Hours ago she had resolved to live, only to face this. Nils’s blood curdled in her stomach and she held herself motionless, using her vampire strength to suppress the urge to vomit.
Loki waited for her to compose herself before speaking. “Three vampire attacks on Hunter cells: Indonesia, Chile, British Columbia. The humans were completely wiped out—men, women, and children.”
She exhaled slowly. “They know.” The secret Uta had long-protected must have leaked—either from Andre’s household where the vampire Pedro had taken the Hunter Lucas Bennett as a lover, or from the cruel Ethan Bennett’s own research. Regardless of the source of the rumor, if vampires were now slaughtering Hunters en masse, it could only be because they suspected the Hunters’ blood would cure their wasting disease.
“It would seem they know something.” Loki’s gaze traveled over Uta.
Mangy sheep scrotum, that was bad news. Where had her knitting gone? “Are Sadavir and his aggressionists behind this attack? I will kill them.” She stormed toward the door. “I will hunt the blood suckers down one by one and take their heads. I will deprive them of the honor of sun-walking.”
Loki grabbed her arm and held it fast. “Uta.”
Perhaps only creatures as ancient as him could convey such a plethora of emotions in the timbres of a single voice—grief and anger were the high and low tones, with harmonies of impatience and concern.
She shied, turning from him. How could she bury her emotions under anger if he spoke to her that way?
“It is not your fault,” he continued. “It is Bennett’s. He escalated this war. He brought about the death of thousands of vampires and householders.”
“I should have protected the secret better.” She walked up to the screen, staring into the empty eye-sockets of a tiny, blackened skull. “I should have scoured their artifacts and made certain no one ever discovered the secret.”
“And exterminated every one of them? We would be no better than them.”
“We are no better. These are revenge killings, Loki. There is no justice to these deaths, nor is there logic in killing the source of precious blood, if the secret I guard is correct.”
“Perhaps they also took hostages. With everyone in the compounds dead, there is no way to confirm the existence of survivors.”
Uta could not look away from the television. “It is all my fault.”
Loki flipped off the screen and took her hand. “Child, I grow tired of your self-recriminations. You are not Atlas.”
She yanked away her hand. “Atlas was a self-important prick.”
“Pot, Kettle.”
His patronizing smile baited her, but she couldn’t muster up the energy to be annoyed.
“You must tell me everything, Uta.”
“The cost of breaking my vow is high. I will only do so once, in front of the entire Justicia.” She pressed her fingers to her lips, closed tight, and tried not to think of the consequences.
“All right. I already have plans to convene them. Pack your bags. We are going to the Kaštel Estate.”
Kaštel. Where she would be forced to break her vow. And to see Bel—her greatest failure ever.
“Loki, please.”
He pulled her into a sideways embrace, the only kind that worked across their height difference. “You will face him, child, and you will survive, just as you always have. As our kind always has.”
“Always has to end sometime.”
“Nonsense,” Loki said. Of the many tones in his round, melodious voice, not one rang with conviction.
Chapter 4
IN LUCAS’S EMPTY GUT, hot coffee sloshed and mixed with too much stomach acid. He reached for one of Lena’s scones on a tray in the center of the dining room table, finally mended after Andre had split it in a heartbroken rage. Outside the wall of windows, green grass had begun to sprout over the ashen hillsides like a promise, though every few feet, the promise was broken by the skeletal black vines straining skyward. New life might come, but it would not be the life his vampire friends needed.
The scone crumbled in his hand.
Zoey aimed the projector at the wall so everyone could see the photos Loki had sent to the newest member of the vampire Justicia, Andre Maras.
The vampire’s ruggedly handsome face pulled into a grimace. “In all my years, vampires have never retaliated like this.”
The old guy never really looked old, but since the fire, a cloud of defeat surrounded him, slumping his shoulders and adding years. Secretly Lucas preferred the change—dejected Andre was slightly less scary.
