by Lily Luchesi
Mark nodded. “Ah, I was quite similar. I was a member of the Queen’s guard, but a vampire infiltrated us and killed two of my comrades. I managed to kill it, but I was still fired. I would have been arrested, too: they thought I committed the murders. They couldn’t prove anything.” He chuckled. “I went on a new mission: to hunt down vampires. I tried hunting Angelica, but she caught me. Instead of killing me like I thought she would, she gave me an opportunity at a new life. I’m quite grateful to her.”
Danny smiled. “She’s a great person, no doubt about it. A little stubborn, and sometimes infuriatingly headstrong, but still wonderful.”
“You love her.” He looked over at Danny with a grin.
“Guilty.” Danny cleared his throat, embarrassed. “Anyway, what were you told about our situation?”
“Next to nothing. According to Brighton, who gave me the message, all she said was that she needed me in Chicago and wouldn’t take no for an answer.” Mark shook his head. “I should have demanded more information, but you know how she is.”
“That I do. All right, are you ready for this clusterfuck of a story?” he asked. He told Mark an abridged version of what had happened, leaving nothing out. If Angie trusted him to replace Director Dominic, he had to know the whole truth. The only thing he left out was Angelica being a full vampire. That was not his information to divulge.
When he got to the part about how both Fiona and Miranda had teamed up to kill her and keep him, Mark began to laugh uncontrollably.
“Ah, forgive me,” he said through his giggles. “To think, I’d watch Vicious for entertainment! I should have just befriended you; your story is better than the telly! Sorry. Please, do go on.”
“So nice to see that my near death gives you such enjoyment,” Danny said, smiling. He liked this guy, despite who he used to be. Danny finished up with what had happened, and Mark sat there, taking it all in.
“So, you’re telling me you’re a reincarnated soul?” he asked Danny.
Danny nodded. “I lived a century ago, and was reborn sixty years after my initial death, and now I have these psychic powers. I have limited precognitive visions in my dreams, and very extensive psychometry. I am still discovering what kind of powers I might have, and who knows what I haven’t found out yet.”
Mark smiled. “This company just gets stranger. I don’t think we’ve ever had a reincarnated psychic before. In fact, I can’t recall ever meeting a reincarnated soul.”
That surprised Danny. This man didn’t know he was a reincarnation? He had no idea how his past directly influenced the formation of the PID? This was going to be a touchy subject that he’d have to discuss with Angelica soon. Especially taking that file of hers into account. She’d want to study Mark, but Awakening him might be difficult bordering on impossible if there was no one to shock the memories out of his deepest subconscious, like Angie had done for him.
“There are others like me out there…but some of them don’t know their pasts. I didn’t discover mine until I met Angelica in this life. She triggered my powers and my visions of the past. They had lain dormant my entire life.”
As he was about to say something else, Angelica entered the room, wearing a black pea coat over a pleated black dress. Proper clothes to run a company, but not to fight. Was she quitting being a field agent entirely?
“Mark. I see you arrived early. I trust that Danny has properly briefed you?” she said, not even acknowledging the man she claimed to love.
Mark stood up and shook her hand. “Good to see you, Angelica Yes, he’s filled me in very satisfactorily. You have had quite the year, haven’t you?”
She smiled wanly. “You’ve no idea.” She waited for Danny to walk around to the front of the desk before she went and sat down. “How is Brighton?”
“He’s good. He told me to tell you that in a few years the hemoglobin replacement elixir should be completed,” Mark said.
“HG replacement?” Danny asked. “You mean fake blood?”
“Synthetic blood,” Angelica corrected, actually speaking directly to Danny for the first time. “Brighton Sands is a chemist, biologist, and a great PID employee. When he’s not slitting throats, he’s at the offices in London, trying to make vampirism easier to deal with. Also lycanthropy. He’s not just working on synthetic blood, but also synthetic organs to help shifters be able to feed without killing.
