Duncan

by D. B. Reynolds

  At some point in the future, he’d come back here, more than once if he lasted that long—and he had every intention of lasting a very long time. He wanted to know the vampires in his territory. Wanted to know the lives he held in his hands. But tonight he had other, more pressing business.

  Duncan stepped out of the overheated house and lifted his face, welcoming the brush of cold air over his skin as he drew a deep breath. His security people waited, standing all around him with infinite patience.

  “How far to Victor’s house, Louis?” he asked.

  “Half an hour, my lord. No more.”

  “Then, that’s where we’re going next.”

  * * * *

  The SUVs raced down the dark roads, the people of Leesburg safely tucked away behind the walls of their houses, not knowing that vampires were speeding by in the dead of night. The convoy turned off the main road and passed through a well-lit neighborhood of neat, modern homes before leaving the lights behind once again. Victor’s house—now Duncan’s—was a few miles beyond, down a two-lane road with wide, grassy fields to either side. A spacious home was perched in the middle of each of those fields, well away from the road and up on a low hillside, as if to better gaze down upon their less fortunate neighbors.

  The address Duncan and his people sought was down a sharp turn to the right, and then a long driveway ending in a square of neatly trimmed spruce trees, growing tightly together to create a barrier against casual observation. The driveway split through the trees to reveal a sprawling white clapboard house, with an old-fashioned covered porch along the entire front face. A single chimney and multiple peaked roofs made it look like a farmhouse on steroids.

  Duncan had no sooner taken in the sight of the house, than Louis was jumping from the still-moving vehicle, snapping commands into his headset. The trailing SUV raced past, leaving muddy tracks on the perfectly maintained green lawn as it swerved around and back onto the driveway, tires squealing as it skidded to a stop in front of Duncan’s SUV.

  “Miguel, what—” Duncan started, then saw the car parked to one side of the huge house. Damn her. “No one touches her, Miguel,” he said tightly. “Let me out of here.”

  “My lord—”

  “Out, Miguel. Now.”

  He heard her voice before he saw her. Standing on the front porch, waiting for them like she owned the place, was Emma, the thorn in his side. Despite himself, he grinned, thinking it might well be worth a few scratches for a taste of Emma Duquet.

  His people ushered her off the porch and away from the house, surrounding her with a wall of impenetrable vampire bulk. Obedient to his orders, no one touched her, but they didn’t give her a choice, either. She either moved, or she would be crushed.

  Duncan gestured, telling his vamps to fade back, and then he waited, knowing she’d never be able to remain silent.

  “What?” she demanded, meeting his calm stare.

  “Why are you here, Emma?”

  “Probably the same reason you are,” she snapped.

  “How did you know where we were going?”

  “Hey, I work in this town. I have sources, too.” Her lips were pinched defiantly as she glared up at him, her violet eyes silvering in the new moon’s light. She shuddered suddenly, and he realized she wasn’t wearing anything but the hooded sweatshirt she’d put on back home.

  “You’re cold,” he murmured and shrugged off his leather jacket, wrapping it around her shoulders before tucking her against his body and rubbing his hands up and down her back. She shivered again, almost violently, burying her face against his chest.

  “Emma,” he said quietly against her ear. “What if someone had been waiting for you here?”

  She spoke without raising her head, clutching his jacket closer. “The house is empty. I already checked it out through the windows.”

  “You couldn’t have known it would be empty,” he said, exasperated. “And you still don’t. Just because you didn’t see anyone—”

  “But you said,” she shuddered once, hard, then grew still, as if her body had expressed its displeasure with the cold temperature one final time before admitting it was now warm. “You said Victor was gone.”

  “He is, but there were others involved, and we know nothing about them yet. It’s not safe for you to be here, certainly not alone.”

  “But you’re here now.” She looked up, giving him big eyes, as if that could fool him into believing her innocent. “You’ll keep me safe, won’t you?”

  “You’d have been safe if you’d stayed home, as I asked.”

