Masters of the Night (14 page)

Angie clinched her fists.
“Bastard.
Bastard.”

“I know,” Kathryn said sympathetically.

I’m a bastard for saving her life? And one little thought kiss?
Henri thought,
amazed. Then he frowned, upset. Very humanly upset.

“No, no, not Henri,” Angie explained
swifly
to Kathryn. “I wasn’t calling Henri a bastard, Kathryn. I meant—” She pointed
at the dead
vampyre
.
“Him.
I
think he wanted to hurt me.”

Kathryn gazed at the
vampyre
gone to hell in
a hurry. “That’s possible. He was viewing you like he wanted you for his
midnight martini.”

“He was viewing me with more than that,” Angie
said .

Henri studied Angie thoughtfully. Was her mystic sight in play?

“I will need to stay close to her,” he murmured to his bird as it
lighted on his shoulder. “There may be more to this river rat than the night
has revealed.”

Angie walked back to the pickup with Kathryn silently for a few
moments,
then
asked shyly, “How did you know about
the—kiss thing?”

“Your heart started beating like lightning had hit.
That
and Henri’s reputation.”
She halted and turned to her. “Actually, Angie,
Henri probably would not have been able to slip one in on you like that unless
you were receptive.”

Angie’s lips parted as if to protest,
then
closed. She was more than receptive to him.

She stepped closer to the dead vamp that had not yet turned to dust. “I
guess they don’t just—go away?”

“Not a master. They can come back to life,” Andre said. He bent down
and with a single, agile whip of his sword blade, separated the
vampyre’s
head from his neck.

As he watched from the distance, Henri felt a sick hollow wad, like
worms on the dead, form in his stomach.

Odd.
The crossbow
slayer didn’t look that well either, as the stench of chicken blood filled the
air.

“He will dissipate at sunrise,” Andre said.

Dissipate. What did dissipation feel like? Henri wondered in idle
terror.

“How long has he been hanging around your house?”

“About four days. He was killing my chickens and the rats in the barn,”
the policeman said. “Where I come from, there are people, and there are
animals, and then there are varmints. A chicken stealing weasel is a varmint.
He was a varmint. And you hunt varmints down—and kill them. But I could never
catch him.”

“A gun wouldn’t kill him anyway.”

“My auntie used to sit on the porch and tell me stories …” he began,
then
looked as though the night had not been real. “I think
I’m just going to call in sick, get a pint of ice cream, and watch Jerry
Springer—something sane.”

In pity, Kathryn offered to take the night from his memory, but the
officer backed away from her, muttering something about being “out here in the
woods too long, think I’ll move into town,” and with the glazed eyes of a
sleepwalker, he got in his car and went home.

Four days, Henri thought pensively. The slayers had arrived back in the
states four days ago.

“I hope we have better luck with the Nicholas who answered the ad for
the journal,” Angie said.

When Angie was safely away from the woods, and Andre had taken her to
the house he had rented for his troupe’s stay in Sacramento, Henri flew into
the city to the roof of an old museum, to sit on a gargoyle and think. The
master
vampyre
had not been after the policeman. He
had been after Angie.

A
vampyre
, strong, sinewy with dark wings,
lighted next to him and gazed out into a star studded black velvet sky. “Give
her up, Henri.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Odd thing the other night.
Jane was
vacationing in that god-awful house of hers when a
Lammergeier
was spotted in the woods rummaging through an old barn. And what do you think
he found?”

Henri murmured a profanity, his thoughts roiling.

“The Realm hasn’t just offered a reward for the mystic, Henri.
Position, power, fresh blood supply for life, whatever the finder wants is what
they’ll pay. How many of them can you kill? Tonight was just the beginning. How
are you going to protect her? And stay alive to do it? Jane will be relentless.
The
Lammergeier
will be relentless. The whole damned
Realm will be relentless.”

“And you, Nicholas?” Henri asked.

“The way I see it, you’ve only got three options. Fight us all from the
darkness. Or grab the mystic and run.”

“You said three options.”

“
Vampyres
can’t procreate.”

Spreading his dark wings, he shadowed the stars as he flew skyward and
disappeared into the night.

14.

“How in hell does a
vampyre
catch a cold?” Angie asked, shoving a box of
tissues across the truck seat to Kathryn as they drove toward a tree-lined
drive and a hedged walkway lined with garden lights. A mansion
rose
behind the lights, majestic, its upper balconies
reaching out over a massive manicured estate.

“It isn’t a cold. It’s a reaction,” Kathryn insisted as she pulled a
tissue from the box—and sneezed.

A strip of fog, out of sync with the clear night, rolled across the
hood of the pickup then down the window weather stripping—and in through the
back window of the truck’s extended cab.

