they slid around on the slippery marble. Instead, Cyn went directly to the side door, and looked up the concrete paved driveway. “This road connects to the main drive?”
“It does. In fact, this is the terminus of the main drive. It was only extended to reach this far when I built the cottage for Alexandra.”
“And that was?” She didn’t really need to know; she was just curious.
Raphael gave her a bemused glance. “Roughly ten years ago, wasn’t it, Duncan? Shortly after we built the new main house.”
“Ten years last month, Sire,” Duncan said, popping up out of nowhere, which was something vampires seemed to excel at. Although Cynthia was pretty sure she’d seen him moving around the outside of the privet hedge earlier. Raphael was much slicker about it. Great, Cyn, what are we, in junior high school now? She walked past the doorway and along the side of the house, mostly to distract herself from Raphael’s disturbing presence. Trees closed in all around, coming right up to the walls of the house itself in the back. She looked up beneath the eaves and spotted the gleam of a security camera. This had to have been an inside job. There was too much security around this place for someone to have made it all the way to the guest house and back out again without getting caught.
“Video?” she asked, tilting her head to gaze at the camera. “Does it archive?”
“Digital video and audio direct to a server in the basement of the house,” Duncan answered.
“You have the night in question?”
“Certainly.”
“Do I get to see it?” she asked, somewhat exasperated by the vampire’s less than forthcoming responses.
“Indeed, you do,” Raphael interjected easily. “That’s one of the reasons we’re here.”
“And what’s the other reason?”
“So you can see the crime scene, of course. That’s what you humans do, is it not, Cyn?”
Cynthia sighed. It was going to be a long night. “Yes, it is, Lord Raphael,” she said, remembering Lonnie’s advice. “I don’t know any other way to run an investigation.”
“Excellent. Then, come, Cyn.” Every time he said her name, he separated it out from the words around it, as if savoring the taste. Sin. “I think things will be much clearer to you after you’ve seen the security footage,” he continued, taking her arm gently and steering her back toward the doorway. “And do call me Raphael. After all, you’re human. You’ve no allegiance to me . . . as yet,” he added softly.
Cynthia turned and stared at him, uncertain she’d really heard those final words. Raphael seemed not to notice, guiding her down the side of the house in the dark, then pulling open the heavy wooden door with ease. As they went through, she saw the door had a double-keyed deadbolt, in addition to a keypad lockout inside. Which meant she’d been right in her earlier assessment. Whoever had taken this Alexandra, for whatever reason, had at least one accomplice on the inside. A thought occurred to her. “What time did you say it was when your . . . when Alexandra was abducted?”
“It was nearly sunrise. She would have already been feeling the pressure of dawn. It would have made her, and her guards, slower, less alert.”
Duncan stared at his Sire in alarm, and Cynthia wondered if this was one of those secrets vampires usually didn’t share. And then it occurred to her to wonder why Raphael was being so free with this information. She pushed aside that worrisome thought and considered what he’d told her. “Humans,” she said.
Raphael smiled. Beautiful and deadly.
“It was humans who took her,” she repeated, breathless and a little aggravated he hadn’t just told her.
“Very good, Cyn. This is why I believe you, a human, will be best able to find her.”
“But if she was still awake, some of the other vampires must have been also. You wouldn’t have left her here with only human guards, especially not at night.”
Raphael’s expression quickly turned blacker than a moonless night, his eyes pits of darkness that sucked in the light and gave back nothing. “No, indeed, not. But the traitor will be my concern.” She watched the fury roll out of his expression just as quickly, watched the moonlight sparkle come back to his eyes. “Your job,” he continued, “will be catching the human puppets, who will in turn lead me to their vampire masters.”
“Okay,” she breathed, shaking herself slightly. “Let’s uh, let’s—”
He gestured toward a dimly lit hallway. “It’s all set up for us.”
Chapter Eleven
THE HOUSE WAS dark inside, with only a faint light coming from the hallway. There was a slight smell of bleach in the air, like a cleaning solution. She looked at Raphael in question.
“Human guards patrol the house and grounds during daylight hours. They were murdered, their bodies dragged into the kitchen. My staff has already cleaned.”
Cyn nodded. If this had been a regular forensic investigation, valuable evidence would have been destroyed by that cleaning. But there was little “regular” about this whole case. They continued on through the large French provincial kitchen, and Cynthia couldn’t help noticing the big side by side subzero refrigerator/freezer. She didn’t want to think about what was stored in that one. Ugh.
The hallway was brighter than the kitchen, though not by much, with some low wattage lights recessed into the crown molding along the ceiling. She noticed bracket-mounted candleholders all along the wall and shone her flashlight on one of them curiously. It was the real thing. Although the candles currently stuck in the fixture were fresh, she could smell the paraffin from previous burnings. Raphael had gone ahead of her, but he came back down the hall to see what she was looking at.
“Candles?” she asked.
