Midnight Masquerade

by Nancy Gideon

  Nick supposed some day that difference would become tangible to him, but tonight on this first night of his new life, he couldn't discern it. “And my mother? Is she one of you?"

  "Yes. I'm sure you will meet her soon."

  "I don't know that I want to."

  Gerard smirked at that. “Of course you do. There is no reason for you to stay apart now."

  "What reason was there?"

  Gerard grew evasive. “Ask your father."

  Nick gripped his forearm, drawing a haughty glance of objection until he let go. “I'm asking you."

  "Your father discovered the family secret. He insisted that your mother sever all ties to us, including the fortune that comes with our name. She loved him and she loved you, so she complied. Until she was diagnosed with an inoperable tumor pressing against her brain. She would have died within a few months’ time. So we presented her with an alternative, an alternative your father could not accept because she hadn't told him about the illness, only about the money and the exciting lifestyle. She had hoped he loved her enough to choose her. But it was not to be.

  "So they made an agreement between them. He would keep our secret and you, and she would begin her new life absent from yours. Who can say he was right or wrong in what he did or her in what she did, but the bargain was kept until you were in danger, and he came to us for help."

  But had the bargain been kept?

  "She didn't stay away.” Nick marveled softly. “I've always felt her near me. I didn't understand, and I never said anything to my dad because I didn't want to upset him."

  Gerard shrugged philosophically. “A mother's bond to her child. I can think of no stronger tie. But now, I must ask you to think of something else, something decidedly less pleasant."

  They were back to Bianca.

  "What do I do?"

  "Relax. Shut out all but thoughts of her. Reach inside for that essence, dark as it might be, and follow it to the source."

  He shut his eyes, but they sprang back open. “I can't."

  "Don't be afraid. She can't harm you or us."

  "But she'll know I'm there."

  "Not if you're careful, not if you reach slowly, quietly. Don't touch her mind. Reach out for her senses. What does she see? What does she smell? What does she hear?"

  Nick took a deep breath and let his anxieties expel with it. And then he started along the trail, a ribbon of sensations. He didn't try to analyze or concentrate too deeply. He followed, letting instinct draw him across the distance, out of his awareness in search of hers.

  A sudden overpowering odor made him rear back against the seat.

  "What is it?"

  "I don't know."

  "Explain to me what you're experiencing."

  Hot smells. Wild. Rank.

  "Animals."

  "What kind of animals?"

  "I don't know."

  "Where are you, Nicholas? Look carefully. Don't let her know you're there."

  A still fell over his actual body as his astral self grew more aware. Darkness and motion becoming light and silence. A cave? Water. He fought not to pull back from the smell. Against the sense of large, primitive life. A soft rumbling. A growl?

  Where the hell was she?

  Bars.

  Then he knew.

  "She's at the zoo."

  "Ah,” Gerard sighed, settling back with a thin smile. “I always enjoyed trips to the zoo. And that's where we will go. As soon as night falls once again."

  Chapter

  Twenty-three

  Kisses, sweet and seductive, teased her from slumber. She didn't need to open her eyes to know who was in bed above her. Relief and want skirted the edges of her awareness in a deliciously tender welcome. Wordlessly, she lifted her arms to enfold him, drawing him closer, tighter, delighting in the weight of him upon her own body.

  "Oh, Nick,” she breathed into his increasingly avaricious kisses, “I thought I'd lost you.” She looked up at him through a sheen of tears, reveling in the sight of his darkly handsome features, in the passion flaming in his dark, devouring stare.

  "I want you, cher." That claim growled from him, low and gruff and, excited by his intensity, Rae arched up against him. “Give yourself to me."

  "You already have me, Nick. You had me from that first night."

  "No,” he argued softly.

  Expecting husky petitions of love and desire, Rae smiled up at him, losing herself in the engulfing power of his gaze. Until something unknown erupted through that stare. Something harsh and ravenous.

  "Not like I'm going to have you."

