“Can you see them?” she asked, her voice sounding somewhat calmer.
Twisting around to look out the rear window, I let my eyes dance over the cars that were keeping pace behind us. No one seemed to be in any great hurry to catch up to us. “No, but they’re still coming.” I could sense them, four naturi approaching fast.
“Do you need to see them to boil their blood?” Mira inquired.
“What?” I demanded, jerking around so that I was sitting back in my seat again.
“I have to see the naturi to burn them,” she explained. “Do you have to see them to boil their blood? Or is it enough that you can sense them?”
“I—I don’t know,” I admitted. “Anytime I’ve used that power I’ve been able to look my enemy in the eye. It’s a last resort.”
“Well, I think we’ve reached that point,” Mira snapped. “Unless you really want to pull over and fight them hand to hand.”
“I can try it, but they’re in a car. If it works, they’re going to crash,” I pointed out. “Innocent people could die.”
“There would be another investigation, more memories to wipe, bodies to dispose of…” she softly listed under her breath with a shake of her head. “I can’t do it.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I—I can’t do it,” she whispered then shook her head violently as if to wake herself up from a trance. “It won’t work. We need another plan and I think I’ve got one,” she announced with renewed vigor. “Are they still following us?”
I reached out with my powers briefly, touching on the naturi that were still speeding along behind us. They seemed a little closer than they had been only a couple moments ago, but they weren’t quite breathing down our necks. “They’re still there.”
“Good.” To my surprise, Mira jerked the car across three lanes of traffic and grabbed the first exit. I didn’t say anything, but held on as she jumped off the expressway and then grabbed the first on-ramp to the highway, heading back south.
“Where the hell are we going?” I demanded once we were comfortably settled in front of a semi.
“Back to Savannah,” she informed me, as she actually slowed the car down to the legal speed limit.
“I thought you wanted to keep them away from the lycans,” I said, flinching when she abruptly changed lanes a little closer to a Toyota Prius than I thought was sensible.
“They’re not animal clan,” she replied. “If they were, they would have called up the shifters when we were at the restaurant. I think these are from the wind clan.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because the only thing that’s been in my domain since you showed up was from the wind clan. The group in the conservatory.”
“So it’s somebody out for a little revenge,” I said, frowning.
“But why only the wind clan?” Mira asked as she glanced up into the rearview mirror.
“Who do we know from the wind clan?”
“Rowe, Cynnia, and her sister Nyx,” Mira quickly replied. “I don’t think they’re with the pirate. He was banished. Besides, if Rowe wanted my head, I have no doubt that he’d come here to get it personally, after his falling out with Aurora.”
“Do you think they were sent by Cynnia? Trying to extend an olive branch?” I asked. I barely resisted the urge to turn the heat on in the car. The later the night grew, the more the temperature dropped, so that now my fingers were growing stiff from the cold.
“Then I guess we might get to see if these naturi want to talk or fight,” Mira said, taking an exit into Savannah. “Are they still following?”
“Yes,” I said, glancing over my shoulder as I continued searching for the car that I knew held the naturi.
Beside me, I could feel a slight chill enter the air. It reached through my clothes and brushed against my skin. I jerked and looked back over at my companion. The unexpected touch of cool energy was coming from Mira. She was using her powers, but I couldn’t begin to guess at what she was doing. The energy was very slight and I might not have noticed it if I hadn’t been sitting so close to her.
“What are you doing?” I demanded.
“Saw this in a movie once,” she said, flashing me a somewhat strained grin.
“You know movies aren’t real life,” I reminded her.
“Yeah, well this movie didn’t also have a wily nightwalker as the lead, so this may just work,” she joked, then abruptly turned serious as she headed toward the riverfront area. “Open the glove compartment. You’ll find a garage door opener inside.”
Leaning forward, I popped open the glove compartment. Inside lay only a 9mm automatic and a small remote control for a garage door opener. I pulled out the remote, but didn’t close the glove compartment door. I wasn’t carrying a gun and I felt safer with the weapon just a matter of inches from my fingertips.
“When we turn the corner, hit the button,” Mira directed.
Mira headed into what appeared to be a somewhat dodgy part of town, full of old warehouses and worn houses. She suddenly took a left turn and I hit the button. I looked around, trying to discern what I had opened when I heard a low, metallic creak and grumble just down the street from us. A large metal doorway was rolling up to a warehouse. Mira quickly jerked the car into the opening, the roof of the car barely missing the bottom of the doorway as we squeaked through the opening.
“Don’t close the door!” she quickly ordered before I could push the button again. “If they’re close behind, they could see it going down.” Mira hit the brakes and turned off the car before we came to a complete stop, plunging the warehouse back into total darkness.
“Now what?” I asked.
“We wait,” she whispered. Mira sat back, letting her hands slip from the steering wheel and into her lap. “How close are they?”
I closed my eyes and stretched out with my power, letting it run through the entire city. I could feel nightwalkers leisurely strolling all over the place, or seated in close quarters with other warm bodies. I could sense a scattering of naturi all over the city, but the set of four moving fast enough to be in a car were a distance off; maybe a half mile away. “They’re not close. Actually…I think they’re moving away from us.”
