“I’d be shocked if you did know who killed her,” Mira said with a shake of her head. “I didn’t come here for that.”
“What else could you want to know with your new beau in tow, looking to scare us all into submission?”
I gritted my teeth, but otherwise kept my comments to myself. It wouldn’t help our cause and certainly wouldn’t make Gregor any more cooperative.
“I want to know if there could be a specific reason as to why she was chosen,” Mira said, easily brushing aside his comment.
“You mean it’s not enough that she was the only daughter of a United States senator?” Gregor inquired. One thick eyebrow arched as he turned his full attention to Mira.
“Speaking of which, who was the idiot that brought her in? It’s not like she could easily disappear if there was some kind of unfortunate accident,” Mira demanded caustically.
“I believe it was Everett who officially welcomed her into the fold,” Gregor said, then shrugged his narrow shoulders. “At least, that’s who I saw her with first.”
“That’s convenient,” Mira muttered. She flopped backward against the back of her seat and slouched slightly as well, nearly matching Gregor’s posture as she grumbled to herself about the ironic whim of the fates.
“I don’t understand,” I said, drawing Mira’s gaze back to my face, but it was Gregor who spoke up first.
“Mira is unable to punish our dear Everett for bringing in the wrong type of human because you already took the trouble of killing him this past summer.” Gregor’s smile darkened to something more twisted and evil.
In return, I sat back, crossing my arms over my chest as I frowned back at him. I wasn’t going to apologize if that was what either of them were looking for. I was a hunter. Killing nightwalkers was what I did. When I came looking for Mira in July, I had slaughtered several vampires in an effort to locate her. Everett was just one in a long list of deaths that had occurred at my hand.
“And after Everett disappeared, you welcomed Abigail into your little group?” Mira pressed, ignoring the staring contest that was building between Gregor and me.
Gregor blinked first, jerking his attention back to the Fire Starter. It was clear within her voice that she was growing more irritated with both of us. “She was a sweet girl,” Gregor commented. “Funny, charming, and adventurous. She already knew about us so I saw no problem in allowing her to continue her association with our kind through me and my friends.”
“You could have wiped her memory,” I snapped.
The nightwalker sat up a little straighter, his smile dimming into a slight frown as he looked at me. “Yes, I could have, but in truth it never occurred to me. I didn’t discover that she was the daughter of a senator until after she died. All I knew was that she kept an apartment on River Walk, was a sweet little curator at one of the local museums, and enjoyed club hopping. Abigail was just another one of the crowd.”
“And she knew Tristan?” Mira inquired.
Gregor’s smile returned as he looked over at Mira. “Yes, Abigail was with us the night that Tristan happened in the Dark Room. I invited him over to sit with us, to have a bite to eat. Abigail was more than willing. I thought it would please you that I made the effort to welcome your young one into the area.”
This time it was Mira’s turn to frown at Gregor. She leaned forward, her nails digging into the seat cushion beneath her. “Have a care with Tristan. I don’t always approve of your games with the fledglings, but I have been lenient and allowed you to have your fun. I will not be so forgiving when it comes to my family.”
“I have in no way threatened Tristan,” Gregor quickly argued, holding both of his hands up and open toward us in surrender.
“You never threaten,” Mira countered. “You offer up little games, escapades of chance and risk, and fledglings end up dead.”
“Your warning has been noted, but again, I must state that I have not threatened Tristan in any way,” Gregor amicably said. “I only offered him a hand of friendship, a sip from my cup.”
“A cup that happened to be Abigail,” I said.
The nightwalker shrugged, folding his hands in his lap. “She was willing and it certainly wasn’t the first time. She knew what she was doing. Again, as far as I know, none of us were aware of the young woman’s parentage. I like to think that we would have taken care of her memory should it been known.”
“Besides your little group, was there anyone else that she was known to associate with?” Mira inquired, dragging us back to the topic at hand. The reason we had come here was not to draw lines in the sand where Tristan was concerned, nor had we come here to discuss my disgust for their habits.
