Standing in front of him, it was still hard to believe Thorne was a nightwalker. Without the slight flow of power leaking from his body, I would have said he was only a sad, thin human. He looked like someone had animated a skeleton and then carelessly thrown a draping of skin over his bones so that they would hold together. His flesh was almost a powdery white, nearly matching the bleach-blond hair that stuck out in all directions on his head. He wore a pair of skintight leather pants that only accentuated his thinness. His chest was bare, revealing every rib and bone.
He wasn’t even bothering to breathe. Any other human would have been winded after singing a full set, but he didn’t even pretend, and the people around him didn’t question it. It was like momentarily slipping into someone else’s dream. A vampire sat, open about what he was, and no one noticed or cared.
On the other hand, Tristan was what I’d come to expect a nightwalker to be. He appeared to have barely escaped his teens when he was reborn. His dark brown hair hung down to brush against his thin shoulders and his pale blue eyes watched the crowd, but his gaze seemed distant, as if his thoughts were somewhere else. He was nicely dressed in Hugo Boss, Ralph Lauren, even a little Armani, in the luxury Sadira swathed herself and those around her. Looking at him, I wondered if I’d had the same grim and unyielding appearance near the end of my first century.
“Bugger off,” snapped one of the band members. My eyes never left Thorne, who had yet to notice me. He was too busy whispering sexual promises to the pink-haired girl sitting next to him. Tristan had looked up and was closely watching me, but no expression had yet to appear on his handsome face.
“Are you Thorne?” I demanded, preferring to ignore everyone else.
The nightwalker reluctantly pulled away from the woman and looked up at me. A broad smile lit his face, revealing his fangs again, as his eyes slid down the length of my body. “For you, I can be anybody,” he said in a thick, cockney accent.
The line would have been far more effective delivered by the likes of Pierce Brosnan or even with a lovely Scottish burr, like Sean Connery’s. From Thorne it was just pathetic.
“Are you Thorne, child of Tabor?” I demanded. That definitely caught his attention. He stared at my face, his eyes narrowing as he concentrated. There was a faint surge of power from him for only a second before his eyes widened.
“Bloody hell, another vampire!” He laughed, throwing his head back. Everyone at the table looked at me in a new light, questioning. They were weighing me, wondering what Thorne had meant. The tension around the table grew slightly, but not enough to indicate any real concern. The bassist narrowed his gaze on me then looked over at another band member, trying to decide if they should be worried. To them, I was another imposter.
“We need to talk,” I said over his laughter. “Now.”
“As you can see, I’m a mite busy.” Lounging insolently in the booth, he linked his hands behind his head and stretched out his legs beneath the table. The pink-haired woman in the ripped white T-shirt leaned over and placed her head against his chest, wrapping her arms possessively around his waist. She shot me a dark, warning look. I wanted to laugh. How could I want some toothpick when I had Danaus hovering in the shadows? Of course, my “plaything” could boil my insides with a thought. But that play date would come only if we survived the next few days.
“Send them away.”
“Who the hell do you think you are, you damn wanker?” he demanded, sitting up.
I leaned forward, slamming my hands down on the dirty tabletop with enough force to rattle the pints of beer. The amber liquid sloshed a bit on the table and everyone jumped backward. “I am Mira, and your better.” He jerked back suddenly, his heels digging into the floor as he half stood. He was trapped between the booth and the table, looking like he was about to start climbing the wall to get away from me.
“Fire Starter,” Tristan whispered in a tone that sounded a touch too much like awe. His eyes widened and his pale lips parted slightly as he stared at me with new interest. I ignored him for the moment. My main concern was that I now had Thorne’s attention.
“My reputation precedes me,” I said tightly. “Get rid of them before I throw your bony ass through the wall.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” he snickered, his eyes darting off toward the huge crowded that danced and screamed behind us. Sticking to the creed of remaining in the shadows would not include throwing a person through a brick wall, but what Thorne didn’t know was that I had a penchant for pushing the limits of the shadow dance we maintained.
