Tanasha’s touch had cleared the fog building in his mind, had helped him to fend off the overwhelming push coming from Marius. When they’d stepped out of the house into the rain he’d tried to put up a magical barrier that would keep her dry. His magic had rolled right off her and, because he touched her, off him.
Duncan bet she was a Null. She strengthened his shield, helped him to overcome whatever Influence magic Marius utilized.
He started another search on the young man’s history and anything else the Archive had on being a Null. He wanted to give Tanasha as much information as he could.
He couldn’t imagine her Gift as an active, measurable ability. No wonder it had never been recognized.
Duncan dragged his thoughts away from Tanasha and the way she made him feel. Despite her doubt, he was certain that Marius used a mixture of Naema and Vampire magic. He had an idea how such a coalition may have come together. He prayed that he was wrong.
Tanasha was right on point, both species tended to stay away from each other.
Naemas surrounded themselves with high fences and open green space. They segregated themselves in individual Districts, sticking together and making it incredibly difficult for anybody to enter their world. They even employed their own Guard.
Vampires on the other hand had mingled with humans from the very start. The Vampire-human relationship had been rocky and at times they had stood on opposite sides, but Vampires would rather surround themselves with humans than members of their own species.
He studied the neighborhood through the transport’s window. And Vampires didn’t mind dark alleys and corners filled with shadow. They didn’t even mind living in a residence that was literally falling to pieces around them.
Duncan sighed when the transport stopped outside an ancient three-story building. At one point it would have been grand and polished, but those days were far behind. Now most of the windows had been boarded up and the few that still had glass had been decorated with laser bars.
He gently stepped around a pile of broken roof shingles and jumped over the missing steps leading to the front door. Duncan never understood why Hugo lived under these circumstances. The other Vampire was old enough to accumulate wealth and move somewhere a little more upscale.
At least somewhere where the front door still existed. He stepped through the empty doorway into a narrow corridor. It smelled of cooked foods, human sweat and refuse and a dark, coppery smell.
Duncan tensed when he sensed the spilled blood. He took the steps two at a time, sometimes three if some were missing, until he reached the top floor. Unlike the lower floors, this one only had two apartments. Hugo and his boyfriend lived in the one on the left.
Unfortunately, that was the one he could smell the blood from.
He knocked but didn’t get an answer. He tried again, louder this time. The third time his hand rattled the synth-wood door. “Hugo? It’s Duncan.”
Tentative footsteps approached the door. The security chain clinked against the inside of the door, which opened an inch. Pale-blue eyes with deep rings underneath set in an unearthly white face met Duncan’s gaze. “Duncan?” he whispered.
“Yes, Trurro, it’s me.”
Tears dripped down the human’s cheek. “Thank Jade you came.” Trurro closed the door and unlocked the chain. He invited Duncan into the apartment with a wave of his hand.
Inside the apartment looked nothing like one would expect in a residence so run-down. Hugo and his human companion had gone to town with lovely real-wood furniture, artwork Duncan expected to be authentic and decorations that made the apartment look like a luxurious uptown abode.
Trurro just stood in the foyer, sobbing. Duncan sighed and guided the thin boy to one of the comfortable couches in the living room. “What happened?” he asked as he sat the boy down.
“H-he-he’s d-d-dead!” Trurro cried out.
Duncan wasn’t surprised. The scent of Vampire blood flooded the apartment. “What happened?” he asked again.
Trurro gasped and panted, mumbling words Duncan couldn’t make out. “Trurro, pull yourself together and tell me what happened.”
The boy nodded and took a couple of deep breaths. “I came home from the theater yesterday night and…and…f-f-found him.” He buried his face in his hands and sobbed some more.
Duncan patted him on the shoulder and rose from the sofa. He’d have a look around and see what he could find. Maybe when he returned Trurro would have settled down and would be more coherent.
The bedroom was at the back of the apartment. It was lavishly decorated in gold and red, reminding Duncan of pictures he’d seen of long-ago Earth bordellos.
The huge bed was covered with satin sheets. And had a massive pool of blood in the center of it. Hugo’s body had been moved. Duncan imagined the other Vampire had left strict instructions on how to deal with his body should he die.
Duncan studied the sticky blood and discovered a number of cuts in the sheets. He lifted them with care and discovered the cuts went all the way through to the mattress. Hugo had been stabbed.
Duncan frowned. A knife wound, even a whole bunch of them, wouldn’t kill a Vampire. And how the Jade did they keep him lying down? Hugo should have struggled and fought against his attackers. It was definitely plural. No way a single person, even a Vampire, could have killed Hugo.
Duncan walked around the bed and found proof. A number of bloody footprints of varying shapes and sizes confirmed his suspicion.
Why didn’t he defend himself? Duncan leaned closer to the bed. A large cut across the pillow told the story. They’d held Hugo down and decapitated him. Even an old Vampire couldn’t come back from that. Duncan rose and checked the rest of the room.
He vaguely realized that Trurro had stopped sobbing, but continued his investigation, checking the wardrobe, the drawers and the attached bathroom. The sink had blood smudges all over it, but Duncan doubted the attackers used it to clean up. More likely Trurro had tried to revive his lover and gotten blood all over himself.
