by Nell Stark
“It has been theorized—though not yet proven—by a group of our scientists that Plasmodium sitis is in fact the original vampire parasite, and that the other strains are derivative. Because it demands such large quantities of blood, it often kills its hosts during the transitional process. As a result, it has been necessary to charge one vampire with the task of perpetuating the existence of your clan. He, or she, is elected to the office of the Missionary.”
I bit my lower lip to keep from making an outburst. The knowledge that I had been turned—and many more others killed—in a perverted attempt to thwart the extinction of a vampire clan made me want to leap across the table and throttle Helen where she sat. I’d been angry enough when I thought I’d simply been a victim to the same kind of thirst that tempted me now. To hear instead that I was part of a deliberate project made me want, for one absurd moment, to throw myself in front of a bus just to spite them all. And Helen expected me to be grateful?
“You are upset.” When I continued to say nothing, still fighting my desire to lash out, she sat back in her chair and sighed. “Your self-righteousness is vaguely amusing. I felt certain that you, of all people, born and raised in a prominent political family, would understand the principle of expedience. We are far more fragile than the legends make us out to be. Your very existence is a triumph for our species.”
“You told me once that no one ever has to die at the hands of a vampire.” I gripped the arms of the chair hard and kept my voice low. “Yet the damn Missionary sacrifices lives right and left, just to find the occasional person who survives. How is that just?”
“Just?” Helen laughed. “You know nothing of the operations of justice. Your youth has made you myopic. Millions of people throughout the history of the world have died insignificant, nihilistic deaths by comparison.”
I didn’t want her to have a valid point. I didn’t want some small part of me to feel compelled by her argument. I wanted to stand up and leave the room so I didn’t have to hear anymore, but that would be childish. So instead, I gritted my teeth and changed the subject.
“Something else that Henri said confused me. He mentioned the ‘blood prime.’ What is that?”
“He was referring to his lord and master. The natural, biologically appointed leader of each clan is called the blood prime.”
“Biologically appointed?”
“As you and I both know well, vampires cannot be born—they can only be made. A distinct genealogical tree can thus be drawn from one vampire to another, but with a clear and discernable point of origin. That origin, the eldest vampire in a clan, is the blood prime. He or she governs the clan, usually from its capital.”
I frowned, trying to remember the place Henri had referred to. “Which, in my case, is called Sib…”
“Sybaris, yes. It is located in western Algeria, and was founded long ago by turned members of the French royal family.” At that moment, Helen’s phone rang. She murmured an affirmation into the receiver and then hung up. “My next appointment has arrived. I hope that this conversation has been helpful, Valentine. And that you reconsider your refusal to travel to Sybaris for the election. It is both your right and your blood duty to participate in the choosing of a new Missionary.”
I rose and threw back the last half-inch of scotch. Helen was either trying to bait me or bully me or both, and I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of an emotional response. “I appreciate your taking the time to share your knowledge with me,” I said. “Good night.”
And then I set the glass down on her desk and left without looking back.
Chapter Three
The apartment door closed behind me with a hollow sound, and I stood still for a moment, discomfited by the hush that greeted me even after nearly an entire summer of coming home to empty rooms. I dropped my bag on the scuffed hardwood floor and shucked off the loose polo shirt that concealed the gun tucked into the waistband of my jeans. It went on the nearest shelf, behind the middle row of books. I’d started carrying it regularly a few days after my meeting with Henri and Helen, almost two weeks ago. It had seemed, then, as if someone was following me around. Now I wasn’t so sure. The thirst and loneliness and fatigue were probably just making me jumpy.
I sank into the cushions of the couch and flipped on the television to take the edge off the silence. My shoulders ached from too many pull-ups at the gym, followed by an hour of target practice. On the screen, a commercial for antidepressants ran in black and white, and I found myself jealous of its audience. Modern medicine had no way of alleviating my symptoms, no drug to even out the imbalance in my blood. In my soul, if you believed that kind of thing. My jury was still out where the soul was concerned, but it was clear enough that for whatever reason, my condition was declining in Alexa’s absence.