“It’s not a retaliation. It’s a feeding frenzy.” Pedro stood behind Lucas’s chair, resting his elbows on the seat back in a way that grounded Lucas.
“He’s right.” Zoey scrolled the screen so the report came into view. “The women, and the children…” Her voice had lost its professional air, trailing off on a gasp.
Kos stood alone, without Lena. Good thing, too, since she had baby fever. She didn’t need to see the photos.
None of them did.
As far as breakfast scenes went, it was the most surreal of Lucas’s life. Vampires had learned about the magic in his blood. Now they were slaughtering his people. He shivered. No—Hunters weren’t his people anymore, maybe they never had been. The vampires sat discussing his worst fears over scones, which they didn’t actually eat. And these once-frightening creatures, who had accepted him, sat grieving for the lives of their enemies.
What the hell was wrong with them?
“Snap out of it, you pussies,” Lucas said. “This is no worse than the slaughter of household women and children that Hunters have been perpetrating for centuries. Or, if you’re a lucky vampire, you get the slow death of the wasting disease instead.”
No one replied, and everyone’s eyes traced chaotic lines around the room in what had to be an attempt not to look at one another. The two other humans, Leo and Vania, reached for scones, and Lucas pitied the vampires for not having the distraction. Pedro pulled out the seat next to him. Its legs grated against the floor, setting Lucas’s teeth on edge.
The big clock’s pendulum swung. Tick, tock. Deafening even to his human ears. Each tock ratcheted up the tension in the room.
Pedro began to tap his finger in time with the clock. Tick, tock. Tick, tock. Tick, tock. Finally, he slapped his palm onto the table. “Madre de Dios, someone leaked the information.” With a promise of protection, his warm hand settled on Lucas’s thigh.
“Who would have done that?” Kos looked around the room. “Surely none of us.”
Andre shook his head. “No one here has anything to gain.”
“Could it have been someone on the Justicia?” Zoey asked.
“As far as I know, Uta has not shared her suspicions with them,” Andre answered.
Kos rubbed both his hands over his head, smoothing back his short blond hair. “Krist, Hunters were bloodthirsty before they felt defensive. This will only amplify their violence. Soon, the human governments will be drawn in and then we are all at risk.”
Lucas leaned his forehead into the heels of his hand, his eyes fixated on the scar of the giant crack running the length of the table. “It had to be Ethan.” His words came out a whisper, meant only for the oak beneath his face.
“What?” several voices chimed at the same time.
He sat back, crossing his arms. “It’s his type of move. He’s the only one who benefits from an all-out war. All along, he’s incited fear, and gained power from it. And of course, the Hunters would never suspect him.”
“But how could he spread a rumor to vampires?” Kos asked. “Most of us don’t even know how to contact each other.”
“I don’t know.” Lucas hugged his ribs tight.
Pedro pointed at the wall, where the images had been. “Which was the first attack?”
“Chile was twenty-two hours ago. British Columbia eighteen.” Zoey turned the projector on, and the final image reappeared. “And Indonesia, eleven hours ago.”
Pedro didn’t respond to the data, and Lucas wondered what he was thinking.
Zoey opened the briefing document and skimmed it. “Thirty-six hours ago, there were also two smaller attacks in Europe. They were simultaneous, and involved the cells positioned in former vampire enclaves.” She rested her chin in her palm. “What does that mean?”
“Well, take Croatia, for instance,” Kos said. “There is a small Hunter cell in Dalmatia whose purpose is to prevent the refugees from returning there. That’s why the wasting disease is their best weapon. If vampires could return from exile, they would all be at their full strength.”
“And they would have no need of Hunter blood.” Andre’s tone was bitter.
“Unless you count sunlight as a need,” Kos retorted. They still weren’t sure whether Hunter blood, or Blood Vine for that matter, would allow them to tolerate the sun; the conundrum was how to find out without getting fried to a crisp.
“So,” Pedro called them back to focus, “there were two attacks on these Hunter outposts. How many died?”
It took Zoey a few seconds to find the information in the email. “All together, twenty-five.”
