Shadow Hunter

by B R Kingsolver

  We parked in front, and the huge door opened. A man dressed as a butler stood there awaiting us.

  “Cute little bungalow, don’t you think?” Sam said with a chuckle.

  “I’ve seen houses like this in Europe,” I said, “but not too many of them in this country.”

  Having spent the past nine years living in what most people would consider a fantasy palace—inside what was essentially a medieval walled city—I was probably not as impressed as most American women my age would have been.

  “Have you met any of the ancient vampires before?” Sam asked quietly as we climbed the front steps.

  “Yes. I’ve met two who were much older than Carleton,” I said. The master vampire I had killed in Austria was born in the twelfth century. His power was incredible, but he underestimated me, and I had been lucky. At the time, I was younger and very arrogant. After I got out of that scrape alive, my arrogance was greatly diminished. “Very scary. Not the sort of guy you’d want to anger.”

  “Even if Barclay is only a couple of hundred years old, you do understand the danger we’re in. Right?” Sam said as we approached the door.

  “Yeah. We’re on the same page.”

  The butler was a vampire, of course, and looked to be in his sixties. I was aware that old vampires often rewarded their best servants by turning them, especially if the servant developed health issues.

  The house was even more elegant inside than I would have expected looking at the outside. Hand-painted silk wallpaper, polished hardwood, parquet floors, cast plaster moldings, and very expensive artworks screamed money and eighteenth-century style. I felt rather shabby. I had put on my best white shirt and black trousers in anticipation of the meeting, but in that house, I felt I should be wearing a floor-length silk gown. Sam was dressed as he always did.

  We passed a salon with at least twenty vampires and twice that many living humans having some sort of a party, and I saw more vampires watching us from the second- and third-floor mezzanines.

  The butler led us into a large study with Persian rugs, ceiling-high bookshelves—particularly impressive when the ceilings were sixteen feet high—and a large desk. Two chairs sat in front of the desk with a low table between them. Two crystal glasses with a crystal decanter of what I assumed was water sat on a tray on the table.

  “Miss McLane, Mr. O’Grady, how gracious of you to come,” the man behind the desk said. He didn’t rise to greet us. Dressed in a dark brown business suit with a red tie, he had piercing blue eyes and thick sandy hair that spilled over his collar. I judged that he’d been turned in his late thirties or early forties. Although it was difficult to tell with him seated, I guessed that he was in the six-foot range with an athletic body.

  “Mr. Barclay,” Sam said with a slight dip of his head. He took the seat on the left in front of the desk without waiting to be invited. Following his lead, I took the seat on the right.

  “Would either of you care for water, or something stronger?” the butler asked.

  “Water is fine for me,” I said, and Sam nodded. I had no intention of eating or drinking anything served to me in that place. The butler poured liquid from the decanter into both glasses, then retreated to stand by the door.

  “So, you’re the young lady everyone is so excited about,” Barclay said. He looked me over, and I couldn’t figure out from his expression if he was deciding whether to seduce me, merely drain me, or just kill me quickly and get it over with.

  I fell back on my training. The Masters of the Illuminati had prepared me to rub elbows with royalty, heads of state, and captains of industry, all the better to get close to them and murder them. Barclay didn’t intimidate me, and I was confident that if he did try to kill me, he would get the worse of the conflict. I was less confident that Sam and I would make it out of the place alive if that happened. There were dozens of vampires in the house, plus their human servants, and the guards at the gate were armed with submachineguns.

  “I wasn’t aware that I was such a person of interest,” I said, giving him a sardonic smile.

  “The rumor is that you’re a Hunter,” Barclay said, “or some other kind of legendary warrior.”

  “The rumor is that you’re a vampire. Don’t you find it amusing how such silly stories get passed around?”

  The look Sam gave me was priceless, but Barclay threw back his head and laughed out loud.

  “Oh, Miss McLane, I think I like you.”

  “Most people find me charming.”

  “So, you don’t deny it?”

  “I absolutely deny it. I’m a bartender.” I leaned forward. “Mr. Barclay, I am a mage. I have a certain amount of training, and a certain amount of education. But I am not some sort of mythical creature seeking to save the world by going around slaying creatures of darkness. Now, why don’t you tell me why you invited me here tonight?”

  Barclay gave me the once-over a couple more times, his sight lingering on my chest somewhat longer than was polite, then asked, “How much do you know about vampires?”

  “More than I really ever wanted to.”

  “Very good. The Master of the City has suffered the final death. Someone—we think it was a Hunter—delivered that fate. There are now myself and three other mature vampires who were his children left to sort out his legacy. In addition, someone seems to be trying to pit the shifters and magic users against us. That could create a very uncomfortable situation for everyone should such conflicts become more public. Are you with me so far?”

  “Yes, but I don’t understand what that has to do with me.”

  “Ah. I have heard, and this is more than a rumor, that you have explained this exact scenario to Francis Jones and her team. I find it somewhat unsettling that a woman who appears so young and ordinary has such an in-depth understanding of such a complicated situation. Don’t you find that unusual, Mr. O’Grady?”

