James tried not to notice the things he couldn't help but notice as the frightened, introverted professor stood behind a conveniently located grove of trees in her bra and white cotton panties, with her arms up over her head.
He tried not to notice, but he noticed anyway. Her skin, smooth and tight. Her lean body. She wasn't curvy. She didn't have mounds of cleavage busting out of a lacy push-up bra. She was lean and toned. Her skin didn't sport a dark coppery tan but was almost as pale as his undead relatives'.
And warm, as he ran his hands over it. From her shoulders to her wrists. Underneath her arms and down to her lithe waist and then to the barely flaring hips. From her soft belly over her rib cage and all around her breasts, all the while trying not to touch the breasts themselves. Then he turned her and examined her nape, her shoulder blades, her lower back. He stopped where the underpants began, crouching down to begin checking those long, lean legs of hers.
He found the telltale bump, no bigger than a mosquito bite, in the delicate crease where buttocks met thigh, and she jumped when he ran his finger over it.
"Hey!"
Her voice was raspy, a little bit breathless. She was either humiliated or as turned on as he was, and then he wondered if it might be a little bit of both.
"Sorry. It's right here."
"What's right here?"
"I'll show you in a sec. Grab hold of the tree, this might pinch a little."
She did as he told her, and he squeezed the tiny bump like a blackhead. It popped like one, too, except that the object that came out of it was tiny and metal.
To her credit, she didn't squeal. She flinched hard and sucked in a sharp breath, but that was all.
He said, "All done," and held the thing on the tip of his forefinger as she turned.
She frowned at it, wishing for her glasses. "What is it?"
"A tracking device. It sends out an electronic signal so that someone on the other end knows where you are at all times."
Lifting her eyes to his, she said, "They put that in me?"
He nodded at her clothes where they were hanging over a nearby limb. "Better get dressed. Now that we're rid of this, we can be on our way."
"But why?" she asked, grabbing the jeans and stepping into them. "I mean, if they wanted me, why let me go? And if they didn't want me, why implant that...that thing in me?"
"So you could lead them to me," he told her.
She stopped with the shirt in her hand and studied him for a long moment, then resumed dressing. "Why are they looking for you?"
"Because I'm different. And with the DPI, that's pretty much all the reason they need."
"What's the DPI?"
"A government agency," he said, and didn't elaborate. Instead, he refocused on the device, already thinking up ways to get rid of the little unit. "You ready?"
"Yes. Ready." She looked at his hand. "Are you going to crush it under your shoe, or bury it, maybe throw it into a stream or something?"
"Or something," he told her. And then he started walking back toward the car. As they reached the winding road, he waited. Two other cars went by, followed by a pickup, all headed in the direction she and James had come from. When the truck passed, he tossed the tiny unit and it landed right where he intended it to: in the bed.
"Now they'll be looking for us in the opposite direction."
"You're brilliant."
He smiled at her and opened her door. "You can barely keep your eyes open, can you?"
"No." She got in, leaned her head back and closed her eyes.
"Maybe you can relax enough to sleep for the rest of the ride. They can't follow us now, and I think you're finally convinced that I'm one of the good guys." It was a real shame he was going to have to prove otherwise to her when they reached their destination, he thought grimly. But in this case, the ends justified the means. And he couldn't be sure she would refuse to help his cause, once they got there, so maybe she could go on thinking he wore a white hat.
But if she did balk, then he would have to force her cooperation.
For a moment he went still, stunned by his own train of thought. That was not the kind of thing James Poe ever did. Force someone to do something they didn't want to do. Much less someone like her. Innocent, frightened, delicate.
Beautiful.
He wondered what was happening to the moral code he'd lived by for his entire life. But he didn't really have a choice in the matter. The existence of his entire race was at stake.
Brigit paced and worried. She had taken Aunt Rhi's advice and headed into her bedroom for a nap, but she had awakened the moment she sensed that J.W. was gone. She felt him more acutely than she felt anyone else. Upon rising, she'd made the unfortunate choice to turn on one of the twenty-four-hour news channels to hear what was being said about the events of the night before.
Veteran newsman Matthew Christopher was in the middle of interviewing a suit-wearing politician who spoke as if from memory. "Lester Folsom's book was pulled for reasons of national security, Matt," he said, as if speaking to a slow student who didn't quite get the point. "As demented as poor Mr. Folsom was, we can't ignore the fact that he did indeed work as a covert agent, and in that capacity, he was privy to massive amounts of sensitive information."