My throat burned just thinking about her, and against my will, I went to the refrigerator. In it was a half-empty pizza box, a few bottles of beer, and two bags of her precious blood. I almost mustered a laugh at how quintessentially bachelor the scene was—with a twist. The crimson bags called to me, but I forced myself to grab a beer instead. I still had ten days to wait until her return, and the urge to drink would only grow stronger.
Not that bagged blood had anything more than a placebo effect—the vampire parasite would reject anything that wasn’t fresh. In Alexa’s absence, it had defaulted back to consuming my own red blood cells. Left unchecked, it would transform my entire circulatory system, eventually rendering me a full vampire. I would be even stronger, even faster, my senses even keener, but as my human failings waned, so too would my human compassion. I would become distant. Cold. Ruthless.
Alexa was the only one who could save me from that fate—hers was the only blood that the parasite would accept as a substitute. I never would have wished on her the burden of sustaining me, but it was comforting to know that she was my soul mate all the way down to the chemical level.
My phone rang, piercing the white mumble of the television. When I fished it out of my pocket, I hesitated. Sebastian Brenner, prominent nightclub owner and one of the celebrities in the up-and-coming generation of werewolves, was calling me at eleven o’clock at night. Either it was some kind of emergency, or he was bored.
I answered the call. “Hey.”
“Valentine,” he said, drawing out the first syllable.
“You’re drunk.”
“Am not.” The two words would have sounded petulant coming from anyone else. “I’m just glad to hear your dark and broody voice. Come to Luna, and I’ll make you feel better.”
I had to laugh. For some unfathomable reason, Sebastian persisted in flirting with me. “Who’s with you?”
“Karma is right here and promises to protect your virtue. And I think I saw your bloodsack friend Kyle on the dance floor earlier. Now will you come?”
I bit back a suggestive reply. “Maybe.”
“Maybe,” he said, a note of disbelief coloring his voice.
“Maybe.” And I hung up.
*
Half an hour later, I trudged up the stairs from the subway, hoping that it would be cooler on the streets than underground. But the mid-August night was sweltering, and my gun, tucked into the back of my jeans, shifted uncomfortably against the moist skin of my lower back. Above the skyscrapers, the bulging moon, draped in haze, ruled the sky. It would be full in a week. Three days later, Alexa would finally come home.
The line to get into Luna stretched for half a block, but I didn’t so much as slow my pace. The bouncer, Damian, had biceps as thick as my quads and spiked hair that looked bleached but wasn’t. I’d seen him shift only once—a few weeks ago, when some Were turf skirmish had spilled over into the club. It wasn’t every day that a polar bear materialized on a dance floor. I’d been tempted to snap a picture with my cell phone.
“He’s on the roof, Val,” was all Damian said as he pulled the rope aside for me.
“Thanks.” I threaded through the crowd inside and made my way up to the secon
d floor. As I paused at the bar to order a scotch, I couldn’t help but reflect on my relationship with the Weres of New York. Many of them hated me, holding me responsible for Alexa’s rebirth, choosing to believe that I’d manipulated her into deliberately infecting herself with the Were virus so that I could be fed for eternity. Others sympathized with us and treated me as one of the family. For whatever reason, Sebastian had gone so far as to include me in his inner circle—which was otherwise populated by shifters. It was curious. It was confusing. But on a night like this one, when the loneliness was riding me just as hard as the thirst, it was a comfort.
The door to the roof was guarded by another bouncer. I’d never seen him before, but when I approached, he moved aside. I stepped out onto grass and paused to admire the view, familiar by now, but still breathtaking. An immaculately groomed lawn—real grass, not turf—covered the expanse of the roof, contrasting sharply with the surrounding cityscape. Ten feet away, several people were lounging on blankets. Karma gave me a small wave as I approached. I smiled back as warmly as I could before turning to the alpha of the group.
