Master of Darkness

by Susan Sizemore

  “Hey, we’re not that close cousins. Besides, we don’t know for sure if this guy’s for real.”

  Joe tapped the side of his nose. “Oh, yes, we do.” There were delicate gradations and variations of scent within a bloodline that showed relationships. Be it human, vampire, or their own kind, werewolves could sniff out kinship bonds. “This Prime is definitely Sid’s brother.”

  “Then why didn’t he know where Sid is? Why didn’t he care? Why didn’t Sid mention him to us?”

  All valid and good questions. Which didn’t stop Joe from being annoyed at them. “The guy was on the verge of killing me,” he admitted. “And walked out before I had time to ask.” He touched his throat. “He’s got issues. And I’ve got bruises.”

  “Over Lady Antonia?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe we’d better call her.”

  “And tell her what? That her oh-so-independent only daughter is still missing? I think I’d rather find Sid than confront her mother.”

  “Good point.”

  “And I’m not going to be the one to mention Laurent to her. That is not my place. You’re her nephew,” Joe pointed out.

  Daniel held up a hand and counted on his fingers. “Great-, great-, possibly great-nephew. Descended from a brother, and you know that relationships through the female line are more important in Clan culture.”

  “Coward.”

  “Yep.” Daniel went to Sid’s desk. “There’s something I’ve been thinking about trying.”

  “Wait a minute.” Joe looked around. “Cathy’s not in yet?”

  “She’s in,” Daniel answered, nodding toward the back of the building. “The full moon came a little early for her this month.”

  Joe concentrated with his were-senses. Her wolf presence was there, all right. Cathy was locked inside a morphed body and newmade’s madness for the next several days. Now another member of the crew was out of the loop, when they were all needed.

  “Blast and damn!” Then he looked worriedly at Daniel. “She didn’t—”

  “Cathy managed to lock herself away in time. No scratches or bites for me. Now, about my idea,” Daniel persisted. He picked up the glass paperweight from Sid’s desk. “You know this was Sid’s mom’s, right? Have you noticed how Sid touches it all the time?”

  “Yes. And yes. So?”

  “You know how Sid and I have been experimenting with techniques for me to be able to read present-day events from objects?”

  “I see where this is going, Daniel. You want to try to find Sid by ‘reading’ the ball.” Joe gestured at the object carefully cradled in Daniel’s hands. “What are you waiting for?”

  Not that Joe thought this would work, but he was willing to try anything. Besides, who was he to discourage his friend from trying to help? There was no doubt that Daniel could pick up accurate energy from the past. Maybe this time…

  Joe practically held his breath as he watched Daniel close his eyes and concentrate. His fair-complexioned friend grew paler and paler, and he sensed fear, and growing horror. After a few seconds, the paperweight rolled out of Daniel’s limp hands and landed heavily on Sid’s desk.

  “What did you see?” Joe asked anxiously.

  Daniel’s eyes were open, but he wasn’t seeing anything in the office. It took a few moments before he came back to the present and looked at Joe.

  “That thing’s still too full of Lady Antonia. I saw the days when—” He shook his head. “I’m not going there. I haven’t the right.” He took a deep breath. “Nothing about Sid. Sorry.” He fell wearily into the desk chair and looked at Joe with bleak eyes. “Now what do we do?”

  Good question. Time was a critical factor in a missing-persons case, and Sid had been missing since Friday. He had no leads, not even a sniff of one.

  But he did have one anomaly.

  “I guess that what I have to do is to accept that your opinion of Laurent’s presence in this not making sense makes sense.”

  “Huh?”

  “I’m going to load up on garlic spray, put on some shoes, and go have a talk with him.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  All Laurent had wanted for days was to have Eden and the laptop in the same place at the same time, long enough for her to unencrypt the information that he needed. At the moment he was once again alone in the apartment, wondering why his wishes never seemed to come true.

  Maybe if he’d put her to work last night instead of taking her to bed …

  He smiled at the memory of the pleasure, unable to work up the energy to castigate himself over that lapse in planning.

