Darkness Rises ig-4

by Dianne Duvall

  Krysta listened carefully and tried to memorize every name and face as Étienne introduced her and Sean to the group. It was a relief to see other humans present. Or gifted ones. She wasn’t sure how to tell those apart. But she could tell by their auras that there were almost as many mortals present as there were immortals.

  Her gaze slid to Seth, whose aura glowed that brilliant white, then to David, whose aura did the same, but had a tiny sliver of purple mixed in. The other immortals had a pretty equal mix of white and purple.

  She looked at the small redhead—Ami?—who sat beside Seth. Her aura was unlike anyone else’s. It contained the same color variations of humans and gifted ones, but had little sparkly things in it, as if the stars in the night sky were peeking through a rainbow. It was beautiful and very peculiar. What was she?

  Seth and David’s auras were different because . . .

  Actually, she wasn’t sure. Was it because they were so old? Or were there other supernatural beings? Étienne seemed sure they were immortals, yet . . .

  Those auras.

  “Let’s begin,” Seth said when the roll call of names ended.

  Chris cleared his throat. “Before we get started, there’s an issue we need to discuss.”

  Seth motioned for Chris to continue. “What’s on your mind, Chris?”

  Chris’s gaze circled the table. “My goal is the same as the network’s: To protect you. It’s why I scrutinize so carefully every member of the network before hiring him or her. It’s why every Second is handpicked. If even one person leaks the truth to the media, in this information age in particular, it is hell to clean up and counter. Every year, with every new gadget and fucking cell phone with apps that can realign the damned planets, it gets harder. We can’t afford to make a single mistake.”

  “What’s your point?” Ethan asked.

  “My point is I can’t protect you if you keep hiding your girlfriends from me.”

  Every eye swung toward Krysta.

  She glanced around. “Why is everyone looking at me?”

  Silence.

  “Oh. Oh, no. I’m not Étienne’s girlfriend. We just . . . hunt together . . . sort of. It’s not like we’re dating or . . . We haven’t slept together or anything . . . I mean we slept together . . . twice, actually . . . but we didn’t—”

  “You aren’t helping,” Étienne murmured.

  She clamped her lips shut. What a time to find out she babbled when she was nervous.

  “He has a point,” Roland spoke. “Étienne hid this woman from us—”

  “The woman has a name,” Krysta interjected.

  “—and Richart hid both Jenna and her son from us. Every mortal is a potential threat.”

  Chris frowned. “Says the immortal who threatened to kill me if I went anywhere near Sarah when you two got together.”

  “That was different.”

  “How?”

  “You’ve all said it a thousand times. I’m an untrusting, antisocial bastard.”

  “No, you aren’t,” Sarah protested and glared at the others. “Stop saying that.”

  Roland continued. “Anyone who can win my trust deserves it. Besides, she saved my ass. Twice.”

  “Technically,” Krysta said, “I saved Étienne’s ass.”

  “After I risked it to save you.”

  “That’s true. I thanked you for that, right?”

  Chris waved his hands. “It doesn’t matter who saved whose ass. The point is every mortal poses a threat. Especially now. If you don’t let me interro—ah, interview these women, you place everyone in danger, because sooner or later someone always trusts the wrong person.”

  “True,” Seth murmured.

  “Ah hah!” Richart blurted at the same time. “You were going to say interrogate! I knew it! That’s why I kept Jenna a secret!”

  Chris swore beneath his breath as Roland and Étienne both nodded. “Okay, maybe, in the past, I might have been a tad harsh when ensuring that an immortal’s lover could be trusted. But can you blame me? Look what happened to Mattheus.”

  “Who the hell is Mattheus?” Roland grumbled.

  “Mattheus got screwed?” Tracy said. “That sucks. He’s so hot.”

  “Who’s Mattheus?” Sheldon seconded.

  “He’s an immortal from Brazil,” Chris said. “His mortal lover, whom he thought was completely trustworthy, videotaped them having sex—”

  “Awesome!” Sheldon interjected with a grin.

