She gave his arm a playful shove. “Not funny. Ready to dive into the throng?”
“Why the interest, Jess?”
“There’s an electricity, a sense of something coming from these people that I’ve never felt before.”
“Maybe they’re just looking forward to whatever they’re going to see?”
She chewed on her lip. “I don’t think that’s it.”
His face took on an aura of concern. “I get it. We’d better follow them.”
YESTERDAY AFTER WORK, Morana had followed Gervais without his knowledge, and he’d gone straight to Vlad’s club. Double-crossing spy bastard! She’d be watching him closely from now on because he was up to something, and she’d be damned if he’d get away with it.
Today, something buzzed under her skin. If it was possible for her to feel excitement, it might be something like that. Whatever it was, she got a bit of a high from it. Almost a jolt of what it might feel like to be alive.
Looking across the city, she sensed an awakening. Wait a minute! The blood she drank must’ve been tainted this morning. She kept walking and shoved odd thoughts away while trying not to be influenced by that weird vibe of excitement in the air.
She had to ignore the off-kilter feelings if she wanted to stick to her plan to catch Gervais unaware. His movements lately had been suspicious at best. She’d take her time—she had until dawn. Most vampires didn’t spend their evenings at home, so he’d have to come out of his apartment sooner or later.
She’d barely settled back against the wall when he and another person showed up in the foyer of his building. They were obviously trying not to be noticed.
She squinted for a better look at the other one. Aha! It was the same vampire he’d talked to in the club.
After the vampire left, Gervais wandered down the street while she stuck to the rooftops, following him without being seen.
He went straight to Vlad’s club—again.
She slipped inside, where he wouldn’t see her, while he seated himself at the bar, where he drank two goblets of blood. No one bothered him. No one came near him, except the bartender to ask if he wanted another drink.
When two over-sized vampires stopped and stood between her and Gervais for a couple of minutes, she couldn’t get a clear line of sight. She wanted to shout and tell them to get the hell out of the way, but everyone would notice her then, including Gervais.
But by the time they moved, he was gone.
Irritation bloomed, and she gritted her teeth as she got up to leave.
On the way back, she stuck to the shadows, hoping not to run in to any other vampires who wanted her dead because she’d thwarted the attack on her brother. That big hitman had been out for Regent’s hide, and if she hadn’t been following him, he’d be dead right now.
Regent’s attacker had been an Order vampire. He wore the mark of the raven. The Order stayed low-key, and normally, they didn’t kill humans and set themselves up for trouble—so why threaten Regent? Because he was a priest? Because, according to street talk, he’d had a hand in ending the demon invasion of Paris?
Damn it, she needed to be the vampire who put herself on the map. Unfortunately, Jess had arrived with a suitcase full of cachet. Parisian vampires knew she was deadly to them, but they still respected the hell out of her.
Morana returned to her car and made her way home, on the outskirts of the city. Her adoptive father’s family had owned this land and farmhouse for generations. It was ironic that Sinclair wasn’t going to be able to pass it on to his progeny. He’d chosen the wrong profession, as some odd fringe group known as Watchers, he’d never have any hope of fathering a child. And then adopting a vampire made it even less likely.
She’d tied up Sinclair and left him in the basement a couple of days ago. She probably should give him some water. If he died of thirst, she’d never get the recipe for the drug that he’d gotten her hooked on. Only, he didn’t know she was hooked.
Well, maybe he knew now. She grinned and rubbed her eyeteeth to make them shine just before she opened the door to the basement.
“Good evening, Papa,” she said in the little girl voice she used only for him—and only when she wanted something. It was a voice that always made her feel sick.
He turned pained eyes on her, but couldn’t speak through the gag.
When she yanked the cloth out of his mouth, he gasped for air and tried to swallow.
She released one of his hands that were handcuffed to the solid oak headboard in the basement bedroom. He’d never be able to escape from this room because it had been fitted for her when she was an out-of-control teenaged vampire.
“Cherie, why are you doing this to me?” he croaked.
“I want the recipe. I want to be able to recreate it myself.” She burned inside, but had to play on his sympathies even though she’d tortured him. “What if you die? What will happen to me then? I can’t live without your drug. It makes me fit in, and feel wonderful.”
“I know you can’t help this, Morana. It’s not your fault. But hurting me to get the recipe will do you no good, either. I’ve told you over and over—the mixture can only be created by a Watcher. Even if I gave you everything you needed, it’s not just a matter of ingredients. There’s an element of Watcher’s influence, a kind of magic you can’t learn.”
Damn, that made sense to her. She’d gone off on her own when she was eighteen, thinking she’d manage without him. Instead she’d nearly gone crazy and had almost gotten herself staked. He’d found her and brought her back, put her down in this basement room and waited out the madness while he fed the drug to her, a little at a time.