Pedro reached down and scratched at his ankle. His memories of the torture Lucas’s sadistic brother had inflicted on him seemed to surface occasionally as an itch and he’d repeated the unconscious gesture every time they talked about Ethan. Thankfully, since the two of them had become lovers, that itch seemed to be the only lasting damage from the trauma.
After another moment, Pedro straightened. “It had to be Ethan. He attacked them to set a precedent, then somehow spread a message to vampires encouraging them to do the same.”
In silence that followed, the clock pendulum grated on Lucas—how could all these vampires with super-hearing stand that thing?
It had been Ethan. Tick, tock, tick, tock. Each click of the second hand drove certainty into Lucas’s bones.
He glanced at his lover. Pedro combed his persistently fallen lock of black hair off his forehead, revealing his once-blue eyes, now turned golden from Lucas’s own Hunter blood. Those yellow eyes, set off by all his bronze skin, were orders of magnitude sexier than they’d ever been in a Bennett, or any Hunter for that matter.
A Hunter-eyed vampire. Pedro would never be safe. None of them would be, as long as Ethan lived.
So Lucas had to kill his brother. Simple as that.
He stood. “I’ll search online and try to find evidence that he’s spreading the news about the Hunter blood. Leo, want to help?”
Lucas’s fellow ex-Hunter Leo no longer looked like a kid. A month of training with Bel’s crew of vampire mercenaries had turned his baby fat to muscle. The kid was fit, and cute in a boyishly handsome way that his carefully cultivated beard of stubble couldn’t hide. And he had become an asset because of his insider knowledge of online Hunter networks. With Leo on their side they’d had ringside seats to Ethan’s ascension as the Hunters’ leader.
“Already on it,” Leo answered. As usual, he had two laptops in front of him at the same time.
More thick silence followed Leo’s words, but before the clock could tock again Pedro broke the spell. “Damn, it’s stuffy in here. Where’s Bel when you need him?”
“In San Francisco. He’s monitoring his test subjects,” Kos answered. “But if he were here, he’d say: ‘Did any of you jerks die last night? Then cheer up, we’ve got work to do.’”
Zoey cleared her throat, and all eyes focused on her. “Nice try Kos, but this is what he would say.” Zoey slid halfway out of her chair in a sullen slouch very reminiscent of Bel and crossed her arms. “Those Hunter attacks are total bollocks. But the good news is, unlike you vampire fools, I can still wank. And that’s a lot more fun than this meeting. So, I’m going upstairs to enjoy the only power I have that you don’t. Later!”
She’d nailed his working class London accent, and Lucas laughed so hard his side hurt. Andre turned the color of a tomato. Kos slapped his knee. Bel’s lieutenant and resident fire-starter, Vania, snickered behind her hands, perhaps not wanting to seem too disloyal to her boss. And just like that, even without being in the room, Bel had lightened the mood.
Chapter 5
BEL’S HANDS TREMBLED as he set down the rack of vials on the stainless steel countertop. Over the pissed-off sound of The Ramones on his headphones, the tubes clattered.
Should he even bother running the tests? Clearly the treatment had failed—he’d failed.
The music fit his mood like a tailored suit, not that he’d ever worn one.
I hear you, Joey. Being sedated sounds perfect right about now.
He scanned the shelves, of half a mind to begin processing the blood, even though he knew it hadn’t worked. The borrowed lab was small, but packed full of shiny new equipment. Only a letter from an old friend at Oxford and a very large check from Bel had opened up the prized workspace in the basement of the research hospital. He’d paid for it. He may as well get his money’s worth. He reached for a flask. At least he could find out whether any of the hemoaurum he’d infused into the patients remained. Maybe it was just slow to work. The flask slid from his grip and clanged against the countertop; apparently it didn’t believe that bit of fancy any more than Bel did.
Shite.