  Everyone looked at him.

  “What? I like porn.”

  Still they stared.

  He frowned. “I have to give up booze, parties, and porn? Can’t a Second have any vices?”

  Chris sighed. “Anyway. She videotaped them having sex and intended to auction it off to news outlets once it had been authenticated by an expert who would swear the glowing eyes, fangs, and . . . ah . . . unusual speed and other things demonstrated were not special effects produced by a post-production house.”

  “Maybe they were,” Sheldon suggested somberly. “Maybe she was out to discredit him. I think we should all watch it and—”

  “The tape has been destroyed,” Seth cut in.

  “Damn.” Sheldon slumped down in his seat.

  Chris met Richart’s gaze. “Anytime you want me to get rid of him . . .”

  Richart shook his head. “He amuses me.”

  “Chris does have a point,” Seth said, returning to the subject at hand.

  At the opposite end of the table, David nodded. “We have seen it countless times. This is a lonely existence that can sometimes drive us to trust where we should not.”

  “Chris,” Seth continued, “perhaps if you allowed the immortal to be present when you met with his lover, he would no longer feel wary of your possible treatment of her.”

  “Or him,” Lisette tossed in.

  Étienne raised his eyebrows.

  “What? I can’t date?”

  “Fine,” Chris said. “If any of you acquire a lover with whom you wish to share the truth, you can be present when I meet with her. But I do need to meet with her. Or him. If you’d consent to a telepath being present or listening in from the next room, all the better.”

  When no one spoke, Seth spoke for them. “They’ll take it into consideration.” The casual words carried the weight of an order. “Is that all, Chris?”

  “For now, yes.”

  Seth turned to Étienne. “So?”

  “So?” he repeated.

  David leaned forward and braced his elbows on the table. “Tell us what happened last night.”

  Étienne hesitated. He wasn’t sure how to tell them without explaining Krysta’s role in it. And he thought it best to minimize that as much as possible.

  No one seemed to have caught her reference to their hunting together. They had all been too titillated by the idea that he had been hiding away a girlfriend.

  Which, as she had pointed out, was not to say that Krysta was his girlfriend.

  You’re rambling, David spoke in his head.

  Étienne shot him a glance. Much to his surprise, the elder immortal seemed amused. No, I’m not.

  Yes, you are, Seth said.

  Is everyone listening to my thoughts? he demanded with exasperation. His barriers were usually stronger than that.

  No, just us, David answered.

  Go ahead and tell them what happened, Seth advised. We’ve already gleaned it.

  Étienne leaned forward and braced his elbows on the table. “I was out hunting with Krysta—”

  “Wait,” Chris interrupted. “You two really do hunt together?”

  Étienne looked at Krysta, who shrugged. “In a manner of speaking.”

  Chris threw up his hands. “Okay. Another point of business. Most of the immortals at this table are at least a hundred years old, so I didn’t think I had to remind any of you of this, but you cannot recruit your own Seconds. All Seconds must be assigned by the network, which thoroughly vets and trains them. What the hell, �
�tienne?”

  Now Krysta leaned forward. “I’m not a Second.”

  Before everyone could start bitching at once, Étienne held up a hand. “Krysta came to my attention a couple of weeks ago. I was out hunting and saw several vampires tracking her with the clear intention of preying upon her. Much to my surprise, however, the vampires turned out to be the prey. Krysta is a vampire hunter.”

  “No way!” Sheldon blurted.

  Étienne scowled at him. “As soon as I realized this, I began to follow her.” As swiftly as possible, he caught them up on his adventures with Krysta.

  “No wonder you’ve been so distracted,” Lisette said, studying Krysta curiously.

  Marcus frowned. “By vampire hunter you mean . . . ?”

  “She hunts vampires. She lures them into traps, then dispatches them.”

  “That’s impossible,” Ethan said.

  Krysta stiffened. “Then I’ve been doing the impossible for six years.”

