Masters of the Night (13 page)

13.

“He stood in this
very river,” Angie said, as she joined Kathryn on the bridge. “Nicholas the
gold hunter, getting his boots soaked like everybody else while he swilled a
tin pan to catch a slice of the good life.”

She shifted her gaze to the shore in mystic vision.
The white horse
is taking a cool drink from the river’s edge while his master, in his funny
hat, is watching the moon rise over the trees. He’s wearing a red checkered
bandana, but he doesn’t like it. He takes it from around his neck, swills water
into it to wash his face, then tosses it away. He hates it because it’s the
color of blood, but he bought it for the same reason.

A woman stood some distance behind him, in the shadows.

My rather undead ancestral aunt, I’m supposing, if I’m a Weston.

Angie and Kathryn left the bridge. Dusk was being chased from the
horizon by the oncoming night, and they would soon be driving into deep woods.

“Are you all right?” Angie asked as they walked to the truck.

“Being probed by a master is …”

“Sheer hell, from what I could see.”

“We are
vampyres
. Everyone has those who are
in rule over them, those we must answer to, and feed.”

“So what part do you play in Andre’s brat pack?” Angie asked quickly,
deciding that was as much information along that line as she cared for at the
moment.

“We are not a brat pack. We are Andre’s Shadows,” Kathryn corrected her
curtly. “We are shadow warriors, night fighters, seekers of the damned.” She
paused and exhaled slowly to calm her irritation with the mystic.

Angie kept her mind steady as Kathryn’s eyes moved deeply into hers.

“For as long as Andre needs me, I am his to command.
He sometimes tackles
very heavy forces of darkness.”

The azure eyes moved away. They climbed into the pickup Andre had
rented.

Kathryn began calmly driving—like a bat out of hell.

“You always drive like this?” Angie said, tightening her seat belt.

“Yes. We all do.”

Meaning, of course, Henri.

Kathryn drove silently for a few moments,
then
murmured, “Stockholm Syndrome.”

“What?” Angie asked, puzzled.

“What are you doing cozying up to the
vampyre
who captured you and almost took your life?” Kathryn asked, turning to her
harshly. “He’s dangerous.”

“I am not suffering
from a paradoxical phenomena
of empathy with my captor,” Angie answered, feeling a little curt herself. “He
was trying to save my life.” Briefly, she told her what really happened.

Minus the total immersion thing.

Best left unsaid.

“I don’t remember much, but I believe him. I would have died without
his help.” She pulled a note from her pocket. “The Nicholas that
Tani
said is a cop on night shift lives off to the right at
the next turn.”

The police officer’s cabin at the end of a gravel drive was flanked
with pine trees and warm porch light.

The pickup slammed to a stop, and they cautiously walked up the porch
steps.

Henri was standing between them, his arms loosely around their waists
before Angie’s hand was around the doorknocker.
“So.
Shall we all greet Nicholas?” he smiled.

“What are you doing here?” Angie cried. “Andre is right behind us!”

“No, I don’t think so. He’s going to be detained. It would seem a log
fell off a truck.” He paused and grinned.
“Maybe more.”

The cabin door opened, Henri smirked, and Angie slapped her hand over
her mouth. That they had neglected to enter a rather significant field in their
computer name search was obvious.

“Make it quick, ladies and gent,” the black officer said, fastening the
last button on his uniform shirt. “I’m on my way to work. Are you selling
something or just need directions? Most people who end up out here are as lost
as city pigeons on a mud hen pond.”

“You’re right. We’re lost,” Henri said quickly. “Can you point the way
back to town?”

“I’ll do better than that,” he said with a grin. “Follow me in.”

“Well, unless your vamp can change skin tone, I think you can rule this
one out.” Henri shrugged as the police officer pulled his car out of the
garage, and he walked Angie and Kathryn back to the pickup.

“In all the excitement when we actually found a Nicholas of interest, I
guess I didn’t see that pertinent little fact,” Angie admitted.

She also did not see the shadowy form that followed the policeman’s car
from high in the trees.

But she felt it—the sludgy thickness in the air, the presence of the
unseen.
The evil.

“Something is about to descend,” Henri said. “Pedal to the metal,
Kathryn. Get her out of here.”

He flashed into the woods.

The pickup barreled down the gravel-pitted road to keep the red glow of
the cop’s tail lights in sight.

“Do I need a stake, or my will power?” Angie asked, inhaling deeply.

“It’s a
vampyre
.”

The cop’s car suddenly turned crosswise in the road. Kathryn slammed on
the brakes, stopping short of a few feet of him.

Angie felt Henri hurry to join them. The essence of his strength flowed
like a river of molten steel through the trees.
And through
her.

The policeman jumped out, waving his gun upward, toward a treetop. “All
right, you dirty piece of hog gut! I’ve got you now!”

His eyes seemed filled with terror, but he also seemed determined to
confront whatever was shaking the high tree branches.
“You
chicken-
stealin
’ varmint!”