Even when she’d been a child, she’d been voracious and uncontrollable until she’d grown enough to start taking his special concoction. He’d created the recipe to give her a sense of calm, to allow her to interact with the other vampires in Paris. To be one of them. But he probably didn’t realize she’d become totally addicted to the high the stuff gave her.
“I need to know how. You have to teach me,” she said forcefully.
“Darling daughter, I can’t. The abilities are born in Watchers. We can no more teach you to have our abilities, than to give you the ability to fly.”
“How can you still be like this?” she asked.
“Like what?” He rubbed his tired eyes with his one free hand.
“You still don’t hate me. After all I’ve done to you.”
“I love you, child. I know it’s hard for your vampire heart to grasp, but a father’s love knows no end. You can’t help yourself. That’s my fault. I should have realized the drug was having such a strong effect. You need it to be tempered, to lower your cravings.”
“No! Don’t you dare change a thing! I want it the way it is.”
He shook his head. “I can recreate it to have the same efficacy but without the cravings.”
“Cravings are pretty much all vampires know. Please don’t take that away. I’m sorry I tied you up, Papa.” She felt actual moisture behind her eyes—hell, she might even cry. She was that panicked that he might fuck up her mixture. She needed the drug. It was her exultation, and it would lead her to rule the Order.
“You want me to be inside the Order, don’t you, Papa?”
“I do want that for you, my love. But you can’t take over this way, don’t you see? You need to be more in control of your emotions. Do you remember how it was when you were small and you had no impulse control? You might be reverting, my darling. I need to work on that aspect of the medicine.”
“I insist! I want it the way it is.”
He sighed and lifted a shackled hand as high as he could before he let it drop again. The handcuff made a mechanical sound as it fell.
“Papa, I saw a Cardinal at Regent’s apartment the other night. He looked familiar to me.”
Sinclair stiffened and fear crossed his features. “Who was he?”
“I don’t know. What is it about a Cardinal that makes you look afraid?”
“Morana! You’ve got to release me! I need to find out who this man is.”
“Tell me what you know,” she said. “Now.”
“I can’t. Trust me when I say it’s better that you don’t know. But you can also trust that I will bring you into the Order. I have something to tell you—I’ve kept a secret from you.” He cringed and waited for the worst.
She leaned in closer to his face and had to physically stop herself from forcing him to talk. “What do you know?”
He closed his eyes in a pained expression and swallowed hard. His voice was gravelly from lack of moisture. She grabbed a bottle of water from the table he couldn’t reach. It must have been torturous for him to see the water but be unable to get it. And that was exactly why she’d put it there. She opened the top and handed it to him.
“Merci, merci.” He drank deeply, swallowed half the bottle before he stopped.
Was he so weak? He should hate her—why didn’t he?
Somewhere in her dark pit of a heart, she felt something for him. For a second, she regretted the way she’d treated him. She huffed out a ragged breath before she unlocked the second handcuff. “Please forgive me, Papa. I shouldn’t have done this to you.”
A tear slid down his face, and his aged, fatigued features locked on her gaze. He swallowed again, as if biting back a moan while he rubbed his raw, red wrists. “I love you more than you’ll ever understand, Morana. I may not be your biological father but I love you more than he ever could.”
She sighed. “Yes, I understand.” Hell, no, she didn’t understand. Her cold heart didn’t allow for that kind of emotion, and he might as well have said he hated her. It would mean the same thing to her.
She turned away from him. At least that’s what she wanted to believe. She was a cold-hearted vampire bitch—she couldn’t have any feelings for this man, right?
He followed her back upstairs and went to the fridge. He pulled out a bottle of orange juice and swallowed it down.
It was then she realized, not only hadn’t she given him fluids for two days, but she hadn’t fed him either.
He dropped onto a chair in the kitchen, his body shaking. He was weak from his experience.
“You should stake me while I sleep,” she said to him in an uncommon gesture of attrition. “I don’t deserve you.” She got cheese out of the fridge and a loaf of stale bread and set it in front of him.
He shook his head instantly. “I love you, child. I always will. You can’t help what you do, sometimes.” He yanked off a piece of bread, then crammed it into his mouth and chewed hard, getting it down with a swig of orange juice.
Suddenly, Morana’s body tightened and began to seize. The sun had risen and she hadn’t gone to her safe room. A smart man would stake her in this vulnerable state.
A sliver of sunlight danced across the kitchen floor through a stained-glass window. She watched it as if it made a beeline to her-—waited for the burned flesh it would elicit. Even in his weakened state, Sinclair jumped up and stepped between her and the sun. “Hurry, dear. Get to safety.”
Why didn’t he just let her burn? If the situations had been reversed, she would have.
She went down to her room, again wondering how Sinclair could love someone like her . . .
Chapter Six
JESS AND BRITT followed the crowd through the city. She felt packed into the moving throng, with barely room to move.
Revelers carried wine in their backpacks, drinking along the way and passing bottles around as if it were communion wine.