“She’ll do it,” Tristan said evenly, his wide eyes never leaving my face.
Thorne hesitated a moment, staring at me through narrowed, beady eyes. “Get out of here,” he grumbled in a low voice. I glared at him, resisting the urge to grab for his throat when he looked over at his companions. “Get out of here!” he repeated. He gave the woman at his side a hard shove, sending two people to the floor. The others scrambled out of the booth, grabbing their drinks as they pushed their way into the crowd.
Eighteen
I slid into the seat to Thorne’s left while Danaus walked around the booth and sat across from me, trapping Thorne and Tristan between us. The faded maroon plastic seat sagged in certain places and had been mended more than once with silver duct tape. The music spun by the DJ crowded the dance floor with scantily clad people. It was a good turnout and would have been a nice place to spend a few entertaining hours if I wasn’t already previously engaged.
Thorne stared at Danaus for a long time, his eyes pinched and narrowed. He sniffed the air, then jumped backward, hissing. He tried to stand in the booth, but I grabbed his arm and jerked him back down.
“I know your smell. You’re the hunter.” His voice was choked as he slid closer, his haunted gaze then slamming back, confusion twisting his features into an ugly knot as he picked up Danaus’s scent on me. “But…why are you traveling with him?”
“Not your concern,” I said, but the sound came out sounding more like a growl than actual words. “Why didn’t you try to protect Tabor when he was attacked? Wasn’t that your job?”
“I wasn’t there,” he said, wrenching his arm out of my grasp. He picked up the mug of beer in front of him and emptied the contents before slamming it back on the table. It was sort of strange. He didn’t expend the energy to breathe but would use the energy to digest alcohol. As far as I knew, no vampire could digest solid food, but we could do liquids. Unfortunately, no amount of alcohol would intoxicate us, but drinking the blood of a drunk human would give you a nice though extremely temporary buzz. Intoxication for nightwalkers had nothing to do with alcohol.
“Where were you?” I laid my hand on the table, then quickly lifted it in disgust when I discovered that the surface was covered in a sticky film.
“I was on loan.” The right corner of his lips twitched as if in a suppressed smile. I nodded, while Danaus stared hard at me, expectant.
“I’m always surprised at how little you know,” I said, setting my hands back in my lap. “It is a common practice among nightwalkers to loan out their pets to others of similar strength. It’s called being polite.”
“And they let themselves be used like that?” There was a curl to his lip as he spoke in distaste. Resting on the table, his left hand tightened into a fist.
“You make it sound like we have a choice,” Tristan softly interjected.
A sharp, bitter laugh escaped before I could clip its wings. “When you are young and weak, you go where you are told and do what you are told. If you’re lucky, you survive the encounter and return to your maker.”
“And if you are killed while you were on loan?” Danaus’s hard blues never wavered from my face.
“Then your maker gets to kill one of the other vampire’s pets. A fair trade,” Thorne said with an indifferent shrug.
“Why? Why do this?” Even as Danaus shook his head, his gaze still never left my face. He watched me closely, as if seeing me or my kind for th
e first time. I think whatever little bit of respect I had earned was dying before my eyes.
“Why else?” My laughter spiked higher, trying to hide an unexpected stab of pain and embarrassment. “Pleasure and entertainment.” It was time Danaus understood us a little better; the good and the bad.
I looked over to Thorne, who was staring out at the crowd, dancing to the music. His gaze was distant, a smile teasing at his thin lips. His thoughts were lost to another place and time.
“Who did you go to? Claudette?” I prodded. She had a reputation for sampling the children of the Ancients. I’d had the pleasure of visiting with her once. Luckily, it was a brief visit.
“Macaire.” Thorne blinked twice as if trying to free his thoughts of some old memories. “I was sent to help break in his newest Companion.” A smile blossomed on his thin, angular face, his fangs poking a little against his lower lip.
