Martina already had a hand on his shoulder; now she squeezed it. “This place was a trash heap, with rats and homeless people inside before we started. You should thank us, wraith.”
“Maybe I should raise your rent,” he muttered.
“In a few hours our slaves and companions turned your wrecked property into the lab and holding facility we require.”
“You have clever slaves,” he answered. He was not impressed. What did he care about the education of mortal monkey puppets?
“Very clever,” Martina agreed. “This operation has been in the planning stages for nearly a decade.”
“A decade’s not that long.”
“In the growth of mortal scientific knowledge, the last decade has been amazing. I’ve been following the development in genetic research, and knew it held the key to our finding proof about the abominations. It did take some time to find the type of scientists we needed, people with training, skills, and of course, enough of the Goddess’s Gift to be put to our uses. As soon as we heard about Ibis’s plans to bring the city back to life in the modern age, we put my plan in motion. We made a bargain with him to exchange information for our services. We found and enslaved our research team. We acquired the necessary equipment—”
“Which you kept in a truck because you didn’t have anywhere to stash it.”
She ignored, or possibly didn’t notice, Eddie’s sarcasm. “We found you. We knew you had property.”
Eddie wanted to snap at her that there were a lot of things she didn’t know about him. But what was the point? All he really wanted was to find out why she’d brought him here, and then get out. It was bad enough he’d had dreams about Martina last day; he didn’t want to face the fanatic in the flesh any longer than he had to. He glared at her now, waiting.
She was silent under his regard for a few moments, then she smiled, like a kid with a very special secret. “Do you want to see what we’re doing to the abomination?”
“No,” he said.
She ignored him, and drew him down a hall to a heavy door that was guarded by two of the biggest vampires Eddie had ever seen. Not only were this pair tall, broad, and heavily muscled, but they wore body armor, helmets, and held heavy guns. Now this show of strength impressed Eddie. He was a warrior, after all.
Martina urged him forward. Eddie balked, and pointed toward the door. “You’re keeping Duke in there?”
“It’s perfectly safe.” Her smile was smug, even placid. “He’s drugged. And restrained.”
“He’s an Enforcer!”
“That’s that sort of attitude we’re trying to save you people from.” She shook her head. “You’re terrified of him, aren’t you?”
“And you’re not?” Eddie pulled away from Martina’s grip, but one of her guards stepped forward and leveled his weapon at Eddie’s chest. Eddie was not normally afraid of guns, but something about the barrel of this thing looked ominous. He shot a look at Martina. “What kind of rounds does that thing fire?”
“Incendiary,” she answered. She was smiling benignly again. “Very painful.”
“Vampires can’t kill vampires.”
He’d always truly believed this was the one evil that strigoi could not commit on each other. But now, with the way this nest of insane fanatics acted, he was no longer so sure.
“I don’t want to kill you, wraith.”
Eddie didn’t like the emphasis on I. “What do you want?”
“A sample of your blood.” She gestured toward the door. “Let’s go inside.”
Jebel didn’t tell me why he’s in town.
Char recalled this while she sat on the bench she’d shared with Valentine the night before. Lights flared in pretty patterns overhead, and neon blinked and swirled at the entrances to casinos. Char had no problem ignoring the lights, or the pedestrian traffic all around her. Even the vampire junkies were no more than tiny blips on her awareness. She was in a broody mood, and Jebel Haven was easy to brood over.
While their conversation in the hotel was supposed to have been a two-way information exchange, she’d blurted out her interest in the hotel—which she supposed wasn’t all that big of a secret—but Jebel hadn’t really told her anything. Except about Martina, the scrolls, and the missing Enforcer, she amended. Okay, so he had told her a lot, but he hadn’t told her why. He hadn’t told her how. He hadn’t named sources. It was important in their very secret world to keep it secret. She shouldn’t let a mortal keep important information from her. She shouldn’t let a mortal freely snoop around the edges of vampire life. Of course, she shouldn’t have let him go so long without having tasted her blood, either. Their bond was real, and it was strong, but it was a human one, made up of trust, and love. It was too human. She acted too human. And that was no way for an Enforcer to protect her kind.
