Master of Darkness

by Susan Sizemore

“I don’t know why I’m doing this,” she said as she drove to an empty parking space.

  She reached over and scratched between his ears. He leaned into her touch, not only to continue reassuring her that he was safe, but because it felt really good.

  When she took some bags out of the back seat and got out of the car, he jumped out behind her. He trotted beside her into the elevator.

  “I hope you aren’t a barker,” she said when the door closed. “Because we aren’t supposed to have animals in the building. I mean, having a vampire in residence is bad enough, but the neighbors would really complain about a dog—except that you aren’t a dog, are you? I know a wolf when I see one. After looking at you for a while, that is.”

  Okay, first off, she talked to animals. A lot of people did that, so it wasn’t too strange that she was holding a one-sided conversation with him. Secondly, she took him for a wolf, and wasn’t in the least bit afraid. Why?

  He nudged her thigh, and she understood it for a question.

  “Sid’s from the Wolf Clan.” She rubbed his head again. “So I guess that’s who you belong to, right, Joe?”

  Belong? His head came up, but he managed not to snarl at the woman. And in a way, she was sort of right. Long ago in the bad old days, when humans hunted them regularly, the Clans and the werefolk had made an alliance to help and protect each other. This had come to be known as the Affiliation, and werewolves naturally tended to run with the Wolf Clan. Which was one reason Sid was his partner.

  When they reached the apartment, he wasn’t sure what to do. He already knew the vampire was gone. And he wasn’t going to morph back to human form in front of someone he didn’t yet trust, simply for the sake of holding a proper conversation. But he wanted to find out what his nose could tell him.

  So he followed her in and let her shut the door, though it gave him the feeling of being caged.

  She put her bags down and called, “Wolf!”

  Of course there was no answer. Joe found it odd that humans couldn’t tell when they were alone. It was sheer numbers that made them kings of the world, because most of them didn’t have any useful senses to write home about.

  “Wolf?”

  The small living room held a computer setup that looked like it could be used to control missions to Mars. She picked up a pad of yellow paper that had been left on the desk chair.

  “Looks like he left me a note.” She glanced at it and chuckled. “It says he wasn’t going to leave a note, but decided not to worry me.”

  She sounded charmed, and her body chemistry changed subtly in response to thinking about the vampire. So you’re turned on by this Wolf, Joe thought. But what does the note say? Any mention of Sid?

  Her cell phone rang, and she put down the pad to answer it. “Wolf? What’s that noise?”

  “I could use a little help, sweetheart,” Joe heard the vampire answer.

  “On my way. Where are you?”

  “About three blocks west of the alley where we first met. On a warehouse roof.”

  “Stay put. Should I bring Joe?”

  “Let’s leave the team out of it. Hold on.” There was a whoosh sound, then a shout. “I like this crossbow. Come alone. Hurry.”

  “Stay,” the woman ordered Joe. She snatched a piece of equipment off the desk and left.

  Once she was out the door, he morphed back to human form. “You kids have fun,” he murmured, and flexed his fingers. It was good to have thumbs again. He scratched his chest, yawned, and proceeded to have a thorough look around the apartment.

  He was intrigued when he found the small tape recorder on the desk. He was even more intrigued when he rewound it and began to listen.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Laurent jumped off the roof as the VW pulled up to the curb. His ankles twinged a bit when he landed on the hard concrete but he was otherwise fine, as it was only a three-story drop.

  Fine was not a word that could be used for the two Manticore Primes he’d left with hawthorn wood arrows sticking out of their chests up on the flat roof of the building. Why wouldn’t they just leave him alone?

  Oh, yeah, the computer.

  He pulled open the passenger door and tossed the laptop case into the back seat.

  At last! He had the computer, retrieved from its hiding space in the aerospace museum. He was going to be rich! Even better, he was going to be free.

  Laurent slid in beside Eden and grabbed her for a hard kiss. The taste of her sent his blood zinging, adding to his excitement.