“I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist.” Sebastian was dressed as casually as I’d ever seen him, in slim-fitting khaki shorts and a tight black T-shirt. He was rolling the stem of a half-empty martini glass between his fingers, daring the liquid to spill over. “You look like shit. How long has it been since you’ve had a decent meal?”
I sat in the space Karma made between them, trying not to betray the thirst his question inspired. “Almost two weeks. And another ten days to go.”
Sebastian arched his shaggy eyebrows. “Plenty of snacks downstairs, if you’d quit being so picky.”
Karma tsked her disapproval and brushed one palm across my shoulder blades before lightly massaging the back of my neck. “Stop baiting her. What she’s doing is admirable.”
“Suffering is not admirable.” He drained his glass in one long swallow. “Don’t fool yourself. Nobility has no place here.”
Karma’s solicitousness needled me in a way that Sebastian’s callousness had not, and I had to struggle not to shrug off her hand. Even that slight, platonic touch made my skin ache, desire and thirst twining together like the strands of a double helix.
“That’s a fine thing to say, Prince Sebastian,” I said, focusing on the verbal spar that he wanted. As a pureblood, he was effectively Were nobility himself.
His laugh was short and sharp. “Being a Brenner doesn’t mean as much as you seem to think. After four hundred years, my father has spawned whelps on every continent. Even if he wanted to care, he’d be hard-pressed to find the time for all of us.”
For the first time, I felt empathy for Sebastian. “Our fathers are cut from the same cloth. What does yours…do?”
“My father?” When Sebastian looked surprised at the question, I realized that I was already supposed to know the answer. At least he wasn’t haranguing me as Helen had. When I nodded, Sebastian bared his perfect teeth. “Pisses off your kind.”
I sipped at my scotch to hide my uncertainty. There had always been tension between vampires and Weres, and in the past, that tension had boiled over into outright hostility. But the Consortium was an alliance of the two species—created and maintained to help them survive and even thrive in secret amongst the humans. Did Sebastian’s father distrust the alliance? Or just vampires?
The sounds of reveling from the club below penetrated the hush that had fallen over the group, and I decided to change the subject to something more mundane. “Luna’s crowded tonight.”
Sebastian drained his glass. “Unsurprising. This is the first night we’ve been open in almost a week.”
I frowned. “Why?”
“You didn’t hear? The annoying bloodhounds at the DA’s office shut us down.”
“They suspended our operations while they questioned the management,” Karma added.
“For what reason?” I asked, hearing the outrage in my own voice. Suspicion prickled at the corners of my mind. “Who was in charge?”
“Olivia Wentworth Lloyd.” Sebastian spoke the name as though it left a bad taste in his mouth. “And I have no idea what she was looking for. I suspected drug trafficking at first, but her questions made it sound like she was investigating some kind of violent crime.”
“Damn it,” I said. “She just won’t give up, will she?” I knew Olivia well—we had been born into the same social circle. One year older than I, and from just as politically prominent a family, she had often been held up by my parents as a model to which I should aspire. Until she had come out, of course. I admired her, but she and I were too alike for me not to feel competitive. We’d never had to compete over women, but I could tell that she was attracted to Alexa. That hadn’t bothered me until I’d been turned into a threat to Alexa’s life.
“Val?” Karma asked. “You know what she’s looking for?”
“Olivia was attacked by the Missionary, a few weeks after I was turned. He was interrupted before he could do enough damage, and she’s fine now. Fully human.”
“Fully irritating,” Sebastian groused.
I stared at the smoky amber liquid in my glass, trying to make sense of what was happening. “I’m sure she’s still trying to find him. The question is, how did the Missionary’s trail lead her to Luna? Shifters had nothing to do with her attack.”
“Do you think she might be on to us?” Karma’s voice was laced with alarm.
