Masters of the Night (24 page)

Henri moved into full view. “Is she—all right?”

“If you’re here for her, you can’t have her,” James said, stepping
forward with his crossbow.

As his eyes swept the
slayers,
and the weapons
ready to take him, every muscle in the
vampyre’s
body
tightened.

“Your strength is coming from her,” James said angrily, raising the
bow.

Henri bristled and stepped forward in challenge.

With a wave of his hand, Andre warned James to back off. Then he asked
again, “What do you want?”

Henri smoothed his hand across the front of the soft, white cotton
shirt he was wearing. “I would ask only that when you come for me in
daysleep
, you do not—slash—my shirt. I wore it in—happier
times—and would like it to remain
untorn
.” He paused.
“My deepest hour, and my weakest point of resistance, is when the sun beams its
hottest. Place a cross and slay me then and you will have me. But that day is
not today, Andre. For you know my strength. And I do not wish to kill your
troupe.”

Andre’s grip on the stake relaxed. “I have a better idea. My mystic
slayer tells me you are in atonement. Why don’t you just—go see your cousin,
repent and stop feeling sorry for yourself?”

“I might die if I enter Stephen’s church and that sanctuary light hits
me,” Henri exclaimed as though the suggestion was ludicrous.

“You die if you don’t,” James said with a shrug. “What’s the
difference?
The church, the
Lammergeier
,
the Lady Jane, or us at high noon?
Your pick.”

“Go to Stephen, Henri,” Andre said. “The Realm and the Lady cannot
touch you once you’re with Stephen. We will protect the mystic.”

A small smile of irony curled around Henri’s lips. “So Stephen finally
gets his wish. He will probably have every nun in the convent singing
victoriously all night just to torment me.”

Briefly, Henri wondered if Stephen would welcome him with open arms, or
throw holy water at him. And whether facing the Lady Jane could be worse than
the serene little cathedral reeking of cedar and incense and purity.

His black trench coat flowing out from behind him, Henri stomped off in
a huff down the sidewalk. For the moment, he had no choice but to go. The
crossbow had moved into position, ready to burst his heart.

He did not go very far.

He had no intention of deserting Angie with the threat of the
Lammergeier
looming over her—

A beat in his heart again—and an unholy chill thickening the air.

Henri’s eyes darted toward Angie’s bedroom window.

A single lamp came on. James was entering the room.

Henri pulled his black trench coat closer. One of the only chills a
vampyre
could feel besides a ghost was—

Yes, phantoms were on the premises.

And Jane, if the perfume in the sludgy air was not
deceiving him.

24.

As he flew back
toward the apartments, Henri could see the Lady Jane Weston relaxed in the
crook of a limb next to the window, her body stretched out across its width.

But as everyone knows,
he thought,
the pose of idle
rest is the position from which the feline predator leaps and pounces on its
prey.

Her violet eyes shone delightfully as though from a light of their own,
a light that chilled Henri to the core yet excited him with strange heat.

As it always had.

Damn her. She was about to do what she did best.

Seduce.

And her victim was the crossbow slayer.

Jane scratched at the window.
Lightly.
With a crimson red fingernail.

With Angie sleeping deeply from a sedative Andre had given her, James
had busied himself by stacking some empty boxes and was now ripping the packing
tape from the flaps of the one box that remained unopened, the fax machine box.

At the sound of the scraping, he stopped.

Henri felt a wicked sensation begin to pelt the night like needles, an
evil permeating the very walls of the room, almost making them weave. A phantom
was in that box.

The slayer left the box and pulled apart two of the slats on the
venetian blinds cautiously to peer outside.

A pair of violet eyes gazed in at him from out of the darkness.

Instinctively, he reached for a stake from his utility pack.

“You are the crossbow slayer,” she smiled,
then
the violet orbs reflecting the moon moved to his ring.
“And
more, perhaps?”

He glanced at his ring, his brow furrowed in puzzlement.

What did she mean? Henri wondered, his own brow furrowing deeply.

The Lady smoothed her cape away from her shoulders, and let the folds
blow seductively around the branch as she drew her knees up under a silken
white evening gown. A side slit extended all the way up her thigh.