“I found him at Oxford, a biology student. I hired him to start this project ten years ago, and as science has advanced, so has he. He’s one of the brightest minds I’ve ever met, but a bit reckless in the field. Mark, how many times have you had to stitch him up? Or get a team to rescue him after he got in over his head?”
“Or get Inspector Linwood to bail him out of jail?” Mark laughed. “Too many to count. Speaking of Brighton, I have a few questions.”
Angelica nodded, indicating he should go ahead.
“How long is this position for? I left my life in London, and that PID branch is in Brighton’s hands. That’s dangerous in itself, but I also have selfish reasons for wanting to go back home, or make this my new home,” he said.
“That’s debatable, and also entirely up to you. I will need you here until Fiona Guilfoyle is taken care of. At this moment, this office needs to be as solid as possible. I’d keep Danny as the deputy director, but I need him in the field more than I do in here. Please tell Brighton that I will set up an office for him here to continue his work if he wants to come. I’ll appoint a new director over there as well. There are a few candidates to choose from.” She checked a few reports on the computer as she talked, and then said, “Danny. I listened to your report on the vision Leander gave you. I am not sure what worries me more: the fact that he is a demon or the fact that he is the one who signed Fiona’s contract.”
“I’m scared myself,” Danny said. “How can we track them if they’re in Hell?”
“I don’t know. We can track infernal energy in the city thanks to the tech Brighton helped design, but we can’t track Hell itself. It’s not possible.” She clicked something on the screens. “Mark, I changed my mind. I want you to call Brighton and get him on the next plane out here, no refusals. Maybe he can help. And while I have to stay stuck in this damned office, Danny will need a new field partner. I think they can play off each other perfectly.”
Mark stood up. “All right. I will go and give him a ring.” He exited the room and it was all Danny could do not to immediately go into what he saw when he touched Mark.
“Mark is a reincarnation of Dr. Michael Finnigan, the hunter in the group with your father and Leander from the eighteen-hundreds.” He nearly stumbled over the words in his haste to speak.
Angelica’s head whipped up from whatever it was she had started reading. “What did you say?”
“I saw your file on me, how you said you didn’t know about other reborn souls, or if a psychic gift comes with the territory,” Danny said.
“Right. I meant for you to see that,” she said.
“I know. To fill in any blanks you needed filled. Well, here you go. Mark Evans is reborn, a former hunter, and has no clue about any of it. I don’t know if he needs to be awakened like I was, or if he will always be ignorant to his past, but I thought you should know.”
Angelica sat back in her chair. “Wow. I never would have guessed. I suppose we can do some tests, see if we can jumpstart his memory. You said it was me who woke you up? Meeting me?”
Danny nodded. “If he had a wife back then, she might be reincarnated, too. It could work for them just as it worked for me.”
Angelica took out her phone and he saw her pull up Facebook. He didn’t use it himself, but it seemed that she liked to discreetly keep track of her employees with it. “Tell me if this man looks familiar to you,” she said, turning the phone toward him.
Danny saw on the screen a photo of a slim, pale man with dark hair and aquamarine eyes. Despite the modern suit and haircut he wore, his handsome face was easy to place: coroner Ben
jamin Quinn. “He was also in the hunting group. He and Mark seemed to be closer to each other than to Leander and Vincent. Fucking Hell. He came back, too?”
Angelica made the photo zoom back out, and he saw that this was Mark’s profile, and this was his profile picture, of him with the reincarnation of Mr. Quinn. The name Brighton Sands was tagged, with the caption, “I said yes!”
“They’re going to be married next year. If Mark knows nothing about his past, what do you think about Brighton?” she asked.
Danny stared at the photo of the happy couple. Sands was remarkably like his old self, more than Mark was, or even he was himself. His eyes were bright and alert. Too alert. “He knows. I can see it. Call it detective’s instinct.”
Angelica shut the page down and said, “It’s a good thing you can do an interrogation without inflicting bodily harm. I might need you to question him about what he’s hiding.”
“That I can do,” he said.