  And with a snarl, he opened his mouth wide, baring glistening fangs.

  Rae bolted from the dream with a gasp. She was alone in the unfamiliar bedroom with twilight still an hour or so away. Unconsciously, her hand went to the unmarked sides of her neck. Just a dream.

  Not just a dream, she realized as the residue of fright yet crosscut her nervous system. A nightmare. A premonition of what she feared was to come.

  What she feared from Nick Flynn.

  She got up from the bed and moved restlessly to the window. Hot, lazy waves of waning daylight enveloped her as she perched there, rising her face to a sun she would never share with Nick again.

  Don't leave me, she'd begged of him.

  Perhaps she should have been more specific.

  They'd arrived at the LaValois estate too close to dawn for many explanations. Nicole greeted Nick's friend Gerardo with a squeal of delight and hearty kiss, her husband with noticeably less enthusiasm. Without question, they recognized Nick for what he'd become.

  Nick immediately recognized their hostess.

  "You. It was you who spoke to me, warned me at the Noir and told me that Naomi had run away."

  Nicole simply smiled and glanced chidingly at her husband. “A link from Gerard through me to you. We are like family."

  In the elegant study, gathered like any normal group of reunited reminiscers, Rae nearly laughed hysterically as a quote from one of her favorite horror films, The Lost Boys, seemed to fit the moment so perfectly. The bloodsucking Brady Bunch. She'd thought that line incredibly funny at the time. Less so now.

  "I had hoped to protect and guide you,” Nicole continued. “Rae had Gabriel, but you were so all alone. It was the least I could do. I wish it had been more."

  "Your friend arrived with the documentation needed to start an investigation into Meeker, Murray & Zanlos,” Marchand told them. Unable to meet Nicole's challenge with argument or apology, he got right to business. “A legitimate investigation this time, led by some of ours and some of theirs. No cargo will enter through New Orleans.” He nodded to Rae. “As I promised, they will get away with nothing."

  "We have other priorities, Frenchman,” Gerard Pasquale stated with a quiet ferocity. “She cannot be allowed to escape us."

  "If she knows we're on to her, she'll stay one step ahead,” Nicole mused from where she was seated on the arm of Pasquale's chair with her arm draped about his shoulders. Though her husband showed little pleasure in the situation, he said nothing to discourage her display of affection. Rae sensed great history among the three of them—four, if she included the wicked Bianca.

  "Nicholas hasn't the skill to block her notice for long. The moment we begin searching for her, she'll feel our presence."

  Marchand pondered Gerard's observation for a moment than said, “Not if we search by day."

  "I thought your day-walking daughter was on the other side of the globe converting rogues like me from the dark side of our nature with her evangelical husband."

  "I wasn't thinking of Frederica."

  Then Marchand's gaze settled upon Rae once more, and the others turned their focus there as well.

  With all their supernatural powers, it was the single human they sought for help.

  "No.” Nick had been silent to that point, but he spoke his opinion loud and clear. He glared at Marchand in open challenge and said, “You've asked enough of her already."


  Considering all that she'd done, all that she'd risked, all that she'd lost, this seemed almost anticlimactic.

  "What do you want me to do?"

  After their plans were decided upon over Nick's objection, dawn forced them to go their separate ways, she to a bedroom upstairs, they to the sheltering darkness in chambers below. She couldn't shut out the images—of Nick lying back like one of the dead as a coffin lid closed above him, of his unnatural cycle of existence beginning on a clock that ran opposite to hers.

  But he was alive! Wasn't that what she'd wanted? To be with him? To be loved by him? What she'd prayed for as he lay dying on his hotel room floor? That she wouldn't lose him? Would she prefer that he be nailed up in a coffin and lowered into a grave for the same endless eternity that Ginny and Thomas Grover shared?

  Her yearning gaze detailed him. He was still Nick. Nothing all that discernible had changed. At least on the surface. Except for the sudden quicksilver movements he made without realizing it, movements too fast for her eyes to follow. Except for the odd glow in his gaze and the changeable state of his canine teeth. Except for his feeding and sleeping habits.

