Masters of the Night (26 page)

26.

Angie yanked on her
clothes and shoveled her feet into her shoes.

“You are still in great danger,
chéri
,” Henri
said gravely as he took her downstairs.
“If what the slayer
told me is the truth.”

He walked her out to the road where an SUV idled in the shadows of the
trees.

The only occupant was James.

“The Shadows were ambushed while I was getting coffee for everyone,” he
said, his tone burning the air. “Mack thought it was the pizza guy when the
buzzer rang, and buzzed them in. They bit the hell out of the day maid,
then
left her tied up and instructed her to tell me they
will be waiting for you. They know you will try to rescue the Shadows.”

“Where did my aunt stash them?” Angie cried, anger turning her violet
eyes to black ire.

“She couldn’t help playing one more night game,” James said. “She left
that one for you to figure out.’

“Jane is obviously using them in pretense of an exchange, you
understand that?” Henri said.

“The maid said Jane’s
vampyres
descended on
Kathryn with a vengeance,” James said, his tone a frozen Arctic wind. “They
stoned and flailed her with silver clubs to punish the defector, the protector
of atoners. When she tried to extend her wings to fight and help the Shadows
escape, Nicholas broke them. They plan to kill her first.”

Angie’s eyes flew to Henri’s, filled with fury. “Henri! We have to stop
them.”

“That’s not all they have planned,” James said. “They’re going to throw
Henri in a sun well, and you in with him so you have to watch him burn before
the Realm hauls you off to break your will and find the secrets to your power.”

“And we are alone against the
vampyre
woman,”
Henri added. “Where are the envoys?”

“Sweeping the city,” James responded. “I left messages, but I doubt
they’ll be able to join us in time.”

Angie grasped Henri’s sleeve. “Nosy Natalia will know where they are!
She’s Nicholas’ minion.”

“So I suppose this means we are not going to Connecticut tonight?”
Henri sighed with a small sad smile, his blue eyes tracing hers.

“Not tonight,” she said softly.

She jumped in the car. He slid in beside her. “Mystics,” he said,
kissing her lingeringly as though it might be their last. “We are in a pickle,
aren’t we?” He stroked her hair as torrents of tears spilled down her cheeks.

“Cry later,” James said roughly, tossing his cell phone to the back
seat as he scattered gravel with the utility truck tires and sped away from the
castle. “Right now we need reinforcements.”

“Come on. Pick up, pick up,” Angie said, punching in the number James
gave her.

Angie clutched the phone, hoping an envoy would call back, and call
back soon. They needed the cavalry.

At the edge of the city, James whirled the SUV into a trashy, rundown
cul-de-sac.

The old Victorian three-story Natalia inhabited was behind scraggy
trees and wild brush.

James screeched to a halt at the curb. They leaped onto the rickety
porch, and as Angie summoned the strength within her and took the doorknob in
her hand, Henri stepped back. This night was hers.

The smell of the dead in the dim vestibule with soiled carpet almost
knocked her over. But the mystic slayer emerging into her power was undeterred.

“Natalia!” she called out forcefully.

Angie did not relish climbing the fiendishly cobwebby stairs, but she
knew she would rip the house apart to find the flippant vamp.

The
vampira
appeared, easing out of the
shadows in a black lace tank top and skinny jeans, and towered over her in
five-inch wedge heels. “It would seem you walk through locked doors with the
greatest of ease, my dear. Do you also walk through walls? What are you?”

“Where would they go, Natalia?” Angie demanded.

“Who?” she asked with a twisty smile.

“Don’t play games,” James said, moving toward her.

Her smile disappeared.

The carpet on the stairs beyond them seemed to move.

They had walked into a nest.

“What makes you think I would know? Or tell you if I did?” Natalie said
testily.
Nastily.

Angie slammed her hand against the wall next to the
vampyre’s
head.

“I don’t have time for this,” Angie said, her patience lost. “Now where
would they go?”

Piles of rags rose from the dingy
stairs,
mottled the stair rails. Henri bristled, ready to fight them. “Call them off,
Natalia.”

As James’s hand moved to pull a bolt from his pack, Natalia’s eyes fell
on his ring. She raised her hand and motioned toward the stairs. The
vampyres
retreated.

James frowned down at the jewel shining as though from an inner fire,
and his brow deeply furrowed. “What is it about this ring?”

The
vampyre
reared back somewhat, in
surprise. “You really do not know, do you?” The splashy smile returned to her
lips. “This should prove interesting.” She moved closer to Angie, as close as
she dared. “Are you ovulating, I hope?”

“Natalia, we don’t have all night,” Henri said warningly.

Her red lips pushed into a pout. “She’s taking them to that hovel on
the hill called Stony.” Then her eyes glittered toward Angie and she laughed
oddly, as if at a joke only she knew the punch line to.

Henri stepped in front of the Russian
vampyre
and instructed James firmly, “Take Angie to the car.”

“I’m not going to …” Angie began in protest.

James grabbed her by the arm. “Yes, you are. This is not something you
want to see.”