Having checked all he could, Duncan returned to the living room. Trurro still sat on the sofa. The boy had lost weight since he last saw him. “Have you eaten?”
Trurro just stared at him, his eyes blank. With a small sigh Duncan marched into the kitchen and made a ham-and-cheese sandwich. He plopped the plate on Trurro’s lap. “Eat,” he demanded.
The boy looked as if he wanted to protest, but Duncan stared him down. Trurro began to nibble on the sandwich.
Duncan dropped into an armchair and waited for the human to finish.
“They killed him,” Trurro whispered between bites.
“Who did?” Duncan kept his voice gentle.
“The Ferals.”
Duncan’s brows shot up. He’d always suspected that Hugo had links to Ferals, but he’d never been able to prove it. The few times he tried to track and follow him, the other Vampire had lost him in the middle of nowhere.
“What Ferals?”
Trurro took another deep breath. Guilt filled his eyes. “Once in a while the hunger would become too much. Synth-blood gave him the nutrition he needed, but he didn’t feel the same satisfaction that human blood gave him. One of his oldest friends, a Vampire called Jefferson, had turned Feral after the War. Hugo and he stayed in touch,” he waved his arms, “through channels. He never explained them to me.” Trurro hiccupped a sob. “And now he never will.”
“Hugo and this Jefferson would meet up once in a while and Hugo would go hunting with his old friend, killing humans?”
Trurro’s gaze dropped to the ground. He nodded. “It didn’t happen very often,” he defended his lover.
“What about you? Didn’t he drink your blood?”
The boy’s expression changed. He dropped his head back and closed his eyes. “Yes,” he whispered, a smile crossing his lips that could only be described as beatific. “Yes, he did.”
A Vampire’s bite during sex was one of the most erotic things that could happen to a hu
man.
“Then why did he have to go hunting?”
The smile slipped away and Trurro dropped his gaze again.
This time Duncan’s silence didn’t drive Trurro to talk.
“He needed the kill, didn’t he?” Duncan asked.
Trurro nodded. “He once told me that the high he achieved from draining a human dry is incomparable to anything else.” He wiped the tears trickling down his cheeks away. “Even being with me couldn’t make up for that need. But he didn’t want to risk hurting me, so he would go and meet Jefferson.”
Duncan’s little finger tapped against his thigh. They were back where they’d started. He suppressed the tapping and tried to get Trurro to talk more. “What happened the last time he met Jefferson?”
Trurro shrugged. “I’m not quite sure. All I know is that Hugo came home in a tizzy. He was scared and said that he’d never thought Jefferson would go that far. According to him, Jefferson and his followers were going to start another war.” Haunted eyes focused on Duncan. “I had never seen Hugo so frightened. He changed the security system close to hourly. Twice he packed and said we had to leave, only to change his mind saying they couldn’t make it onto the planet.
“He didn’t leave the house in the week and a half since he’d been back. He didn’t sleep and spent a lot of time in his study.” Trurro sobbed. “Yesterday he was even more agitated than usual and sent me away. He told me to go shopping and not come back until he phoned. But he never did.”
“So you came back against his wishes.”
Trurro nodded. “Yes, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I found him in the bedroom.” He covered his face with his hands. “They cut off his head. Duncan, they killed him.”
Duncan grabbed his shoulder. “What did you do?”
“His instructions had been very clear, so I called the undertaker and followed Hugo’s final wish.”
Before the boy could succumb to another wave of grief, Duncan pulled him back. “You said he spent a lot of time in his office. Doing what?”
“I’m not sure, he kept the door closed most of the time.”
Duncan rose and strode inside the study. The room was as lavishly decorated as the rest of the apartment. A massive real-wood desk stood before French doors leading to a balcony. Floor-to-ceiling shelves were filled with books, real paper books.
Nothing seemed out of place. The small personal comp hummed on the desk. Duncan instructed it to show him the last transactions and was told that it had been wiped clean. Knowing Hugo’s attention to detail, chances of recovering any data were slim to none. He paced up and down, hands on his hips, trying to imagine where Hugo would hide his information.
He’d been afraid and sent his human lover away. Hugo knew the enemy was coming for him. He would have found a way to leave something behind to avenge his death.
Duncan had heard rumors about Feral activity that crossed the line and could lead to another galactic war between humans and Vampires. Vampires might be the stronger, more advanced race, but their birthrate was far slower than humans. Unless Vampires started turning humans left, right and center, humans would always outnumber Vampires, making an all-out war deadly for the Vampire race.
If Hugo had evidence of the Ferals’ actions, Duncan had to find it and see what he could do to stop it from getting out of hand.
He stared at the classic books lined up on the shelves, all neat and tidy. At the decorative statues lined up like soldiers. One closer look showed him the figurines were based on book characters. He studied one more closely. The Tin Man had a brain around his neck and that was wrong.
Duncan carefully lifted the short necklace off the figure and studied the brain amulet. It looked exactly like a student version of a human brain. His fingertips traced across it with the lightest touch and he found a hairline fracture. With a hint of pressure the brain broke open and Duncan found an old-fashioned microchip.
