“Tromluí,” Kathryn repeated. “That’s his name?”
“It’s Irish,” Peterson told her, without looking away from the big horse. “Means Nightmare.”
“How appropriate.”
“Isn’t it? Yeah, this one’s Lord Donlon’s special sweetheart.”
“Does Donlon do any of his own training?”
“Quite a bit, though he leaves some of it to me, too. He’s mostly interested in the stallions, but he takes on the occasional mare. Likes to sweet talk ’em first, ’til they don’t even notice he’s climbing into the saddle.”
Peterson gave such a lusty chuckle that Kathryn knew she’d intended the double entendre.
“He breaks them himself?”
Peterson smiled, as if remembering something pleasant. “Breaks isn’t the right word for what he does. I swear these animals understand every word he says. He can take a horse like Tromluí here and have him literally following him around like a baby goat. It’s a sight to see. Not to mention the pretty picture the two of them make together. Two beautiful beasts moving as one. And that man does know how to sit a horse, let me tell you. MmmMmm.”
Kathryn grinned, then hid it quickly. She might agree that Lucas was yum-worthy, but it wouldn’t do to let him or anyone else know it.
“Does it bother you,” she asked Peterson curiously, “to call him Lord? I mean this is America, after all.”
Peterson shrugged. “The Queen of England comes over to visit, and everyone has to learn how to curtsey, right? They don’t call her Liz, or even Missus Whatever-the-fuck-her-last-name-is. It’s kind of like that for Lucas. He’s a ruler, I guess you’d say, in his own society. It’s only polite to grant him his title. Besides, he’s a good employer. He respects my opinion and lets me do what I love for a living. I don’t mind granting him a little respect in return.”
Kathryn nodded. Put that way, it made sense to her, too. Besides, deep down she knew she was only trying to poke holes in Lucas Donlon to avoid dealing with her attraction to him. She couldn’t afford to be attracted to anyone right now. She needed to be focused on one thing, and that was finding her brother Daniel.
“You ever notice any strangers around here, Judy? Maybe vampires you don’t see regularly?”
Peterson didn’t answer right away, but seemed to be giving it some thought. “Lord Donlon doesn’t get too many visitors out here. This is his escape. You know, from all the decisions he has to make everywhere else, all the people coming to him for favors and stuff. He goes away for a few weeks every now and then, and when he comes back, I can see how stressed he is. Then he comes out to play with my babies, and he gets happy and becomes himself again.”
Kathryn eyed the trainer in some surprise. That was a very thoughtful assessment of Donlon. Apparently, Peterson’s talents for understanding animals extended to vampires, as well. Or maybe it was just to stallions, no matter the species.
“Lord Donlon said you’d be riding later?” Peterson said, with a sideways glance. “You ever ride before, Agent Hunter?”
“Call me Kathryn,” she said, “and, yes, I’ve ridden, though lately not as much as I’d like to. I learned as a child and picked it up again in college. I had a friend whose parents owned a small farm not far from Charlottesville, where the UVA campus is. I used to go there sometimes, especially later when—” Kathryn stopped herself from running off at the mouth. She hadn’t talked about that part of her life for such a long time, it felt odd to do so now. And with a perfect stranger, too.
The truth she’d almost blurted out was that until her brother started college on his own, she’d spent every weekend home with him, and almost every weeknight, too, making certain he stayed on the straight and narrow path to college himself. Even back then, he’d had a rare talent for photography, and they’d both known it would be his career. But he’d also been a daredevil, challenging the world at every opportunity. He still was, which was why he’d walked off into the backcountry of the Badlands by himself for two weeks. It was rather ironic that when trouble finally caught up with him, it had been at something as ordinary as a private club. Of course, there was the vampire angle to give it a little edge. From their conversations, she knew that touch of danger had appealed to him.
“I’m sorry I was rambling,” she dissembled, cutting herself off. “The short answer is, yes, I ride. Not well enough for that monster,” she gestured at Tromluí. “But well enough.”
