Blood Born (3 page)

Dammit. His position with the Council required that he always be available, but he’d just completed an assignment and he needed to get away from the irritation he felt around crowds of people. Normally months, sometimes years would pass before the Council summoned him again, but the call had to be from them because few others knew how to reach him. He didn’t blithely give out his number, not even to the older, stronger vampires who could remember him. What was the point? Vampires didn’t call to chat. Besides, he made other vampires nervous. Even most of the Council members, who were powerful in their own rights, were wary of him. And as far as he was concerned, that was a good thing.

Politics didn’t interest him at all, so his involvement with the Council wasn’t entirely logical. The ruling branch of vampire society was as beset by back-stabbing, deal-brokering, lobbying, and special interests as any government yet devised by humans. But he had skills others did not, and for more years than he could count he’d been an integral part of the workings of the Council. His assignments gave him a sense of purpose, and besides, even this place bored him after a while.

Individually and collectively the Council had offered him a more permanent position, a seat at the table of power, but he’d turned them down so many times he thought they should long since have stopped asking. The Council members were as heavily protected as any American president, and he’d go stir-crazy if he had to live all but imprisoned in the Council headquarters. Their quarters were luxurious, but a prison was still a
prison, no matter how high the thread count on the sheets.

They would keep calling until he answered the phone. Annoyed, he pulled it from his pocket and glanced at the number. His eyebrows rose as concern replaced his annoyance, and he thumbed the talk button. “Ambrus,” he said. Hector wasn’t the member of the ruling Council charged with assigning Luca’s missions, but he was an old friend and he wouldn’t call unless it was important. In the more than six hundred years they’d known each other, they’d also learned to trust each other, something important in the vampire world. Together they’d seen a lot of changes in the vampire community. They’d kept the peace, and they had protected the secret of their very existence, using whatever methods were necessary.

Hector hadn’t been a young man when he’d been turned, and though he was strong he wasn’t at a physical peak, the way Luca was. Hector’s strength was in his mind, his shrewdness and his control.

“There’s a serious problem,” Hector said without preamble. It wasn’t like him to be so abrupt. He was almost twelve hundred years old, so he’d learned there was almost never a need for haste or impatience.

Luca turned to walk back toward his cottage. A problem for the Council meant that, like it or not, he’d soon be on his way to D.C. “What sort of problem?”

Hector hesitated. “I think there’s a traitor on the Council.”

Luca stopped in his tracks. “A traitor … How?” It was a serious accusation, but not one he could easily dismiss, simply because this was Hector. Treason in the vampire world meant one thing: a vampire doing something stupid that could result in exposure to the humans. Still, exactly what did “traitor” mean? Attacks against the Council didn’t count as treason, because Council
members, like all the other vampires, had to survive by their own strength and wits. If they couldn’t manage that, then they were dead, and the stronger stepped into their places.

“A rebel faction has formed. Their position is that they’re tired of living in the dark, that vampires are superior to humans—which is true—so they want to overcome the humans and take over the government. One of the Council has joined them. I’m certain of it, but I haven’t been able to find out
who
.”

Luca grunted, but otherwise restrained his reaction. If Hector was right—and he almost always was—then this was definitely a serious situation. Periodically someone or a group of someones would decide it was outrageous that vampires had to hide their existence, and they would have to be dealt with before they could expose the entire race. Never before had a Council member joined in that idea, though, which immediately made the situation more dire.

With some common sense and caution, vampires could live in relative peace because humans didn’t believe they were real. The Council made the rules that ensured that peace, and whenever any vampire didn’t obey, well, that was where Luca came in. A vampire who fed and killed indiscriminately risked them all, so Luca was called in to handle the problem.

Because he could come and go pretty much as he wanted, and no human remembered him, there were no repercussions. Not only that, he was old enough and strong enough that he could go out in daylight, which meant most vampires were helpless against him. He executed them during the day only under the most extreme circumstances, such as if the vampire had gone totally mad and any delay was too dangerous. Otherwise, he faced his prey and at least gave them the opportunity to fight. They never won—obviously, or he
wouldn’t still be here—but the exercise gave him fighting practice. Executing a sleeping vampire wasn’t any fun at all.