  “Well, I’m here now.” Her voice sharpened, and he almost smiled. He’d known she couldn’t keep up the wide-eyed façade for long.

  Duncan ran his hands up and down her arms, as if still trying to warm her, using it as an excuse to delay—and to think. He didn’t want Emma anywhere near whatever Victor may have done in this house. The knowledge alone could be dangerous. But he understood all too well her need to know the truth about Lacey’s disappearance, her need to do something.

  “You know, Emma,” he whispered, feeling her grow still as she listened to him. “I could take away your memories of this entire evening and send you home none the wiser.”

  She drew back from him with a jerk, searching his face. “I’d never forgive you if you did that.”

  “You’d never know. There’d be nothing to forgive.”

  “I’d know,” she said firmly.

  Duncan did smile then. She was stubborn as a mule, this one.

  “I’ll be perfectly quiet. I promise,” she wheedled, clearly sensing his weakening resolve.

  Duncan sighed. “Very well. But you will remain right by my side. And you will do whatever I say when I say it, no arguments.”

  “As long as it’s nothing ridiculous,” she muttered.

  SheRidiculous?”

  “You know what I mean. If you tell me to bark like a dog or something, I’m not doing it.”

  Duncan laughed and hugged her tightly before letting her go. “Very well. No barking.”

  “Do you want this back,” she said, making a halfhearted move toward pulling the jacket off.

  Duncan stopped her with a hand on her arm. “Keep it. You should have worn something warmer.”

  “I didn’t have time. I wanted to get here before you guys, so I grabbed my keys and ran.”

  “Maybe you should keep a jacket in your car. You know, for your next close pursuit.”

  She gave him a quizzical glance, as if trying to figure out if that was a joke or not.

  Duncan let her wonder. He took her hand and headed for the front door. “Remember your promise, Emma. What I say, when I say it.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Your wish is my command and all that.”

  “If only it were that simple.”

  Miguel sent two of the security detail around to check the house from the outside. The others accompanied Duncan, most of them going in ahead of him.

  Duncan scanned the front of the house as he approached, searching the many windows, although he wasn’t certain what he was looking for. That bad feeling Miguel had talked about was getting worse by the moment, and he already regretted letting Emma stay. He should have wiped her mind and sent her home. Forget what she’d said about remembering. He was very good at what he did, and she wouldn’t have remembered a thing. The problem was it felt wrong to do that to Emma. That didn’t make any sense to him, but something in his mind—or his heart—told him to be honest with her, or he’d regret it later.

  Miguel held back a few moments, letting the security team go ahead. Lights soon came on inside, dimmed severely. It was the kind of lighting a vampire would prefer, and the hell with whatever human guests might be joining him. Typical Victor. But Duncan was glad for it, because he could already detect the unmistakable scent of old blood. A lot of it. And if that much blood had been spilt in this house, he didn’t want the glare of bright lights distracting him from whatever his other senses might have to tell him.

&nb
sp; He walked through the doorway with Emma, who squeezed his hand tightly despite her earlier brave words. He took three slow steps and stopped, nearly crushed as his empathic senses were inundated by the pain and fear saturating every wall, every floorboard, every damn inch of this house.

  “Emma,” he said in a strained voice. “Go back to your car.”

  Her head whipped around. “Duncan?”

  “Now, Emma, please. Miguel, have someone stay with her.” His lieutenant moved to take Emma’s arm, and Duncan added, “Gently, Miguel.”

  “Duncan?” Emma repeated, her voice trembling with uncertainty. She might not have his exquisite sensibilities, but she wouldn’t need them to know something was wrong.

  “I’ll be out soon. Don’t worry.”

  He heard more than saw Emma leave the house, heard Miguel order one of the vamps to stay with her at the car. And then his lieutenant was back.

  “Do you feel it, Miguel?” Duncan whispered, and sent a fraction of what he was sensing down the link he shared with his vampire child.

