Rendell’s destruction would help Michael put all of that behind him once and for all, Jessie told herself. And then maybe she could help him move on and start a new life with her at his side.
“Everything quiet there?” Michael went on.
“Everything quiet,” Clifford told him.
“Is Jessie resting?”
Clifford glanced at her. “What do I tell him?”
She motioned for him to hold up the microphone. Grinning, he did so and depressed the key so Michael could hear her as she said, “Hardly! You think I’m going to sleep until this is all over?”
Michael chuckled. “Yes, I should have known better, shouldn’t I? Try not to worry, Jessie. Everything’s going to be all right.”
Try not to worry…Easier said than done, Jessie thought. But she said, “I know. And I’m not worried.” She wanted him to think that she had complete confidence in him. Which, as a matter of fact, she did. But all the variables couldn’t be controlled, and ultimately what happened tonight wouldn’t depend just on him but on dozens of other people, as well.
Michael signed off with a promise to stay in touch. Jessie sighed as the radio fell silent.
Clifford turned in his chair and looked at her, obviously deep in thought. “You know,” he said, “I never really expected Michael to find someone again. That terrible business with Charlotte happened before Max and I started working with him, so for as long as we’ve known him, he’s been this grim avenger of the night, for want of a less melodramatic term. I suppose I thought he’d always be that way.” Clifford paused, his frown deepening. “I hope he doesn’t get distracted at the worst possible moment.”
“Oh, great,” Jessie said, suddenly feeling her heart sinking. “Something else to worry about.”
“You promised Michael you wouldn’t worry.”
“You didn’t actually believe that, did you? Wouldn’t you feel a lot better about everything if you were with him right now?”
“As a matter of fact, I would,” Clifford replied with a sigh and a nod. “But all we can do is wait.”
That was the truth, damn it, Jessie thought, and as the minutes crept by, waiting became harder and harder. She tried again to distract herself by practicing, but it didn’t work this time. She kept thinking about Michael and wondering what he was doing and what was going to happen.
All of those concerns occupied her mind to the point that she almost didn’t hear the faint thump on the roof. She did hear it, though, and so did Clifford, who exchanged a startled glance with her.
“What the hell?” he said as he started up out of his chair in front of the console.
At that moment, a roar louder than any Jessie had heard in her life slammed into her ears like a pair of giant fists. A concussion rocked the house and drove her to her knees. Waves of heat assaulted her.
A bomb, the part of her brain that wasn’t too stunned to function told her. Somebody had dropped a bomb on the farmhouse.
Not the sort of bomb that would level the place, though. The walls still stood, but some of the roof was gone, she saw as Clifford grabbed her arm, hauled her to her feet and stumbled with her into the living room. Flames were everywhere. Whatever had hit the roof was as much an incendiary device as an explosive.
Max was on his feet, too, jolted out of his nap by the blast. Blood dripped down his face from a new gash on his forehead, probably caused by some shrapnel from the half-destroyed roof. Clouds of smoke rolled through the room, making all three of them cough. This wasn’t tear gas, like in the training facility that afternoon, but rather smoke from the rapidly spreading fire. The flames had a good hold on the walls already; chances were they would consume the whole house in a matter of minutes.
“We’ve gotta get out of here!” Max shouted.
“We can’t!” Clifford replied. “You know what’s bound to be waiting for us out there!”
“We’ll fight our way through ’em! Damn it, Clifford, if we stay here we’re dead!”
Clifford nodded in grim acceptance of that fact. He let go of Jessie’s arm, yanked a cabinet open and pulled out crossbows and quivers filled with sharpened wooden stakes.
Jessie’s hands trembled as she took one of the quivers and slung it over her shoulder. Looked like she was going to get her chance to fight vampires after all, she thought.
Clifford pressed the crossbow into her hands. “You know how to use this?”
Michael had shown her, and she had practiced a little, but she wouldn’t call herself proficient in the weapon’s use. She had no choice but to learn on the job, so to speak, so she nodded and said, “I can use it!” as she loaded one of the stakes into the slotted receptacle that held it and cranked the bow back to full cock.
Clifford pulled a small spray can out of his pocket and sprayed Jessie from head to foot with it. The smell of garlic dizzied her. Clifford and Max drenched themselves in the stuff, too.
“That won’t keep them off of us completely, but it’ll help,” Clifford said, raising his voice now to be heard over the crackling and roaring of the fire. He tossed the empty can aside. “Let’s go!”
The heat in the room was terrible by now, a monster that threatened to shrivel both the flesh and the soul. The parts of the roof that hadn’t been destroyed by the explosion had started to collapse because of the blaze. A sheet of fire dropped between the living room and the room where all the electronic equipment was located. They couldn’t call for help now. They were on their own.