“Alexandra preferred things as they had been. She never adapted well to the modern era. There are additional lights, of course.” He gestured above. “Mostly for the human staff. I forget sometimes what poor eyesight you humans have in the dark, Cyn.”
“You know,” she muttered, half to herself. “You and I will get along a lot better if you stop pointing out all of my human deficiencies. I’m sure you all must have a few of your own.”
He gave a soft chuckle. “My manners are a bit rusty, I’m afraid. I have so little direct contact with humans anymore.”
Cynthia eyed him doubtfully. He said all the right words, but there was always the tiny hint of a smirk on that handsome face, as though he was playing along for his own entertainment. “Right. So where’s this security setup then?”
“This way.” He continued down the hall, making a turn into a small foyer near what would have been the main entrance if not for the useless checkerboard courtyard. Cyn followed him past a winding stairway and toward the back of the house where a square of light on the wood flooring marked an open door. Raphael paused in the light to wait for her, then preceded her down the stairs to the basement.
Duncan was already there, seated at the hub of a very sophisticated security control center. Every console was lit up, and as she glanced from monitor to monitor, she saw there was precious little of the guest house that wasn’t under surveillance. She did a quick survey of the room, noticing the locked gun cage and what looked like a closed bank vault door against the far wall. Curious.
“Nice,” was all she said, focusing on the security console. “Do you have any redundancy between the houses? The main gate?”
“Not at this house. Not a live feed anyway,” Duncan said. “Alexandra lived apart.” He frowned slightly. “Fo
r many reasons. We do have the main gate, however. Video only. His fingers flew over the keyboard and he gestured at a large monitor hanging on the wall to her right. “The morning in question.”
Cynthia walked over to the monitor and watched as a black, late model panel van pulled up to the gate. The guards were human, she noted. “Pause that.” The screen froze. “Human guards,” she said. “When I came through earlier the guards were all vamps.”
“As you noted, they timed it carefully,” Raphael said right behind her. She started a little and his eyes shifted to her, his gaze lingering long enough to make her uncomfortable. “It was close enough to sunrise that my vampires had already retired for the day. These humans—” He paused and pointed at the monitor. “—would have been on duty perhaps half an hour, no more.”
“You must have video of the shift change. Did you see anything different, unusual?”
“No. Most of Alexandra’s vampire guards are my own, my children—”
“What does that mean? Your children?” Cynthia asked in surprise. “You don’t mean literally . . .”
Raphael gave her an assessing stare. “Of course not, Cyn. Among us, the term ‘child’ refers to one whom we personally have brought over. One we have . . . reborn. It is a powerful connection among our kind and one not easily broken.”
“But it can be broken?”
He frowned at her. “Rarely. But, yes.”
“You referred to a traitor. Was he one of yours?”
“No.”
“But he was one of Alexandra’s guards?”
“Yes. I thought I knew him. That was my mistake and one I shall personally rectify.”
Cynthia waited for him to expand. When he didn’t, she shrugged and turned back to the monitor. “Go ahead, please,” she told Duncan. The video activated again, showing the driver of the black van having a conversation with one of the guards. The guard was arguing with him, gesturing toward the house, then back to the paperwork the driver was trying to offer him. She saw the van shift as the back doors were opened and four men jumped out, two going to either side of the vehicle. At the same time, the driver opened his door, ramming it into the guard talking to him and distracting the others. She scowled as the intruders opened fire; AK-47’s mowed down the human guards almost before they could raise their own weapons. One of Raphael’s men inside the wall did manage to rake the front window of the van, cracking the windshield, but within seconds all of the guards were down and the gate was open.
Without audio, she couldn’t hear what was said, but the driver was visibly cursing as he searched behind his seat and came up with a tire iron which he used to break out the rest of the glass, clearing the vehicle’s front window. He barked a few words and his team piled back inside, before he drove beneath the camera’s frame and out of sight.
“When I came through the gate tonight,” Cyn said, “I saw at least six vampires on the gate itself and an uncounted number throughout the grounds and in the main house. Why were there only the four humans three days ago?” she asked.
“Lord Raphael is in residence tonight,” Duncan explained quietly. “The main security detail travels with our master, which is why Alexandra has a separate unit. She prefers the comfort of familiar surroundings and rarely travels. When our master is gone, only her security detail remains.”
“But you have cameras on the gate, someone must have seen what was happening.”
Duncan nodded in agreement. “Again, with Lord Raphael absent, the gate would have been monitored from here at the manor house. There is a separate, smaller control room off the kitchen upstairs. It is used by the guards during the day.” He glanced at Raphael before continuing. “The traitor murdered the human guards here at the house before the van arrived and remained outside the vault after the others had retired for the day. We never thought—”
“Shall we move on?” Raphael interrupted.