  “What took you so long?”

  “Traffic.”

  “Thanks for the pickup.” He threw his head back and cackled with glee. “Drive, my beauty. Drive.”

  She gave him a quick, worried look. “You feeling all right?”

  He patted her knee, then stroked farther up her shapely thigh. Her skin was warm, wonderful. “I’ve never felt better in my life. And you feel damn good yourself.”

  She squirmed under his touch. “You’re distracting me.”

  “You want to pull over and fool around?”

  She laughed, but her attention was on the rearview mirror.

  Laurent sighed. He didn’t have to look. He could feel them. “We’re being followed.” He closed his eyes and concentrated. After a few moments, he said, “Hydras this time. The Manticores want me; the Hydras want you. We’re a very popular couple.”

  “In all the wrong circles.” She gently pushed his hand away from her thigh. “It’s enough to make a girl want to stay home, with the zapper on and the covers pulled up over her head.”

  “Not you,” he said, and put his hand on her shoulder this time. “You live for action, adventure, all that hunter stuff.”

  “And you are Prime,” she answered, mockingly sententious. “Born to save the world.”

  “Whether it wants to be saved or not.”

  They shared a sardonic look and a moment of perfect understanding.

  Then he remembered that he wasn’t really a Prime of Clan Wolf. So the moment was a lie. And the lie twisted like a knife in his heart.

  Weird.

  Laurent forced the pain away, but not before she noticed the change in him.

  “What’s the matter? Are you hurt?”

  Her concern didn’t help, so he concentrated on the situation.

  “What shall we do about your Hydras?”

  “Track them down to their lair and destroy them utterly?” she suggested brightly.

  “That could be fun,” he agreed. “But I meant the ones behind us.”

  “Lair’s a silly word, isn’t it?” she added.

  “Right now I’d like to get back to ours. This could be a problem, since they have a telepathic fix on us.”

  “I was thinking about that,” she answered. She jerked a thumb toward the back seat. “We can be rid of them, if you don’t mind having a brief headache.”

  He glanced behind her. The zapper was resting next to his precious laptop.

  “It’s not hooked to a power source,” he tried hopefully.

  “It runs on batteries as well as current.”

  Great, the hunters had a portable anti-vampire weapon. “I hate we’ve all gone so high-tech,” he complained. “What happened to using our wits?”

  “You mean your superior speed and strength against our primitive weapons?”

  “And cunning,” he added. “We all used to use cunning.”

  “Quit stalling. I can spend the rest of the night trying to outrun these guys, or we can disorient them and head back to base.”

  He sighed. He wanted to see what was in the laptop. “Okay, we’ll use the zapper. But if I go psycho violent on your ass, it’s your fault.”

  “You won’t.”

  She sounded way too confident, way too trusting. “I might,” he warned her.

  “You’ll have to work the controls,” she told him. “There’s a timer control, so you can send out a brief pulse. We’ve never tried using it this way. In fact, we weren’t sure it would actu
ally work until—”

  “You tortured me with it?”

  “Oh, don’t be such a baby. It’s meant to blank out telepathy, not hurt anybody.”

  He let it go, and pulled the zapper into his lap.

  Headlights were coming up fast behind them now.

  “I think they’re going to ram us.” Eden’s foot pressed down on the accelerator, and her tricked-out little Volkswagen flew down the street. She gained a block on their pursuers in a few seconds, and barely made it through a changing light at a busy intersection as it went from yellow to red. “That won’t hold them for long,” she told him. “Hurry up and figure out the controls. Set it for ten seconds. No, twenty.”

  He studied the zapper. “Got it.”

  She slowed the car to let the vampires get closer. “Go.”

  He pressed a button.

  Blinding pain roared through his head. The crash of metal screamed in his ears, while a scream of agony tore from his throat. He had to get away. Had to escape.

  Had to.

  He had no control over his claws, or his fangs, or his muscles.

  The pain—

  “Now, that didn’t hurt too much, did it?”