“If you were going to try human food for the first time, maybe you
should have chosen something milder like chicken soup?” Henri’s voice spooled
over the back seat.

“How did you …?” Angie blurted, jerking around, then shook her head and
sighed resignedly, “Oh, never mind.”

“So.
You are on your
way to the Browning mansion, I see. Built
when cattle was
king and railroads and Nicholas ruled.” He stretched out comfortably across the
seat.

Kathryn snatched another tissue. “I don’t suppose there’s any getting
rid of you?”

“Not likely.” He smiled deeply at Angie,
then
added, “I doubt my old friend
Nicholai
is in
atonement. If he saved a mortal and didn’t at least take a taste, there had to
be a reason, and not necessarily a good one.”

Before long, a pillared mansion cloaked in night and the sweet smell of
honeysuckle rose out of a stand of laurel pines.

“Somehow this is not what I was expecting,” Angie commented as they
parked. She stepped back to admire the porch archways trellised with the
flowery vines.

“We do not all reside in dank dungeons and cobwebby crypts,” Henri
quipped, pulling her close.

Do not leave my side,
he threaded,
squeezing her hand into his own. He did not relish letting her enter this
golden cave. But he knew she would go spelunking with or without him. She
wanted the chronicles of her past.

There was no response to the bell. They rang again,
then
knocked.

Angie tried to peer through the sidelights next to the door. “I don’t
think anyone is home.”

The porch light came on. The door opened.

Shock, horror, fear and amazement, a load of raw emotion, passed
through Angie as she gazed at the being standing before her.

The only thing missing was the hat.

He apologized for his tardiness in answering the bell, his eyes cut to
Henri’s briefly,
then
with a disarmingly charming
smile that curled the corners of his perfect, full mouth, he invited them in.

“You called and said you might possibly have a journal that would be of
interest?” Angie asked, but didn’t move. To accept an invitation to enter a
vampyre’s
lair was to accept an invitation to death.

Henri stepped unhesitatingly into the foyer, pulling her with him, less
enthusiastically. Kathryn went back to the truck, sick as a dog.

A chandelier shimmered from the vaulted foyer ceiling onto glossy obsidian
floor tiles.

“Nice place,” Henri said with a slightly mocking tone.

“Better than a barn,” Nicholas responded with a smirk.

Not much like a
vampyre’s
chambers,
Angie thought. And
not quite the dark and dirty cellars and sewers Andre usually cleaned up.

Wonderingly, as they followed him down the hall to the library, she
brushed her hand against the rich warm oak paneling of the walls. Was this the
house of a prince, or a prince of darkness?

If Andre or
Taniesha
had touched the wood,
would their
retrocognitive
powers have revealed
anything of his past, or him?

This was not your usual, bite-you-in-the-alley
vampyre
.
The library was well lit by table lamps, and a friendly fire crackled in the
fireplace. Rich furnishings and expensive books surrounded the walls.

An exquisitely carved Spanish saddle was displayed in the middle of the
room along with a lariat and bolero. A pair of golden candlesticks and a pewter
goblet adorned with jewels glittered from a shelf behind the glass of an
antique étagère.

A battered bowler hat and a gold pocket watch were beside them.

But the piece de resistance was on his finger.
An
emerald.
Set in a thick, fifteenth-century gold band intricately
engraved with Latin symbols.

A
vampyre’s
ring.

Nicholas tossed a few pine chips in the fire to create an aromatic
fragrance in the room.

“So who is the lovely
vampira
who broke
rank?” he directed toward Henri.

“The
Valkyrie
.”

His eyes expressed surprise.
“The
Vampyre
of Light.
I thought she was a myth.”

Suddenly, in a movement more like a blink, Nicholas was in front of
Angie, fully focused on her, studying the chain dipping into her blouse
semi-concealed.

“What are you? You do not seem to be entirely of mortal blood,” he
said, flipping a sly, mocking glance at Henri. Then his gaze moved deeply into
hers and he raised his hand to move her to release whatever cross the chain
held so he could search her being.

Henri’s hand came up like lightning.

“She belongs to me.”

He shrugged, and let his hand drop.

“And your name?” he asked her, smiling deeply.

Angie started to give him her nickname, but somehow, “Angie” suddenly
seemed plain Jane in the face of exotic creatures with names like
Beucherie
,
Nicholai
and De
LaCroix
. “
Liora
Anjanette
,” she said.

“
Vous
êtes
français
!”
Nicholas said,
pleasure lighting up his eyes. “
Enchante
,
Mademoiselle Carter.
Est-ce
que
vous
parlez
français
?”