  Sam simply gave him a sour look and didn’t respond.

  “Miss McLane, do you understand what a nexus is?”

  “The center of something.”

  “Yes. Why does everyone—the vampires, the shifters, the mages, the human civil authorities—all seem to be interested in you? Why do conflicts and murders occur wherever you happen to be? And why are you the only one—other than a couple of vampires centuries older than you are—who seems to understand what is happening? I believe you are a nexus. And if I’m correct, you’re the only one who can keep everything from unraveling and exposing us to humanity.”

  Barclay rose from his chair and walked to a sideboard where he poured blood into a crystal goblet and took a sip. He was a bit shorter and perhaps more athletic than I had estimated. Probably a soldier, possibly a swordsman, when Carleton turned him.

  He faced us and leaned back against the sideboard.

  “Miss McLane, I will pay you a hundred thousand dollars if you can figure out what is going on and put a stop to it. Stop whoever is orchestrating this catastrophe that is about to descend on us all.”

  I took a deep breath and said, “I’m a bartender. I would love to have that much money, but I’m afraid you’ve mistaken me for something that I’m not. Now, if that is what you called me out here for, I’m sorry to disappoint you.”

  Barclay’s face worked, seeming unable to decide whether he was sad, happy, or angry. “I’ll make it a million!” he shouted.

  I stood. “Sam, I think it’s time for us to go.”

  “You can’t do this! You have to help me! I’m the Master. Don’t you want me to be the Master? Where are you going? Stop!” It was like watching a three-year-old throwing a tantrum. He stamped his feet and pounded his fists against the fireplace.

  Sam stood and we walked out. The whole time we spent leaving the house, getting in Sam’s SUV, and then driving out of the gate, I kept expecting something to go wrong, something to blow up, but nothing did. When we finally reached the public road and turned onto it, I heaved a sigh of relief.

  “Good night! He’s stark raving mad,” I
said. “I was afraid we weren’t going to get out of there.”

  Sam glanced over at me and said, “You and me both. You’ve got a hell of a lot more balls than I gave you credit for.”

  We drove on for a while, then he said, “If you don’t want to answer me, I’ll understand, but I’m going crazy from curiosity. What is your affinity?”

  I chuckled. “I don’t have one.” I thought about how much to trust him, but then decided that I had to trust someone, and he had been nothing but kind and supportive. “My father was a mage, and my mother was a witch. Somehow that all got intertwined. I’m a ley line mage without any affinity that I’ve ever been able to determine, and I can also cast spells, although I only know a handful. All my training is in manipulating ley lines.”

  He shot me a startled glance, then turned his eyes back on the road. “Give me an example of a spell you know.”

  “When I cast the wards on my apartment, I used a witch’s spell, then reinforced it with energy from the ley line.”

  Sam barked out a laugh. “Now I know why you’re so confident about your wards. That would confuse the hell out of me.”

  Chapter 17

  Too many people confused rationality with sanity. Master Benedict was the most rational person I’d ever met, but he was criminally insane. Obsessed with power, riches, and domination, there was nothing he wouldn’t do to accomplish his goal of ruling the world.

  And as rational as Barclay’s analysis might be, that didn’t change the fact that his goal was to become Master of the City, and old vampires were utterly ruthless. Getting in bed with him, either figuratively or literally, would be the craziest, stupidest thing I could possibly do.

  What none of the people in Westport—remote from the world’s power centers—understood was that their little tempest in a teapot was nothing compared to the goals and machinations of those Illuminati who were left alive. And I had no doubt that attracting the attention of the Illuminati would be disastrous.

  Especially for me. I was willing to bet that I could count the number of Illuminati in Westport on one hand. If there were more than two, I would be shocked. But one thing I could never do was let them find me. If anyone who truly knew what the Illuminati stood for, who knew who I was, ever found out I was alive and what I had done, they would hunt me mercilessly. My only protection was ignorance of my survival. No one ever left the Order while still alive.

  I was completely convinced that what I was seeing in Westport was due to one of the Illuminati. No one else could have called in a Hunter. I was also sure the Hunter had been assigned prior to the destruction of the City. To my knowledge—and my position under Master Benedict gave me insight most Hunters would never have—no Illuminati still alive in North America had the ability to contact, let alone assign, a Hunter. The Illuminati Council were the ultimate control freaks, and they were all in the City when it burned.

  As a result, neither the Illuminati stationed in the city nor the Hunter had any way of communicating with their superiors because their superiors were all dead. Therefore, if I could take out the Hunter and the Illuminati stationed in Westport, the chaos would eventually sort itself out. No one was going to come looking for either one because no one knew they existed, but I had to do it soon in case my suppositions were wrong.

  The meeting with Barclay told me that I was in a precarious position, with too much attention focused on me. I was attempting to keep my head down, but it seemed everyone thought I had something to do with the mess, and they weren’t being quiet about it.

  The night after our meeting with Barclay, three vampires walked into Rosie’s. The first guy was the one who drew my attention. Tall and slender with thick black hair and blue eyes, he wore a tailored black suit that cost more than I made in a month. The other two were obviously his wingmen.

