Master of Darkness

by Susan Sizemore

  “Then who is it up to?”

  Frank’s outrage did not bother her in the least. “I think the Clans do a pretty good job of policing the Tribes these days.” She jerked a thumb toward the building. “Let the Wolf guy handle this. The Clans don’t want to lose control of who gets the daylight drugs, Dawn is really their problem.”

  “Is that what Wolf told you? Is he the one causing you to quit?”

  Was Laurent the reason?

  Well, the fact that she was out here when she needed to be inside with him said something about her reasons.

  “Your ride’s here,” was all she said to Frank as the van pulled up behind the VW.

  He reached to open the door. “Just think about it a while longer before you make it official. Please?”

  “Ah, come on, don’t you want to take over running the op?”

  “Hell, no,” he answered. “My wife is pissed off enough about my not being home the last few days.”

  “See how hunting interferes with the important things in life?”

  He slammed the door.

  Once Frank was gone, Eden parked in the garage and rushed up to the apartment. She felt very little guilt about not telling the other hunters about Joe. Why get everybody all riled up and start another crusade against the werewolves?

  “Why don’t we all go out gracefully?” she muttered as she opened the apartment door.

  “What?” Laurent asked, turning from the computer desk as she came in.

  “Thinking out loud about the hunters,” she told him. “I see you’ve finally unpacked the famous laptop,” she said, peering past his shoulder.

  “Yeah.” He sounded downright bitter.

  There was a tenseness in the way he stood, and his eyes were hard, but she thought there was dark pain there as well. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Let me help.”

  The words were a catalyst for both of them. They met in the center of the room and shared a kiss that was so fierce and desperate it nearly overwhelmed her. She held him as tightly as she could, loving his hard male body, his heat and his scent. Desire rocketed through her as she soared on the way he tasted, the softness of his lips, the sharp danger of his teeth.

  She ran her hands down his back and over his buttocks. Tight little ass, she thought.

  His hand came up under her shirt, rubbing his palm over an already pebbled nipple.

  Within moments they were on the floor. Clothes were shed in a frantic rush. They came together in a mating frenzy fueled by desperation.

  This could be the last time she felt him inside her, filling her, completing her. The last time she wrapped her arms around the strong, straining muscles of his back, her thighs around his pumping hips. The last hot kiss. The last perfect explosion that sent pleasure beyond pleasure shuddering through her.

  It was over too quickly, a bittersweet coupling that left her with an aching satisfaction and longing for more.

  He gave her one last, swift kiss. Then he was up, getting dressed, leaving her feeling bereft, almost forgotten. A cold draft from the air-conditioning drifted across her bare, damp skin. It sent a jolt through her, like ghost fingers walking up her skin. Or someone walking across her grave.

  His back was to her when she got up. He was looking at his computer. She could tell from the way he stood, neck and shoulder muscles tight, that none of the tension had left him.

  It hadn’t left her, either.

  “What can I do to help?” she asked as she put her clothes back on.

  “Nothing.”

  Though she didn’t think either of them were talking about the computer, she asked, “You want me to break into it?”

  “No. Not anymore.”

  He sounded tired, defeated. She didn’t get it. “Will you please tell me what’s wrong?” She didn’t mean to sound quite so testy, but she’d never been fond of mysterious statements.

  “The sun has set.”

  This time she understood what he meant. A fist closed tightly around her heart. “You’re leaving.”

  “Time to move on.”

  Not just leaving for an evening round of vampire hunting, but leaving for good.

  “You’re quitting the op,” she accused the vampire. “Just like that.”

  She heard the outrage in her voice and inwardly laughed at her hypocrisy. Hadn’t she been about to tell him that she was quitting herself? She was tempted now to suggest they quit together, that they run off together.

  She wanted them to run off together.

  Maybe they could start a new life together, away from his people and hers. When she’d walked into the apartment she’d been unsure what she wanted of the future, other than to stop being a hunter. Suddenly she knew. She knew in her blood and her bones that she simply wanted to be with him. The revelation sang in her, and hurt her so much she could barely breathe. She didn’t know how to begin telling him.

  She was going to try to begin, but he turned to look at her and his eyes were blank. His expression was cold, closed. He was everything dangerous and deadly, pale, beautiful as the angel of death. Totally unapproachable.

  Wherever the Prime who’d talked to her, laughed with her, made love with her had gone she didn’t know, but a statue had taken his place.

  But the statue stared at her, caught her gaze, and, for a moment, he drank in her soul. Everything she felt for him poured out of her. He took it in, and gave nothing back. Yet when it was over and he walked out the door, she felt like she’d given him something more precious and sustaining than blood. And that the weak emptiness he left behind was worth it.

  This reaction only lasted a moment. Loss remained when she came back to her senses, but she was also completely pissed off.

  “You can’t walk out on me!” she shouted after him, and spun toward the door.

  She fully intended to go after Laurent, but her gaze raked across the desk as she turned. The laptop was gone, but her small cassette recorder sat suggestively next to where Laurent’s computer had rested. There was a yellow sticky note on top of it, and she went over to read it.

  It read, Play me.