Ten minutes later, Henri was back in the car, in the back seat with
Angie, his face somber, his muscles taut. “Let me see that ring,” he said over
the seat to James, his voice coffin-cold.

James did not argue. He slid it off and handed it to him.

Henri studied the symbols engraved on the inside of the band, then
handed it back. “You are both children of the Realm. And they want you. I have
a castle in the Black Forest where I can hide you.”

“Look, ass,” James said, glancing back over the seat. “I don’t know
what this is about, but I’m not abandoning the troupe. You can go with me or
you can run hide in your hole, but I’m going after the Lady Nasty and her
pretty boy, and get them back.”

“Let’s just barrel into hell and rescue the world,” Henri retorted, no
love lost in his voice for the slayer.

“Are you with us?” Angie pleaded.

Henri looked into the violet eyes needing his power, his strength. “I
can refuse you nothing.” He cupped her chin in his hand. “I can also promise
you nothing. I cannot promise I can protect you, Angie. But I can promise I
will fight by your side to the death.”

“I’ll take it,” she cried elatedly, throwing her arms around his neck
in an ardent embrace.

James tore away from the curb, but was brought up short by an
eighteenth-century coach and horse thundering from the alley, blood dripping
from the wheel spikes.

He threw on the brakes. The car spun sideways.

Angie and Henri leaped from the car, weapons drawn, but stumbled to a
stop. The monster emerging from behind the velvet window coverings was an evil
neither of them had counted on.

He was human—with an Uzi. They had expected to fight the forces of
darkness, not the living. The shooter never pulled the trigger. He leaped back
into the coach. The horseman slapped the reins, the horse neighed, and the
ghost coach raced away into the night.

His goal had not been to kill, but to taunt.

To detain.

Their battle tonight was to be spiritual as well as physical. Battles
of mind and will as well as flesh and blood. Jane wanted to break them, so they
could be taken easily when they reached the House.

“Well, at least you know what you’re in for,” Henri cast toward James
as they raced the SUV toward the nearest airport.

With Henri’s arm around her shoulders like an anchor, Angie gazed out the
car window, her heart on a rollercoaster. She had discovered she had a psycho
vampyre
in the family album. One of
Drac’s
nephews, or both,
were
poised to impregnate her then
hit the
vampyre
circuit. And she was in love with a
master
vampyre
who might die trying to defend her.

And she had no idea what had happened to her mother’s diary after it
went flying out of her grasp. She leaned her head against Henri’s shoulder and
wished she was in Connecticut.

27.

Blue-black clouds
sagged above the trees in dark bracelets along the road leading to the House of
a Hundred Rooms. Not even a surreptitious moonbeam slipped through to create
brief semi-light.

Angie could see her aunt’s demon smile, and her blood rushed in hard
pulses. “She’s about to strike again.”

A white cloud encased the car. And within the pale core, the forms of
winged things—ravens or bats, she wasn’t sure.

The cloud mass seeped in around the window weather stripping up through
the floorboard, in through the vents.
Vapors with a sweet
scent.

“Damn her, she’s drugging us,” Henri said.

The road soon seemed to weave and twist at odd angles, lost in a cloud
punctuated with eyes.

Vampyres
, far away then
suddenly in their view, latched on to the windshield like tree frogs, then let
go and floated away into nothingness.

A
vampyre
slapped against the vapor-drenched
window beside Angie, licked his tongue against the glass. Lick. Lick. Lick.
Bared his fangs.
Clawed at the glass.

“I’m getting really tired of this,” she said. Surprising both Henri and
James, she rolled down the window—and grabbed the assaulting creature by his
hair. Pulling him partially inside, she said through clinched teeth, “You want
my blood, do you, punk? Well, do
ya
?”

She staked him—he screamed and died. She shoved the dissipating
skeleton out the window and rolled it back up.

“Pedal to the metal, James.”

The car shot through the white cloud like a black ribbon.

A black sky studded with a myriad of crystal stars emerged. The road
was tranquil, clear.

“You probably need to know,” Henri said to James, “that I’m under
sanction.”

James shot him a hard look. “Thanks. Yeah. I might need to know that.
Now we have to fight a
Lammergeier
.”

Angie turned Henri’s face toward her, looking into the blue waters full
on. “About that statement, children of the Realm—”

The ghost appeared behind him floating top hat and all outside the rear
window. “So what is Henri De
LaCroix
looking for
tonight? Comfort for a guilty conscience? Peace for his wretched soul? Security
in heaven because he has found that he has none in hell?”

“I guess he wants an answer, or he’ll keep hanging around,” Henri said,
turning to him. “Hope for forgiveness,” he replied simply.

“Ah, then it is hope he seeks.”
Silence.
Then,
“Is it a false hope?” Then he leaned in through the glass, his face to Angie’s.
“You seem to have a dilemma.”

“Help us,” she implored.

“You are near your destination. Trust the atoner.”

“Think he means you?” James tossed back at Henri with a smirk.

The dead gray eyes penetrated James and the ghost’s voice changed,
becoming feral. “The castle is close, just three miles into the foothills. But
the road will be long for you tonight.”