He could almost—
almost
—have some sympathy with the rebels. There were many vampires who considered all humans as far beneath them as a cow or a chicken might be to those humans. They were necessary for nourishment, but to be forced to hide from them out of fear, to be made to cower in the dark … some vampire egos couldn’t handle it. Luca didn’t quite see things that way. For one, he didn’t cower. For another, he had fought beside humans, made love to human women, enjoyed their progresses and inventions, and sometimes laughed at their actions until he was exhausted and his ribs ached. Humans were endlessly entertaining, if nothing else.

“I’ll be there tomorrow,” Luca said as he resumed his distance-eating stride.

“Hurry,” Hector urged, and his voice changed as his power surged, his tone and cadence sliding into the rhythm that said he was seeing the future.
“Battle is in the air. I smell it. I can almost touch it. Death is coming. Death is coming for us.”
With a click, the call disconnected.

The powerful vampire sounded frightened, which alarmed Luca even more. Death. Vampires lived with death, but some clung to their new version of life with an almost panicked intensity. Others, after living for so many years, actually yearned for an end and would choose to die, but most didn’t. Hector enjoyed life, even after all his years, but he wasn’t afraid of death. What he feared was something bigger: the collapse of the wall of ignorance that protected the vampires from the humans.

Luca reached his cottage and began packing, making phone calls and arrangements of his own as he gathered
what he needed. If Hector felt death was coming for them, as he’d said, then their world was in great danger and uncertainty.

Luca had many strengths and powers; as a rare blood born, conceived and born to a vampire mother and father, he was much stronger than those who’d been turned to the life. Prophesy, however, wasn’t one of those powers. Despite the surety in his tone, Hector’s gift of prophecy was relatively mild, and while Luca certainly believed Hector’s prediction, he also knew there was just as much that Hector didn’t see.

He’d have liked more time in Scotland, but as he prepared for the trip he felt his heartbeat increasing in anticipation for what was to come. If there was a huge battle, well, he hadn’t been in a proper battle in a very long time.

Chloe Fallon had just drifted off to sleep when the image popped into her subconscious: a long, thick, blond braid hanging right in front of her face. That was all, just a braid, but so real she felt as if she could reach out and touch it. The shade of blond was darker and more golden than her own, and it seemed to be streaked with several shades. Had to be a natural color, her dreaming mind thought; it would take forever for a hairdresser to work all those different colors in.

She started awake, absurdly surprised to find herself alone in her own bed. That was the weird thing—one of the weird things, anyway. She didn’t feel as if she was truly alone. She almost felt as if all she had to do was roll over and she’d find the person attached to the braid lying there beside her. Unable to stop herself, she lifted her head to take a quick glance
at the other pillow. Nope, no one there. Good. She had the bed to herself, as usual.

She flopped over on her back and stared at the dark ceiling. Of all things to dream about … a
braid
. She kept having the same dream, over and over, about a damn braid. Maybe she had some deep-seated desire to be a hairdresser, though she didn’t think so. She didn’t even like spending much time on her own hair, which was why she got the most maintenance-free cut she could, short of shaving her head. So what did it mean that she kept dreaming about a braid? There had to be a person attached to the hank of hair, but she’d never seen a face. She didn’t even know for sure if the braid belonged to a man or a woman. Her first thought had been “woman,” since long hair wasn’t exactly in fashion for men, but she got a sense of power when she was in the presence of the braid. It was definitely a strange thing to be obsessing over.

The braid dream had been coming for several weeks now. At first she’d decided stress was the cause. Her job and college classes were both demanding. She enjoyed them, but they didn’t leave much time for a social life. Relaxation, laughter, fun … she’d had to put them all aside, but now she was out of college for the summer and thought a break would cure all her ills.
Not
.

