Masters of the Night (8 page)

“You’re filled with fire,” she said, her own heart smoldering.

“Do you not want the fire’s flames,
Anjanette
?”

He eased her hand in under the open shirt and onto his bare chest.

A fountain of heat rose within her, from him. “Will this path prove
fatal, Henri?” she breathed, exploring the strong muscles, lost in him.

Reluctantly he pulled back to put space between them and let her
recover from his touch. He became engrossed in his wine, watching the lamp
light shine in its depths.

When he looked up, his eyes had lost their fire. The gaze
was—hauntingly sad.

“The path could prove fatal, but not from me. We’re in danger, Angie.”

His words stunned her into sobriety, and she sat up straight. “The
great and powerful Oz seems—shaken,” she said, but her taunt was weak. His
demeanor was that of a knight without a shield.

She opened her mouth, no idea what to say, then said nothing as she
heard a familiar voice at the front of the restaurant. Andre’s crossbow slayer
was asking the hostess if she had seen a young American woman, a blond, come in
for dinner.

Angie turned back to Henri.

Henri and his wine glass were gone.

A shadow passed across the wall, darkening one of the Paris murals,
then darkened another and another. But only Angie, the mystic, “saw” the
vampyre
. Silverware chinked, glasses clinked, laughter and
small conversations continued unaffected.

“Trust no one,” Henri whispered across the room to her as he slipped
out a side door.

The Shadow slayer approached the table with a grin, but his brown eyes
were somber with concern. “You were running late. The boss feels you need a
healthier fear of the dark, my dear.”

“
H’lo
to you, too, James Lauren,” she
returned. Her words were slightly slurred.

He glanced down at the expended wine bottle.

“Yes, I am becoming magnificently, stinking drunk,” she said, dropping
her car keys into his palm.

He took the keys, glanced curiously at the bottle again, and then his
eyes rested on a small circular indentation in the tablecloth directly beside
her.
Slight, almost imperceptible.

From a second wine glass.

9.

By the time the
mini reached the two-story Tudor home, the landscape was embellished with rainy
dark. James hadn’t said much, just opened her door for her, and Angie reached
over the back seat for the newspapers.

A smattering of
Tormentil
stalks and petals
fell out from between the pages. She slipped them in her pocket, and loading
her arms with the newspapers and her packages, scooted out of the car.

Still a little tipsy as she entered the house, she clutched the guide
rail to the second story balustrade and went directly to her room— a cozy niche
with a ceiling sloping to a gabled window, ivory rosette wallpaper and a
trundle bed. Pulling the
Tormentil
from her coat
pocket, she tossed them and the
newspapers
,on
the bed, dumped the items from her bags and boxes on the bed as well, then
opened the single window to take in huge gulps of air and clear away the
lingering wine.

A starling was sitting on the outside sill, staring in.

Henri.

“Are you crazy to
come
this close to a house
full of slayers?” she cried in a whisper.

His response was simply to preen the water from his wing.

A voice silvery, lilting like Japanese wind bells, suddenly filled the
bedroom doorway.
“
Regarde
tous
ces
beaux pullovers!
Angie, those are gorgeous sweaters!”

Angie slammed the window shut, smacked the curtains together and turned
around quickly, holding them closed behind her. “I have a slight phobia of
lightning,” she said in response to the
vampira’s
cool but questioning glance. “Blinding white light, fireballs bouncing across
the floor, all that.”

Kathryn sat down on the edge of the bed and gazed at her quietly. “Are
you expecting a storm, Angie?”

Angie quickly held up the two sweaters and asked which Kathryn thought
was the better color for her. “I couldn’t decide between the two—so I bought
them both.” She forced a bright smile while her insides churned.

“They’re both great,” Kathryn said pleasantly.

Then her eyes fell on the third item Angie had not been able to resist
purchasing. Kathryn gathered the cloak into her hands, a floor length,
deep
purple hooded traveling cloak with satin orchid lining.
Her blue gaze clouded over as though she had just transported to some undefined
place beyond the room, the house, the present. “This is a period piece.”