Duncan bowed his head in acquiescence and turned back to the keyboard. The next bit of footage was from an interior camera and included some audio, although the quality was not very good. From the high ceilings and windows, Cynthia thought it must have come from one of the upstairs rooms. A young woman was playing the piano, something light and pretty. Mozart, she thought. The camera was behind her, so Cyn couldn’t see her face yet. But long, black hair hung down her back in thick, shining curls, and she was small, almost childlike in size. A perfect size one, Cyn thought cynically. A man sat next to her, his hair just as black, but completely straight, cut blunt at the shoulder. He wore the same charcoal suit as Juro and the other bodyguards she’d see at the main house.
Cyn felt more than saw Raphael step up behind her, felt his breath stir her hair as he whispered a name, “Matias.”
Cynthia glanced at him over her shoulder, uncertain if he’d intended her to hear, and then looked away from the naked pain on his face. She focused instead on the slightly Asian cast of Matias’s face, wondering how old he was and where he’d come from. This was the vampire Lonnie had told her about, Alexandra’s supposed lover. The camera angle was high, but she thought the rumor was probably true. The two of them, Alexandra and Matias, seemed very relaxed together, like old friends, or old lovers.
A man’s voice said something off-camera and Alexandra’s back stiffened. She stood and turned, Matias holding out a hand to assist her as she came into full view for the first time. Cynthia sucked in a breath. She looked so young, little more than a girl, almost doll-like in a full-length gown of peach-colored satin. Small breasts plumped out of a low-cut, lace bodice that narrowed tightly to her waist, then flared over what had to be panniers of some sort beneath her dress. She reminded Cyn of the porcelain-faced dolls her grandmother used to bring her from Europe. Pretty little things to be put on a shelf and admired, but never touched, and never, ever played with.
“She’s only a child,” Cyn said, her voice thick with disapproval. “How old was she when you turned her?”
Duncan jolted to his feet, a protest on his lips, but Raphael held up a strong, square-fingered hand to stop him, his gaze never leaving Cynthia’s face. “I take into consideration, Ms. Leighton, that you are human and perhaps do not know our customs. My people—” He indicated Duncan with a tip of his head. “—are fiercely loyal to me and will not be so tolerant. You might want to consider that in the future. Whether you wish to acknowledge it or not, I am one of only eight vampire lords on this continent. My power is, frankly, beyond your comprehension. I expect, and have earned through my own efforts, the respect of those around me, and if not respect, then at least courtesy.
“Alexandra’s physical age is not your concern, and such a question is an unforgivable breach of etiquette among my kind. Regardless of her appearance, she is an adult of several hundred years.”
Cynthia flushed, embarrassed, angry and scared stiff. She’d been rattled by Raphael’s obvious pain at seeing Matias and shocked at the girl’s youthful appearance, but that was no excuse. She was smarter than this. “I apologize, Lord Raphael. I was . . . surprised and reacted without thinking.” She lifted her chin, daring him to refuse her apology.
Raphael held her gaze, his face nearly expressionless. Cynthia forced herself to breathe.
“Duncan,” Raphael said at last, his dark eyes still on Cynthia. “Please continue.” Then he gave her a small nod of acceptance and gestured once again to the screen.
Cynthia turned slowly, her heart pounding, her legs wobbly with adrenaline rush. It took her a moment to focus on what she was seeing. “Who’s the redhead?” she asked finally.
“Albin.” Raphael’s voice was so cold it made her shiver, and she knew without asking that she was looking at the traitor.
The rest of the scene unfolded on screen as they watched. Cynthia sucked back a gasp of disbelief when she saw Matias literally dusted and gave a hard smile as Alexandra shook Albin off and strode from
the room ahead of him. Duncan gave a little tsk of disgust when Albin paused before leaving the room to cast a contemptuous grin right at the camera. “He knew the cameras were there,” she commented.
“Of course,” Raphael agreed.
The remainder of the video was a montage of images cut together from the hallway and exterior cameras, showing the rest of the abduction and including Albin’s obviously human accomplices. It ended with a shot of the rear end of the black van as it drove away, leaving bodies scattered on the ground around the gate.
“Who found the bodies?” she asked, subdued.
“My security forces, when they rose for the night. Alexandra’s room was empty, unused, as were those of Albin and Matias. Alexandra’s . . . former security chief immediately instituted a search of the house and grounds. His men reported back from the gate with the unfortunate news.”
“Unfortunate,” Cynthia repeated. She drew breath to go off on him for his callousness at the human guards’ deaths, remembered the loss in his voice when he spoke of Matias, and said instead, “The human deaths. You didn’t call the police. What happened to them?”
Raphael was watching her, and with that uncanny intuition of his seemed to understand the realignment she’d just worked out . . . and the question she was really asking. “It has been some time, Cyn, since my people were reduced to scavenging bodies for sustenance. These,” he gestured at the monitor, “were cared for and sent to their families, if they had them. If not, they were cremated and scattered to the winds even as our own bodies are. Their families were compensated, to the extent money can compensate for life, and their funeral expenses, if any, were paid. I treat my people well, Cynthia. All of my people.”
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