“Did they ever get close enough to get a good look at my car?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Good,” Mira said with a soft sigh. “Then we’ll just wait a little while and make sure that they aren’t getting any closer.”
“How?” I asked. Releasing the seat belt, I turned in my seat so that I was partially facing the nightwalker. My eyes were slowly adjusting to the darkness, picking up the small chunks of dirty light that was filtering in through the window on the second floor and through the roof skylight. I could pick out the outline of broken wooden pallets and the occasional crate. Mira remained a faint outline in the dark car.
“When we entered the city, I started cloaking you. I wanted to see if I could cloak you against the naturi. If they’re headed away from us, it would seem that the answer to my question is yes.”
“And if the answer is no?”
“Then we fight them in here, away from anyone else that might be hurt.”
I sat back in my seat again and stared off into the darkness. One thought kept repeating through my head. This choice didn’t fit her usual actions. When I arrived in Savannah in September, she had been in a car chase with the naturi. She had caused them to wreck and then continued the fight on the side of the road. This time we were hiding. Something had changed.
“Why are we hiding?” I demanded.
Mira turned her head and looked out the window to her left. “It’s for the best. No one gets hurt.”
“And it leaves naturi running free within your domain.”
“I never said that I was happy with the decision!” she snapped, her temper briefly flaring. “I just said that it was for the best.”
“What’s going on? Normally, you would have set the four on fire by now and we’d be merrily o
n our way,” I pressed.
“‘Merrily on our way,’” she repeated, a grin spreading across her face as she looked back at me. “I don’t recall us ever doing anything merrily. You’ll have to remind me.”
“Drop it! I’m being serious. What’s going on?”
The grin fell off of her full lips and she looked down at the steering wheel. “I can’t start fires.”
I stared dumbfounded at the nightwalker for nearly a minute, my brain seeming to shut down under that unexpected pronouncement. The Fire Starter could no longer start fires. How could such a thing happen? What was going to happen to her and her standing within the domain once the other nightwalkers discovered her ugly little secret? Fire had always been Mira’s edge.
“How did it happen? When? Is it because of what Cynnia did to you? But that can’t be, because you used fire at Machu Picchu and at the conservatory. Is the ability completely gone?” I started, the questions pouring out of me before actual thought seemed to kick in once again.
“I haven’t lost the ability,” she said, sounding painfully defensive. “I could still burn you to a crispy critter if I wanted to, so stop celebrating.” Mira drew in a cleansing breath that she didn’t need and gripped the steering wheel tightly. “I haven’t been feeding enough.”
“I’ve noticed,” I growled. When I let my guard down, the world around me was washed in a red haze when I was with Mira. Her hunger beat at me until I thought I would go mad. I couldn’t imagine how she managed to focus through it.
“I haven’t been feeding enough,” she repeated stiffly, ignoring my interruption. “I don’t have the energy to create and manipulate fire. It would be too exhausting. If I’m pressed and desperate, I could, but it would leave me…”
“Vulnerable,” I finished.
“Yes.”
For a heartbeat, I thought about it. She was weak. She was little more than a normal nightwalker now. She wouldn’t have the power to set me on fire. She wouldn’t have the strength to fight me if I tried to kill her now. The fight would be over in a matter of minutes and the world would at last be rid of one of the most dangerous creatures to ever walk its face.
And yet, in the very next heartbeat, I knew I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t kill Mira. Maybe one day when we were finally standing on opposite sides and not drawn together by some common foe, I would be able to finally strike her down. But not tonight. For now, she was my ally, the one person in this world I had been charged to protect. Not only was she safe from me, but she also needed my help.
Leaning my right elbow on the door, I rested my head in my hand. I honestly couldn’t believe I was about to say this. “Then feed, Mira. We can’t afford to have you weak or possibly distracted. The naturi are running around your domain again and we’ve got something else chewing up young girls.”
“You don’t think this thing is naturi?”
I sighed, somewhat surprised to see that my breath was visible in the cold. I wasn’t ready to tell her. I needed more time to think, to figure out how we could possibly deal with this threat before setting the truth lose into the air. “I don’t know. You said there was a strange smell that you could identify. You’ve been around all the naturi, you know their smells.”
“So maybe the attacker isn’t naturi. Could be lycan or…warlock?”
“Or bori?” I said, mentioning the one creature I knew that she wouldn’t give voice to. The suggestion had to be thrown out there. She had to at least consider it.
“Highly unlikely.”
“And I’m sure you would have said that it was highly unlikely that I would have been affected by the Stain in Peru, but I was,” I said, turning my head to look at her. The spell had awoken the bori that held a part of my soul and the results had nearly been disastrous.
“Are the naturi close?” she demanded, ignoring my comment.
“No. Far end of the city and getting farther away.”
“Good. Then we continue this investigation by trying to find out why the attacker might have chosen Abigail Bradford for his victim when he could have chosen anyone else.” Mira reached for the key and started the car, causing its animal-like rumbling to echo through the empty warehouse.