“About Leander, I want to know how and when he became a demon, and why he gave Fiona a contract. Usually demons work for witches, not the other way around. Why do you think he sought you out? Why you and not me? It is me he knows, and who he wants to kill.”
“I think he wanted me to join him,” Danny said. “That’s why he showed me the past, as if I was going to say that his radical ideals were right, and abandon all of this…abandon you.” He looked up, trying to catch her eye, but she looked away.
“Perhaps it would have been better if you had,” she said.
Danny was about to reply when Mark came back in.
“Brighton is packing as we speak. You’ll email him the plane ticket?” he asked.
“Already done,” she said, showing no hint of the thick layer of emotion that had just been hanging over the room. “Why don’t you go and get some rest? You must be jetlagged.”
“I am pretty knackered,” he admitted. “All right. It was nice meeting you, Danny.”
“Same here.” He waved as Mark left, closing the door behind him. Danny looked back at Angelica, waiting for her to continue speaking. “Well? Why should I have gone and sided with a demon, a demon who has wanted you dead for centuries?”
Angelica looked him in the eye, cold determination in hers. She was so strong, so beautiful. Why was she being so difficult? “Danny, please, just go home. You have a lot to do to find Fiona and now this whole thing with Brighton.”
Danny was so frustrated and confused. “Angelica, what is it? Why did you walk out the other night, and why are you shutting me out? After everything, why? You know I love you.”
“Well, you shouldn’t!” Her voice was so sharp, it startled Danny. She immediately looked ashamed at her tone. “Look, what happened to me was not a simple thing. I changed at the very base level: every molecule, every blood cell. I need time to get used to what I am now. And in order to do that, I need time by myself. I must be alone, so I can be sure I don’t hurt anyone unintentionally. If you truly love me, you will give me the time and space that I need.”
Her eyes were pleading, and he went to reach across the table to touch her, but she moved out of reach.
“Angie, I will give you whatever you need. Just please remember that you are not alone anymore. You don’t need to deal with this by yourself. I am here, and I am not going anywhere.” He stood up, waiting. When he realized that she was not going to answer, he walked out the door.
***
Angelica waited for the door to close behind Danny before she slumped in her chair, running her hands through her hair. It was all too much. Maybe she could handle more reborn souls along with the hunt for Fiona and the demon who owned her contract. She could handle being the official director again. She could handle all of it if she were still part fucking human. Not only was the time she could work on this case cut in half, but she had more on her mind than ever.
What could she do now? When would her human emotions start going away? Would it be harder to control her murderous urges? She’d had enough of them as a vamplet. As a full vampire, how often would she have to rein herself in?
Her inner turmoil made working very difficult. She could feel the changes in her body now. The heightened senses shocked her when she’d opened her eyes this evening. She hadn’t transformed into a bat yet. To be honest, she was too afraid. She had seen many shifters turn, and it always looked quite painful. She didn’t want to voluntarily subject herself to that if she didn’t need to.
She was terrified that she would snap, and killers always went for those they knew first. Just like Vincent had killed Veronica, she feared that she would wind up with Danny’s blood on her hands.
Chapter Six
Danny woke up to a text message pinging his phone. No one ever text him, so who was it? He checked it, and saw a message from Mark. Angelica must have given him Danny’s number, and this was his first official day as deputy director.
B. Sands’ plane coming into O’Hare at two P.M. Please pick him up and take him to the PID offices.
Below that was the flight information. Danny flopped back onto his pillows. It was only seven in the morning!
“Since when am I a fucking chauffeur?” he mumbled, even though he knew that he was needed to question Brighton about his past life. There was no going back to sleep now, so he figured he’d just get up and possibly make some headway in their search for Fiona.
The thought to go and find Leander and capture him in a Devil’s Trap was tempting, but he decided against it. He couldn’t do it alone, and Angelica was asleep. He was so tired of waiting, of being afraid for his life. Going out was frightening. How did he know that the mailman, or his neighbors across the street, weren’t somehow working for Fiona and would try to kill him? Granted, he was a skilled fighter and marksman, but if his guard was down for even a second, it could mean his capture or his death.