“Et
vous
,
vous
êtes
anglais
?”

His pleasure was apparent as his laughter became rich, enjoyable. “I
would like to think there were stately English castles somewhere in my
ancestry,” he said. “But they are actually Russian. Being English is a current
convenience, you might say. What of yours?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

A strange look passed briefly through his pupils.
Tossed
quickly at Henri.

Then it was gone, replaced with a simple shine from the fireplace
flames.

Nodding in the direction of the window as his keen hearing picked up
Kathryn sneezing and sniffling in the
truck,
he arched
an eyebrow, and smiled. “Corn flour?” he asked Angie.

“Corn tortilla chips and chipotle sauce.”

“She should have tried something a little easier on her system. Chicken
soup is less likely to send quasi-mortality into shock.”

“I don’t think she’ll be trying human food again for a very long
while,” Angie said.

He invited them to sit down. Angie sat on the edge, the very edge, of a
brown leather couch. He stood next to his desk, comfortably gazing down at her.
“Why have you sought me out?
Just for a journal?”

“We also came to see if you
were truly wanting
to return to the world of mortal men, but it would seem we also need your
help.”

“A
Vampyre
of Light with a cold, a
semi-mortal mystic, and a renegade Royal need my help,” he scoffed with a dry
laugh.

In spite of his air of confidence, the Russian
vampyre
was being cautious, Angie noted. He was ready to flee or fight, intrigued but
defensive. His jaw was taut, every muscle in his body tight.

She tried to read his aura.

But there was none.

“Discovering you was an accident,” Angie said.

“They were looking for Allison Weston. It seems you knew her?” Henri
smirked at him.

A small frown replaced Nicholas’ smile. “She inadvertently turned onto
a rather trashy street in the older part of town one night, lost, and knocked
on the wrong door for directions. I used a little friendly persuasion to keep
the occupants from killing her. She became infatuated with me, stalking me for
weeks, and followed me on board a train thinking I was leaving town when I was
actually trying to outrun a slayer. When the train derailed, a hunter of the
damned staked her in the ensuing confusion. I do not know why. I was trying to
save a woman with child and was unable to help her.”

“You told Angie on the phone you had a journal that belonged to a
passenger on the train?” Henri interjected quickly, his own jaw becoming taut,
his eyes scissoring the other
vampyre
.

“It belonged to the woman I was helping. Kara
Milstead
.
She said she had bought it at some little boutique in Old Town. She gave it to
me several years ago when she was dying. We—had kept in touch. But I’ve never
had time to read it.”

He opened a splendid wood storage trunk beside a wine rack, and pulled
out a time-worn,
leatherbound
journal.

“Thank you,” Angie said, as he handed her the journal. She tried not to
let him touch her hand as she took the little book, but his fingertips brushed
her palm. Deliberately, she knew. He wanted to test the mystic waters.

A cold burst of heat tunneled up her wrist.
And a
manifestation of mystical warning that this
vampyre
had little fear, even though he could be burned by the protective presence of
the cross on her neck.

They will never back away …

He had touched her, defying the burn.

He touched her for no more than a moment, an eternity,
then
withdrew his hand.

“Would you care for a glass of wine?” he asked.

He curled his fingers into his palm.

Touching her had hurt him.

I need something stronger than wine,
she thought.
I need Jim Beam.

He pulled a red wine from an oak cabinet, uncorked the bottle, and
poured them all a glass.

As she took her glass, his mouth curled into a deeper smile, and the
brown pools in the eyes of the Russian penitent oddly seemed even more beautiful
than when Angie had first looked into them in the etching …

Henri stepped between them, swirled his wine glass in front of her
eyes, and she shook away the burning in her brain.

“
C’est
parfait.
This is
magnificent,” she breathed as she swirled her own garnet red liquid glimmering
in the candlelight.
“A bouquet like fresh rain after a
thunderstorm.
This is
vintage
.” The wine had
been aged until the bouquet was delicate and beautiful.

“Where are you from,
Liora
Anjanette
?” Nicholas asked, with an odd twisty smile tossed
toward Henri.

“Podunk, California,” she said with a shrug. “But I’ve been to England
recently.”

A flicker passed through his eyes at the mention of England, but he
simply grinned and laughed. “I have never been to Podunk.”

“I found the English countryside mysteriously beautiful at night,” she
said with forced calm. “And the forests almost made me believe in fairies,
dwarves and wood nymphs.” She pulled her eyes from his, and they fell on his
ring. “The sea was a shimmering dark emerald. Wonderful, wild waves that threw
salty sea spray on my face when I walked the rocks.
Waves
that exploded with splashes of moonlight.”