“Not anyone that I noticed,” Gregor replied.
“What about the lycans?” I asked.
Gregor frowned as he looked out toward the dance floor, seeming to be lost in thought for a moment. “Back before the naturi, back when there was peace with the shifters, she spoke with them here at the club,” Gregor said, his voice taking a somewhat wistful tone. “I never noted a particular preference for any one lycan. She was just friendly, striking up a conversation with someone who happened to be standing next to her at the bar as she waited for a drink. Abigail was a free spirit.”
Shoving my right hand through my hair, pushing it away from my eyes, I gazed down at Mira, who seemed to be staring at the table, lost in thought. “It doesn’t sound like she was chosen because she was involved with any particular nightwalker, but because she was involved in this world,” I said. “It’s not enough that she was a senator’s daughter who died under suspicious circumstances. That could be covered up.”
“But a little digging into her habits, her friends, the people that she was known to associate with could reveal our entire world,” Mira continued, picking up the thread of my thought. She looked up at me, a frown pulling at the corners of her mouth. “It would at the very least start pointing fingers at the Dark Room. Nightwalkers can do without the publicity.”
Gregor suddenly sat forward, his hands coming to rest on his knees. “You’re not going to shut down the Dark Room again, are you?”
Mira shook her head, looking down at the table again. “So far, it’s been quiet. The media haven’t gotten past her squeaky clean background as an honor student and museum curator for the Girl Scouts. Unless we close this case soon, they’re going to start digging deeper and it’s only a matter of time before people start pointing out where she spent her nights.”
“She frequented a number of the bars around the city,” Gregor argued. “The Dark Room is just one of the many.”
“The Dark Room is also the only exclusive, members-only club in the city. It’s going to raise some eyebrows and put this place in the spotlight,” I said, drawing Gregor’s ire. When I was hunting for Mira, I quickly learned to keep my distance from the club, as the concentration of nightwalkers would easily overwhelm me. The temptation had been to linger not far away and watch for someone of Mira’s description to appear, but the risk had been too great.
“I’m content to leave things as they are for now,” Mira said with a heavy sigh. “Since you are so partial to the Dark Room, I put it in your hands to keep an eye on the media and see to it that they don’t go looking into our little establishment.”
Gregor jerked in surprise at this pronouncement. “Really? Isn’t such a thing within Knox’s domain?”
“He’s got enough to worry about,” Mira snapped. “Maybe you’ll prove to be useful to me at long last instead of a pain in my ass.”
“As you wish,” he said, with a nod. The nightwalker then looked over at me and waved absently. “Watch yourself.”
My would-be attacker’s footsteps were nearly silent under the loud music that now blasted through the nightclub. As I turned, a young woman carrying a blade rushed me. Her teeth were clenched and bared so that I could hear the low rumble of a growl coming from her as she lunged. I hesitated, my brain struggling to understand why this complete stranger
had decided to attack me unprovoked. At the last second, I caught her wrists with both hands, but not before she managed to bury the tip of her knife in the meaty part of my shoulder, slicing through muscle.
A hiss slipped from between my clenched teeth as I shifted my weight to my left foot so that I could shove the woman away from me. She kept her tight grip on the blade, pulling it out of my arm as she stumbled backward.
The scent of my blood hit the chilled air and I was immediately swamped by the wave of hunger that washed red through the club. I blinked a couple times, struggling to focus on the world around me, the pain in my arm, anything but the swarm of nightwalkers that suddenly felt the urge to drain me dry. Suppressing a growl, I closed up my mind as much as possible, dampening the hunger pangs echoing through my brain. Mira was the only creature that I couldn’t completely block out. I could feel her as a slim shadow in my thoughts, simply watching while hunger gnawed at her insides.