He admitted that, if it came to a choice between dying or being Fiona’s prisoner, he’d take death.
At least his house was warded against demons. Leander couldn’t even touch the driveway without being repelled back to Hell.
Soon enough, you bastard, you’ll stay there permanently.
***
“Hoc sacrificium mando vobis ante lucem surgere.”
Fiona Guilfoyle winced as her bowl of ingredients flared up, singeing the edges of her blonde hair. She watched as a handmade hybrid werewolf began to rise on the altar before her, she heard its snarls and growls, before it suddenly went silent. She stepped back, observing, nearly tripping over the corpse of the girl she had sacrificed to create another hybrid werewolf.
Through the smoke, she saw its silhouette begin to contort, and then it exploded. She yelped as she was hit with blood. To her left, its heart plopped down. A bit of small intestine landed on the front of the altar. What looked like a spleen was now splayed across her shoes. Her face was splotched with red, and it stained her blonde hair.
“What a bloody mess!” she cried, stamping her foot like an angry child. “Leander! Where are you?”
“Right here, darling,” he said, appearing at her side.
Damn, his physical form is gorgeous. She wondered how a mere human could have been born that handsome.
“What can I do for you?”
“Explain this!” She gestured to the blood and guts that had almost been a new shifter to kill Angelica Cross.
He looked about him as if the gore was nothing to him. She realized that it probably didn’t faze him at all, since he had been a hunter and was naturally a sadistic prick. “Oh…I forgot to mention this. You used up quite a bit of your magic when you made these before, and that was with Miranda’s vampiric blood. In fact, you used so much magic you nearly died, and I had to come and rescue you. Quite an inconvenience. So, I made an alteration to your contract.”
Fiona spluttered, “You— you can’t do that! We had a deal!”
Leander held a hand up. “Uh, actually I can do that. The only thing I am contractually obligated to do is not kill you as long as you
’re useful. When you lost all that magic, as I said, it was an inconvenience to me. So I made sure you can’t ever lose that much magic again. You’ll have to stick to making deals with regular werewolves from now on. Or die. Your choice.”
“You son of a whore!” She stomped her foot, wishing she had the capability to hurt him. “Can’t you make my magic stronger? Strong enough so that I can take care of that sniveling little vamplet once and for all?”
He shook his head. “No dark magic can touch her. Not yours, not anyone’s. I can hurt her, but I can’t kill her by black magic means. Her line is more than ancient. You had just better be glad that she never decided to turn.”
“Why?” Fiona asked. “Because her powers will be stronger?”
Leander narrowed his eyes. “You could only wish that that was the worst of it. If Angelica Cross were to ever become a full vampire, we can all kiss our lives goodbye. You, me, and all of humanity.”
***
Danny was standing outside of his Caddie outside the airport, waiting for Brighton Sands to exit. He hoped that he could pull of this questioning without pissing Sands off.
The man was very easy to spot as he walked out. After all, Danny had seen him before. He was tall and slim, with pale skin and dark curls. His eyes were bright and very aware, as a hunter should be, and he walked with an air of confidence even Danny could never possess.
“Mr. Mancini,” Brighton said smoothly when he approached him. He removed his black glove to shake his hand.
“You must be Brighton Sands,” Danny said. “You recognized me?”
Brighton just nodded as Danny took his hand, and Danny prepared himself once again for the visions that would cloud his mind. He felt a static shock between their palms as they touched, and then the visions came quickly.
Brighton in the nineteenth century, bending over a werewolf corpse with Mark. Brighton tentatively kissing Mark both in the past and in the present, the two versions of them merging as one. Brighton in the past, with a pained expression on his face and holding a pistol. Brighton in the Oxford lab, meeting Angelica. Brighton meeting Mark again in this life, and immediately sweeping him into his arms and kissing him.