by Linda Howard
The bulb in the streetlight exploded, sending sparks raining down on the man, and that end of the street plunged into darkness.
Chloe bolted for front door, key in hand, her heartbeat suddenly hammering against the walls of her chest. Her hand shaking, she tried to jam the key into the lock while she looked over her shoulder, expecting to see the man looming out of the darkness as he tried to get to her before she could get inside—
No one was there. Or rather, no one she could see. Swearing under her breath, she forced herself to look down at the lock, but it still took three more tries before the key slid into the lock. To hell with swearing under her breath. She said, “Dammit!” in a fierce voice, turned the lock, and slammed the door open. As soon as she was inside she slammed the door again, this time closing it, and engaged the deadbolt before she gave the door a kick for good measure.
That was it. Okay, so this was the first time she’d gotten scared walking home at night, but once was enough. No matter how much her car sputtered and lurched, no matter how nice the weather was, no matter how short the walk was or how green she felt by saving the gas, she was driving to and from work from now on.
Something was going on. The dreams, the voice, the weird disconnect at work, and now what felt like her first official panic attack. Tomorrow—actually, when she woke up later today—she was calling her friend and getting that psychologist’s phone number. Maybe she could move up the date of her annual checkup with her general practitioner, too, just in case. All was not right in Chloe’s world, and she’d do whatever she had to do in order to fix it.
She wanted her peace of mind back.
But maybe, just maybe—Blowing out a breath, she stood there a moment longer, trying to decide if her imagination had just run away with her, big time, or if her instincts had been on target and she’d been smart to listen to that little voice telling her to run like hell.
Sorin was watching Chloe Fallon walk toward him relaxed and unconcerned when his cell phone rang. “Shit,” he muttered, annoyed with himself because he hadn’t turned off the phone, and with the caller for choosing that exact moment to make the call. No point in hoping she hadn’t heard the phone; she’d stopped immediately, her head turned as she looked for the source of the noise.
Even from here he could hear the sudden thump of her heartbeat; she was already thoroughly spooked. For a split second the thrill of the hunt surged through him and he started to take her now, his fangs elongating as the hard, rapid beats of her heart pulled him like a lodestone.
Only the knowledge that the call had to be urgent stayed him, though it had been an effort to hold himself back. He reached into his pocket for the phone instead of bringing down the pretty blonde. “Yeah,” he said by way of greeting, his gaze still locked on Chloe Fallon. A sudden perverse urge to tease her seized him. Should he stay hidden in the shadow of the big trees, or—
“We have a warrior coming through soon,” Jonas said, his tone tired and excited all at once. “Melody’s the closest, but I can’t get in touch with her.”
“Who’s the conduit?” Sorin asked, at the same time he was thinking, Hell, why not? Maybe if Chloe Fallon was on edge, she’d give him a better chase. Tease her a little, let her know he was out there … things had been a little too easy lately, and he was getting bored.
He stepped out of the shadow of the tree and smiled at her, letting some of his power lash out. Overhead, the streetlight exploded and sparks rained down on him like fireworks, and the little rabbit ran for her house as fast as she could.
“He’s a soldier in North Carolina.”
Soldiers were reliable and efficient conduits, which stood to reason; they were often able to make contact with their Warriors and bring them over in half the time other conduits could figure out what was going on.
North Carolina wasn’t far, but the sun rose early in the summer and he wasn’t as resistant to it as that bastard Luca. The queen wanted him to locate Luca, hunt down conduits, and keep tabs on his little red-haired witch, Nevada. How in hell he was supposed to do all that simultaneously he had no idea. His wayward child, Melody, was supposed to be taking up the slack, but Melody now and always did whatever she felt like doing. She was a top-tier hunter, but she had no discipline. Someday, he was afraid, that lack of discipline would be the end of her.
On the other hand, it was better that he, rather than Melody, face the soldier. If the Warrior was close to coming through, the soldier would be on high alert, and trained humans could and did take down even skilled vampires.
“Okay,” he finally said. “Where exactly is he?”
“I’ll send his picture and address to your phone.” Jonas cleared his throat. “The queen called earlier. She wants to know if you have any leads on Luca.”
There was both a wariness and a weariness in Jonas’s voice that told Sorin the man was close to the breaking point. Even vampires had their limits, and Jonas was pushing his. The queen had had him working nonstop for months now, since she’d discovered his special talent of locating conduits and that he could even tell how close the conduit was to bringing over one of the warriors.
“So, you’re now a messenger as well as a locator?” he asked.
“Apparently so.”
“If she calls back tell her I have nothing new on Luca because I’m spending all my time trying to kill conduits, the way she wants, and keeping the little witch hard at work, also the way she wants. You might also tell her if she wants to replace me, feel free.”
“I can’t tell her any of that,” Jonas said softly. “She really just wants you to find Luca.”
“I’m not the one who lost him,” Sorin pointed out.
“She said he’s potentially dangerous.”