“I found it in the back of the shop in a little corner crammed with
costumes.”

“This is authentic. I used to have one like it in royal blue.”

She placed it carefully back on the bed as though it was part of a treasured
trousseau,
then
looked up at Angie. “Looks like you
found some pretty good steals.”

“The one thing I couldn’t find was a curling iron.”

“You can use mine,” Kathryn offered.

In a flash she was gone.

And back.
“Until you can get one.”

She tossed the iron across the room to Angie.

Angie caught it easily with one hand, surprising the
Vampyre
of Light with her unsuspected quickness.

The movement startled Angie as well. It was as though her hand had been
a glove, for an invisible power …

“Andre is training you well in such a short time, teaching your hand to
follow your mind’s eye like that,” Kathryn said.

But she was staring at her as though she wondered whether it might not
be as much Andre’s training as a staining from the master
vampyre
who might not have left her unscathed.

Angie quickly made a mental note to be more careful around the
vampira
.

Let the damned thing fall next time.

Kathryn crossed the room—and opened the window curtains.

“Looks like a new rain
is
moving in.” She
turned and dressed her words in a casual tone. “Are you going with us to
dinner?”

“I had a bite and some wine on the way in. I think I’ll pass.”

“See you when we get back then.”

As soon as her foot had stepped beyond the threshold of her door, Angie
ran back to the window. Had the
Vampyre
of Light seen
Henri?

A rustling on a birch tree branch nearby.

Angie. Do not go out alone.
Anywhere.

The words whipped through Angie like a spinning wind.

No!
She shoved her hands over her ears, realizing she had
heard, within her, the silent words
vampyres
could
spin at each other across the unseen threads of space and time.

Henri’s power had opened portals she had not expected.

The threads he tossed traveled and unraveled, along her very spine.
Angie turned from the window, stricken.

She slammed her face into a deadpan expression. James was leaning
against her doorway, his arms crossed, gazing at her curiously.

“I wouldn’t hide too many secrets around here if I were you, Angie,” he
said. “I won’t ask you who you were with tonight, but you need to
remember—Andre didn’t hire us because we were pencil-pushers. We push stakes.”

The quiet young scientist, Angie was learning quickly, was by far the
most deadly of the Shadows.

Quiet, deadly and adopted.

Left in his car seat in a grocery cart, all James had as a remembrance
from his DNA mother was a ring.

Beautiful piece of pizzazz, Angie thought, glancing at the ring he
perpetually wore. The stunning circlet of gold cradled a substantial black
sapphire in a bezel setting, and the Greek key of life, symbol of eternity and
infinity was engraved, unbroken, around the band.

His smooth brown hair was pulled back behind his ears in a ponytail
that reached about mid-shoulder, exposing a plain gold cross swinging from a
thick neck chain.

“Did you get the clasp fixed?” Angie asked as she glanced at the chain
that had weakened earlier in the week.

“Seems to be okay now.”

“Seems to be?”

A slight shrug rippled across his switch hitter shoulders. “I’ll have
it looked at next time I’m in town.”

“Might be a good idea.
Considering
your profession.”

“You could probably use a little extra protection yourself,” he said,
lifting an eyebrow toward her bare throat.

His eyes fell on the little spray of yellow flowers lying on the bed
quilt, and his tone lightened.
“Ah,
Tormentil
.
Origin of the name, obscure.
Linked somehow, the
experts believe, to the fact it appeases the rage in the teeth.
The original toothache powder.”
He glanced out the window at
the sky still persistently harboring clouds. “
Gonna
be a solar eclipse in a few days. Hope we get to see it.”

“I wanted to show these newspapers to Andre,” Angie said, picking up ye
old English news.

The slayer’s lips broke into a smile.
“Didn’t think
you were supposed to take reference material out of the library.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m a thief. I’ll repent and return them
tomorrow.”