"Apparently enough to get him shot," the newsman replied.
"No one has proven that the murder had anything to do with-"
"Don't give me that," Matthew interrupted. "A guy's about to release a tell-all, an expose, about his work as a covert op, and he gets blown away, execution-style, on the eve of that. Do I look like I was born yesterday?"
"Matt, you're not giving me a chance to explain-"
"There are sources, Mr. Jenner, who say Folsom's work involved the paranormal. The unknown. Some of the blogs are claiming he was about to reveal the actual existence of a race of vampires. How do you respond to that?"
The guest made a face. "Anyone can post anything on the internet. You know that. No right-minded person would believe-"
"We might know what to believe if the storm troopers hadn't raided every book distribution center in the country, destroying every copy in existence so none of us could read for ourselves..."
"You'd be reading fiction. With just enough real information thrown in to cause serious problems."
"Are you concerned at all about rumors that there were a handful of advance copies floating around? That WikiLeaks has published what they claim are actual excerpts from the Folsom manuscript on their website?"
The bureaucrat measured his words. "As far as we know, we've managed to find every copy."
"It's for sure you got all of Folsom's. And his notes, and everything else he had in his house in the Caribbean. Relatives claim soldiers gutted the place."
"That's an exaggeration."
"They say you stripped it to the bare walls. Even rolled up the carpets."
"Well, I wasn't a part of that team, and I'm sure the family's feeling very violated, and perhaps, in their grief, might just be blowing things a tiny bit out of pro-"
"Tell me this, Mr. Jenner. Is there, or has there ever been, a secret division of the CIA devoted to investigating cases involving the paranormal?"
Jenner looked Matthew Christopher right in the eye, leaning slightly forward in his seat. "Absolutely not."
"Who shot Lester Folsom, Mr. Jenner?"
"We don't know. But believe me, the murder of a CIA operative, even a retired one like Folsom, is something we take very seriously. We've put every resource we have on this, and we will not rest until Lester Folsom's murderer is-"
Brigit clicked the remote control, accidentally hitting the channel selector rather than the off button. The riot taking place on the TV screen held her riveted. Flames were licking at the early morning sky, devouring what looked like a brownstone. The tagline on the bottom read Riots Break Out in Brooklyn. The reporter was saying that a gang of self-proclaimed vigilantes apparently believed the residents of the two-family building were vampires, and so they'd set the place on fire and burned them alive.
She hit the remote again, turning the TV off, and closed her eyes. Where are you, big brother? The world is going insane, and it's not safe out there for you.
He spoke to her mentally. I've got the professor.
You rescued her alone?
They let her go. Planted a chip, but I tossed it. We're on our way.
Not here, Brigit replied, her lips moving as if to give more emphasis to her words. It's not safe. Word's out. Vigilante vampire hunters just murdered two families in Brooklyn. As soon as the sun sets, I'm taking Aunt Rhi and getting out of here.
Go to the Byram house, her brother told her. They think we abandoned it long ago.
Good idea.
Be careful, Bridge.
I will, bro. You, too. See you in Byram. Wait till after dark.
See you there, he assured her.
Brigit closed the channels of her mind, just in case there might be anyone around trying to pick up on mental transmissions. God, if the mortal world truly knew they existed...then they'd be lucky if any of them managed to survive.
She must have slept all day, Lucy thought as she came slowly awake. The sun was gone, having set beyond the distant horizon sometime before she lifted her head to stare through the car's windshield.
They seemed to be in the middle of nowhere, driving along a narrow, twisting, dark road without a painted line or a streetlight in sight. The pavement was cracked and littered with potholes, and the edges were disintegrating chunks of broken asphalt. Forests stood clothed in a misty purple haze in the distance, and just as she was about to ask where in the name of creation they were, they rounded a hairpin curve and she saw a mansion straight out of an old Saturday afternoon creature feature.
It rose, gothic and dark, with countless sharp spires stabbing into the deepening twilight sky. A few of its arched windows were lit, but most remained black, like sad, vacant eyes. And the wrought-iron fence that rose tall around the outside leaned lazily this way and that, as if its spearlike points were tired of standing guard.
To Lucy's horror, James turned into the twisting dirt path that passed for a driveway, passing in through the open gate and driving nearer the house she was sure must have been the setting for a plethora of Vincent Price films.
"Where are you taking me?"
"Don't panic, okay? I know it's scary looking, but it's just a house, and it's one of the few where they won't be looking for us."