“Lucas is a fool,” I muttered under my breath.
“True,” he chuckled. Thorne stretched out his legs again, toying with a stray bottle cap on the tabletop. “He won’t survive long. He thinks too much on his own.”
It was a sad but true thought. Good servants did exactly what they were told and nothing more. You start thinking and trying to predict the needs of your master, and you’d get crushed when you made a mistake.
“Of course, Tabor said the same of you,” he continued.
My eyes jerked back to his face but I kept my expression blank. “That I think too much?”
“No, that you wouldn’t survive.” Thorne’s brown eyes seemed to dance with malicious glee for a second in the faint undulating light. “He said that without Jabari, the Coven would have killed you centuries ago.”
I had suspected this for a while, but to actually hear the words sent a chill down my spine. “I’m no threat to the Coven.” I tried to sound as if none of this made any difference to me.
“So you say, but Tabor is dead and a seat is still open on the Coven. I may be in London, but even I hear the occasional whispered thought or rumor.” He leaned forward, his chest nearly brushing the edge of the table. “Everyone is watching, waiting for you to make your move.”
Sitting up in the booth so my nose was mere inches from Thorne’s, I tightly gripped the edge of the table for balance. “Well, tell everyone that I don’t want it.”
“No, you just want the colonies.” He snickered, flopping back against the booth, his amusement unbroken. He elbowed Tristan once in the ribs, flashing him a wide grin that the other nightwalker didn’t return.
The colonies had become the last refuge for my kind. The Coven and the Ancients dominated Europe, Asia, and even down into Africa. South America had been abandoned by nightwalkers because of what happened at Machu Picchu…the death and pain that still lingered was too unpleasant, even for my kind.
That left the United States. It was an enticing place, with its lax morals, hypocritical philosophies, and fast lifestyles. In the West, all was still new and precious. It was an exciting place to be, especially when there was little to no threat of encountering an Ancient. I had been part of the wave of young ones to leave Europe in search of my own home, moving out from beneath the thumb of the Coven.
But the newness of the colonies was a curse as well. It lacked the history and long memory of Europe and Asia. The colonists didn’t realize that there were dark corners that should not be illuminated and questions that should not be asked. There was no doubt among my kind that when the Great Awakening arrived, it would start in the New World.
The nightwalkers in the States were different from those in Europe. We were younger on average, and quiet. The families were fewer and smaller in size. We did what we could to safeguard our secret. But our numbers were growing, and the Coven knew it. It didn’t help that I was one of the oldest among those across the ocean. There was some speculation of a coup, and my stubborn silence didn’t soothe any of the frayed, anxious nerves.
“I’m surprised the Coven has not come down on your head,” I said, desperate to change topics. I sat back in the booth and let my hands fall back into my lap. It was one thing to open the door to our world to Danaus; it was another to let him see into the politics. I didn’t want anything to do with the Coven. And I certainly didn’t want to play Keeper for all of the States. I just wanted my little city with its cramped alleys, trendy little bars, and quiet, tree-cloaked neighborhoods.
“For what?”
“Your little show.” I waved my arm to encompass the dimly lit pub filled to the brim with waiting victims.
Of course, I was sure part of the reason Thorne had been overlooked so far by our kind was because he’d settled in London. Between the wellspring of magic that had soaked into every inch of the island and the constant flow of witches and warlocks passing through the city, the whole place was a powder keg waiting for a careless match. No vampire stayed in the city long. If anything went wrong here, we all knew a vampire would play the scapegoat. Few older vampires would hang around, and definitely not long enough to bother with him.
“You know it’s our law to stay in the shadows and never reveal yourself to more people than necessary,” I continued. “I’d wager this crowd is a little more than necessary.”