Fifteen minutes later Duncan stared at his comp monitor. They had completely and utterly lost their minds. If they continued on this track they wouldn’t just cause a war with humans.
It would lead to the total extermination of Vampires.
* * * * *
Hours later Duncan stumbled into his complex. He’d been talking to his sources, trying to verify what he’d found at Hugo’s. He was dead beat and only wanted a tall glass of Baijiu, then to get a shower and try to rest his brain.
What he didn’t expect was to be attacked by a fury in his own lobby.
“Where have you been? Do you have any idea how long I have been waiting for you? Hours!” She punched his shoulder. “Where the hell were you?”
Duncan captured her wrists and shook her a little. “Tanasha, pull yourself together. What happened?”
Hours earlier he parted ways with an immaculately dressed and controlled Naema, who’d snuck into his head and made herself at home there. She’d made his heart race and his cock hard.
Now her hair was tangled, a smudge of dirt decorated her cheek. Her clothes were disheveled and her pants had a small tear. And controlled? Nowhere close. Her emotions bombarded him. He felt her fear and knew it was the predominant reason for her screeching.
He released her wrists and took her by the shoulders. “Tanasha, calm down and tell me what happened.”
She took a deep breath that turned into a sob and threw herself into his arms. “Ferals attacked me outside the house.”
Duncan felt as if he’d been punched in the gut. He pulled her close for a second, and then pushed her back so he could look into her eyes. “Ferals? Are you okay? What did they want?”
He pulled her against him again, for the first time thinking over what she’d said. “What do you mean, Ferals? How can they have attacked you? It’s impossible to get into the Naema District.”
“Well, it looks like nobody told them!” Tanasha snapped. “They waited outside my building and jumped me. It was pure luck that I managed to get away.”
Duncan shook his head in disbelief. Ferals were packs of lawless Vampires who fed on humans and killed them. After their discovery three hundred years ago, Vampires had the option to either stop feeding on humans and use synth-blood or be declared Feral with a shoot-on-sight order. It had taken years for the Vampires to bow down and now Ferals ruled the uninhabited outer planets, where no human or Naema dared to tread. But they never came to highly inhabited or civilized areas.
Having Ferals invade Tanasha’s home meant that she’d become the top of the kill list. Combined with what he’d found out earlier, Duncan knew they were in deep shit.
He hugged her close. Her pulse raced and she shivered with reaction.
And she’d come to him.
He pulled her even tighter, giving her his body and strength to lean on, to ground herself, to realize she wasn’t alone.
“Why? How did they find me?”
“Come on, let’s get you upstairs.”
Duncan put one arm under her knees, the other behind her back, and lifted her up. He carried her through the lobby and instructed the elevator to take him up to his apartment. The door opened for his fingerprint and mental connection.
Once inside, he tried to put Tanasha on the sofa, but her breathing grew labored and she clung to his neck so tightly she nearly strangled him. Duncan sat down with her in his lap. “It’s okay, baby, I’ve got you, you’re not alone,” he crooned over and over again.
Bit by bit Tanasha relaxed, her breathing evened out. She loosened her stranglehold on his neck and rested more comfortably against him. Duncan didn’t ask any questions. He just kept stroking his hand up and down her back.
“I was just walking toward my home and there they were,” she began. “How did they make it into the District, how did they even know it was my house?”
“They had inside help.”
Tanasha stiffened and moved slightly so she could look him in the eyes. “What do you mean?”
Duncan exhaled and pulled her back against his chest. “I’ve been hearing
rumors for months now, rumors of an underground human trafficking ring. Ferals are smuggling humans as blood slaves. Wealthy Vampires have the opportunity to purchase their own blood slave or two. They no longer have to use synth-blood and hey, if the slave dies, they can always get another.”
“They will set off another war. Where have you heard about this?” Tanasha shivered and cuddled closer into him.
“Here and there.” Duncan tightened his embrace and kissed the top of her head. “They’ve been very clever so far and stuck to the outer planets as well as high-risk groups. The Consortium has enough planets with vagrants, street courtesans, seasonal workers and minority communities. People from those groups usually don’t inform the Sentinels when one of them goes missing. And if they do, the Sentinels tend to only do superficial work, not bothering to find out anything.
“They can build up a quick and ready supply by just sticking to those groups. There has been some talk about settlers and other civilians going missing, but if they spread it far across the planets and don’t repeat in the same area?” He shrugged. “Nobody is going to put things together.”
“But what has that got to do with me or the District?”
“I have a feeling that the Ferals may be branching out,” he said.
Tanasha pulled back abruptly. “You’ve gotta be kidding!” She shook her head. “That is suicide. There are too few of us around, we would notice if somebody went missing.”
“Unless they have found a way to make everybody believe the person has left of her own free will.”
She paled. “Sydney, you think they took Sydney?”
He shrugged. “Look at the situation. We have a Naema who has a shipload of power, power intertwined with Feral magic. As a result he can manipulate everybody he comes in contact with. But only after he ensured he was engaged to and then married into a high-powered Naema family. Then his brand-new wife disappears and nobody around him asks questions.”
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