  Mr. Tall-Dark-Handsome-and-Deadly headed straight to the bar and slid onto a seat while his buddies grabbed a table between the door and the bar, one sitting so he could watch the room, the other positioned to watch the door.

  “What can I get you?” I asked. “We don’t serve your usual drink.”

  “Macallan twenty-five,” he said.

  Probably our most expensive whisky. Sam had special glasses for such spirits, and when I set it on the bar, the vamp positively lit up. He lifted it to his nose and inhaled, then took a tiny sip and rolled it around on his tongue.

  “I don’t drink much anymore,” he said with a musing tone in his voice, “but once upon a time I developed a taste for fine whisky, and sometimes I indulge myself.” He pushed a hundred-dollar bill across the bar. I took it, rang up his drink, and gave him his change.

  Most vampires didn’t drink alcohol because their systems didn’t process it very well, but I knew many of the older ones did. I had briefly worked in a club where the Bloody Marys were entirely too authentic.

  He lifted his head, and I could tell he was scanning the bottles on our top shelf.

  “The proprietor keeps a nice stock,” he said.

  “He has good taste.”

  His eyes dropped to my face and he said, “Yes, he does. Erin McLane?”

  “You have the advantage of me, sir.”

  “George Flynn. I understand that you had a meeting last night with Rodrick Barclay.”

  “There aren’t any secrets in this town, are there?”

  Flynn chuckled. “Not too many. I don’t suppose you would care to discuss your business with Rodrick.”

  “I don’t have any business with Mr. Barclay,” I said. “He simply wished to introduce himself.”

  “I see.” He slid a business card across the bar. “Well, now I’ve also introduced myself. Changes are coming to Westport, and it never hurts to have friends. If you find yourself in need of a friend, I hope that you’ll consider me. I think I could offer you far more than Rodrick can.”

  I shook my head. “I prefer to stay away from politics, especially supernatural politics.”

  “Sometimes events overtake us. I assure you, there are those in Westport who won’t care about your preferences.”

  A customer came to the bar, and I went to take his order. After I mixed his drink, I turned back and saw that Trevor and Josh had taken seats on either side of Flynn, and the vampires sitting at the table weren’t too pleased about it. I reached under the bar and wrapped my fingers around Sam’s sawed-off baseball bat, feeling the jolt of magic that always came when I touched it.

  Trevor was talking, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. Flynn seemed to be ignoring him, sipping his drink and looking straight ahead. After a few minutes, Flynn stood, laid a twenty on the bar, and walked away, his men following him out the door.

  I walked over, picked up the twenty, and asked, “What was that about?”

  Trevor shrugged. “Just reminding him that mages stick together, and that we would be very upset if anyone tried to harm one of us.”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  “I’m sure you can,” Josh said, “but it never hurts to make sure the supes remember their place.”

  A couple of minutes later one of our regulars staggered through the door and announced, “There’s a riot going on out there!”

  “A riot?” Josh asked.

  “Riot, battle, whatever you want to call it. Vampires fighting vampires. Must be thirty or forty of them.”

  Chairs scraped across the floor, and half of the people in the bar surged to their feet.

  My training kicked in. Hunters were not only the soldiers of the Illuminati, but also the policemen, and while I had never done domestic duty, I had been trained to handle insurrections.

  “Hold on!” I yelled. “Anyone who goes out that door isn’t coming back inside!” Luckily, almost everyone paused. “I’m not having that mess come inside. Sam will ban anyone who brings a fight in here.”

  I grabbed Sam’s magic bat and called, “Jenny! Cover the bar. Tell Steve what’s going on and call Blair.” Rounding the end of the bar, I told Trevor and Josh,
“You two. Come with me.”

  They followed me out the door where we found a swirling battle of vampires fighting vampires. I saw Flynn near the entrance to our alley, and those vamps trying to get to him were discovering the difference between a young vampire and an old one. His hair was barely mussed as he grabbed a guy by the neck and twisted his head off.

  “You guys stay here and cover the door. Don’t do anything unless one of them tries to get to the door.”

  Casting a personal shield, I waded into the melee using the bat as I would a sword. Two men were fighting right in front of me. I hit the one with his back to me in the head, and when he fell, I clubbed the other one in the face. Another vampire, much taller than I was, came at me, and I broke his knees. The power embedded in the bat was pretty incredible, and I wasn’t having to use any of my own power except to maintain my shield.

  While the vamps seemed to know who their enemies were, I didn’t care. I took out three more before they seemed to notice me and consider me a threat. Several turned to face me.

  The fight was rather quiet, and when I raised my voice, it carried. “Stop this! Now! Get the hell out of here!”

  Most of them stopped what they were doing and gaped at me.

  “If you want to act like a bunch of juvenile delinquents, do it somewhere else. The police are on the way.”

  One guy leaped at me, a sneer on his face. I poured power into my hands, and the bat changed his expression. Everyone watched him fly across the street and slam into the hotel wall.

  “I’m not joking. Get the hell out of here before I start killing people.”