  Disbelieving stares.

  “Mortals can’t defeat vampires in battle,” Edward said.

  “This one can,” Krysta insisted.

  “Ami can,” Sheldon pointed out.

  “Melanie could, when she was mortal,” Bastien added with a proud smile.

  “But Ami and Melanie didn’t take them on alone,” Ethan said. “They fought by Marcus’s and Bastien’s sides.”

  Marcus leaned forward and caught Ethan’s eye. “Ami wasn’t fighting by my side when she kicked your ass in that sparring session. And you’re faster than a vampire.”

  Sheldon laughed. “Burn!”

  Seth sighed. “We’re getting off topic here. I’ve examined Krysta’s thoughts. She has indeed been hunting vampires for the past six years with the help of her brother. And, before you ask, neither of them are members of the mercenary groups who keep troubling us. Her gift gives her an edge”—he held up a hand to stay him when Ethan opened his mouth again—“which I will not disclose. If Krysta wants you to know, she’ll tell you herself.”

  Ethan stared at Krysta. A teasing gleam entered his eyes, making Étienne narrow his own as his hackles rose. Offering Krysta a flirtatious grin, Ethan said, “I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours.”

  In a heartbeat, Étienne drew a dagger and threw it.

  The hilt struck Ethan right in the center of his forehead, snapping his head back. “Ow! Shhhhit! What the hell, man?”

  Krysta gaped up at Étienne, who squirmed as everyone at the table stared at him.

  He cleared his throat, but didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t really meant to do that. He had just reacted.

  “Oh yeah,” Sheldon said. “He has fallen and he has fallen hard.”

  Snickers and head shakes all around.

  “Merde.”

  David held up a hand and called for quiet. “Please continue, Étienne.”

  Eager to change the subject (Why did it seem to return so often to his being smitten with Krysta?), he told them about defeating the vampires, then being set upon by mercenaries.

  No one reprimanded him for not getting the hell out of there as soon as he saw that first tranquilizer dart. That’s what they were supposed to do to avoid capture, but all understood his desire to protect Krysta.

  Cam leaned forward and braced his elbows on the table, his attention on Krysta and Sean. “Thank you. You don’t know what they would have done to him if they had gotten their hands on him. If these are the same people we dealt with before—”

  “I don’t see how they can be,” Melanie interrupted. “That threat was neutralized.”

  Étienne shook his head. “These soldiers were very reminiscent of the others.” He related the events that followed at Krysta and Sean’s home.

  A steady stream of curses and exclamations of disbelief accompanied him.

  Marcus looked ready to snap, his fury fairly heating the room. “How the hell is this possible?”

  Chris shook his head. “It must be a different group.”

  “They have the fucking tranquilizer!” he shouted.

  Ami placed a hand on his arm.

  Étienne understood Marcus’s rage. The last mercenary group had included some of the monsters who had tortured Ami. And they had been eager as hell to get their hands on her again.

  Cam shook his head. “We must have missed something.”

  Seth shook his head. “We didn’t. Every mercenary who knew of our existence was either killed or had their memories wiped. And David and I saw to the latter ourselves.”

  David nodded. “Darnell worked tirelessly with the network’s techno-geeks to expunge all mention of us, of vampires, and of Ami from their computers and servers.”

  “And replaced it with malware,” Darnell added. “There’s no way they could recover those files. I couldn’t even recover those files.”

  “And yet,” Roland said, “Étienne was tranqed and attacked by humans garbed as soldiers.”

  “Could they be military?” Sarah asked, brow furrowed. “Could Emrys have gone to the military without our knowledge?”

  Seth shook his head. “I would have seen it in his thoughts.”

  “Donald and Nelson didn’t either,” David mentioned before anyone could ask.

  Donald was the leader of the elite Private Military Company Emrys had drawn into his war with the immortals near the end. Nelson was Donald’s second in command or yes-man. Because their company was widely known by the public, killing the two men would have raised too many questions, so their memories had been erased instead and a story concocted—something about a couple of transport planes colliding in a freak accident—to explain the deaths of the soldiers slain by the immortals.