Andre was depending on him. All the vampires in the whole bloody world depended on him, but his test subjects fared no better now than they had two weeks ago. Federico, one of the frailest vampires, had even whispered his fear that his wife Liliana would die very soon. And she wasn’t the only one so far gone—the wasting disease had decimated the entire test group, leaving them as weak and lethargic as the residents of a human nursing home.
He turned up the volume on his tunes and tried to silence his worries with Joey Ramone’s shouts.
The door to the small lab swung open and bumped Bel into the counter, jostling the rack again. He caught the thing before all the tubes toppled, and reared around to shout at the intruder—but it wasn’t one. It was Lexi, radiant and beaming, prettier even than she’d been a month ago in Los Angeles when he’d borrowed her lab’s shiny new mass spectrometer.
His anger deflated and he grinned, pulling out the earbuds. “What are you doing here?”
Music blared from the little speakers and she grimaced. “I knew your clams had arrived and you would need to run the samples. Maybe this will be your big break—I couldn’t resist coming to help.”
She opened her arms to offer an embrace. He accepted it, relishing the feel of her, as tight and fit as ever. But no desire flared in his gut. Damn.
He called up the memory of her slim, muscular legs wrapping around him. Still nothing. Double damn.
He opened his eyes to find her waggling her fingers at him.
Oh. A rock, a big one.
“Guess what! I’m engaged.”
Again, not a flare of jealousy over Lexi. His Lexi.
He wanted to punch the wall. But he couldn’t let her see his fear, so instead he raised an eyebrow. “I distinctly remember you swearing never to do that.” A decade ago, it had been part of her charm, and a month ago she had shrugged casually when he’d probed about her commitment to Mister-Rob-the-Douchebag. “What happened?”
“Bel, I’m thirty-five.”
“So.”
“You wouldn’t understand. You’re a man. And you haven’t aged a day since we were in grad school.”
That was true, and a subject to be avoided. He flashed his I’ve-seen-you-naked-and-remember-every-detail smile at her. “Flattery will get you everywhere, doll. And I promise not to say a word to Mister Dou—Uh, Mister Lexi about anywhere you want to go.”
Her blush would have been very easy to misinterpret, if Bel had even an ounce of interest in misinterpreting. Triple damn.
“He prefers Mister Doctor Lexi.” She squeezed Bel’s wrist. “But enough about him. Can I see the clams?”
Shite. From one scam to another on the turn of a dime.
He inched to his le
ft, trying to shield the vials of crimson blood from her view. No way could he fool her into thinking it was the gray-blue hemolymph of clams.
Over the years, he’d woven her an intricate lie about his research. Even though her questions kept him tap dancing, it was a hell of a lot easier to explain than the truth—he studied vampires, not mollusks.
“Actually, I extracted the lymph and dumped them into bio-waste already.”
“Then I’m just in time. Where do we start?”
And just like that, he ran out of dance moves. The linoleum of the lab floor may as well have vanished. He floated in space with nothing to hold onto.
“Bel? What’s wrong.”
He stepped to the side, revealing the rack of blood. Her light brown brows pulled together in a puzzled frown, and he scratched the back of his head, hoping to hide his fidgeting fingers.
She leaned closer to the vials. “Is that human blood?”
“No.”
“Well it’s not clam blood.”
The tiny lab closed in on him. His lies, his failure, this beautiful woman he’d once loved, and the female who’d bonded herself to him so he could never really love anyone else…His vision blackened at the corners of his eyes, and the flasks and beakers lining the walls began to spin.
“Bel. Bel! Sit down. Put your head between your knees.”
He dropped his ass onto a lab stool and folded himself in half until his breaths came slower and his field of vision widened back to normal. When he looked up, Lexi’s eyes brimmed with tears.
“What is it, doll?”
“You’re sick. Your condition has finally become symptomatic, and, oh God—are you dying?”
His condition—part of the lie. When he’d lived with her all those years ago, he’d had to explain his obsessive research. He’d gone from their bed to the lab and back—never time for any fun that wasn’t horizontal—out of desperation to understand his mysterious existence as a vampire halfling. The only one, as far as he knew.
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