  She shuddered as a confusion of emotions assailed her. Should she mourn the loss of the man he had been or learn to love what he had become? Could she?

  As they passed in the doorway, Nick reached out to her for the first time, his hand tentative in its clasp of her own.

  "Don't do this. You don't have to prove anything."

  His touch was cold, his tone remote.

  Rae pulled her hand away.

  "I finish what I start."

  She'd walked away from him, unwilling to decipher what moved behind his dark, masked stare. But the question continued to daunt her.

  What about what she'd started with Nick? Was that finished now, or had she simply given up without a fight?

  When she closed her eyes to sleep, she could see him rising up from his first kill, bloodlust blazing in his eyes, as he wallowed in the ecstacy of it. He'd killed a man in self-defense, to protect them all. It was something she would have done herself. But the manner in which it was completed, the pleasure that was taken in the accomplishment, those were what set this being apart from the man Nick Flynn had been.

  Time was growing short. This wasn't the place to wax sentimental over expectations held and lost. She had a job to do.

  It wasn't as if having nothing beyond the job was anything new to her.

  While her friends slept below, Bianca Du Maurier was burrowed in at the zoo. It was her mission to find out where before sunset. Then, while Gabriel went in search of Zanlos and his kidnapped love, the others would join her to bring about the destruction of the woman Marchand so fondly called Queen Bitch of the Universe.

  Then her quest would be over. And she could return to ... what? Detroit and the lonely dissatisfaction she'd found there? Despite all the pain, all the turmoil, these last few weeks in Washington were the first she'd truly felt alive and valuable. Through Marchand LaValois and his unconventional band of guardians, she had found the means to make a difference and, oddly, a way to fit in and be accepted.

  Was this to be her future then? Living amongst these unnatural beings with their supernatural sense of right and justice?

  Did it matter which wrongs she was righting as long as that justice was being served?

  But there was more than herself to consider.

  Did Nick have the right to know?

  More food for thought to save for later.

  Now, it was time to go to the zoo.

  * * * *

  Someplace private. Someplace out of the light of day but artificially bright. Someplace subterranean, Nick had told them. With big animals and jungle sounds.

  Despite the heat of late day, the zoo was crowded with families and tour groups. Amongst them, Rae was the only one with a purpose other than enjoyment. Starting at the visitor's center, she worked her way methodically along the paths, checking the panda habitat, the great ape exhibit, searching the gibbon house and monkey island for possible hiding places. Within the buildings, she found security or maintenance people who responded quickly to her questions once she flashed her badge.

  And they all directed her to a single area at the very back of the zoo.

  She placed her palm over her belly. “To the Bat Cave, Robin."

  BATS Stop-22. It was a nocturnal dweller's paradise.

  Rae shivered as she stepped into the climate-controlled area, from the steamy 90-degrees plus outside to a balmy 73. Home to over 400 night wings, the surroundings were pocked with nooks and crannies, artificial trees and even a pond and waterfall. She listened briefly to one of the enthusiastic guides describe their system of reverse daylight. From 10:00 p.m. until 9:30 a.m., all the lights were kept on to simulate daylight so the bats would be fooled into sleeping while the zoo was closed. Then, during the day, the interior lights were dimmed so visitors could observe them when they were active—the short-tailed bats from Central and South America grooming one another or snuggling for warmth. The giant fruit bats dining on fresh produce or squabbling over the prime roosting spots which most of them were busy doing as their false daylight hours approached.

  Rae walked slowly through the habitat, ignoring the noisy squeaks and shrieks of both inhabitants and visitors. She studied the topography, searching for a shadowed nave, a dark recess, a crevice big enough to hide a member of the most night dangerous breed.

  And then she found it, tucked up behind the waterfall, niched into the wall to hint at secrets untold. Just the suggestion of a cave that went far enough back to harbor one inverted sleeper. She couldn't be sure. It was too far, too dark.

