Natalie rose, came around the side of the desk and leaned her hips against it. “What happened to the previous chief?”
“We had a lot of wild animal attacks in the area,” Grace said, then leaned her elbow on the armrest and cupped her chin in her hand. “The former police chief fell victim to a bear attack. At least, that’s what Doc Morton put on the autopsy report. Back then, if you claimed werewolf or vampire attack as a cause of death, you’d find the little men in white coats turning up to bundle you away in an ambulance.”
Natalie folded her arms. “There doesn’t seem to be any recorded settlement of shadow breeds in that area, though.”
“There wouldn’t be. Those monsters hid themselves in plain sight, pretending to be humans—even the nightwalkers established themselves by working night shifts.” She snorted. “If you can believe it, our county medical examiner was a bloodsucker. It was no wonder so many people were murdered in the area without anyone being the wiser. We beat the national average for ‘accidental deaths.’” The police chief shook her head. “They were very clever, very sneaky.” Grace leaned forward in her seat, her expression earnest. “You have to realize, back then there were no such things as monsters. It was all fairy tales and campfire giggles. If you insisted on their existence, you were considered crazy. If I’d reported a vampire in our midst, that town would have had another police chief by sunset.”
“So—you were protecting your job?”
“I was protecting my family,” Grace corrected, her tone stern. “And the town who placed their trust in me.” She shook her head. “For years, we had this reputation for being the edge of civilization, with all the wild things in the forest.” She smiled, but there was no humor in her expression. “So then we started to fight back. That’s when we started to realize the numbers we were potentially dealing with.”
“What did you do?” Natalie breathed, captivated by this firsthand account of a time for which many couldn’t find any accurate historical information.
Grace shrugged. “We did what we could. We learned about our enemy. We fought against our enemy. When necessary, we called for reinforcements.”
“There were more of you?”
“Right across the Pacific Northwest.”
Natalie’s eyes rounded in realization at Grace’s words. “Are you saying you and your town started the Resistance?”
Grace’s eyebrows rose. “Is that what they called us?”
Natalie nodded. “Yes, but all the historical accounts we’ve been able to find suggest that a man, Jason Thorne, spearheaded that movement.”
Grace’s face softened and her lips curved into a sweet smile. “Did he just?”
“Did you know Jason Thorne?” Natalie exclaimed. He was only the father of the Resistance, and the reason humans weren’t completely annihilated during The Troubles. There was a statue of him in Reform Square, within view of Government House.
Grace’s smile broadened. “Well, that’s a whole other story.”
“There is no mention of Devil’s Leap in any of the historical accounts,” Natalie murmured. “No one has ever considered that area as a place of interest.”
Grace’s smile broadened with satisfaction. “Then we did our job right.”
“How so?”
“Those ‘breeds,’ as you call them, started to notice others of their kind going missing from the area. They started to come in greater numbers. We knew that if they kept disappearing, then we’d get more of their kind coming through, and that meant more of our townspeople being killed. So we had to make it look like an accident. We created natural disasters, mining accidents—it was very risky, living in Devil’s Leap.”
“But—so many, Grace,” Natalie breathed, still shocked by the numbers. “How did you hide the bodies?”
Grace looked down at her shoes. “They didn’t all die...straightaway.”
Natalie’s eyes widened. For once there was a shadow of guilt that crossed Grace’s features.
“What did you do?” Natalie asked in a low voice, almost afraid of the answer.
“We didn’t know how to kill them. Not at first. Especially the nightwalkers. You’d think you’d killed them, and then the next night they’d be back trying to kill you. It was exhausting. We lost a lot of good people.”
“What did you do, Grace?”
“Doc Morton lost his wife to these things. We needed to learn more about them,” Grace explained.
Natalie cringed. “What did you do?” she whispered as horror brought out her goose bumps.
“We...held them,” Grace whispered back.
“Held them? What do you mean, you held them?”
“We had a place, this old bunker from the Cold War,” Grace said, then cleared her throat. “We used it to hold them and...find out about them.”
Natalie blinked as she processed the words. The Cold War? God, that was going back in time. A lot of countries had been renamed as part of Reformation and territories had been split or merged, depending on which breed was awarded them. If memory served her correctly, the Cold War was a political war between east and west, with an impressive arms race and a world poised on the brink of atomic war. Bunkers had been built everywhere—she’d even seen one in what was formerly known as Russia—to provide an escape haven from potential nuclear disaster.
“Ah, the mountain,” she said in comprehension. “You used a bunker in the mountain to—what? Keep them captive? Observe?”
“We did more than observe,” Grace admitted and a shadow of shame crossed her face.
“More...?” Natalie frowned. If you needed to learn about the enemy, what else would you do than observe? Suspicions edged with dismay rose within. “Experiments?”
Grace grimaced. “It wasn’t something that I was in favor of, but I can’t deny some of those ‘experiments’ gave us the weapons we needed to fight the monsters.”
Natalie’s eyes narrowed. “Did you know that a werewolf’s bite could kill a vampire?”