Regina was right about one thing: Luca Ambrus was a dangerous bastard, a pure fighting machine who with just a look could make ordinary vampires piss on themselves. No one knew exactly how old he was, or exactly how powerful, but there were plenty of tales about some unbelievable things he’d done. One of these days, Sorin figured he’d test himself against Luca, because he himself was too much of a fighter to live in peace with himself unless he knew whether or not he could defeat the blood born. He might die in the attempt but what the hell, battle was a good way to go.
“Hector was his friend,” Sorin said. “She should’ve thought of that before she killed him.”
The queen—she had begun insisting that they call her Regina, as she would leave her old identity behind and adopt a new one when their uprising succeeded in upending the structure of power in their favor—was as cold and ruthless as any vampire he’d ever known. She would destroy anyone and anything in her way, in her determined rise to power, so it was far safer to be on her side than against her.
“Forget Luca, forget Regina,” Jonas said tightly. “There’s a conduit close to calling in his Warrior, and you have to take care of him ASAP. Do it yourself or send someone else, I don’t care.”
There were a few vampire rebels, Sorin’s own soldiers, who could withstand daylight to some degree. He could send them out hunting Luca, because that’s when he’d be moving around. “Check all the area hotels and motels again; Luca has to be sleeping somewhere.” The first check hadn’t turned up anything, but that didn’t mean Luca hadn’t since found himself a nice, dark little room somewhere. He was cunning enough to have delayed doing so until he’d figured they had had enough time to run the initial check, thinking they wouldn’t bother to check again.
“So, I guess you’re not going to forget Luca,” Jonas said, his voice tired. “Fine, fine, I’ll check again.”
The unwelcome truth was, a lot of vampires were not exactly computer savvy. Computers were too new, and vampires had an innate dislike of them because the digital era had made life so much more difficult for all of them. Jonas was an exception to the rule; he’d taken to computers as if he’d been born in 1980 instead of 1780. Sorin had forced himself to learn something about computers, and of course they all used cell pho
nes, but he’d learned just enough to help him evade showing up in all the data files.
Jonas was a bit hamstrung when it came to computer usage, since—as he was not exactly a willing rebel—he wasn’t allowed computer access unless he was under guard. His cell phone was programmed to send and receive only from select numbers, as if he were a human child, not a powerful vampire. How that must grate …
“I’ll head to North Carolina myself,” Sorin said. “If I can locate the conduit right away and catch him outside his home, I’ll be back within twenty-four hours.”
“Call me as soon as you get back.”
The phone went silent; Jonas had ended the call. Sorin supposed if he had anything else to say to him, he’d call back. If not, he’d simply send the required information.
He needed to be on the move, but he stood there for a moment staring at Chloe Fallon’s closed front door and wishing he could simply walk through it to do what had to be done.
Soon.
God, he wanted this to be over with. The preparations were necessary, but they wore on his patience. He was ready for the real war to start, the war where the humans found out just how pitiful and lowly they were.
This uprising might be the most exciting thing he’d done since his turning, more than seven hundred years ago—seven hundred and twelve to be exact. When the war was over, he wouldn’t have to hide ever again. He wouldn’t have to change his name, move, or seek dark alleyways in order to feed, taking just enough to survive and then glamouring the unwilling blood donor into forgetting what had happened. A lot of times he’d gone hungry because he hadn’t been able to feed as much as he had wanted.
His position in the uprising was high enough that when the war was won he’d be nicely placed in the hierarchy that would be set up. He wouldn’t ever again have to pretend to be someone else, and he’d feed when and where and how much he chose. Humans would serve him, and he’d never again be forced to hide from those who were so far beneath him in every way. That was the way it had been when he’d been turned, and he longed for the old order, when vampires had been superior.
Everything was falling into place. First, they had Jonas, a vampire who could locate the specific energy a conduit emitted, so they could stop the Immortal Warriors from coming into this world. Without the Warriors on the side of the humans, the pitiful little worms wouldn’t stand a chance. Then Regina had located a descendant of the witch who had cast the spell that kept vampires outside a home unless they were invited in, so for the first time they had a real chance of having the spell broken. Regina had quietly been building her army of vampire rebels for the past fifty years, looking for the ones who were outraged by the imbalance of power, swaying those who were on the fence, luring the strong. If they could avoid Warrior interference, humans wouldn’t realize what had happened until it was too late. They’d be enslaved, serving their superiors as they should have been doing for all their short, miserable, meaningless lives.
This country would fall first, because the vampire community was already so large and organized here. The rest of the world would follow in time. At the very least, they would have to deal with the reality of vampires being in charge of the most powerful nation in the world.
As he walked away from the conduit’s house, he started thinking about his little witch. Nevada was necessary, but her part in the rebellion was taking longer than it should. There were times when he thought she was holding out on them, hiding her power and her ability to break the spell even though her family’s lives depended on her doing as she was told. He had no proof, he’d never caught her in a lie, but there was something about her …
It was her scent. It annoyed the hell out of him, and if he could, he’d separate himself from her and have someone else monitor her progress. Regina thought it was funny that the witch relied exclusively on Sorin, that she had asked for him and didn’t willingly deal with any of the other vampires at all.