"They aren't looking for us. They're looking for you. They let me go, remember?"
"This is just a stop along the way."
"Where the hell are we? Why did I sleep so long?"
"We're in Connecticut." He stopped the car, shut off the engine. "And you slept so long because you were drugged last night, and...and because I told you to."
"You told me to." She looked at him as if he were insane.
"The power of suggestion is...it's another of my..."
"Finally!" The driver's door was yanked open, and a pair of female arms wrapped themselves around James before he could get out. The newcomer's blond hair was barely visible from within the car, but her swimsuit-model bosom was level with Lucy's line of sight as the woman released James to kiss his face, then squeezed him again. Lucy relaxed as she realized that it was just his sister, Brigit. Not that she cared. She was angry, she reminded herself. Which, by the way, was unlike her. She didn't get angry. She negotiated; she talked things out with reason and with logic. She avoided conflict.
Until she'd been shot down in a Manhattan street and dragged into some kind of intrigue that had nothing to do with her.
"You said you would take me home," Lucy accused James's back.
"You said I would take you home. I just didn't correct you." His voice was muffled by the hug, until his twin finally released him and straightened away.
"Aunt Rhi and I have been worried sick. You took much longer than we expected. You should have checked in." She peeked around him, smiled and bent down a little to wave her fingers at Lucy. "How are you doing, Professor?"
"I just want to go home."
"Yeah, you look good and pissed off." Brigit grinned. "Glad to see you have it in you, to be honest."
Then Lucy's door was pulled open, and she turned and lifted her head, startled, to find herself staring up into the powerful eyes of a woman who was frightening in her beauty, regal in her bearing and intimidating in her glare.
"One would expect a woman plucked from the very jaws of death itself to show a little gratitude. Wouldn't one?"
She didn't speak so much as purr her words, her voice deep and resonant and menacing.
"Of course I'm grateful. I just...none of this has anything to do with me. I've been through hell, and I want to go home."
"Oh, well, that's different then," the woman said. She looked up, over the hood of the car, to the two on the other side. "She wants to go home, poor little thing. That changes everything, doesn't it? Including the fact that our entire race is facing annihilation?" She snapped her eyes back to Lucy's, and before Lucy could blink, she was pulled from the car, and lifted off her feet and into the air.
The regal one, her endless raven locks waving in the breeze as if with a life of their own, glared up at her, baring her teeth to reveal fangs that gleamed. She was holding Lucy up with one hand, clutching the bunched-up front of her borrowed shirt. And by her side, a black panther-a black freaking panther-crouched and snarled, baring its fangs, as well.
Lucy couldn't speak, couldn't scream. She was silent and shaking, and her heart pounded at a rate that had to be dangerous to her health.
"Put her down, Aunt Rhi." James's voice was firm as he came around the car and put one hand on the woman's shoulder. "She's here to help us, after all."
"Pitiful that the salvation of our race lies in the hands of this puling, weak little mortal." But the woman did lower Lucy to the ground.
Lucy looked back toward the gate at the entrance to this horror film set, her entire being itching to run. But there were others standing there now. And she thought they might be vampires, like this dark-haired one, who surely must be their queen. One of them even wore a cloak that floated and snapped in the wind.
Lucy shot an accusing look toward James, who'd saved her, only to pitch her into a pit of vipers more dangerous than the one he'd pulled her from. He was no hero, no angel. He was one of them.
And why did that realization bring such a crushing sense of disappointment with it?
"Only partly," he said aloud. "I'm part human, too."
She blinked in shock. "Did you...did you just...?"
"Hear your thoughts? Yes, I did. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to intrude, but you were sort of shouting them at me."
"At us all," the one he'd called Aunt Rhi muttered, stroking the panther's head. The cat pressed up against her hand like a devoted pet.
"Brigit and I are the two who are like no other," James went on. "Part vampire, part human. The Light and the Darkness. Opposite, and yet the same."
"One the destroyer, the other the salvation," Lucy whispered, and in her memory she heard again Lester Folsom's shocked words as he'd read the prophecy.
This is about the mongrel twins.
"Exactly," James said. "We need your help, Lucy. We need your help to figure out how it is that we can avert the disaster predicted in that prophecy. The vampire Armageddon."
"And you're going to give it to us," Rhiannon informed her. "Eagerly, willingly and completely. Anything less, and you'll become...kitty treats."
Her pet growled as if on cue, and Lucy tried to hide the chill that tiptoed up her spine.