“Just bring them downstairs after we get back from dinner,” James said
with a friendly slap to the frame as he pushed away from the door. “He’s in his
room right now with the door closed. That’s a ‘do not disturb.’”

As soon as James left, Angie was back at the window looking out into
the night, into the trees.

Where are you, Henri?

She was certain he was hanging around, or rather, flitting, around to
keep her safe. He had said they were in danger … She wanted to know why.

She searched within her being to find a path to him.

As though drawn, she looked toward a distant weathered barn, barely
visible in the lightless night.

He was behind the graying doors. She could see his eyes, two red meteor
points glowing through the rain as the doors opened a slit.

Desperately, Angie, still warmed by the pleasure of him, wanted to run
to him, run out into the night into the rain, to explore that protective,
tender fire, lay in the hay with him and let him flame against her body wet
with rain.

But she also didn’t want him dead with a crossbow bolt through his
back.

James was a seasoned slayer.

Angie was, in fact, discovering Andre’s
vampyre
seekers were truly warriors in the shadows, even though Andre’s assignments
often brought them close enough to death to feel the cold breath of the grave
on their jugular veins.

They would enter a hang or lair and sweep, as they called it—then move
out. No one was to know who they were or where they came from. They were
shrouded in secrecy, in shadows.

Except for me, of course
, she thought. I
get to spend my
time in musty basement graveyards looking through old newspapers.
Because I can’t throw a stake and hit the broad side of a barn.

Sighing, Angie began putting away the two sweaters she had purchased,
and the cloak.

But as she started to hang the cape next to her only evening gown in
the small closet, she stroked the rich velvet and saw Henri’s memories within
its luxuriant fibers—foggy brick-laid streets, sidewalks lit by gas lights,
ballrooms and ball gowns, three-story homes with expansive libraries.
Carriages and brandy.

Angie slipped out of her clothes and into her evening gown, clasped a
diamond drop pendant around her throat, and put on a pair of modest sized
diamond earrings, the only diamonds she owned. Sweeping the cloak around her
shoulders, she gazed into her cheval mirror, hummed a little waltz, and twirled
in front of the glass. She imagined herself dancing, imagined what it might
have been like to have lived in the earlier century, dancing in her jewels with
the beautiful burgundy satin dress swirling around her, and the purple velvet
cape hanging in the coatroom. Countless little gold curls and tendrils brushed
her forehead and the nape of her neck. And olive eye shadow accentuated the
violet hue of her eyes, deepening their shine.

Henri suddenly appeared in the mirror behind her.

She gasped. “You have a reflection!”

He grinned. “Most in atonement do have one, I’ve heard.”

“Most in atonement knock,” she said, admonishing him as she turned to
face him. He was arrogant—she liked it. He was brash, bold—she loved it.

But she was afraid to show it. “You are here uninvited.”

“Do I need an invitation?” he grinned. “We are joined,
Anjanette
.”

She became serious, her brow furrowed. “What you need is to leave,
Henri.
Very quickly.
In case you hadn’t noticed, I
live with slayers. Every room in the place houses one.”

“They went to dinner.”

His smile spun around her heart. She trembled, wanting him to stay,
afraid to let him stay.

His gaze moved to her cloak, and he seemed to become lost in the rich,
royal purple sheen of the dark velvet lying softly against her shoulders. In
fact, Henri seemed unable to take his eyes from the elegant traveling cloak. He
seemed to suddenly flush with color as he stared at it. Angie watched him, watched
the wash of excitement, watched him try to resist touching it.

Moonlight slipped in through a window and caught her in a silvery beam.
He moved close to her and kneaded the velvety material lightly, briefly with
his fingertips,
then
he brought it up to his face to
enjoy the perfume caught in the rich cloth.

“In earlier centuries a young woman would never have traveled or
attended a social function unescorted,” he said, gentility permeating his tone.