“No one rides Tromluí but Lord Donlon, anyway,” Peterson told her. “Isn’t that right, my beauty?” she added, scratching the big horse’s cheeks as if he were a fluffy kitten instead of nearly a ton of muscle and attitude.
Kathryn glanced at the digital readout on her watch. 5:47. “What time’s sunset around here?”
“This time of year, six or thereabouts. It’s getting later every day with spring coming on.”
“I should probably get up to the main house, then, huh?”
Peterson shrugged. “Lord Donlon said to expect you, so he’s likely to come looking down here. Takes ’em a while to wake up and get going anyway, just like you or me in the morning.”
“Okay. Is there something I can do in the meantime?”
“I got some stalls need cleaning out,” Peterson said. She laughed at Kathryn’s grimace of reaction. “Don’t worry, I’ll start you out easy. You know how to work a curry comb?”
“Now that I can handle.”
“Then I’ve got just the horse for you.”
* * * *
Lucas opened his eyes seconds after the sun dropped below the horizon. His daytime sleep had been anything but restful. He’d lain there through the hours of sunlight, plotting strategies for dealing with Klemens, identifying places where the vampire lord’s hold was weak, his people dissatisfied. The latter wasn’t hard to find. Klemens was a benevolent despot at best, and a heartless bastard at worst. He’d toppled the previous ruler of the Midwest through the time-honored tradition of challenge and a fight to the death. It was the way things were done in the world of Vampire, but it didn’t always make for a favorable outcome.
In Klemens’s case, the Midwestern territory had gone from a lord who held his power gently to Klemens, who ruled with an iron fist. Every vampire lord, Lucas included, had the right to tithe the vampires they ruled and protected. But, like Lucas, most exercised that right sparingly. Klemens, on the other hand, tithed every single vampire in his territory, regardless of their individual situation, and enforced it like some sort of medieval king. Lucas had taken in more than one vampire who had crossed the border just to get away from Klemens and his thuggish collection agents.
For decades now, Lucas had lived side by side with Klemens in a state of mutual distrust but no outright hostility. It was kind of like North and South Korea. There was the border, and they had both watched it closely, but until now neither had wanted to pay the price of outright war.
Something had changed with Klemens in the last year. Lucas wasn’t certain what precipitated that change, although he suspected it had something to do with Raphael and the way he was gathering the other vampire lords to his side. He’d already allied with Rajmund in the Northeast and even Sophia up in Canada. In the South, Jabril had died unexpectedly, and Raphael had stepped up to support the new lord, who was too weak to hold the territory on his own. Raphael claimed it was only for the sake of stability. Lucas doubted that, but didn’t care either way. He had no problem with Raphael’s long term goals. He was, in fact, a party to them. But even he didn’t know what had really happened with Jabril. There were rumors that Raphael’s mate Cynthia had been involved somehow, but he’d never managed to get beyond the rumors. Not even Raphael would discuss it with him. Since Lucas and Raphael were far closer than was usual among vampire lords, his Sire’s reluctance to even broach the subject gave credibility to the rumors of Cynthia’s involvement. Raphael had always been very protective of those he loved, especially the women.
So, it was possible that Klemens had seen Raphael g
athering the reins of power into his own hands and decided to make a move before it was too late. And since he’d always coveted Lucas’s territory, it was the most natural target of his new expansionistic impulse.
Lucas leapt out of bed and went directly to the shower, thanking the gods of invention for modern plumbing as he did every evening. With the hot water pounding him into submission, he considered Kathryn Hunter. She was like a dog with a bone when it came to the search for her brother. And he supposed he couldn’t blame her. If he’d had a brother, he might have done the same. Hell, for all he knew, he had a whole tribe of brothers that he wasn’t aware of since his father had split when Lucas was still a baby. His parents had never married, and his mother had always refused to talk about it. Lucas suspected his father had been married to someone else, his mother no more than a summer night’s fling. When she’d ended up pregnant, the fling had become a burden, and his father had fled back to the safety of his wife and family. Lucas didn’t have any proof of his theory, though by now he had the resources to pay someone to dig it up if he’d wanted. For that matter, he could have hired Raphael’s mate Cynthia to track his ancestry as so many of the others were doing.