With fear causing her pulse to hammer in her head, Jessie followed Max and Clifford out the front door. Shadowy shapes swooped at them from the darkness as soon as they were on the porch. Max roared in anger as he struck out to the right and left with the long stake in his hand. Jessie caught glimpses of hideous figures turning to dust as Max’s stake penetrated their chests, but mostly everything around her was chaotic confusion. Clifford had a crossbow in his left hand, a semiautomatic pistol in the right, and the gun blasted several times as he fired it. Jessie knew they were under attack by vampires, and it stood to reason that some of the bloodsuckers’ human slaves would be with them, too. Clifford targeted the humans with the pistol.
A deep, powerful voice boomed, “Don’t kill the girl!” A rush of footsteps made her turn toward the end of the porch to her right. Several figures charged at her. In the garish, flickering light of the flames, she couldn’t tell if they were humans or vampires.
Either way, she thought, a sharp stake in the chest was bound to hurt like hell, so she flung up the crossbow and triggered it.
At this range, with the full power of the crossbow behind it, the stake was a deadly missile. Even more so when the targets were vampires, as they were in this case, Jessie noticed as she reached for another stake. The one she had fired tore through the chest of the first man charging toward her. He turned to dust before her eyes, his face dissolving so that she glimpsed the skull underneath the shredding flesh before it fell apart, too. The powdery remains sprayed forward to land almost at her feet.
At the same time, the stake had gone all the way through the first vampire and taken out the second creature in a swirl of unholy dust, too. It didn’t have enough force left to penetrate the chest of the third vampire, though, who grinned at Jessie as it bounced off. He stomped through what was left of his comrades as she tried desperately to reload the crossbow. She managed just in time, bringing the weapon up and triggering it just as the grinning monster lunged at her.
The stake hit the vampire in the chest at almost pointblank range. His face had begun to contort as he smelled the garlic on her, but he didn’t have time to be fully repelled by it before the stake blew him away in a spray of dust.
Jessie fumbled for another stake and looked around. Max stood in the center of a ring of enemies, still flailing away with his stake as they closed in on him. Clifford was on one knee, firing the crossbow, then reloading and firing again with such swift efficiency that his movements were little more than a blur in the nightmarish
light. Both men were putting up a good fight, but there were too many of the enemy.
Jessie screamed, “Max!” as the big man went down in a knot of struggling figures. More vampires closed in around Clifford, and Jessie couldn’t see him anymore, either. She took an instinctive step backward, intending to put her back against the wall of the house, but it was on fire and the blistering heat drove her away from it. She leaped down from the porch, thinking that maybe she could run off into the night.
She didn’t make it more than a few steps before a figure loomed up out of the darkness and grabbed her. She swung the crossbow at the man’s head, but he batted it aside with a forearm. His other arm went around her throat as he spun her around and jerked her back against him. Obviously, from the way he was manhandling her, he was human, not a vampire. Otherwise the garlic would have at least given him pause. It didn’t seem to be affecting him in the least.
Panic assailed her. She wanted out of here. She flailed and jerked, but it didn’t do any good against the mercenary’s superior strength. She felt her feet leaving the ground as he hauled her away from the burning house. The arm across her throat held her like an iron bar.
“Look what I found, boss,” her captor said as a dark figure emerged from the shadows into the flickering light cast by the flames. Jessie’s vision had begun to blur, but she could make out a tall, lean shape, and as the man came closer she saw long hair swept back from a high forehead and dark eyes above a hawklike nose and a slash of a mouth.
“Ms. Morgan,” the man said as he came to a stop in front of her, “how kind of you to come out, since we couldn’t come in to visit. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.”
Jessie’s frantic struggles slowed as she realized that the man had a British accent. Mad thoughts whirled through her brain. It couldn’t be…It just couldn’t…
“All me to introduce myself,” the man said. “My name is Jefferson Rendell.”
Chapter 13
W hat was going on had such an unreal quality Jessie wanted to believe it was all a dream, a terrible nightmare from which she would soon awaken. That had to be it. This couldn’t really be happening.
But it was real, all right. She had been taken prisoner by the vampire overlord. She knew that from the pain she felt when he wrenched her arm as he forced her into the rear seat of a long black limousine.
Behind her, the farmhouse continued to burn. More of Rendell’s men carried the limp forms of Clifford and Max toward a black SUV that had accompanied the limo up the driveway after the incendiary bomb had been lobbed onto the house by a grenade launcher from outside the range of the cameras and motion detectors. Rendell gloatingly explained all of that to her. He also told her that the lives of Max and Clifford were being spared…for the moment.
“Having them alive may come in handy when dealing with that beau of yours,” Rendell had said as the vehicles pulled away from the so-called safe house that had turned out not to be safe at all. “Michael is cursed with an inconvenient loyalty to his friends and relatives…” He put a finger under her chin and tipped it up. “And his loved ones. You must fit into that category, hmm, my dear?”
Jessie wanted to spit in his face, but the fear that gripped her made it impossible for her to work up any saliva. She managed to glare at him, though, as she shrank into the far corner of the capacious backseat and put as much distance as she could between her and the vampire.
Rendell had just laughed at her fierce look, clearly not intimidated by it at all. And why should he be? He had been one step ahead in this deadly game all along, Jessie realized.