“Why?” Sitting up, Thorne crushed the bottle cap between two fingers and dropped it on the table. “Why keep hiding? These humans have seen more horrible things in their lives than us. I’ve seen monsters in their movies and on their newscasts that were ten times worse than what I’ve done. It’s time they knew.”
“It’s not for you to decide.”
He hit his fist on the edge of the table, knocking over his empty mug. “Then who?”
“I don’t know. It’s coming, but not yet. There is more at stake than just the nightwalkers. There are things these humans aren’t ready to face.”
“I don’t think they’ll have much choice. Besides, they accept me.”
“They think you’re a fraud,” I reminded him. Slouched in the booth, I tried to avoid kicking Danaus in the shin, but the booth was crowded with long legs.
“Not for long. It’s time we stepped forward. Let them bask in our power. I’m tired of hiding.”
“But it’s what we are, what we’ve always been. We are just shadows and nightmares to these creatures. Nothing more.” I recited words I had heard a hundred times over. I sounded old even to my ears. My rationale was a tired one, clinging to the ways of my kind. I had seen this longing in many of the younger ones as they walked among the humans. Movies were made about us, with only small nuggets of truth permeating their depths. Humans gobbled up books about nightwalkers and magic users, looking for an escape from the mundane. But what if they woke up one morning and realized those things that thrilled and secretly enticed them were real and living next door? Would they still look at us with the same interest, or would we become vermin to be exterminated, like rats or cockroaches?
“Yeah, but it’s like you said. It’s coming.”
“Enough!” I shouted, scratching my nails on the table, picking up a gooey layer of grime underneath them, causing me to grimace. Watching Thorne peripherally, I began to clean out my nails with a matchbook lying in the center of the table. “None of this matters. It’s not why I’ve come. What did Tabor tell you of the naturi?”
At the mention of the naturi, Thorne stiffened beside me.
“He rarely spoke of them and only when he was in a black mood,” he said, his voice barely more than a whisper as he gripped the edge of the table. “It was always at the same time of year; new moon in the middle of summer. He would stay locked away in his private rooms for several nights on end.” His accent had grown thicker and older again.
I paused. “What did he tell you?”
“Nothing that made any sense. Just that if I ever saw one, I was to run. Don’t try to fight. Just run.” He raised haunted eyes to my face. I understood his fear. Tabor was not only his master and creator, but had been an Ancient and an Elder on the Coven. Thorne knew that
for something to unnerve Tabor so thoroughly, it had to be bad.
“More than five centuries ago, a triad sealed most of the naturi from this world. They are trying to break through. We need your help to seal them again.”
“My help?” A nervous laugh escaped him and skittered under the table to hide. “What the hell can I do?”
“Tabor was part of that triad. He’s gone, but he made you. As part of the same bloodline, we think you can take his place in the triad.”
“And do what? Tabor was more than three thousand years old when he made me.” He stared wide-eyed at me, confident that I had lost my mind. I couldn’t blame him. Even though I’d said it, I was having trouble believing it myself. Thorne wasn’t a particularly strong nightwalker. He had probably stayed alive this long only because of Tabor’s protection and his own smarts.
“I don’t know. This wasn’t my idea. Jabari sent me to find you,” I admitted, frowning.
“Bloody hell,” he muttered. Slumping back in the booth, he pushed the overturned mug with his index finger, making it rock. Any hopes he might have had about escaping me dissolved to dirty slush. He might have hoped to talk his way out of my grasp, but if an Elder had sent me, there was no escape. I would hunt him until I expired. And in a fight, he had no chance.
At that moment, a waitress in a tight black tank top brought over a tray laden with three mugs of ale. It was the dark type that reminded me more of motor oil than any liquid a human might actually want to imbibe. She leaned forward as she placed the mugs in front of each of us. Around her neck dangled a pentagram; she wasn’t the first one I’d seen in London wearing such an item.
“I thought you might want another pint before going on again,” she said, picking up Thorne’s empty glass. She shuffled away, squeezing between the band members who had come back over to the table.
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