  Laurent became slowly aware of the night, of the shredded upholstery, of his claws still buried in the dashboard, of the machine that was now lying heavily on his feet. He became aware of his ragged breathing, his rapid heartbeat, and the ringing in his ears.

  He finally became aware of the absence of pain.

  Mostly he became aware of how worried Eden was, despite her flippant question, and how sorry. But she wasn’t scared of him. He’d just vamped out in a completely uncontrolled fashion, and she trusted him not to hurt her!

  Her trust twisted like a double blade in his heart.

  He slowly took his hands away from the dashboard and retracted his claws and fangs.

  “Did it work?” he asked her.

  “Yeah.” She glanced in the rearview mirror. “The Hydra driver’s reaction caused a five-car pileup. I hope nobody was hurt.”

  “At least nobody human.” He put back his head and closed his eyes. He desperately needed to rest.

  “I left Joe at the apartment,” she said as he started to drift off. “Was that okay?”

  He didn’t like the idea of another hunter at the safe house, but he wasn’t up to complaining about it. “Fine,” he mumbled, and drifted off while she drove.

  “Hey, Joe, we’re home,” Eden called as they came in the door. She seemed puzzled when she didn’t get an instant response. “Where are you, Joe?”

  Laurent rather hoped that this Joe person had left.

  She walked into the middle of the living room. “He couldn’t have gotten out.” Then she smiled. “I bet he’s sleeping on one of the beds.”

  Laurent didn’t sense another human, but there was—something.

  “I picked up some fresh clothes for you,” Eden said, and pointed toward a pile of bags on the floor.

  “Thanks,” Laurent answered absently. He was impatient to put Eden to work on the laptop, but there was no way he was letting it be hacked into while they had company.

  The something he sensed was psychic, but the shielded mental impression he got didn’t feel vampire. Plenty of the hunters had psychic gifts; this Joe was likely one of them.

  Laurent opened the coat closet by the door and tucked the laptop case behind boxes of equipment. It wasn’t an ideal hiding place, but it would have to do for now. When he turned around, he glanced at the shopping bags. He was rather touched that Eden had been so thoughtful. Pity the bags were empty.

  “I guess Joe must have needed a change of clothes.”

  She laughed, and glanced up from reading her e-mail. “Right. Just tell me he isn’t the type who likes to chew up shoes or anything.”

  “Not as far as I know.”

  Her comments piqued his curiosity even more. There was something about this Joe’s mental signature that was starting to tickle his memory. Something that reminded him of some of the folk who hung out at the other bar he frequented in Los Angeles. There was a group of loud, boisterous, biker types who came in sometimes, led by a fellow named Shaggy. And he was a—

  “Why don’t you go check on Joe?”

  “I think I will.”

  Eden’s attention was very much on her computer. Laurent was glad of this as he walked down the hall to confront the werewolf lurking in his bedroom.

  The male impatiently watching the door was barefoot and wearing what Laurent guessed were his new jeans and blue shirt.

  “Hello, Joe,” Laurent said.

  “Hello, Wolf,” Joe answered, coming smoothly to his feet.

  While they had the same build, Joe was an inch or so taller, a little leaner. His attitude was neutral, but with a strong dose of curiosity.

  “I didn’t know werefolk worked with the hunters,” Laurent said.

  “You know damn well we don’t,” was the reply. Joe got to the point. “Where’s Sid?”

  So, he’d been caught out at last. Or had he? The werewolf thought his name was Wolf. Laurent decided to bluff. “Right here.”

  Joe looked him up and down and took a few deep breaths. “You look like a Wolf,” he said. “You smell like a Wolf. But you’re not Sid Wolf.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  Joe took a step closer, an alpha-to-Prime gesture. “For one thing, Sid’s my partner. And more importantly, Sid’s a girl.”

  Sid was a girl? What sort of name was Sid for a female?

  “Just checking to make sure you really know her,” Laurent lied smoothly. “Why’s she called Sid, anyway?”