  But, knowing she'd be searching in the dark, she'd come prepared.

  The powerful flashlight beam startled the lair's occupants into a frenzy of flight.

  "Hey, turn that off."

  Just before her arms were gripped at the elbows and pinned behind her, the area behind the falls was illuminated for an instant. Long enough for her to distinguish a downward spill of blonde hair as gleaming red eyes opened and lips drew back from pointed teeth.

  Then the flashlight was shaken from her hand to shatter on the ground.

  "I'm sorry,” Rae began to explain. “I'm a police officer. I thought I saw a child back there."

  "Well, I'm a police officer, too, and I know exactly what you were looking for."

  Palmer.

  He kept her elbows notched up high to propel her up the steps and out of the bat cave. In the fading light, he looked none to pleased to see her. Or perhaps that was due to the huge discoloration swelling like a noxious puffball on the side of his brow. He was hurting her, but she refused to let him know it as he marched her out into the Great Cats exhibit near the lions habitat.

  "You've made a lot of trouble for me, Borden, you and that boyfriend of yours. It's not going to hurt my feelings at all to get rid of you."

  "About as much as it's going to disturb them when you screw up one too many times. I don't think they offer a vampire toady retirement plan. Then who'll put your kids through school?"

  "Shut up."

  He shoved her forward, forcing her into the cement wall that surrounded Lion/Tiger Hill, Stop-17 on the zoo tour. Palmer gestured into the hilly habitat with his gun barrel before digging it into her side.

  "They're out there prowling tonight,” he told her with a low viciousness. “Usually they bring the big cats in at six for their feeding, but somehow, a rather toxic chemical was released in their den. So tonight, they roam free. One of those big kitties can weigh up to 600 pounds and goes through sixty-five pounds of horse meat and oxtails a week, or so my helpful tour guide told me. They're creatures of habit, and they're wondering about now why no one's rung the dinner bell."

  Rae gasped as a sudden pain scissored up her forearm. When Palmer held it out in front of her, she could see he'd cut a long slice from elbow to wrist. Extended over the restraining wall, her blood began to drip into the moat
circling the exhibit. It wouldn't take long for the cats to pick up the scent.

  Nor would other predators miss it.

  Palmer chuckled.

  "Feeding time at the zoo."

  * * * *

  Blood. Human blood.

  From the way Gerard's eyes glittered in the gathering darkness, Nick knew he smelled it, too. But what his relative may not have picked up was a subtle nuance entwined with that intoxicating scent, that of Rae Borden's perfume.

  A low growl rippled up through Nick. Someone was going to pay dearly this night if any harm had come to Rae. He'd been against this plan, against thrusting her back into the jaws of danger. But he couldn't stop her from doing what she'd been trained to do, from what she was driven to do. All he could do was the best he could to see that she was safe.

  And so far, he wasn't doing a very good job.

  "Since we haven't heard from her, we'll have to assume they have her."

  Marchand's brutally blunt summation was a stake to the heart.

  "We don't know that for sure,” he argued softly, as if saying it could make it so.

  "No, we don't.” The Frenchman placed a reassuring hand upon his shoulder. “We can't afford to assume anything. And we can't let that blonde bitch escape us. Agreed?"

  The consensus was unanimous.

  "We'll separate here. We can cover more ground that way. I don't have to tell any of you that we're dealing with a clever and completely ruthless killer. Be careful."

  The four of them, Marchand, Nicole, Gerard and Nick split and swept down different paths in search of a demon and the human who might now be her captive. Nick didn't want to consider that possibility. Since his transition, he hadn't had a chance to give much thought to the future—or to a future for him and Rae, but he knew he didn't want her trapped in darkness the way he was now. He wanted her to have all her options open for a normal life, even if that meant a life without him in it.

  I want to grow old with you.

  Impossible now.

  She had to be alive, and he had to keep her safe from ... from those like him.