“I’m going to nail him,” she vowed to the night. “Tonight. Going to drag him into an alley if I have to, cut a vein, and make him take a drink.” If they could find a few minutes to spare from saving the local Enforcer from whatever trouble he’d gotten himself into. She ran her tongue over slightly extended mating fangs. “Going to be sweet.”
Fortunately, the night around her was too busy, and far too noisy for anyone to overhear her talking to herself. This was the sort of place where people gave you space. People came here to enjoy themselves. To make fools of themselves. They got drunk and noisy and rowdy and made out with each other. No one paid attention to anyone else, or expected anyone to pay attention to them. It was permanent Mardi Gras. She could feel their joy, frantically desperate in many cases, but at least mortals knew how to have fun. There was a certain built-in gloominess to being a vampire. She liked humanity.
Maybe it would help if she didn’t like humans so much. Maybe it would be better for her if she didn’t believe, deep in her soul, that she was human, just diurnally challenged. Many vampires thought they gave up their humanity when they changed, which accounted for the lack of a sense of fun. Now she found out that some vampires didn’t think Nighthawks were vampires. She felt like some evil conspiracy was trying to throw her out of her species, not once, but twice.
“And I won’t have it,” she murmured, firm and fierce.
She wondered where Geoff Sterling stood on the humanity issue. And why he liked the notion that Nighthawks were utterly different than the parents they came from. She also wished she wasn’t sitting here waiting for Sterling and the enigmatic Valentine to put in an appearance.
“Stupid meeting place,” she muttered as she took a look at the rapt faces of the tourist crowd fascinated by the light show around them. “Stupid people.” Why did she feel so compelled to take care of them? Even the neon junkies wandering among the mortals got a certain amount of her sympathy.
Maybe she shouldn’t have called Valentine and Sterling in. She and Jebel were certainly capable of handling a few rogue vampires. She was very aware of Jebel as he roamed restlessly up and down the five-block area. He was guarding the perimeter, guarding her from the neon junkies, she supposed. Or more likely, the alert monster hunter part of him was uneasy about the presence of so many vampires dispersed among the crowd of mortals.
“Probably a bit of both,” Valentine said, suddenly standing next to the bench. “Who is he?” she asked as Char jumped to her feet. “He’s cute.”
“But mortal,” Sterling added from behind her.
“He has a cute butt,” Valentine said.
“She’s been following your boyfriend for a few minutes,” Sterling said when Char turned to face him. “I thought she was checking to see if he’s dangerous to us.” He grinned and shrugged. He was wearing sunglasses again. They were all dressed in black. “Guess she was just checking him out.”
“Dark, dangerous, dirty. Qualities I like in a man.”
Char did not like the other woman’s casual tone. It made her claws want to come out. “He’s mine.”
“And she’s mine,” Jebel said, coming up to stand closely behind Sterling. “You unde
rstand that, don’t you, fang boy?”
So, Jebel had noticed Sterling’s interest in her. Char was pleased by this show of possessiveness on Jebel’s part.
Sterling stood preternaturally still, his expression going flat. “Don’t annoy me, mortal.”
“I won’t like you when you’re annoyed?” Jebel spoke with confident amusement. He glanced at Valentine. Char noticed he took a moment to appreciate the other vampire’s feminine attributes, then he looked at her, smiling. “These your friends, sweetheart?”
“I wouldn’t call them friends,” she replied. “But I think we’re going to need their help,” Char admitted as a sudden burst of anxiety overcame her. She looked around anxiously, then was compelled to meet Valentine’s dark gaze. “Something’s—”
“Stirring,” the older vampire said. Valentine exhaled, then took a deep breath. “Something.” Then she seemed to shake off any semblance of worry, and smiled at Jebel. “While we’re waiting for disaster to strike, you can fill us in on what we need to know.”