  “It’s short for Sidonie,” Joe replied, with just a hint of suspicion.

  “And you are her—partner?”

  “We work together.”

  Laurent didn’t miss the slight affront in the werewolf’s voice. He held up a hand. “I wasn’t suggesting—”

  “You better not be.”

  Werefolk were notoriously touchy about even a hint that they might be fooling around with any species but their own.

  “She’s my best friend,” Joe went on. “Which is why I’m asking you where she is.”

  “I have no idea,” Laurent said truthfully.

  “She didn’t tell you where she’d be after she turned this case over to you?”

  “She’s—an independent female.”

  Or so Laurent gathered from Joe’s comments. He didn’t know why Clan Wolf would allow one of their precious females out of the house, but if they chose to let their breeding stock roam free, that wasn’t his problem. It might actually help him to continue his masquerade for as long as he needed to get Eden to do the work for him.

  What he needed right now was to pacify Joe, and somehow hustle the pup out before Eden took any notice.

  The werewolf was not at all happy. “She didn’t come home this weekend. Her mom’s worried. I’m beginning to worry.”

  “She’s a vampire,” Laurent pointed out. “Dangerous by nature—even if she is a girl.”

  “I know you’ve been passing yourself off as Sid, which isn’t such a bad idea—”

  “How do you know that? And why isn’t it a bad idea?”

  “I listened to your girlfriend’s taped mission reports, where she keeps referring to you as Sid Wolf. When dealing with humans, disinformation is not a bad thing. Especially when they’re hanging out with hunters. But I’d like to know your real name.”

  “Laurent,” he answered without thinking. He cursed himself for not coming up with an instant alias, something that sounded more like a Clan boy moniker.

  The shock that surged through Joe sent Laurent back a step.

  “What?” he demanded.

  The werewolf stared at him intently for a few moments, taking long, deep breaths. “Yeah,” he said at last. “You’re Laurent.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Eden ran a hand through her short hair. Now that the adrenaline rush from earlier in the evening
had worn off, she was pretty much running on empty. But she still had the energy to smile fondly at the memory of Wolf kissing her when he got in the car.

  She wanted to call him back to her for another kiss when he went into the bedroom, but made herself stay at the computer. She had to keep distance, perspective.

  She managed to concentrate on her e-mail for a while, but eventually the low murmur of conversation from the bedroom caught her attention.

  It was several more seconds before she thought, Conversation?

  Wolf had gone into the bedroom to check on his pet wolf. Who was he talking to? More importantly, who was talking back?

  The most logical explanation was that the voices were coming from a radio. But logic really didn’t come into the picture when dealing with the supernatural.

  Eden got up and walked to the bedroom as silently as she could, then put her ear to the door. She considered it gathering intelligence. One of the voices definitely belonged to her vampire lover. She did not recognize the other male voice, who said:

  “…she keeps referring to you as Sid Wolf. When dealing with humans, disinformation is not a bad thing. Especially when associating with hunters. But I’d like to know your real name.”

  “Laurent.” A pause. “What?”

  Another pause. “Yeah. You’re Laurent.”

  “What the hell is going on here?”

  Laurent whirled to face Eden, who was standing in the doorway, quivering with fury. He wasn’t surprised to see her, or at her outrage. Or her question. But he wasn’t at all happy with her timing. He was grateful that she didn’t seem to be carrying a weapon.

  “Not now, sweethear—”

  “Who are you?” She was glaring over his shoulder. Then her furious gaze came back to him. “Who are you?”

  “He’s Laurent Wolf,” Joe answered for him.

  Her attention swung back to Joe. “How did you get in here?”

  Hearing himself named Laurent Wolf made Laurent cringe. It made dark things buried deep inside him clamor for his attention, claw to get out. That name didn’t belong to him, even though the Clans were matrilineal. He didn’t have a name. Not even Laurent of the Manticore had ever been officially bestowed on him.

  “You let me in,” Joe said. “Don’t you remember?”