  “I might be gone by the time you get back,” Laurent’s voice issued from the speaker. “I suppose I should say something like, we’ll always have Paris. And I’m leaving you a present. Remember when I interrogated Roswald? I got some information from him that I haven’t shared with you yet. If you must hunt down the Dawn makers and their distribution network, there’s a Gorgon named Hannibal hiding out in Del Mar you want to eliminate. Have a nice life. And doesn’t that sound stupid? Why do people always sound stupid on these things?”

  “Good question,” she replied as the taped voice ended.

  Eden looked around the mostly bare room, overwhelmed to numbness by the sense of utter defeat. Why’d he have to tell her this now, when she was ready to give up? When she wanted to give up!

  What was she supposed to do now?

  She wanted to go home, to her own kitchen and bedroom and stuff. She wanted a shower and fresh sheets and to spend the rest of her vacation bemoaning her losses and counting the cost before getting on with her life.

  She had a life beyond her hunter heritage. Thank God for that. Even if she had to break with her family over her choice, she had other things she could do. Even if Laurent Wolf played no part in that life.

  Woe is me, and all that.

  The point was, she’d been willing to face the pain of her first decision. Now Laurent had left her with another decision to make. He’d thrown the duty and honor stuff right back into her court.

  It looked like the Clan Prime was giving her the strength to see the duty and honor thing through to the end, even though he wasn’t going to be around to help out.

  And why was that?

  Maybe because he felt too much for her and had to walk away for her own good?

  Pathetic. God, she was pathetic.

  To alleviate her confused feelings, she put herself back into hero mode. �
�Do, don’t think” was not a bad way to put off coping with emotions.

  She listened to Laurent’s tape again, and not just for the sound of his voice.

  Hannibal of the Gorgons, eh? In Del Mar.

  Not a bad bit of real estate. The Tribes had certainly become upscale of late.

  Okay, the first thing to do was follow standard procedure and do a scouting run around the area to get a lay of the land. It was best to know the terrain you might have to fight on.

  Eden cleaned up and went out for a drive. She’d only gone a few blocks before she noticed the tail.

  “Damn.”

  She could drive like a pro and had a powerful engine under the hood, but the driver behind her was equally good, and driving something more than equal to her VW. She fervently wished she hadn’t taken the zapper back into the apartment, because a quick squirt of energy had already proved its usefulness. A cell phone call wouldn’t bring her team fast enough at this moment. And a mental cry for help to Laurent wouldn’t work, as she wasn’t psychic.

  On her own, she zigged and zagged around cars and corners and onto a tree-lined side street, but she was certain she’d been herded into a trap when a pair of vampires dropped from the trees onto the hood and roof of the small car.

  She swerved and braked hard in an effort to throw them off, but they clung with all their superhuman strength. She even heard one of them laugh at her efforts. Then a fist came through the windshield. A foot crashed through the window, hitting her hard in the shoulder.

  The next swerve was not intentional, and took the car into a tree. There was no airbag in the specialized vehicle. The seat belt not only saved her but slowed her down for a moment too long. The vampires grabbed her and dragged her from the car.

  One of them held her arms from behind, the other came up in front of her.

  “We meet again,” Roswald said, just before the Taser touched her chest.

  A hard hand over her mouth stifled her scream.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  It wasn’t—right.

  Laurent knew he was deliberately walking into a trap, but that wasn’t the kind of wrong his senses were registering. He’d been walking for quite some time, following the telepathic aura that was distinctly Justinian’s. The king vampire of the Manticore pack was deliberately keeping his mind open, calling Laurent to him.

  After all the trouble he’d gone to to hide his whereabouts from the hated elder Prime, Laurent thoroughly resented Justinian’s mental energy shining out like a beacon calling him home.

  It was a game to Justinian. All of Laurent’s life had been a game for Justinian’s pleasure.

  Laurent stopped to pull himself together. There was a bench nearby under a palm tree. He took a seat to think.

  He was no child. He was turning himself in to Justinian of his own free will. This time he had actually chosen to play the game.

  His choice. It would be important to remember that in the hours and nights to come.

  He took a deep breath and caught the scent of salt air moving on a faint western breeze. The touch of the air held the familiarity of Antonia’s caress on his cheek.

  That Antonia was alive, that she had a daughter, still stunned him. All his questions pressed like a crushing weight on him.

  Maybe he didn’t need to know.

  He’d never met this sister; he could leave her to her fate. The only person who would think less of him was himself. And Eden if she ever found out.

  She was good for him. So good that the effect was devastatingly bad for his survival instinct.

  To escape from all the junk filling his head Laurent made himself look around. It wasn’t just the breeze that was familiar. The houses lining the street were old, many with the carefully tended grass lawns that were so bad for the city’s desert environment. But real grass had been a popular status symbol here since—

  When?

  Belisarius pushed his face into the earth. The older, bigger cub’s knee pressed hard against his spine. The grass was sharp and spiky, wet from being recently watered. The fresh aromas of earth, water, and growing things did not make up for the pain and humiliation of having been caught outside the house again.