The enraged woman shoved away a chair that had become entangled with her feet and tightened her grip on the bloody blade in her right hand. She took another swipe at me, but I easily slipped out of her reach as I sidled away from the booth. Unfortunately, my back was now turned toward a growing throng of nightwalkers who were intently watching the scuffle. I needed to end this as quickly as possible before anyone else decided to join in the fray. In Mira’s weakened state, I wasn’t so sure she would be able to control this mob and I wasn’t about to put it to the test.
“A fan of your work?” Mira inquired from behind me. She sounded as if she were still lounging in the booth with Gregor.
“You fucking bastard!” the woman snarled, looking as if she was searching for an opening.
“Guess so,” Gregor muttered, but I ignored them both. My focus was on the woman. A quick scan revealed that she truly was just human. Not a vampire. Not a lycanthrope. Not even a witch. I killed nightwalkers by the light of the moon. How could she possibly hope to kill me? Unless she didn’t. Maybe she was the distraction. I couldn’t take any chances surrounded by this many nightwalkers. I had to end the confrontation as quickly as possible, and preferably without any additional bloodshed.
“What do you want with me?” I asked, taking a step away from the woman in an effort to establish a little breathing room.
“I want you to die!” she screamed. As she swung the blade at me, a swath of brown hair fell across her face, momentarily blocking her vision. I snatched up the opportunity, ripping the knife from her grip. She shrieked at me in rage, lurching toward me with her fingernail aimed to remove a layer of flesh from my face. Placing my hand on her bony shoulder, I shoved her backward. Nightwalkers scattered as the woman stumbled away from me until she finally fell to her butt in the middle of the dance floor. The grinding music had been stopped and the silence was broken only by the woman’s jagged breathing.
“I don’t know you,” I said in a firm voice. “Why do you want me dead?”
The first of her tears started slipping down her pale face as she stared up at me from where she continued to sit on the dirty floor. “You killed him,” she started in a low, haunting voice. “They told me that you hunted him down and killed him.”
A new darker sense of dread took hold in the pit of my stomach. I didn’t like the direction this was headed and my only hope was that someone had lied to this poor woman.
“Who?” I asked, my voice losing some of its former strength.
“Mark! His name was Mark and you killed him,” she shouted. Her hands balled into fists at her sides and shook with her anger and her obvious pain.
I turned so that I could look at Mira, while still being able to watch the woman out of the corner of my eye. “Mira?” I prompted. She was the keeper of this domain; she would know what had happened to this lost soul.
“She’s right,” Mira said in a weary voice. “Mark was the third one you killed when you came into my territory in July.
My shoulders stiffened and my fingers tightened around the handle of the knife as I turned back to face the woman, who was now gasping for air amid her sobbing. Her slim shoulders jerked as tears streaked down her cheeks to splatter on the floor.
“You don’t remember him?” the woman demanded in a ragged voice. “You fucking bastard. His name was Mark and he had soft brown hair and gentle brown eyes. Would never have hurt anyone! You killed him and he never did anything to hurt anyone!”
I had killed someone important to her—a friend, a lover. And I couldn’t remember his face. He was lost to the overwhelming tide of blood and death that had followed me for endless centuries.
In July, I came into Mira’s domain searching for the Fire Starter. I killed any nightwalker that attacked me and any that refused to answer my questions. Five died in all, but I couldn’t recall the faces of any of them. They were just nightwalkers; dark creatures that fed upon the life of humans.
And yet I had succeeded in wounding the very creatures I had sworn to protect. The poor human weeping at my feet had been hurt by my decision to kill her lover.
Clenching my fists at my sides, I turned my head and glared at Mira. I wouldn’t apologize for what I had done. I couldn’t do it. I still believed in what I was doing. Someone had to protect the humans from the nightwalkers.
Yes, but some humans don’t want or need your protection, Mira mentally said to me, proving that she had been listening to my thoughts. Your actions have more severe repercussions than you sometimes realize.
I save lives.