Unable to resist the temptation to boast, even to someone he considered a puny human, Rendell said, “I’ve known all along what your precious Michael was up to, you know. Once the report reached me that he was here in Texas, I knew his presence had to have something to do with the summit meeting between Spaulding, Escobar, Takahashi and myself.” A curt laugh came from his thin lips. “Spaulding is a fool. He spends half his time drunk on blood. I know more about his business than he does, so it wasn’t any great trick to find out that Michael had purchased the resort property. That confirmed my suspicion.”
Jessie’s voice shook a little as she said, “Stop calling him Michael, like the two of you are old friends or something.”
“But we are!” Rendell protested. “Or at least, if not friends, then closely connected by mutual…acquaintances, shall we say. Did he ever tell you about Charlotte Whittier? Dear, beautiful Charlotte?”
“I know what you did to her,” Jessie said, fighting the cold terror that threatened to overwhelm her from the inside out.
“Then you know that what happened to her was Michael’s fault. You’d think that he would have learned his lesson from that. But of course he didn’t. He’s done the same thing all over again, got an innocent woman mixed up in things that are none of her business. Foolish boy. But you’re the one who’s going to suffer because of his foolishness, Ms. Morgan.”
Jessie swallowed hard. He planned to turn her into a vampire, too.
But Michael would stop him. Somehow, Michael wouldn’t let that happen to her. She knew it.
“How…how did you find us?” she forced herself to ask. She didn’t really care all that much, but she wanted to keep her thoughts distracted from the grisly fate he had planned for her.
“The men who attacked that buffoon Max earlier in the day were able to plant a tracking device on his car before he killed them. Following him to the farmhouse presented no problems.”
What Michael had said about the vampires mixing modern-day technology with their supernatural powers had certainly proved to be true. Despair nibbled at the edges of Jessie’s brain. How could anyone hope to defeat these creatures?
She closed her eyes to shut out the sight of Rendell’s arrogant smile, but she couldn’t get away from his voice. “I’m sure you’ll see Michael soon. I don’t believe he’ll waste any time attacking the castle once he knows I’m there, since all the others are already in attendance. We’re going to make it easy for his men to recognize me. I can black out these windows with the touch of a button, you know, but tonight I’m going to leave them transparent.”
Jessie opened her eyes. “It’s a trap. The summit’s nothing but a trap.”
“Of course. He would have realized that, had he not been…distracted.”
And the leering smile on his face told Jessie quite plainly that she had been the distraction.
“The fool never should have gotten involved with you, my dear,” Rendell said. “But it appears that Michael Brandt is just too arrogant to learn his lesson until it’s too late.”
Too late, Jessie thought.
Too late for everything.
The resort/corporate retreat previously owned by Warren Spaulding was a huge, castlelike structure on a plateau north of the interstate. No doubt anyone driving by was shocked by its appearance. A castle just wasn’t the sort of thing people expected to come across in these rugged Texas hills that had once been home to several coal mines.
Michael had studied the place’s history once he discovered its connection to Warren Spaulding. It had been built some fifty years earlier by an oil billionaire as a hunting lodge and as a place to throw grandiose parties. But an oil bust had wiped out the man. Its ownership had changed hands several times since then, all failures, until the property had been bought cheaply by one of Spaulding’s companies. Those managers had made a success of it at last, renting it out at exorbitant prices to corporations who held training sessions there, or courted wealthy clients by bringing them there for hunting parties—and parties of other sorts, if the rumors were to be believed. According to those rumors, the stone walls of this castle had seen as much decadent behavior as the ones in their European cousins.
The funny thing was, considering that a vampire owned the resort, the place really was a legitimate business, and a profitable one, at that. Spaulding had steered clear of personal involvement with it—until now.
> The resort’s regular employees had been given the week off, and new staff members had arrived, according to the surveillance Michael’s men had kept on the place for days now. Those newcomers would be human slaves of the vampires who wouldn’t be shocked at what went on during the summit meeting of the four overlords. Spaulding, Rendell, Escobar and Takahashi weren’t the only leaders of the various vampire clans scattered around the world, but they were four of the most powerful, and any alliance they formed here would only strengthen the spreading influence of the creatures.
Michael didn’t intend to let that happen.
The staging area for the raid was a ranch approximately thirty miles away from the castle, a distance that could be covered quickly in the sleek helicopters equipped with state-of-the-art stealth technology. The Brandts had spared no expense on the best equipment money could buy.
Like the rest of the family, Michael was a firm believer in using wealth and power for good. In the past few days, though, he had discovered that just as the old saying had it, there were some things money couldn’t buy. And all of them were embodied, beautifully, in Jessie Morgan.
Michael’s thoughts as he paced back and forth restlessly near the landing field were of Jessie as much as they were of the mission that would take place tonight. He wanted to get back to her, to feast his eyes on her again, to feel the compelling warmth of her in his arms. Normally his brain would be fully occupied with going over the plans for tonight’s raid, instead of thinking about a woman. Maybe feeling like this wasn’t such a good thing for a warrior.
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