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Ben demanded.
Reese ignored him, and continued unbuttoning Clare’s shirt. He had her stretched out on the low table, paralyzed, but her face was turned toward Ben.
Ben reached out to shake the cage, despite the agony. Clare’s eyes were on him, full of terror and pleading, but she was completely in Reese’s control. “You’ll die if you hurt her,” Ben promised.
Reese was going to die, Ben decided. No way did Ben want to take a person with so much magical power into the strigoi world. Clare had warned him Reese was ambitious and no good. He’d known it, and was amused by the prospect of taming a tiger, just as he’d been tamed. But Ben knew he’d never been all that dangerous. He’d wanted simple power, money, dames, to build an empire, sure, but a business one.
“You want to rule the world, don’t you?” he called to Reese.
At this question, Morgan Reese straightened up from looming over Clare and turned to face Ben. “I worshipped Satan as a teenager,” he told Ben. “Took part in the black mass. We sacrificed chickens, dogs. We drank their blood. But the magic didn’t work. It was stupid, humiliating. Turned me off to the idea of real magic. So I took up stage magic and was good at it. But real magic still drew me. Drew me here. To this place. Called me.” Reese smiled in a way that Ben found sickening. “Now I realize that if I’d been the one performing the rituals back in my Satanist days, I’d have ruled the world long ago.”
“Ruled the world?” Ben exploded. “Are you crazy? You think magic—Listen to me, you idiot. Charisma’s the only kind of magic that works on most people. Ritual shit hardly works on anybody.”
Reese ignored him and turned back toward Clare. He flipped through pages in the notebook, then picked up the oven mitts.
Fear twisted through Ben. “Don’t do this,” Ben pleaded. “It’s not going to help you rule the world. It’s not worth the effort. Magic doesn’t work!”
“It works on you,” Reese said without looking toward Ben.
“Yes, but—”
“It works on things. It binds the universe together.”
“That’s the Force, you idiot!”
“Same thing,” Reese said.
He moved in front of the table, blocking Ben’s view of Clare. He held his arms up and out to the sides and began to chant. The heavy gloves looked ludicrously out of place in a magical ritual. Ben grew dizzy as Reese continued to speak. He couldn’t make out the words, but the sounds fell into his mind, almost glowed inside his head. The gathering power took his breath away. Energy swirled around the room, drawn toward Reese. Ben felt the rush of current like razor cuts scraping across his skin. Pain blinded him until the voice stopped, and the world and the magic were poised in the silence, waiting for what Reese would do next.
“No,” Ben begged, knowing what must come now, even before it began.
Waves of heat shimmered up from the ruby. Fire glowed in its heart. Reese picked it up, very carefully. He moved quickly, smoke rising from the heat-resistant padding of the gloves. Ben caught a brief glimpse of Clare’s face before Reese stood poised over her again. He saw her terror, and her tears, and the plea for help in her eyes.
“No,” Ben said again. He shook the cage again, totally unaware of his own pain.
Clare had no voice to scream when the burning ruby touched her flesh. But Ben knew the instant her pain started, and screamed for her. He was exquisitely aware of Clare’s agony, and the reek of charring flesh and burning blood. He knew when the stone burrowed into her chest cavity and first touched her heart.
That was when Morgan Reese began chanting again.
Chapter 15
“WHY DO YOU need my blood? Why do we have to go in there?” Duke was in there. Eddie didn’t want to go anywhere near a pissed-off Enforcer. Not even one who was tied down and drugged. Not even Duke.
Nobody listened to him. One of the guards opened the heavy door. The other one pushed him in behind Martina, then followed after and made sure the door was closed and locked again. Eddie checked quickly for exits. Of course, the door was the only way in or out. Damn.