  But he did feel kind of…lonely without her being around. Since he’d spent much of his life as a loner and quite liking it, this was disturbing.

  He didn’t know when he’d decided to keep Eden, but now he knew he would. And he smiled at a decision that should have been alarming. But—why not Eden? Why not take her with him when he left town? He was going to start living the way he’d always wanted. Oh, sure, the fantasy had always included massive orgies with gaggles of ravishingly beautiful and completely interchangeable females. But now that sounded boring. The time when any woman would do was over. Irrevocably.

  “Damn,” he murmured, and tried to mind.

  But what formed in his head now wasn’t fantasy, it was a plan. She’d find the money for him, then they’d go somewhere exotic to live happily ever after, having all the sex and room service they ever wanted.

  It ought to be easy. They’d shared enough blood for him to be able to psychically dominate her if he wanted to. She’d fight it if he tried, of course, but a pack Prime was supposed to take pleasure in the taming. It was the Tribes’ way.

  It also sounded like a lot of work.

  Not that convincing her to stay with him of her own free will wouldn’t be work, but at least it would be interactive. He liked talking to this woman. It was a first, and probably a last, but it was the truth. They weren’t Ilsa and Rick, after all. She wasn’t going to let him make up her mind for her. But he looked forward to getting started, as soon as she returned.

  He’d been dozing when the phone rang earlier. Eden had been in the living room. By the time he’d gotten out of bed she was already out the door. Off pursuing bad vampires no doubt.

  May she be successful, and hurry home soon.

  He became aware of footsteps in the hallway and recognized the mental signature of the person approaching. It wasn’t mortal.

  He went to the door and opened it as the werewolf raised his hand to knock. “What do you want?”

  Joe glanced up and down the hall. “Privacy to talk,” he answered.

  Joe could have completely blown his cover last night; instead he’d said some crazy things. Things Laurent didn’t want to be curious about, but couldn’t help but be.

  He stepped back and let Joe inside.

  “I waited until your girlfriend left,” Joe told him.

  “So we could exchange confidences without little mortal ears hearing too much,” Laurent guessed. “You should have thought about that last night.”

  “I was in a hurry then,” Joe said. “I’m not one for telepathy, and I don’t know sign language. I’m sorry she found out things hunters shouldn’t know, especially about my kind, but it couldn’t be helped.” He glanced toward the kitchen. “Can I have some coffee?”

  “Help yourself.”

  Laurent sat in the living room and waited for Joe to join him, wondering if he was going to have to kill the werewolf. He could do it quickly and efficiently. Eden might even applaud him for taking out a bad guy.

  Killing wasn’t his preferred option, but he’d keep the possibility open.

  “What are we talking about?” he asked when Joe came out of the kitchen, mug in hand.

  Joe leaned against a wall and took a sip of coffee before he looked Laurent in the eye. “Last Friday afternoon Sidonie Wolf took a telephone call from one of the neutral go-betweens that keep the hunters and the clans loosely in contact. Sid was a
sked to pass information about a Prime hooking up with a hunter, for a reason she did not tell me.

  “She did tell me that she was tempted to go to this meeting herself. She said that an experienced private investigator like herself, who dealt with humans on a regular basis and didn’t have any personal grudges against the hunters, would be useful on this sort of joint operation.

  “I did not think this was a good idea, but I didn’t argue with her. I checked up on the meeting and tracked down the hunter who was working with a vampire Prime. I was satisfied that Sid had passed the info to her clan, and that all was well. Because of your distinctive Wolf Clan scent markers, I assumed that you were there for Sid.”

  “Your nose needs a tune-up,” Laurent scoffed.

  “Yesterday morning, Sid’s mother called to tell me that Sid didn’t come home over the weekend.” Joe’s expression became stern, as did his voice. “Your mother asked me to look for your sister.”

  Laurent rose in one furious, fluid move. His heart raced, and blood red tinted his vision. “Get out.”