“You are a seasoned slayer,” she said in a soft, come-hither voice. “So
you know that our cloaks carry the essence, the power of what we are?” She
kneaded a bit of satin white between her fingers.

“I didn’t think you wore them to fend off the cold,” he answered
flatly.

Damn you, don’t you dare try to take her down!
Henri thought,
flying faster. She was outside on the branch, he was inside. She could fly in
the wink of an eye, or knock him off balance if he opened the window and
pursued her out onto the branch.

And Angie would be left unprotected.

Henri tried to force his being to fly even faster, his starling wings
beating the air with tenacity. But his
power of flight and of
flash were
to his surprise diminished.

He was beginning his return to humanity.

At the moment, not a good thing.

“Any other time,” he muttered.

He pummeled the wind, forced his body to respond to his commands. He
lifted a talon, stared at it.
A sensation of warmth above the
bone.

Jane would have the upper hand if this return to Oz continued.

“I don’t need a heart at the moment, thank you very
much,” he
twirtled
to the sky.
“Or
a brain.
Just courage and power.
To get us out of this mess.
Then I’ll be human again. Then
I’ll be a happy, middle-class, blue-collar, have-a-nice-day nine-to-fiver.
We’ll get married, settle down, get pregnant,
have
babies. I’ll work in a tire store or something, the whole mortal enchilada.”

Only, just not right now…

Jane was feigning a pout at the slayer’s wisecrack. Moving a perfect,
pale, silky leg so the slit would widen, she stroked the windowsill sensuously
with her hand. “I have a name, James,” she said softly. “I am Jane.”

“I know. And I’m not inviting you in—Jane,” he said firmly.

“Am I asking for entrance?” Her eyes gazed provocatively at him from
under a black canopy of thick, luscious lashes.

She was keeping her eyes on his, Henri realized, to distract him from
the evil growing in the room like a mushroom cloud—behind him.

Damn it. The Shadows had brought that phantom with them like a nasty
camel spider hiding in the fax machine box.

The wad of tar crawled out onto the floor, then rose to tower silently,
his glowing red eyes slanted malevolently as he awaited his mistress’s command.

Jane moved slightly and eased her hand along the smooth skin of her
thigh. “I want the mystic, James. Are you strong enough to resist me and keep
me from her? I want to see how powerful you are.”

“Give it your best shot,” he said.

Don’t challenge her, you fool!
Henri cried
inwardly.
She loves to play!

Her fingertips followed the slit to its source along her silky skin,
beckoning his eyes to follow. “How did you get that nasty little burn scar on
the inside of your forearm, James?” she asked sweetly, sympathetically. “It
must have hurt terribly. Was the fire your fault?
No, of
course not.
Your stepfather found out what you were and tried to kill
you. But of course, you thought the fire was your doing.” She leaned in toward
the window, and her eyes became excited, wild. “You were trapped—in the fire.
Were you terrified, fearful you would not escape the flames? We don’t like
fire, either, James. Let me take you away from the fire. Come out the window
and fly with me. I can give you an ecstasy no mortal can.”

Her hand glided in under the slit. “You would be so strong, James,” she
whispered, her eyes moistening.

Henri used the wind to propel him. He was almost there …

“I could have worn nothing. But I love this gown, don’t you?” Jane was
saying coyly.

She arched back, the slit opened to full breadth. “I decided instead to
wear nothing under it.”

James stepped back, wary of her seduction.

Her lips turned down and she glared, not having received the look of
lust she had wanted—desire pelting him unmercifully. But just as quickly, her
smile returned, her voice mellifluous. “It was a laboratory fire, wasn’t it,
James?
From an explosion?
He mixed the chemicals in
the college laboratory so they would combust when you lit the Bunsen burner.”

“What are you saying?” he said, his mental control momentarily wavering
as he fought to control his emotions in the face of her words.

It was the moment the
vampira
and her phantom
had waited for, a singular moment of weakness. His mind was theirs to shatter.
She pricked him with visions of fire—and smoke. The air became so hot it could
incinerate a man’s lungs.