Twice during the past week he’d caught a hint of that familiar smell even though Nevada wasn’t anywhere near. It was disturbing as all hell. Tonight the scent had been so strong in the basement that he’d gone up to her room almost expecting to find that she’d escaped. Why else would he catch a whiff of her scent so far away from her second-floor room?
But she’d been there, engrossed in those damn spell books, obedient and pretty and very, very young—and, unfortunately, very necessary.
He tried to create her scent now, wondering if he could call it up whenever he wanted, which would at least be an explanation even if it was an unwelcome one, but … nothing.
It was all in the blood, he mused. The Warriors’ connections with their conduits, who were always their descendants, and the power of the witch who could undo the curse that hampered all vampires … it all came down to the power of the blood.
CHAPTER
SIX
Despite the crappy day and getting scared out of her wits, which, after she woke, seemed more than a little silly, Chloe actually got some decent sleep that night. She had the braid dream again, but only after she’d slept over five undisturbed hours. Those five hours felt like heaven. When the dream finally came and woke her up, at least she wasn’t exhausted. And she felt perfectly normal: no dizziness, no shimmering behind her eyes, no anything, just her normal, level-headed self. If something was wrong with her physically, wouldn’t she feel weird all the time? If it was a brain tumor, would she even notice if she felt weird? Probably not, which meant she likely didn’t have a brain tumor. Along the same vein, if she was going nuts, would she know she was going nuts, or would she think everyone else was? Food for thought, there.
Because she felt normal and had finally got some sleep, she put off calling her friend for the shrink’s number; after all, it was the weekend, so she wouldn’t be able to get in touch with the doctor until Monday anyway. She spent some time on the computer looking up her own symptoms and came up with some interesting stuff, none of which was very likely unless she wanted to get into witchcraft and spells … not. That was kind of reassuring; maybe there wasn’t anything wrong with her at all; maybe the weird dreams were just that, and didn’t mean anything. Maybe the voice she’d heard was … okay, so she didn’t have an explanation for the voice. She still felt better about the situation than she had the night before.
When it was time to leave for work she got her bag and was actually on the sidewalk in front of her house, walking to the Metro, when she stopped and looked uneasily over her shoulder. No tall blond guy in sunglasses and a long black coat was standing at the end of the block, of course. Why had she been so frightened? All he’d done was talk on his cell phone, and smile at her. Wearing sunglasses at night was dumb, but she’d seen other people do it. The long black coat was also dumb … wasn’t that something drug addicts did? Her overall impression of the blond guy wasn’t of someone on drugs, though; he’d looked too brawny, too healthy, not that she’d been able to see a lot of detail.
But … why had he been there? She knew he didn’t live on the street. She had made a point, at her mother’s urging, of making a note of all her neighbors and what kind of cars they drove, so she’d know if someone strange was casing the neighborhood. Yes, her mother was paranoid about her daughter’s safety, but that had still been a good idea. The blond guy hadn’t been visiting anyone, either, not at that hour. Taking a stroll, maybe?
A chill ran up her spine, even though the bright sunlight had dispelled all the shadows and the street was empty of threatening characters. Abruptly Chloe turned on her heel and went back to the house to fetch her car keys. Her gut instinct for caution might be wrong, but she’d rather be wrong than mugged or dead.
She didn’t like driving in D.C. traffic; the Metro was far more convenient. The only thing that made it tolerable was that she wasn’t driving during rush hour; she went to work before the evening rush hour began, and came home in the wee hours long before the morning madness. But each time she made the drive, Chloe spent most of her time praying that
her car wouldn’t break down.
She’d had the burgundy Ford since high school, which meant it was on its last legs … wheels. She’d been putting off buying a new one because the old Ford was paid for. With school, rent, and all her other expenses, it had been nice to not have a car payment, too; she’d been able to save much more than she would have otherwise. But she couldn’t put off getting a new car much longer; that night, after putting in another extremely busy shift at work, she had trouble getting the old car to start. Carlos, bless him, stayed until he was certain she was on her way.
As her car lurched and sputtered into the driveway as if taking its last breath, Chloe faced the inevitable. On Monday, she’d have to begin looking for a new car. She didn’t need anything fancy, just something reliable so she could drive down to see her parents for the holidays and make it to and from work on the days when the Metro closed early, when it was cold, rainy, or when she’d been spooked by strange men on her street.
She was being extra cautious, but when she reached her street she drove to the end of the block, going slowly and letting her headlight beams light up the tree trunks. She didn’t see anyone lurking in the shadows. After making a U turn in the intersection, she drove back to her house and parked. Maybe she seriously needed a vacation, but she still felt uneasy.
Chloe turned off the ignition and got out, automatically depressing the lock lever before she closed the door. The porch was maybe ten steps away, the front door just a few more. If she bought the house and stayed here, maybe she’d build a small garage out back, connect it to the house with a covered breezeway. That would be nice, especially during bad weather. She could even add a second story over the garage and make a visitor’s suite. She could use the extra storage, too. Of course, the yard was very small, as all yards in this neighborhood were. Was there room to build on? She didn’t know anything about the building codes, but she could find out when the time came.
As she stepped onto the first of the three steps that led to the porch, Chloe thought that she should probably buy the house before she started thinking about renovations.