And sometimes you destroy them. A sad look filled Mira’s lavender eyes as she met my gaze. For a moment, it felt as if she pitied me and I wondered if she was right. But I crushed the thought as quickly as it appeared. Someone had to protect humanity from vampires. Right?
I won’t apologize, I sent the stubborn thought to her, though it felt more than a little tired and worn.
I never asked you to, Mira replied. She slid out of the booth and flowed to her feet like liquid. I could feel all the eyes in the room suddenly shift from me to the keeper. She was finally going to take control of the situation and everyone knew that someone was going to finish the night in pain.
“Who does this woman belong to?” Mira demanded, raising her voice so that it easily reached all the dark corners of the club.
When no one immediately spoke up, Gregor ventured a guess. “Mark?” I resisted the urge to look over my shoulder at the nightwalker, suddenly understanding why Mira found him to be such a nuisance. Instead, I let my gaze travel around the room. No one was willing to meet Mira’s direct gaze.
“All right. Let me try this again. Who brought this woman into the Dark Room?” Mira demanded, her tone growing sharper with each word. The Dark Room was a membership-only club and members had to be either nightwalkers or lycanthropes. Humans were only allowed into the club under a lycan or vampire escort.
“I brought her in,” said a blond nightwalker. She held her hand slightly above her head as she stepped forward from a knot of nightwalkers. “We’re friends. I didn’t know you were going to bring the hunter here. If I’d known, I would never have let her in.”
“But I’m sure you were kind enough to inform her exactly who Danaus was when he did appear,” Mira sneered.
“She asked,” the vampire said with a shrug. “I didn’t know she would react like this.”
Neither Mira nor I believed her. The nightwalker could have easily read my attacker’s mind and seen what she planned to do. Of course, there wasn’t a nightwalker in the place that I would have expected to stop the woman before she brandished her knife. Mira might be the possible exception to that, but even that was doubtful, depending on her mood. The only thing about this whole mess that I did find surprising was that Gregor had seen fit to warn me that she was about to strike. He could have easily allowed her to stab me and no one would have thought less of him.
In a flash, Mira palmed a knife that had been at her side and threw it at the blond. The knife hit her with enough force to throw her back a few
steps as it buried itself in the vampire’s shoulder. The blond cried out in pain and surprise as she wrapped her hand around the knife. The scent of fresh blood once again hit the air and the haze of bloodlust grew thicker, but this time there was a new feeling in the air. It was the same demand for death and pain that I felt when Mira was punishing David at the First Communion. When it came to a struggle between two nightwalkers, there was little loyalty to be found, only a thirst for destruction and violence.
“Your lack of discretion could have created chaos and deaths we cannot afford among our ranks. You are not welcome at the Dark Room until you are back in my good graces,” Mira pronounced. “I will not abide attacks on my guests and on members of my family.”
A second later, a bouncer that had been hovering at the front door of the Dark Room when I walked in with Mira swooped down and grabbed the blond by the arm and ushered her out of the club before she could even pull the knife free from her arm.
A heavy silence settled over the club except for the loud sobbing of the woman still seated on the floor. She had not moved during the brief scuffle between Mira and the blond nightwalker that had been her friend.
“What do we do?” I asked, dragging Mira’s gaze back to me.
She frowned at me, creating little lines between her thin brows as she gave a little shrug. “That’s actually up to you. She attacked you. You beat her. By our laws, her life belongs to you now. You can kill her if you like.”
The woman let out a soft whimper and pushed a little away from me before I could even speak.
“Absolutely not!” I snapped. “Just let her go and let’s forget about it all.”
“Unfortunately, that’s not a possibility either,” Mira said. She turned and looked down at the young woman with the red, tear-streaked face. “She broke our rules. She attacked my guest, insulting me and shaming her host. She’s proven that she can’t be trusted. How do we know she won’t turn us in to the Daylight Coalition next because she didn’t get her proper vengeance?” The Daylight Coalition was a group of human vampire hunters, and they would love to get information from an insider.
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