The
vampyre
swooped, and was in front of the
officer before he could get off a round.

Fear wracking his eyes, the cop bravely held his ground and was able to
shoot twice. The
vampyre
swept out his hand, the gun
flew from the man’s hand to his.

“He’s a master,” Henri warned Angie as he swept to her door and she
rolled down her window. “Stay in the truck.”

He began walking with firm, determined steps toward the
vampyre
.

“Move away from that human,” he commanded.

Angie eased out of the truck, to see if the
vampyre
was the Englishman they were seeking. He wasn’t. His hair streamed in long,
black coils around his arms.

He was menacingly handsome.

Handsome, but scruffy!
Like he had been living in the
wild for many days or weeks.

The
vampyre’s
eyes glowed neon red and mean
in the light of the policeman’s car head lamps.

Then they fell on Angie.
And scorched.

She shrank in horror. The eyes were shining like red glass, red
mirrors, and she could see herself in the mirrors, imprisoned so deeply in the
bowels of the earth not even Henri could find her.

She couldn’t
breathe,
her chest was so
compressed by the force of the vision.

The creature took a step as if to flash toward her.

“Bad boy,” Henri’s deep voice resounded through the dark.

Henri was suddenly crashing toward him, a flash of dark light, a master
of masters, silent stealth in a haze of crystalline power.

The
vampyre
with coils did not seem
particularly startled by the master’s power or the rapier flying at him. His
arm swept upward and caught it easily—but not the silver and mahogany dagger
that was hidden in its wake—from Angie, as Henri’s voice burst through her
thoughts and her hand responded to his command. In the next instant, the
vampyre
was on the ground unmoving, the dagger in his
heart.

Astonished but still on the alert, Angie pulled a stake from her pouch
in case there were any other “varmints” lurking around.

Pleased with her power, Henri swept a gaze of lusty fire toward her,
spearing it across the road and straight into her heart.

Angie dropped her hand, her stake dangled loosely at her side. The gaze
burning toward her across the night was filled with such tender fire.

Her heart responded in a flow of flames.

Henri slipped an X-rated kiss into her thoughts, a taste of the depth
of the fire he could press onto her lips and into her being,
a
pulsing
warmth that would sear her legs apart for him.

Angie’s breath drew in hard and sharp.

“I have to get you out of here,” he said, walking toward her.

Kathryn whirled to protect, and Angie could see Henri looking
uncertainly toward Andre’s
vampyre
as though trying
to decipher the extent of the
Vampyre
of Light’s
power.

The next moment he was a blur moving back into the woods.

Henri did not flee from Kathryn very far. Angie felt him halting in his
retreat.

Kathryn bristled toward the shadowy woods. “Leave her be, Henri,” she
warned with no more than a slight parting of her lips.

He stepped out from behind an elm. She went into the stance of attack.

“If you come for her, Henri, I will not stand down,” she said, baring a
wing tip in warning. “In this you have no command.”

The feathery edge shone as though struck by sunlight.

Henri backed off. “Then you are the mythical
Vampyre
of Light, Kathryn?” he asked.

Before she could answer, he fled to the trees. Headlights were throwing
a glow across a bend in the road.

As Andre’s SUV pulled to a stop, Kathryn roughly pulled Angie aside
toward the brush, out of earshot. “It would seem your master is taking you
under his wing. Why?”

“I don’t know. And he’s not my master,” Angie returned defensively.

“He commanded you to send that blade,” Kathryn said forcefully. “His
voice flowed through you like honey. I felt it. He’s in communion with you. I
suspected as much when you were able to catch my threads.”

Trembling, Angie looked away.

“At the moment, it appears he is either in love with you—or he wants
another taste of that loco weed in your veins,” Kathryn said sharply.

“I didn’t think you, any of you, could feel love,” Angie said.

“We feel. We feel the agony of wanting and never having.”

Andre and James were climbing out of the truck, weapons drawn.

“I will keep this between us,” Kathryn said quickly, “for now. You are
in my charge. But walk carefully. I don’t plan on being killed by the Realm
because of you and Henri.”

“I’m not sure why he was going to take me away, I swear,” Angie said in
a small voice. “He said we were in …”

Andre and James were hurrying toward the cop. Kathryn ended the
conversation and hurried to meet them.

“Danger,” Angie finished to herself.

She stood in the road alone, staring into the woods, longing for Henri
De
LaCroix
.

•

Sensing the beautiful mystic yearning for him, Henri gazed back through
the trees toward her, his own longings hard and sharp.

Her heart had beat so rapidly when she felt his passion in flight like
a burning arrow toward her, beat like it was struck with a match.

Henri receded into the darker reaches of the woods a little, but his
eyes kept returning to her. She was exquisite in her little jeans and peasant
blouse as she stood in the road wanting him.

“Throwing thoughts of fire is why he was notorious,” Kathryn
said,
one eye on the woods as she returned to Angie’s side.
“He’s a self-serving cur.”