“Where are we going?” I asked as she slowly backed the car into the street.
“The one place a nightwalker goes to get gossip: the Dark Room.”
TWENTY-ONE
I hesitated in the entrance to the Dark Room, my eyes growing accustomed to the low lighting. One thought kept repeating in my head: I shouldn’t be here. The floor was black marble, too closely resembling the throne-room floor of the coven’s headquarters in Venice. The small antechamber was lit overhead by a single lamp that cast down a red glow, while coat-check rooms rested on my left and right.
Mira led the way into the nightclub for the damned, a sway in her hips as if she was already moving to the beat of the music that was throbbing from the main room. We paused on the threshold, our eyes slipping over the gathered crowd. I could sense a somber apprehension emanating from Mira, though it never outwardly showed. I, on the other hand, was fighting back a growing sense of dread. A quick count revealed that more than two dozen nightwalkers filled the club, accompanied by almost as many human companions. A small knot of lycanthropes was clustered at the bar off to my left, trying to maintain a distance from the nightwalkers while still claiming their right to be there.
Why am I here? I sent the thought winging into her brain, not wishing to be overhead by any other vampire.
We’re conducting an investigation. Gregor will provide us with more information about Abigail, she replied, but there was no missing the mocking in her tone.
This meeting could have been held anywhere but here.
Mira simply looked over her shoulder at me, arching one fine red eyebrow.
First Communion, the formal introduction to Barrett, and now the Dark Room. I’m no idiot—What are you up to? I demanded.
Mira’s smile widened as the fingers of her left hand slipped through the fingers of my right hand, allowing her to pull me a few steps into the club. Her touch was cool, while the scent of lilacs wafted to my nose. How else will be you ever understand my world unless you’re a part of it?
I’m not a part of your world, I mentally snapped, but her smile only grew before she turned to look straight ahead again.
It’s a little late for that.
Before I could come up with a reply, Mira released my hand and roughly grabbed the shoulder of a nightwalker who was trying to edge past her.
“Has Knox been here tonight?” she demanded.
“Came and left about an hour ago,” the nightwalker replied, his dark brown gaze jumping back and forth between me and Mira.
With a nod, Mira released the nightwalker. I would have preferred to have Knox and his calming presence at the Dark Room while I was present. I had encountered Mira’s second-in-command only a handful of times, but he seemed to be very rational and levelheaded, something that would be appreciated right now.
Since my arrival, the tension had increased in the crowded nightclub. Many of the nightwalkers had moved from the dance floor to the shadowy confines of the booths that lined the right and back walls of the large room. Only human whispers could be heard as an undercurrent to the hypnotic music that filled the air. The nightwalkers had slipped into telepathic communication for a more private conversation about the nightwalker hunter in their midst.
Should we wait for Knox to return? I telepathically inquired. I wanted this meeting to go as smoothly as possible and Knox would help greatly toward that end.
He’s gone with Amanda to meet with Abigail Bradford’s parents, Mira explained. He’s helping to deliver the bad news of the animal attack and hopefully quiet the press circus.
In other words, Mira’s trusted second-in-command had been sent with Amanda to tweak the memory of the senator and his wife, making both more pliable and agreeable. The investigation would continue on, but the dangerous human element would be rem
oved for now. It had been a close call and we could only hope that the press would back off. I wasn’t banking on everyone believing the nonsense that Abigail Bradford had been attacked by a dog, but it was the only plausible answer that didn’t include vampires, lycanthropes, naturi, or the bori.
“Let’s get this over with,” I said under my breath, trying not to worry about how many nightwalkers actually heard me.
“Agreed,” Mira said, beginning to sound a little worried herself.
I followed Mira as she wove her way through the maze of tables to the back corner of the club. I could feel dozens of eyes watching my steady progress through the room. Nobody moved, the clubgoers becoming pale statues in the dim light.
The corner booth was larger than the rest, allowing six nightwalkers and humans to lounge in comfort, partially obscured by a dark red curtain that hung on the sides of the entrance to the booth. In the back corner sat a nightwalker in classical Victorian garb, with his ornately embroidered waistcoat over a pristine white shirt and neckcloth. His eyes briefly skimmed over Mira before settling on me with a wide grin.
“Mira,” he seemed to purr. “You’ve brought us a guest.”
“Everyone out,” Mira ordered, ignoring the nightwalker. “I need to speak with Gregor alone.”
The nightwalkers and two humans in the booth slowly pushed to their feet and slunk away, all of them careful to not walk past me. I slid into the booth next to Mira, while a low table separated us from the nightwalker called Gregor. I recalled seeing him at the First Communion with a conservatively dressed brunette.
“To what do I owe this unique honor?” Gregor asked, oozing a wicked kind of glee as his eyes failed to waver from my face.
“Abigail Bradford,” I said in a stark cold voice, finally causing the smile to fade from his mouth.
“Oh, that business,” Gregor mumbled. The nightwalker slouched in his seat, laying his hands limply in his lap. “It is a shame about her, but I can’t tell you who killed her. Heard it was quite messy, but again, I don’t know the ‘who’ behind the act.”
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