Jess frowned. “If there’s a big concert going on, why wasn’t it advertised? Shouldn’t we have heard about it in the media?”
“I would have thought so,” he said, striding along beside her. They’d melded into the crowd and were following the wave.
Suddenly, they’d come to an intersection where people milled toward the center of the street from three different directions.
“Look, there’s a stadium ahead,” Britt said.
The crowd filed patiently into the building. Even from outside, they heard the voice of an announcer. He spoke in French, but from his tone, he was readying the crowd for whatever came next.
“What’s going on in there?” Britt asked the young man next to him. The man looked shocked. “Pardon?”
“He doesn’t speak English,” his girlfriend said in heavily accented French. “But I do. It’s an impromptu concert by Serenity.”
“Serenity? Are they a musical group?” Britt asked. “I’ve never heard of them.”
“They have no records and don’t play for the world, only for Parisians.”
“How did you learn about this concert?” Jess asked the girl.
“The Dark Net. They send a single notice, and when we hear about it, we spread the word via social media.”
“Are they that good?”
The girl’s eyes sparkled in wonder. “They are the world. You’ll see.”
The crowd jammed closer to the stadium doors, and they continued to be swept along until they reached the kiosk to pay. Two hundred Euros each and they were inside.
“Were we crazy to pay that amount of money?” Jess asked.
“Do you think we could get through the crowd to leave, even if we wanted to?” He adjusted his leather jacket and put an arm through hers. “Hang on, babe,” he said, flashing the two tickets they’d just bought. “We’ve got spots on the floor in front of the stage. I can’t wait to see what’s so great about this elusive group.”
“You’re just high on life, aren’t you?” Jess said drily. Since she’d become a vampire, music didn’t have the same impact on her soul that it’d had when she was human. That made her curious enough to see this group. Not that she would feel any of the excitement. She’d just have to enjoy it vicariously through Britt.
Even after the stadium had been packed, the stage remained empty. People waited with unusual patience. That surprised her.
A solid hum of people talking in their normal voices echoed inside the stadium, but no one shouted for the band to appear.
“Weird crowd reaction,” she said to Britt.
“Very.” He grabbed her hand, and they made their way to the front of the crowd. No one complained. That was strange, too.
Now, standing very close to the stage, they watched and waited. The air held an electric frisson of excitement that she could actually feel. She looked at the people around them. They were all staring straight ahead. Waiting and watching.
When three lean, dark-haired men dressed in tuxedos came on stage, a roar went up. They had long, neatly trimmed hair, dangly earrings, and when they showed their teeth . . .
“Holy hell,” Britt said. “They’re vampires, and they’re not hiding it.”
Jess surveyed the crowd. “No one seems to mind. Or maybe they just think it’s part of the act?”
“It isn’t though, is it?”
“Nope. They’re vampires all right.”
She glanced around again, verifying the sensation she’d been feeling. “And, there are plenty of other vamps in this crowd, too.”
“Crap. This isn’t going to turn into a bloodfest, is it?” Britt asked.
Jess considered the possibility. “I doubt it. They’d never be able to keep an attack this large a secret. At least, I hope not.”
“What is it about this band that draws vampires and humans alike?”
Jess looked at the men on stage. “I guess we’re about to find out.”
The men picked up instruments, and the crowd roared again while they took their positions and played a few riffs before they started.
�
��I’ve never seen instruments like those before, have you?”
“The one on the left kind of resembles a didgeridoo, but it has buttons on the side as if it plays like a saxophone, and the other two have unusual string instruments. They all appear to be electric, as well,” she said, noting the amplifiers and speakers positioned strategically around the stadium.
The music started. It sounded strange but compelling at first, and then a feeling of euphoria wormed its way into her desiccated heart and she began to move to the rhythm in the same way Britt and the rest of the humans did.
That music made her feel! She’d read a scientific article on the effects of music on people, but she’d never noticed it having any effect on her, once she’d become a vampire.
But this!
She could listen to it forever.
They played song after song. No one sang. It was just music. The electric didgeridoo did some amazing things to her brain, and she almost felt as if she was high on something. She felt renewed—reborn!
The men in the band didn’t take a break. Finally, the music ended. Not one of the musicians had uttered a word. They’d simply entered the stage and played for three hours, then left.
Jess met Britt’s gaze. He had a smile on his face, just like every other person and vampire around them.
And then, just as they’d milled into the stadium, they left quietly and calmly.
Again, she and Britt followed, swept up by the crowd until they reached part of the street where they could break off and make their way home.
She glanced at her watch. “Did you feel as if we were there for three hours?”
“Certainly not. Time flew by.”
“That’s what I thought, too.”
“I’m glad we went, though,” he said. “That was an experience of a lifetime.”
“Their music was compelling.” She chewed on her lip. “The other vampires must’ve been there for that same feeling. And we thought it might end up as a bloodbath.”
Britt covered her hand with his. The warmth added to the uncanny experience, and she left her hand in his.
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