For some reason he’d expected to see Duke stretched out on an operating table, hooked up to all kinds of monitoring equipment, and with a bunch of mortal scientists poking and prodding at him. There were mortals in the room; they were even wearing white lab coats. There was monitoring equipment, and a metal table, but it was empty. Duke was in the room, all right, off in one corner, naked and looking like hell. Eddie couldn’t see anything high-tech about the way the Nighthawk was being restrained. There was a metal collar around Duke’s neck. A heavy chain fastened the collar to the wall.
“The wall’s reinforced, right?” Eddie asked nervously. “The chain’s going to hold him?”
“Of course,” Martina answered with blithe self-confidence. “Modern materials are wonderfully strong.”
Eddie noticed the nervous glances the mortal slaves threw Duke’s way as they went about their mistress’s business. “You sure?”
Martina moved closer to Duke, taking Eddie with her. “Pitiful creature,” she said happily.
The Enforcer’s head came up slowly. His expression was full of pain, not exactly vacant, but not really aware, either. He snarled weakly, but without a hint of any sort of fang showing.
Eddie wanted to bolt, but since he was held fast by the stronger vampire, he indulged his curiosity instead. “What kind of drugs work on Nighthawks?”
“Potent ones,” was the smug answer. “We’re letting them wear off a bit now. There’s an experiment to be performed that he needs to be awake for.”
Eddie forgot about Duke’s plight, and gulped. “You’re not going to experiment on me, are you?”
“No.” Martina smiled. “We aren’t interested in monitoring your responses.”
“You said you wanted my blood.”
“My scientists want a blood sample from you.” She took him over to a counter where a trio of mortals stood waiting. One of them held a large syringe.
Eddie experienced a type of fear he’d never known before at the sight of the sharp needle. “You’re not going to stick me with that thing, are you?”
“You’re a vampire, wraith,” Martina reminded him. “You’re used to fangs penetrating your skin.”
“That’s different. It is,” he insisted at Martina’s exasperated look. “Besides, a needle won’t go through our skin.” He took some hope from this.
Hope Martina immediately dashed. “This needle will.”
“I don’t want to,” he declared. “It’s not right. Not Lawful. Vampires only give blood when they’re dating.”
“This is for a good cause,” Martina countered. “For science. We’re gathering blood samples from as wide a range of vampires as we can. We’re gathering data that will help our kind. Within a few years we hope to find cures for your light sensitivity, and the agoraphobia that plagues others of our kind. With scientific knowledge we can h
elp ourselves.”
Eddie was shocked to his core. “The Laws forbids experimentation. The Law—”
“That’s what the Enforcers have taught us to believe. We’ve been lied to, kept in the dark ages. Enforcers must—”
“No!” Eddie held up a hand. “Don’t start.” He looked at the lab technician slave with the syringe. “I’d rather give a blood sample than listen to another rant.”
Martina finally let him go, and the slave stepped forward. Eddie closed his eyes, and turned his head away. “Will it hurt?”
“Yes,” the tech answered.
Eddie did not appreciate the honesty, but he stayed still rather than follow the urge to rip the slave’s head off when the metal penetrated his skin.
After a few minutes, the tech said, “Done.”
Eddie sighed with relief and opened his eyes. He looked at Martina, who stood there with her arms crossed, looking smugger than ever. “Can I go now?” he asked her.
“I’m sorry, wraith,” she answered, though there was nothing but glee in her. “But letting you go would be a waste of resources.” Fear clutched in Eddie’s gut as she looked back at Duke. “We’ve taken a lot of blood out of him,” she said. She looked back at Eddie. “He’s getting hungry.”
Vampires sated their need for renewed energy by consuming mortals. Nighthawks built up their strength by taking the energy from vampires. It was a food chain thing.
“No. You can’t do this!” Eddie backed away from the mortals, but was grabbed from behind by a couple of vampires. He struggled, and pleaded with Martina. “Please, don’t. You can’t do this to me!”
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