Grace nodded. “Yes, but we didn’t need to experiment to learn that. We saw that evidence with our own eyes. I know that breeds now have territories, but back then it was open season between those creatures. We learned from some of their tactics.”
“Were there any experiments on a cure for that toxin?”
Grace’s expression shuttered and both of them started when the door to Natalie’s office was thrust open.
Lucien walked in briskly, his midlength coat billowing out behind him like the wings of a dark angel.
“What have you got for me?” he asked abruptly.
Natalie frowned at his cool demeanor.
“Nothing,” she lied immediately. Gone was the hot, sensual man who’d kissed her breathless in the library. This man was determined, focused...cold.
“You can’t tell him. That bunker is a secret,” Grace warned. Natalie gave a small shake of her head as she kept her gaze on the vampire stalking toward her.
“You forget, Natalie. I know you. I know when you’re lying.” There was no missing the impatience in his tone.
Her frown deepened. Was he still pissed about earlier? His whole disposition had changed. “What’s gotten into you?”
“My patience is running out. This process is taking too long,” he said, his blue eyes bright. “We can’t afford to waste any more time reading fairy tales. If you can’t find something, you’re in breach of our deal.”
She held up a finger in warning. “No. Our deal was for me to help you look—it had nothing to do with actually finding something that nobody believes exists. This is what I’m doing. I’m helping you look.” And in return, he wouldn’t hurt or kill her students, friends or the residents of Westamoor. She eyed him as he stopped in front of her, so close the toes of their shoes were almost touching.
“Well, you might be
content to hide behind these books while life passes you by, but my sister doesn’t have that luxury.” He reached around her, pulling her against him.
She opened her mouth to protest the contact but stopped when he slid the phone out of her back jeans’ pocket and held it up.
“Tell me what you’ve learned or I’m calling that little friend of yours. When he gets here we’ll have a late dinner. And by ‘we,’ I mean me.”
Natalie shoved at him. For a moment she didn’t think he’d budge, but he eventually stepped away from her. He held up the phone. “What was his name? Nigel? Nerdster?” He snapped his fingers. “Oh, that’s right. Ned. Shall I call him, Natalie, or do you have something?”
She stared at him stonily.
“Don’t,” Grace warned.
“This is a wild-goose chase, Lucien. I can’t find any reference to a cure for the lycan poison.” She was telling the truth. Kind of. What Grace had mentioned—that bunker—wasn’t cited in the diary, and it may have absolutely nothing to do with Lucien’s quest. “Besides, you can’t call Ned. You need the pass code to get into my phone.”
Lucien glanced at the phone. He made a face. “You’re right. Well, I’ll just go do a door-knock for him, shall I? Work my way through this quaint little town until I find Nerdy Ned...?”
He turned and was halfway to the door before she could take in his words. He was going to—?
“Wait,” she cried out when she realized that, in this mood, Lucien was prepared to kill more than her research assistant. Visions of other people, people she cared about, all maimed and killed, swirled in her mind. Westamoor townsfolk wouldn’t know what hit them.
“Don’t,” Grace warned again.
“Devil’s Leap,” Natalie blurted, ignoring the ghost.
Lucien halted. Turned. Frowned. “What?”
“You might find something at Devil’s Leap.”
Lucien’s eyes narrowed and he was still for a moment. “What?” he asked finally.
Natalie shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “It could be another wild-goose chase or it could be something. There’s a bunker there...”
He nodded slowly in realization. “The mountain.”
“Yeah, the mountain. There might be a reason why no shadow breeds settled there,” she finished lamely.
Grace made a noise of disgust and disappeared. Natalie grimaced. The police chief probably thought she’d betrayed her trust. And, to an extent, she had. But if she didn’t give Lucien something, the people in Westamoor were in danger.
Lucien looked at the window then grimaced. “Fine. We have just enough time for you to pack.”
“Me? Pack?” Her eyes widened and she shook her head. No. He was supposed to leave. Not her. Besides, that was what he was good at.
He smiled as he advanced toward her slowly, his eyes brightening a little as he stepped into the light cast by the lamp on her desk.
“You didn’t think you could get rid of me that easily, did you, Natalie?” He tsked as he shook his head. “Oh, no. Until something happens one way or another with my sister, you and I are like green on grass.” He grasped her arm lightly, but in a grip that she knew would be difficult, if impossible, to break. He smiled. “Think of it like...two friends becoming reacquainted.”
Chapter 8
Lucien squinted behind his sunglasses. The road they were on was slowly rising from the desert floor and he couldn’t wait to put the rolling sand dunes and rocky outcroppings behind them. There was nothing quite like a desert to make a vampire nervous. Deserts didn’t offer much shelter from the sun. He eyed the landscape. Everything just looked so damn scorched under the midmorning sun. So damn desolate and dreary.
A movement caught his eye and his lips tightened. A dunerunner from the looks of things. The coyote shifters dwelled along the fringe of the desert. He hadn’t seen any sandstalkers crossing the valley floor, but that didn’t surprise him. The werecats could take camouflage to a whole new level. As long as he and Natalie kept to the Reform highways, paid their tolls and didn’t stray onto the secondary roads, he wasn’t worried.