  Joe didn’t move. He didn’t break eye contact or show any sign of fear. Brave, or stupid? Definitely deranged.

  After a long, tense silence, Joe said, “You’re clueless, aren’t you?”

  “I’m Tribe,” Laurent said at last. Since he was going to kill the werewolf, he might as well admit it. “We don’t have mothers.”

  “Antonia would disagree.”

  “She’s dead.”

  It should not hurt so much to say it.

  Joe carefully took a cell phone out of his pocket and held it out. “I have her on speed dial, if you’d like to find out differently.”

  Laurent had knocked the small phone out of Joe’s hand before he even noticed that he’d moved. He left a line of blood from his claws across the werewolf’s palm, and the sight and scent of it was like a balm.

  “Bad joke,” he told Joe.

  “I take it you don’t want to call her right now?”

  Laurent turned his back on the werewolf. He didn’t know why he was fighting the urge to kill the bastard.

  “I’m guessing that I know more about you than you know about yourself.”

  Laurent whirled back to face the werewolf, barely any control left. “Get out before I kill you.”

  Joe stood his ground. “Kill me, and you’ll never find out the truth.”

  “I don’t want to know the truth.”

  Joe instantly seized on this. “Ah, ha! You’re psychic enough to know that I’m not lying. Sid is your sister. I need you to help find her. How’d you end up working with the hunters instead of her? Did she contact you?”

  Laurent shrugged. “It was a coincidence. I just ended up where she was supposed to be.”

  “There are no coincidences in the psychic world. Maybe you heard her call for help? Blood is thicker than water. You would know that, being what you are.”

  “A Manticore.”

  “A Prime of the Wolf Clan.”

  Laurent couldn’t help but laugh. “I don’t think so.” The devils wouldn’t have him; why would he want to sing with the angels?

  “Like I said, I know more about you than you do. I know that your sister has spent her entire life looking for you. That’s the main reason she works for a missing-persons PI firm,” Joe said.

  He couldn’t have a sister. It wasn’t possible. But the werewolf clearly believed he did. “What are you expecting from me, dog meat? I am not interested in this Sidonie female. Or in the hunters’ operation.”

  “Then what are you doing here?”

  “I’m a Tribe boy; I’m in it for myself. I don’t know what happened to your friend, and I don’t care.”

  Yet a voice inside his head was begging, Ask him, ask him, ask him! It was the voice of a child, and he told it to shut up.

  “Sure, all you care about is yourself.”

  Joe didn’t sound like he believed him. Laurent couldn’t imagine where Joe got the notion that he had a nobler side.

  “And money,” Laurent added. “I care a great deal about having a lot of money.”

  “You could get a job.”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  There weren’t a lot of career choices open to his sort. Pimping was traditional among Manticores. Hydras were thugs. Dragons specialized in assassination. Etc., etc., etc. None of the classically criminal enterprises of the Tribes had ever appealed to him.

  “You have to have a clue,” Joe persisted. “Your presence has to be connected to Sid’s being missing. I do not believe it’s a coincidence.”

  “Believe what you want, but stop wasting your time with me,” Laurent told the werewolf. “Leave me out of it. I don’t care.”

  “Is that what I’m supposed to tell your mother?”

  It was getting harder to keep his fangs and claws sheathed. “It’s a pity werewolf blood isn’t particularly palatable.”

  “You’re not going to help?”

  “I think that’s obvious by now.”

  Joe gave him a disgusted look. The contempt almost boiled off him. “Tribe.”

  It was a curse, a conclusion. The truth.

  What was worse was the flash of pity he read from the werewolf. Hatred he didn’t mind, but he didn’t deserve this. He was what life had made him, as Justinian had molded him. He was selfish, lazy, self-serving—a survivor, most of all.

  Laurent stood back, crossed his arms, and waited. It didn’t take the werewolf long to take the hint. But after Joe was gone, the things he’d said lingered in Laurent’s mind.