But the truth was he didn’t care all that much. That life, his human life, was long behind him and didn’t have a place in what he was now.
His phone rang as he was climbing from the shower. Drying his hair with one of the fluffy towels, he walked into the living area of his underground vault and snatched up his cell.
“Nicholas,” he said. “What’s up?”
“My lord, I wanted you to know that Agent Hunter is on the premises.”
“Is she, now?”
“Yes, my lord. She’s down in the barn . . . currying.”
“Currying?”
“Yes, my lord. It appears Judy has put her to work.”
Lucas laughed. “She has a habit of doing that with people. Okay, Nick. I’m going to finish up here and go down to the barns myself. I’m fancying a ride in the moonlight with my personal FBI agent.”
“My lord . . .”
“Go ahead, Nick,” Lucas sighed. “Say it.”
“She’s not just a cop, Lucas. She’s a fed. The forbidden fruit of cops.”
“Aye, she is. Which will just make it sweeter when she drops into my hand.”
* * * *
He found Kathryn exactly where Nicholas said she’d be, with the sweet smell of fresh hay and horses all around her, using a curry comb on Sassy, who despite her name, was one of his more mild-tempered mares. Kathryn had donned a pair of faded denims, and they showed her ass to perfection, just as he’d known they would. Much better than the boxy slacks she’d worn the previous night. The barn was warm, despite the cool night air, and she was working hard. A tailored blouse hung outside the box stall, leaving Kathryn in a stretchy white tank top that accented her smoothly muscled arms with every stroke of the comb.
Lucas tilted his head and listened. Kathryn was talking to the horse as she worked, speaking so softly that even his vampire hearing couldn’t pick up the words.
He started to say her name, then changed his mind. She was so entranced with the animal and the repetitive motion of the curry comb that she hadn’t even noticed he was there. The mare noticed him, of course. But after a soft whicker of greeting, she ignored him. Which left only Kathryn. Walking as quietly as only a vampire can, he stepped up right behind her and dipped his face into the crook of her neck, inhaling deeply as he deposited a soft kiss just below her right ear.
Kathryn gasped and spun around, her hand going to her hip for the weapon she’d left sitting on the tack box beneath her shirt. That didn’t hamper her any, however. She swung the damn curry comb instead, and if he hadn’t been a vampire, he’d have been wearing more than a few stripes on his face.
Lucas caught her wrist gently, laughing in both surprise and appreciation. He did love a woman with spirit. And he should have expected it from Kathryn Hunter, he thought ruefully. After all, a woman didn’t make it in the man’s world of the FBI without being able to take care of herself. Nor did such a woman traipse halfway across the country looking for her missing brother. He was lucky he wasn’t sporting a bloody face about now.
Kathryn wrenched her arm away from him and shoved him back a step. Neither of which she could have done if he hadn’t let her, but she didn’t know that yet.
“You’re lucky that pretty face of yours is still intact,” she snarled angrily.
Lucas widened his eyes. “Was that a compliment, Agent Hunter?”
“No, you ass, that was a warning. Don’t ever sneak up on me again. What if I’d been armed?”
“Then I trust you’d have held me gently as I bled onto all this nice, clean straw.”
She bit her cheek, trying not to smile, but it was a lost battle. “Are you ever serious?” she asked, trying to recover lost ground.
“Only when I have to be.”
Tromluí bellowed angrily from his box stall at the other end of the barn, demanding Lucas’s attention.
“Excuse me a moment. Tromluí is very possessive. You and he will have to work something out if we’re going to continue this relationship.”
“What relationship?” she muttered behind him. He smiled as he made his way down the uncluttered aisle to his beautiful black. The stallion poked his head out before he got there, blowing and snorting as if to say, “What took you so long?”
“Och, boyo, I missed you, too,” he murmured, rubbing the big horse’s broad nose.