It didn’t make sense. All she had to worry about right now was her job—assistant manager of an upscale restaurant in Georgetown—and her parents’ planned visit at the end of August. She had to get the guest room in order before they arrived; thankfully she had a couple of months to get ready. That spare room was presently a cluttered storage space, but it would only take a few hours to turn it into a decent guest room. Okay, it would take longer than that, but it was doable.

Yes, she was obsessing a little over the pending visit. What sane, single woman of a certain age didn’t obsess when her parents, who couldn’t understand why their only daughter wanted to live so far away, came to visit? Her mother couldn’t quite pull herself out of her protective mode, even though Chloe was nearing thirty and was determined to live a normal life despite having an aortic aneurysm. The way she saw it, the aneurysm was small and stable, and might never change or grow to a dangerous size. The way her mother saw it, however, was that Chloe had a ticking time bomb in her chest and could die at any moment. Finding a balance between those two viewpoints wasn’t easy, though Chloe suspected that, if their positions were reversed, she’d feel exactly the same as her mother did.

She growled at the ceiling, disgruntled at being awake and stressing over something that wouldn’t happen for a couple of months. She loved her parents. They loved her. She could handle being coddled for a few days.

But, dammit, the latest encounter with the ownerless braid had left her wide awake. Sighing, Chloe rolled out of bed and headed for the kitchen. A glass of milk would help; she’d rather have hot chocolate, but chocolate had caffeine, so she’d settle for the milk. She could sleep late in the morning. She could sleep as late as she wanted, because she worked the evening shift at the restaurant.

After pouring herself some milk, she leaned against the kitchen cabinet while she drank, and stared at her blurry reflection in the window of the microwave. Huh. Maybe there was a little bed-head going on there, which wasn’t fair considering she’d been in bed maybe fifteen minutes, tops. She wondered how she’d look with really long hair, like that braid. She kept her hair just long enough that she could pull it back, sleek and
neat, to keep it out of her way while she worked. Right now she just looked kind of mussed and messy, in soft, gray cotton shorts and a matching sleeveless tee, but what kept pulling her attention was her own baby soft, blond hair. Dammit, forget about the hair!

Impatient with the dream and with hair in general, she moved so she couldn’t see her reflection in the microwave and distracted herself by looking around for things she needed to do before her parents came to visit. All in all, she was very happy with what she saw. Her rental house was small, but she loved it. A friend of a friend had moved to California, but hadn’t been willing to let go of the little gem, though property values in the district were so high surely there would have been a hefty profit in selling.

Still, she couldn’t blame them. The house was well-maintained and the landscaping was great. It was the perfect size for her: two bedrooms, two baths, a decent-sized living room, and a kitchen. It was practically within spitting distance of a Metro station. What else did a single woman need?

The kitchen was square and well-equipped, and had been recently updated. Chloe liked to cook when she had the time, so a decent kitchen was a necessity. She kept hoping her landlords would decide the move to California was permanent and they’d offer to sell her the house—she’d told them she was interested, basically calling dibs—but so far they showed no signs of giving it up. Just as well. She needed to save more money for a down payment. The house was small, but this was a very desirable neighborhood and at the upper limit of what she could afford.

Her parents would freak if she bought a house in the D.C. area. They kept thinking that when was she was finished with school she’d come to her senses and move home to Atlanta. After all, there were plenty of restaurants
there that needed managers, as they’d told her time and time again. The truth was, Chloe loved living here. She loved the people, her job, the energy of the city. She had friends—even if her social time was limited when school was in session—and she loved this house.

Maybe one day she’d have the man to go with it, even kids if they decided to go that route and her doctor agreed that the risk was acceptable, but for now she liked being independent. A few of her friends felt as if they had to have a guy in their lives or else they were at loose ends, incomplete somehow, missing out on life. Not Chloe. She valued her alone time and her independence. If and when the right man came into her life, that would be great. Until then, she wasn’t looking, and she wasn’t desperate. She’d watched too many of her friends end up with losers when they thought they couldn’t snag anyone better. A time or two, she’d fallen into the loser trap herself. Okay, three times, before she’d come to her senses. She wasn’t going to settle for Mr. Right Now because she was afraid Mr. Right wasn’t ever going to materialize.