He adjusted the air-conditioning. It was warm, and he chose to ignore the temperature reading outside his car. Not for the first time, he thanked the ingenuity of vampires before him who had created the night-tint tempered glass and light-armored vehicles. It meant he could travel during the day in his car, if necessary, but he was stuck in it until he found a place to park in the dark.
He eyed the silent woman in the passenger seat next to him. Stuck with Natalie Segova. He could think of worse things.
“Are we seriously going to drive in silence all the way to Devil’s Leap?” he asked her.
She turned to give him a glacial stare that was only mildly muted by her sunglasses, then returned her gaze to the desert slowly giving way to stunted shrubbery as the road rose toward the foothills of the mountain range.
Apparently so. Lucien sighed. So much for getting reacquainted. Natalie was pissed and making no effort to hide it. He checked the rearview mirror. The winding road along the floor of the desert valley had low-volume traffic, but he knew that Enzo was in one of the tempered vehicles. His father’s personal guardian had an uncanny ability to track him. It made him lethal. Dangerous. Bloody annoying.
He glanced again at Natalie. He couldn’t blame her for being angry with him, but he didn’t have the luxury of waiting for Natalie to reveal her findings.
That professor of yours is next. Enzo’s words haunted him.
While his sister was in her current state, Lucien was the Nightwing Vampire Prime, but their colony’s hierarchy was...unusual. When his father had become a Reform senator, Vincent had been forced to secede from his position as Vampire Prime of the Nightwing Colony to avoid conflicts of interest. Enzo had gone with Vincent, so, while Lucien was now in charge of Nightwing, he had no authority over his father’s personal guardian.
He may not be able to control that guardian, but he would do whatever he could to keep Natalie safe from him. Even if she hated him. He sighed.
He’d known as soon as he’d opened the door that Natalie had learned something. She’d looked disturbed, startled and just a little guilty at his appearance. He knew her tells. And he could hear her elevated heartbeat when she’d lied to him.
Natalie shifted in her seat, her denim-clad legs brushing against her oversize tote bag. Along with her laptop, he could see two books in the unzipped opening, and he had to force his gaze back to the road. Officer Pumpkin’s journal, and their book. There wasn’t any other way he could think of it. It had been their book, the one she’d loved to read so often as a kid. He could recite the poems by heart, he’d read it to her so many times.
She’d been such the romantic, and he’d loved it. Not that he’d admit it, but the way she’d looked at the world, with the innocence and optimism of an ingenue was... Refreshing. Charming. It had made him look at things differently—until she’d died, that was.
Warmth flooded him at the memories of “before.” He remembered lying next to her on her bed and gazing up at the phosphorous stars she’d stuck to her ceiling. How many hours had they spent counting stars? Or playing cards? But she’d loved that damn book and he’d had to read from it each visit.
Now, she’d brought the book with her. Surely that had to count for something, right? He eyed her hands and his brows dipped. She’d also brought her gloves. They’d just spent the last four hours passing across the top corner of the Red Desert and she was wearing gloves. His lips tightened. Eventually she’d tell him. Still, this silence was eating at him.
“So what did you find, exactly, in that journal?” For a moment he thought she was going to continue to ignore him, but he heard her sigh eventually.
“They didn’t appreciate shadow breeds in Devil’s Leap.”
“Why d
o I get the impression that’s an understatement?”
Natalie glanced briefly over her shoulder toward the backseat.
He glanced in the rearview mirror. What was she looking at? “We put your gear in the trunk,” he reminded her.
She blinked. “Uh, yeah. Of course.”
She’d packed mainly hiking gear, with some implements she’d used on archeological digs, she’d told him. Tools. Tools that she never left home without, she’d said. And then she’d said pretty much nothing ever since. Until now.
“Uh, the missing people were mainly...shadow breeds.”
He frowned. “What happened to them?”
She shifted in her seat. “I’m not exactly sure, but I suspect it wasn’t pretty.”
“Why do you think that has something to do with Vivianne’s situation?” He’d called his father just before he’d left. The toxin was now visibly creeping through his sister’s system, the dark poison noticeable in her veins. Dave Carter was trying to slow it down, but it didn’t sound good. Lucien couldn’t afford to be off on a fruitless search. Still, going somewhere, doing something, had to be better than sitting around a dusty library reading stories from cultures long dead and pretty much forgotten.
Natalie sighed. “I don’t know,” she said, and he heard the honesty in her voice. “I don’t even know if what we’re looking for actually exists...but with what we saw on the satellite imagery, and some of the cases noted in Grace Perkins’s diary, people in this area were figuring out how to deal with the shadow breeds before the world knew they even existed. In doing that, who knows, they may have come across something for lycanthropulism. It’s as good a place to start as any, I guess.” She shrugged. “I can’t think of any other avenue to follow.”
He stared at the road in front of them. “Well, it’s more than any of the other experts turned up in the last eight months,” he admitted. And she’d found it in less than forty-eight hours.
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