  “So where does that leave us?” Cam asked.

  Seth shook his head. “Without an explanation.”

  Krysta studied the men and women seated around the table in the grim hush that followed.

  She glanced at Sean to see how he was taking all of this.

  Suspicion had fled his face and been replaced by the same fascination she suspected lit her own. This was amazing. She didn’t know what she had expected, but it hadn’t been this.

  They were like a big family. They teased. They bantered. They got snippy with each other, like when Étienne had tossed his dagger at Ethan.

  That had been too funny. And rather revealing. Étienne’s eyes had actually glowed with jealousy. How cool was that?

  Sean shifted slightly. “How did the mercenaries find out about you before?” he asked, surprising her. She had sensed he was relaxing into the situation, but hadn’t thought he had relaxed enough to participate in the conversation.

  David answered. “The brother of a vampire we slew told them, enlisting their aid in his quest for vengeance.”

  “Could something similar have happened this time?”

  Seth shook his head. “It was the first time in history that such had occurred. Because of the madness that plagues them, vampires tend to either kill or transform relatives they bring into the loop. And most vampires think the only thing that differentiates us is immortals’ unwillingness to kill innocents, or to let them do it. Because we don’t fraternize, vampires often don’t realize how much longer immortals live or know that we differ genetically. This human male was in a unique position to learn this information.”

  Everyone shifted their gaze to a man at the opposite end of the table who sat with his arm around a pretty brunet. Krysta thought his name was Bastien, but was having trouble keeping up.

  As her own attention was drawn that way, she noticed for the third or fourth time that the forbidding immortal across from Sheldon was staring at her.

  Roland? Was that his name?

  Krysta didn’t know what it was about him, but he unnerved her more than anyone else present. He just seemed menacing. Like he could slit your throat, then sit down, prop his feet on your corpse, and eat a sandwich.

  Uneasy, she looked up at Étienne. “Who else could be in a unique position to share this informatio
n?”

  He shook his head. “No one.”

  “Bullshit,” Roland growled.

  Étienne frowned. “No one at this table would betray us.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of someone at this table,” he intoned. “We all know the mercenaries’ goal. At least the goal of those we fought before. They know vampires swiftly lose their mental faculties and immortals don’t. They need to capture one of us so they can torture and dissect us and figure out why. Once they do, they intend to use the virus and whatever information they can glean from us to create an army of supersoldiers they can hire out to the highest bidder.”

  “Oh, shit,” Sean breathed. “They could make billions.”

  David nodded. “And wreak havoc upon the world. No human army could stand against an army of immortals. Or a more expendable army of vampires.”

  “Why expendable?” Sean questioned.

  “Any human soldiers they intentionally infected with the virus would have to be slain a year later to ensure their leaders could maintain control.”

  One year? “The madness kicks in that fast?” Krysta asked. No wonder she had never encountered a sane or non-murderous vampire.

  “It varies from human to human and can be accelerated by things like poor living conditions or torture,” David explained. “Sometimes vampires begin to lose impulse control and experience psychotic breaks six months after infection. Sometimes, if they are extraordinarily strong, they can have three or four years before lucidity abandons them. Since the change can be insidious and difficult to detect in the beginning, the mercenary leaders would have to limit the lifespan of their soldiers in order to prevent chaos and collateral damage.”

  Damn. Krysta wondered how that would work. Would the soldiers volunteer to be infected? Would they even understand what they would be infected with? Would they know, going in, that they would be killed a year later? Or would that caveat be kept from them?

  “I think we all know what happened,” Roland spoke again, “why mercenaries have risen against us once more.”

  “Not really,” Étienne said.

  Several others nodded. They truly seemed baffled.

  Roland shook his head. “Isn’t it obvious? Someone at the network betrayed us.”

  Chris slammed a hand down on the table. “Bullshit!”