“Is this the horse I saw you working with last night?” Kathryn asked from several steps away.
Lucas glanced over his shoulder and received a solid head bump from Tromluí for his trouble. The stallion rolled his eyes in Kathryn’s direction and shifted behind the gate of his box stall, as if trying to interpose his considerable bulk between his beloved master and the interloper.
Lucas laughed at the horse’s antics. “You’ve nothing to worry about, mo Tromluí,” he crooned, then spoke to Kathryn in the same smooth tone, without looking back at her. “The horse last night was Nightshade, Tromluí’s oldest son. He’s barely a yearling, while Tromluí is a strapping man of four.”
“He’s gorgeous. I mean, they both are, but Tromluí is larger than life.”
“Did you hear that, boyo? The lady thinks you’re handsome.” He glanced at Kathryn.
“Judy thinks the two of you make a pretty picture.”
Lucas laughed easily. “The truth is he’ll take no other rider. It’s a bad habit, but one I indulge since we both enjoy the relationship. Speaking of which, it’s a beautiful night, would you like to ride?”
“Now? I mean, in the dark?”
“It’s not dark. The moon is only a day past full. Besides, the horses know the trails, and we’ll stick to the easy ones for now.”
“But I’m not dressed—”
“You’re dressed just fine, Kathryn. Even wore your boots. Are you looking for an excuse? Afraid to be alone with me?” He glanced at her again, long enough to wag his eyebrows suggestively.
“Of course, not. But I left my jacket in the car, and—”
“Jackets, we have.”
They’d been having most of this conversation with Lucas directing his words at the jealous Tromluí, but now he turned and called down the aisle, “Judy!”
“Yeah, boss?” Judy Peterson’s head popped out from the tack room. He’d known she was back there, because he’d heard the television. She liked to hang around in the evening just in case he managed to get down to the stables. Usually, if he didn’t make it in the first couple of hours, he wouldn’t be coming at all, or if he did it would only be to visit Tromluí, not to ride.
“Saddle Sassy for Kathryn, would you?” He turned to Kathryn. “You do ride western, don’t you? You’re not one of those horse snobs?”
“That’s hardly snobbery, Lucas, but, yes, I ride Western, as well as English.”
“If it’s English, a cuisle, it’s not worth d
oing.”
Kathryn rolled her eyes at him, but he only grinned and turned his attention back to the stallion. “What do you say, Tromluí? Nothing like a fine moonlight ride with a beautiful woman, is there?” He stepped back enough to open the stall. The stud surged out as soon as the gate was wide enough, but Lucas was ready for him. It was a little trick his horse liked to play. The animal had a bit of the devil in him—more than a bit to be truthful—and he did love to see the silly humans run.
Lucas didn’t run from anyone. He grabbed the stallion’s head and brought their faces together. “You be good now. You’re embarrassing me in front of the lady.”
He knew the horse didn’t actually understand what he said, but his tone got through well enough. Tromluí rubbed his big head against Lucas’s chest.
“Aye, I love you, too, boyo.” He grabbed the stallion’s bridle from the hook next to the gate and was about to slip it on when his cell phone rang. He frowned. Most of his calls were routed through the main number at the house, so this could only be Magda or Nicholas, both of whom rarely disturbed him when he went riding. Lucas pulled the phone from his pocket.
“Nicholas?” he answered.
“I’m scrambling the troops, my lord,” Nicholas said urgently. His voice was jumping, as if he were running as he spoke. “We just got a call—”
And that quickly every plan Lucas had made for the evening was changed. He stopped listening to his lieutenant, his mind already searching the thousands of vampires in his territory for whatever it was that had Nicholas gearing up for battle.
“Fuck,” he swore softly. The compound in Minnetonka, Minnesota was under attack. It was filled with civilians, which should have put it off limits, but Klemens was breaking all the rules in his hunger for power. Civilians wouldn’t stand a chance against Klemens’s fighters, but at least the compound’s leader, Thad, had some combat experience. And the compound itself should have had security in place. “Who called us?”
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