  Laurent stood up and turned slowly, taking everything in with all his senses—sharp vampire sight, hearing, smell, and the all-important psychic awareness. Echoes assaulted him, from a past mostly forgotten.

  He knew this place.

  And now he knew what wasn’t right; the neighborhood looked all wrong. Everything seemed so much smaller, so much older. Of course, it wasn’t so much that the neighborhood had shrunk, he’d just gotten a lot taller.

  Laurent’s lips lifted in a semblance of a smile, and he shook his head. He’d been to San Diego before as an adult, but this was the first time he realized that it was the place where he’d spent a good part of his childhood. Well, he’d spent a lot of time deliberately repressing memories. He couldn’t blame himself for having been successful.

  He shifted the computer case from one hand to the other, and squared his shoulders. He didn’t need Justinian’s beacon call anymore; he knew exactly which house to walk up to. He pushed all the memories bubbling up firmly back down as he did so.

  There were guards placed around the perimeter of the property, but no one approached Laurent as he walked up to the door. He didn’t bother to knock, but the door was opened for him.

  “Hey, Igor,” Laurent said to Justinian’s human slave. “Long time no see.”

  “It’s been two weeks,” the man answered. “And don’t call me Igor.”

  A proper Tribe Prime would cuff the mortal for showing such disrespect. “Guess I know where I am in the pecking order,” was Laurent’s response.

  “You’re keeping him waiting.” The slave turned and walked away.

  Laurent followed down a long hall, and up a staircase, fighting dread with each step. “The place hasn’t changed much, has it?” he commented, but got no answer.

  Then again, the mortal hadn’t been born the last time Laurent was in this house. Haunted house, he thought. He’d never encountered any real ghosts, but who needed them when memory served?

  Before he could get any more morbid, they reached an open door at the top of the stairs. It looked like Justinian had moved back into his old bedroom. The slave held out a hand for the case, but Laurent ignored him and walked inside. He already knew that Justinian was alone in the room. He hadn’t expected Justinian to look so much older. As Igor had pointed out, it had only been a couple of weeks.

  “Belisarius is dead,” Justinian said, as though in explanation. “You’re all I have left.”

  That was not the greeting Laurent had expected.

  Laurent put the laptop case on the floor and shoved it across the tile floor with his foot. “This is what you want.”

  Justinian was seated in a chair next to an unlit stone fireplace. The furniture was Stickley, but the arrogant attitude of the Manticore Prime made it seem like a throne.

  “Thank you for returning the Tribe’s property,” he said.

  “Not your property?”

  “Manticore is mine.”

  Laurent wasn’t going to argue with him, he didn’t care.

  “You came for the female,” Justinian said after silence dragged on for a while. “I knew you’d want a Wolf bitch. It’s in your blood.” He smiled, his eyes full of dark memories. “In our blood.”

  Laurent had never really wanted to kill him before now. He rubbed his tongue over emerging fangs, but kept the sharp points from showing.

  “She was found almost by accident,” Justinian went on. “Roaming the streets as though she had a right. And I thought, Laurent would like a pet. I knew I could use her to lure you back home—though it took you long enough to understand my message. Perhaps you were having too much fun toying with the mortal bitch.”

  “Home?” This time Laurent could not keep his contempt in check. He had no intention of discussing Eden, who was thankfully safely out of this.


  “You know I’ve never wanted you anywhere but at my side. But since I’ve given you a few decades to see the world, it’s time I called you back. You were eager enough to answer the call a few weeks ago.”

  “I was eager for the fortune you promised me.”

  “That isn’t the true reason you came at my call. You crave my approval.”

  “I—”

  Laurent wouldn’t let himself go on. Raving and ranting was no way to confront Justinian about the past. The way to survive was to figure out the game, and either play, or figure out a way to avoid playing. He hadn’t figured out this game yet. Justinian was acting like he was welcoming home a prodigal son. Was the old boy pretending to be feeling his years? For vampires were mortal, despite their long, long life spans. Was the scam to feign a sudden need for reconciliation to somehow gain Laurent’s loyalty?

  “Home?” Laurent repeated. “You’ve never acknowledged me, so how can your lair be my home?”

  Justinian laughed, and looked very pleased with himself. “I’m granting you mating privileges, exclusive rights. That’s a start.”

  Primes could have as many mortal females as they pleased, but usually only the king of the lair had rights to one of their own kind. Rights he shared sparingly with his favored offspring.

  Laurent let out a long, low whistle. “That is a generous gift,” he acknowledged. And this was no time to argue or show suspicion. “Show me the female.”

  “On one condition.”

  Laurent sneered. “Of course. It can’t be anything so simple as trading a female for the Patron’s wealth, can it?”

  “Belisarius is dead.”

  “We were both there when he died,” Laurent pointed out. “He lost the fight with the Reynard Clan Prime. If you’re going to ask me to avenge his death, we both know you can forget it. No love lost between Belisarius and me. And it was a fair combat over the Clan brat’s bondmate.”

  Justinian nodded solemnly. “A fair fight,” he agreed. “But I still lost my heir. I lost my second in command. I lost the acknowledged continuance of my bloodline. You are all I have left.”