  Your mother asked me to look for your sister.

  That, above all else, did not make sense. The two words burned like the lava Eden was so fond of. Mother. Sister.

  Your sister has spent her entire life looking for you.

  Everything went dark around him, thoughts eclipsed by pain. He didn’t know how long it was before he realized that his hand covered his eyes. And he didn’t know when he’d dropped onto his knees.

  How could a few simple words affect him so strongly? They were just words. Stupid female words at that. Mother. Sister. Those weren’t Tribe concepts. Females were nothing, property to be bought, sold, claimed, traded. They were status symbols at best, and sources of profit.

  He’d spent too much time around the Shagal and Reynard Clans lately. The contact must have softened him up to the alien concept of females having importance. And pretending to be a Clan Prime had only made it worse. He’d gotten too far into the act.

  And Eden—Eden had taken advantage of his weakened condition. And not even on purpose. Females were insidious that way. But he still wanted Eden. More than anything in the world, he wanted Eden.

  Laurent scrubbed his hands across his face and shook his head to clear it. It was better to forget the last hour or so had even happened.

  As he got to his feet, he muttered, “Now, where was I?”

  Ah, yes, waiting for Eden to come back so he could run off and live happily ever after with her.

  Then the memory of fighting a Manticore a few nights ago hit him a fresh blow.

  “He offers an exchange of property.”

  “Justinian has nothing I want.”

  “He says you will—once you think about the cravings you share.”

  It had made no sense at the time, and Laurent didn’t want it to make sense now. Because if the message meant what he thought …

  No, Justinian couldn’t possibly be that much of a master manipulator. He could not be that in control of the situation.

  Though Justinian did have a strong streak of prescience. Oh, yes, he could see the future sometimes—or maybe it was more accurate to say that he was very good at arranging it. At least when it came to his own survival.

  Laurent had something Justinian wanted; something that would give Laurent his freedom. Justinian couldn’t allow that, so he’d taken something Laurent wanted, something—someone—Laurent hadn’t even known existed, then made sure Laurent knew about it.

&n
bsp; Everything Joe had said was all true—the mother, the sister who’d been hunting for him all her life.

  It was all a setup.

  “Twist the knife a little more, you bastard.”

  The question was, what was he going to do about it?

  Chapter Twenty

  “I quit.”

  Her cousin Frank gave Eden a confused look. “You mean, after the op is over?”

  “No. I mean I quit right now.”

  They were sitting in her car outside the safe house after spending all day driving around tailing a vampire that was acting “strangely.” They’d trailed him in the hopes he’d lead them to his Dawn dealer. No luck there.

  He hadn’t attacked anyone, hadn’t done anything even vaguely aggressive. He’d smiled a lot, mostly while looking up at the clear blue sky. He’d gotten a sunburn. So the only person who’d actually suffered was him.

  Watching him, Eden had become more and more agitated. And not at the vampire.

  “This is ridiculous, Frankie. Out in the real world you’re a cop—do you see any probable cause for what we’re doing?”

  “Vampires don’t have civil rights, Eden.”

  “Why not?”

  Frank looked out the windshield for a few moments. “They don’t pay taxes?”

  “I bet they do—at least the Clans and Families.”

  “Yeah. I guess. Anyway, you can’t just quit being a hunter. Not in the middle of an assignment.”

  “Most hunters have quit. As of right now, I’m one of them. The assignment’s stupid.”

  “People have been attacked!”

  “Someone was being chased. No one actually got attacked. Except for me and the Clan guy working with us.”

  “I thought you said the Hydras have a hit out on you?”

  “They won’t if I stop interfering with their business.”

  “So you’re running scared.”

  “Damn right. But that’s not why I’m quitting. I believe in honor and duty and all that, but I’m feeling like an idiot and a murderer. Well, not a murderer, exactly, but people—”

  “Vampires.”

  “—are dead because of my actions. I’m not saying that vampires don’t need to die sometimes. I no longer think that it’s up to me to do it.”