“She’s clearly on to something,” Sebastian said. “I’ve upped security, and I know our people will be careful, but…”
“But you’re worried that someone will make a mistake while she’s watching.”
He shrugged. “We’re volatile. You know that.”
I thought back to the early days of Alexa’s life as a shifter—back when something as simple as a loud noise had triggered her panther’s snarling emergence. The majority of shifters fought hard for every modicum of control over their beasts. Sebastian was right. If Olivia looked hard and long enough in the right places, she would find something.
“Maybe we can throw her off the scent. Or ease her suspicions, somehow.”
“Somehow,” Sebastian echoed skeptically.
Karma patted his shoulder. “What are you thinking, Val?”
“Well, either we feed her information, or we try to convince her that Sebastian’s harmless.”
“I’m not harmless.” His voice was flat but his eyes glittered, and I knew that his wolf was suddenly close to the surface. Resisting the instinctual urge to move away from him, I took another long drink of scotch.
“Knock it off. I’m trying to help.” Feeding Olivia information would be dangerous because she was a good investigator. So how could I convince her that Sebastian wasn’t connected to the attacks, while still maintaining the Consortium’s secret?
“I’ve been invited to a fund-raiser on Thursday night for a few of the Democratic candidates for state senate,” I said. “I bet Olivia will be there. Maybe I can talk to her then.”
Sebastian leaned toward me, abandoning his threatening attitude. “Need a date?”
I felt my eyebrows try to climb into my hairline. “Is hell no emphatic enough for you?”
But he persisted. “If I were there too—if Olivia sees me with you, someone she presumably trusts—then she might back off.”
My stomach churned as I thought of how little Alexa would like Sebastian accompanying me somewhere. “She’ll be more likely to open up if I’m alone.” Actually, she would be more likely to open up for Alexa, but I didn’t want to think about that, either.
“You owe me a favor.” Sebastian’s change of tactics was unexpected. “For pointing you in the direction of the Red Circuit, all those months ago.”
“You’re calling in that favor now? For this?”
When his gaze locked onto mine, I realized that he was serious. “Take me with you.”
Much as I didn’t want to admit it, I really did owe him. “Fine,” I said. “Just as
long as we are perfectly clear that this is not a real date. You’re accompanying me as a friend because Alexa happens to be out of town.”
Sebastian inclined his head like a king on his throne. “So…what color is your dress?”
I bared my teeth, ignoring Karma’s sudden laughter. “Excuse me?”
“Well, you know,” he said, dropping the deadpan for a rakish grin, “I would like my cummerbund to match.”
“There will be no dress,” I hissed. “And if you buy me a corsage, I swear to God I will gouge your eyes out and eat them for breakfast.”
Karma’s laughter doubled. Sebastian cocked his head, seeming to consider my threat.
“Mr. Brenner!” A shout from the doorway interrupted our banter. The guard was in a flat-out run toward us. Sebastian rose to his feet with preternatural speed, and I was only a second behind him. Most situations that arose in the club were handled discreetly by security and didn’t require Sebastian’s personal attention.
“What is it?” His voice was quiet but urgent.
“Medical emergency, sir. On the second floor. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
That was all I needed to hear. I took off for the door, Sebastian’s footfalls pounding in counterpoint behind me. A few moments later, I burst into the club and shouldered through the crowd that had gathered. When I broke through into the space that had formed around the spectacle, I skidded to a halt, my confidence dissipating.
A pool of vomit at the foot of the bar. A man foaming at the mouth, convulsing, held down by two more of Luna’s security staff. His eyes had rolled up in his head. As I watched, his body began to shimmer and blur, its molecules defying the conventional laws of physics and biology. I hung back, knowing what would happen next. He would change into whatever animal lurked beneath his skin and psyche. The guards backed away and raised their guns—loaded not with bullets but with tranquilizer darts, to subdue the beast when it emerged.