  Miguel sucked in a breath. “Sick fuck,” he hissed.

  “Not sick,” Duncan corrected softly. “Evil.” His gaze traveled up the wide staircase. It would be worse up there. So much worse. “Upstairs,” he said.

  Miguel sent one of his vampire guards up ahead of him, but Duncan knew they’d find nothing. There was nothing to see any longer, only to feel. He tightened his shields down hard, needing to know what had happened, but unwilling to let the full measure of Victor’s corruption swamp his senses. What he was feeling was horrific enough. He didn’t need to drown in it.

  He climbed the stairs slowly, reluctantly, for all that he was determined to do it. At the top of the stairs, he turned unerringly to the right, the waves of pain and terror like the fingers of a ghost, tugging at his clothing, drawing him closer.

  They passed the first room, and the second. Duncan paused, looking ahead. Every one of the rooms up here reeked of lust, of a hunger that would never be satisfied. But the worst of it, the true depths of depravity that had been perpetrated here . . . that had happened in the room at the end of the hall. The door was closed. Duncan wished it could stay that way.

  His fangs emerged, sliding over his lower lip unbidden, as he stared at that closed door—as he stalked down the hall to that nightmare chamber. Next to him, Miguel gave him a startled glance, his own fangs appearing in response to Duncan’s obvious anger. Duncan almost staggered when it finally hit him, a red haze filling his vision. He opened the door and halted there, unwilling to cross the threshold. He heard the voices of men laughing, swearing, grunting in release. And he heard the terrified cries of women begging for mercy, screaming in agony.

  He swallowed a furious howl, biting down so hard that his fangs sliced his lip. Blood dripped down to his chin, warm and thick. He licked it up without thinking, lost in the memory of what had been done here, of how far they’d gone to satisfy their perverted need to inflict pain on the helpless.

  Duncan spun on his heel, unable to bear another moment within that agony-soaked room. It ran in invisible rivulets down the walls, rotting the boards, the carpets; everything it touched was fouled by what had happened there.

  He strode back toward the staircase. He needed to get outside before the leftover emotions destroyed what was left of his shields. He shuddered at the thought of facing the searing pain of that house without even a shred of protection.

  Miguel hurried next to him, his worried gaze searching every room they passed, not knowing what he was looking for, but feeling the tiniest part of what Duncan was drowning in. Duncan started down the stairs, forcing himself to take them one at a time, when all he wanted was to jump the banister and race outside.

  “My lord, what did you find? What should I tell the others to look for?”

  They reached the first floor. The nightmare lifted enough that Duncan felt as if he could breathe again. “Tell them to search—” He paused, detecting a fresh sense of alarm from . . . was it Ari? “Is Ari outside?” he asked Miguel quickly.

  “Yes, my lord. The backyard.”

  “Let’s go.”

  Miguel pointed through an arched doorway on their left. They raced through a huge dining room to a wide open kitchen with two sets of French doors that opened onto a covered patio. Miguel snapped the handles down hard, not bothering with locks, and Duncan strode outside, quickly finding Ari where he stood head down, staring at the ground, tension radiating from every muscle. Duncan frowned. There was nothing here, except—

  It hit him then, a whiff of decay on the night breeze, growing stronger the closer he got to Ari. When Duncan finally reached his side, the dark-haired vampire looked up, his coffee brown eyes gleaming with wild power that yearned for an enemy to strike down. But there was no enemy here. There was only the dead their enemy had left behind.

  Duncan reached out to his vampire—and Ari was his, not a child of his own, but sworn to him in blood—and calmed Ari’s rage with the touch of his power.

  Together they studied the minuscule disturbances that spoke loudly to those who knew what to look for, even without the smell of death to guide them. To the untrained eye, there was nothing to see but dirt and a little bit of grass that was dry and brown from the winter. No one had bothered to lay down green turf, as they obviously had in the front yard before Victor’s last party. Had that been the one Lacey attended? If Duncan had still believed in a merciful God, he would have offered a prayer that it not be so. He didn’t want Emma to lose her friend that way, didn’t want her search to end here in this house of horrors. But the world had proven to him long ago that faith had no place in this world.