The face retreated back through the glass. He floated away.

“I think he must be condemned to wander the netherworld until he pays
his dues or something,” Angie remarked. Then she studied the crossbow slayer.
“He seems to think James is special. Everyone and every
thing
seem to think
James is special.”

A heavily forested road jutted off to the right.
The
road to the House.

So why was James slowing down again? “
Allez
tout
droit
! Speed up!” she cried.

“The road’s blocked,” he said, coming to a full stop.

Dead ahead, a nine-foot, half-human, half-demonic figure with the head
of a gargoyle sidled back and forth. His skin, slick as oil, was
reddish-orange.
A cat, contemplating its prey.

“What the hell else is running around out here for Jane?” Henri
muttered, climbing from the car. “Let us pass,” he ordered.

The beast pulled his tail into his hand,
then
whipped the sharp edge against Henri’s leg. “Don’t think so,” he said.

Henri’s knee buckled and he winced in pain as blood spurted.

“Henri!” Angie cried, running to him.

“Stay back,” Henri demanded.

But of course, she didn’t. She loved him.

He smiled in spite of his irritation with her.

The tail swished toward Angie in a red streak of nasty temper, but she
leaped over it.

“How does it feel to have been the one who caused him to break the vow
he made so recently, broken for you?” he threw at Angie. “The vow that was
lifting him from hell’s grasp? He has lost his heartbeat.
Because
of you.”

A great sob rose up in her throat at his words.

He moved closer to her. “The memory of what he wanted with you is still
strong within him. It tears at him, and he burns. As you burn. I will be
watching his soul tonight, mystic.”

Desperate, hard breaths filled Angie’s lungs. Henri was now on the
devil’s hit list, as well as everybody else’s.

The gargoyle body transformed into the semblance of a man, perfect,
unblemished, with raven wings that shimmered like black oil in sunlight.

He brushed her softly with his wing tip and held a crystal goblet in
front of her. The ruby red liquid glimmered. The glass sparkled in every
crystal facet.

“Taste the pleasure and the power as you share my cup,” the voice said,
horrifying seductive. “I would take care of you,
Anjanette
.
I would be your protector.”

Henri knocked the goblet from his hand.

James moved forward with a stake.

“Roland! He wears the ring,” a woman’s voice shouted from the trees.
“Fly!”

Angie leaped to stop his retreat. The cross on her neck swung against
him and he lost his wings, becoming no more than a
vampyre
in a black-collared cape writhing in Henri’s grasp. He
screamed,
an unearthly cry of terror.

James knelt over him. “Goodnight, hot shot.” He drove the stake in like
a dagger. “Your imitation of the devil was poor, by the way. You forgot the
horns.”

Terrified, the
vampira
swirled away through
the trees to the ruins of an abandoned abbey.

“Do we pursue her?” Angie asked as James beheaded the master
vampyre
then rose to his feet.

“Playing cape and dagger in monks’ cells with
vampyres
is not my idea of a fun night and it would delay us even more,” James said. He
picked up the
vampyre’s
cloak with the point of the
stake. Turning it skyward, he flicked the stake out from under the folds, and
the remnant of evil power hurtled upward. Spreading across the moonlit sky like
an abandoned sail from a lost ship, it blackened the moon briefly,
then
vaporized.

“That was the Marquis we just took out,” Henri said.

“Well, he’s a dead marquis now,” James responded. “He seemed a little
drunk on his own power. Best he
go
to hell and learn
some humility.”

The three warriors hurried back to the car and rocketed toward Jane’s
vacation home. In dead center, a tower took the house to almost six stories in
height. Chimneys dotted the jagged roof, dipping and weaving and rising across
the hill to connect the wings.

As they parked at the edge of the woods and climbed out of the car, the
trees were thick with wings and eyes.

Henri bristled, ready for war. James raised his crossbow.

And Angie stood stupidly next to them—wondering what to do. Henri had
used her holy water. She had used her last stake on the vamp
who
had clawed the car window. All she had was—

An F-5 power that amazed her, rising in a vortex
within her.
Pure strength.
Her own.

“Hold, Henri De
LaCroix
,” a voice said from
the thick foliage.

A master
vampyre
stepped partially into view.
“We will not engage you. We are leaving—by another’s command.” He paused. “But
be forewarned. She has her entourage.”

His eyes fell briefly on Angie, glowed with dark desire,
then
his eyes rested on James and glowed oddly. The red orbs
with fire like rubies traveled to his ring. He lowered his head in a brief nod
as though acknowledging a prince.

In the next instant, the
vampyre
was in the
air and a black cloud, like a cloud of locusts, rose from the trees to follow
him, winging their way to the far mountains.

“What was that all about?” Angie asked, turning to James and staring at
his ring.

“Beats me,” James shrugged, twisting the band. “Perhaps we fought
somewhere in the past.”

“What did he mean by another’s command?” she asked.

A heavy silence followed her question. Neither Henri nor James
apparently wanted to answer her.