But there was no fear in the slayer’s eyes. He stared at the illusion
of fire, fascinated.

With a corrosive laugh, Jane spread her dark wings and danced
delightedly on the branch. “James, you are wonderful. Invite me in, and I will
let you look at me again. I am more beautiful than the human or that sullied
vampira
could ever be, am I not?”

“Except for the fangs,” he
said,
his tone
flat.

“Burn, slayer,” she smiled sweetly. She drew her wings back in and sat
back down on the limb.

Henri crashed through the bathroom window.

Since the damned thing wouldn’t open for him.

The phantom was forming into a chimera, the lion head nodding toward
Jane as though he had received a command.

The mistress of evil was about to play a horror game. Henri could
literally smell burnt ashes as he stepped from the bathroom and into the
illusion of fire.

A lit candle appeared in the phantom’s cloven hands, and Henri cast a
worried glance toward Angie. She was weak. The illusion could manhandle her if
she awakened in the center of flames she would mystically be able to see.

The odious creature with the body of a goat dropped the candle. “Oops,”
he said.

Drops of hot wax splashed across the carpet, and tiny flames began to
form on the drops, burning the carpet fibers with a thousand little fires.

The little fires rolled across the floor toward the drapes.

The drapes burst into open flame. Towers of red began to lick at the
walls and the bed. Henri could smell the smoke, feel the hot haze. This
mistress of the undead was powerful.

The phantom chimera, its razor-sharp wings outstretched, moved through
the smoke.

Moving between Henri and the bed where Angie lay.

A burning bed …

“Get away from her,” his deep voice commanded from within the smoke.

The phantom dissolved into the floor.

Jane’s rain bell laugh filled the room. “Henri, you have joined us! You
delight me.”

A dark silhouette moving through the smoke, Henri moved toward Angie’s
bed. Sitting on the edge, he took the sleeping mystic’s hands in his.

“What the hell are you doing back here?” James cried angrily, combating
the smoke, trying to cross the room, trying to find his crossbow, keep the
vampyre
from stealing the mystic.

“Saving your butt, apparently,” Henri smirked, tossing a glance at the
slayer trapped in the center of a circle of flames, surges of brilliant
yellow-orange tongues of fire rising up around him.

Jane began pirouetting on the limb like a wood nymph in senseless
mirth. “Slay him, James!”

“This one is more venomous than an asp, in case you hadn’t noticed,”
Henri said, his blue eyes cutting coldly to her heated, violet ones.

He raised his arm and flexed his hand toward the window, toward her
madness. Glass cracked and crashed. Flying pieces of pane showered the branches
and leaves around her.

She stomped her foot against the branch, and flapped her wings in
anger. “I hope the
Lammergeier
kills you, Henri De
LaCroix
!”

“If he doesn’t kill you first for trying to kill the mystic,” Henri
retorted.

Enraged, she turned the room into a volcano.

Scorching heat fell from the ceiling at her command, shot up from the
floor, dripped off the melting metal rims of the Victorian bed posts.

The phantom slithered across the floor like a snake,
then
rose toward Henri with razor wings.

“Kill him, my sweet chimera. Kill him!” the
vampira
cried, clapping her hands in mirth.

The phantom flew at him.

Henri slapped the phantom into an ink blot on the floor. It
puddled
away into the burning drapes.

A floating piece of drape landed on James’ shirt, burning through to
his skin. He cried out in pain.

The chimera rose again out of the shreds of drapery and kicked the
slayer in the midriff with a cloven hoof, a powerful, driving blow that sent
him reeling against the wall and right into the fire. His scarred arm began to
burn unmercifully.

Henri grasped the phantom, splintering it into ashes.

“You should have behaved,” he said.

The burn on James’ arm became a thin line, the skin became smooth.

Henri tossed him his crossbow and quiver. “I really think we should get
the hell out of here before she gets pissed and really sets the room on fire.”

Angie looked up through half-closed eyelids at the master
vampyre
lifting her from her bed. “Henri!” she smiled in
surprise, lifting her arms and sliding them around his neck. “What are you
doing here?”

“Angie, are you awake enough to join your power to mine?” he whispered
urgently.