  He sighed. “I have to talk to Emma first. Then I’ll make the call.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Emma was sitting in her car, the engine running to keep the heater blowing, because despite Duncan’s jacket, she was freezing. It was more than the winter temperature making her cold. She was scared. More scared than she could ever remember being. More than when she’d been forced to kiss her dead grandmother as she lay in the casket. Even more than when her mother had died and left her all alone. She’d been too young then to appreciate all the things that could go wrong, and young enough to believe she’d be fine on her own.

  But not anymore. She knew exactly how the world delighted in fucking with her by taking away everything. Everything but Lacey. If she lost Lacey, too . . . She convulsed in a fresh round of shivering, and turned the heater up another notch.

  Something awful had happened in that house. Duncan was a master at keeping anything from showing on his face, but his very stillness told her it was bad. If he was working that hard at keeping it inside, it had to be very, very bad.

  And she was terrified.

  The vampire standing guard on her stiffened abruptly, his gaze riveted over the top of her car, around the right side of the house. Emma stared through the windshield. Was something coming? Was it whatever awful thing lived in that house?

  She caught a flash of movement, and saw one of Duncan’s vampires racing around the house and into the backyard. Curiosity won out over fear, and she opened the car door enough to put one foot on the ground.

  “What is it?” she asked her guard. “Have they found something?”

  The guard didn’t respond right away, his attention wholly focused on whatever was happening beyond the house. Emma was about to ask him again when he turned and urged her back into the car. “You should stay inside,” he said tightly. “It’s warmer.”

  “Why? What did they find?” she asked, searching his face, knowing somehow that she was right. They’d found something. Not in the house, but behind it. She’d been back there before Duncan arrived, and there was nothing there except a strip of covered patio. Beyond that was a wide patch of dead lawn and then open field. What had they seen that she hadn’t? What could there be—

  Emma’s breath caught as pain squeezed her chest. She must have made a noise of some sort, because the guard
reached out to her, the look of sorrow on his face confirming her worst fears.

  “No,” she whispered. “No!” she screamed and shoved the door wide open, knocking it into the guard and throwing him off balance. She raced for the backyard, knowing she’d never make it, that the guard’s vampire speed would catch her and stop her, but she ran anyway. She had to see, had to know . . .

  The guard grabbed her before she’d gotten two steps down the side of the big house, scooping her up and wrapping her tightly in iron hard arms. “You don’t wanna do that,” he whispered against her ear. “Trust me, Emma. You don’t wanna see.”

  “Let go of her, Baldwin.” Duncan’s voice was hard as he walked toward them.

  Her guard, Baldwin, released her immediately. “Forgive me, my lord,” he said.

  Emma didn’t know what he was apologizing for—letting her get away or holding her too tightly, but whatever it was, she didn’t care. “Tell me what you found,” she told Duncan. “And don’t lie to me.”

  Duncan closed the distance between them, his hands coming out to take hers and pull her into a rough embrace. “Emma,” he started, but she pushed away from him.

  “No. Don’t do that. Don’t coddle me like some fragile flower who can’t handle life. I’ve been taking care of myself since I was eleven years old, so don’t you do that. Tell me what you found,” she insisted.

  Duncan sighed. “A body. We’re—” Emma made a pained noise in spite of herself, her fist coming up to her mouth as if to trap the sound inside. Duncan paused. “Emma, Baldwin’s right. You don’t—”

  “Don’t tell me what I want! Is it a woman?”

  He studied her a moment, then turned his head slightly, as if listening to what was happening in the yard. When he turned back and met her gaze, she knew. “Yes,” he said unnecessarily.

  “I want to see. If it’s—”

  “No. That’s not necessary. We have a picture of Lacey, and they’ve buried her things with her. We can identify—”