Blood Born (4 page)

Chloe had often thought that if she had one major characteristic, it was that she was level-headed. Wow, wasn’t that impressive? But she made a great assistant manager, and one day she’d make a great manager, with an MBA, her level head, and her organizational skills—which did not, she admitted, extend to her guest room. She’d get there, though.

She had the whole summer ahead of her to get the spare room in order, get her responses thought out and lined up for the inevitable arguments her parents would fire at her, and get rid of the weird braid that had invaded her dreams. In the bright light of the kitchen, that last detail sounded downright ridiculous. Who let a dream about hair keep her awake at night? Maybe she subconsciously wanted to dye her hair. The color of
the braid really was nice. Maybe she’d seen someone on the street with a long braid like that one and she’d mentally filed it away without realizing it.

But what about the sensation that she wasn’t alone? Maybe she did need to seriously consider looking for that elusive permanent man, even though she wasn’t quite ready to settle down. She could start cruising bars until she found a willing and acceptable man—nope, wasn’t going to happen. Her level-headedness said that kind of behavior was both sad and dangerous.

She’d have to take up jogging again, dammit. She should have been doing it all along, but she simply hadn’t had the time. Now that she was out of school for the summer, she didn’t have that excuse. Everyone in Washington jogged, so she’d get out and join the herd.

“Chloe …”

The voice didn’t just surprise her, it shocked her like a slap to the face. Her half-full glass of milk slipped from her hand and shattered on the floor, sending glass and milk shooting across her bare legs and the tile floor. Wildly she looked around, certain that someone was there. The voice, that hoarse whisper of her name, had been right
there
. The sound had been directly in her ear.

No one. Nothing. She was completely alone.

She began shaking. She wasn’t asleep, she couldn’t write the whisper off to dozing in the middle of the kitchen while she stood there drinking milk and making plans to drag her running shoes out of the closet. The voice had been real, as real as the mess she had to clean up, as real as the thin trickle of blood where a sliver of glass had cut her leg.

After a minute she controlled her ragged breathing, and her panicked senses began settling down. Stepping carefully to avoid the broken glass that surrounded her, she concentrated on cleaning up the mess, focusing on the task so she didn’t have to think of anything else. By
the time every speck of milk and glass had been cleaned up and disposed of, she could take a deep breath and let it go. She hadn’t really heard anything; her imagination had gotten the best of her, that was all.

It was either that or admit that she was losing her mind, and pragmatic Chloe couldn’t allow herself to go there.

Across the city, Hector paced in his private quarters. His ability to read energies, to see bits and pieces of the future, had grown in his years as a vampire, but he couldn’t see everything. What use was such an incomplete ability in a time of turmoil? How did he benefit from knowing someone close by was a traitor who had aligned him- or herself with rebels, when the precise knowledge of their identity eluded him?

It was the sensation of battle, of coming turmoil, that most disturbed him. The last thousand years had been relatively peaceful, and his six hundred years on the Council had been productive ones. Order was required for the continued existence of his kind. He had done his part to keep the peace, and everything within him told him that the peace would soon come to an end.

Hector had no great love for humans; he barely remembered being one himself. But humans were necessary for the existence of his kind, and as long as vampires were thought to be nothing more than myth or fantastical beings from horror tales, their survival was ensured. There were always a handful of vampires who thought differently, who wanted to openly take their place at the top of the food chain, but they had never had the strength of numbers and were easily taken care of.

Until now.

There was a knock on his door, and with that knock an increased sensation of the end. He didn’t answer, but he knew the locked door offered only a brief delay of the
inevitable. He wasn’t a warrior, had never been a warrior. If Luca were here … but he wasn’t, and wouldn’t be for a few more hours.

All he could do now was use his ability, and Luca’s, to pass on what he could. Concentrating, Hector did his best to fill the air with his thoughts, his energy, and his knowledge. He was looking at the door when it flew open, and in truth was not surprised to see who was on the other side.

He thought the name, whispered it, imprinted the face in his mind, and set it loose.

He fought, of course he did, but he’d been old before he was turned and his physical strength had never been great. The outcome was a foregone conclusion, one he had sensed approaching. And he was aware, at the very end, that there was another traitor in the hallway, listening, waiting, hiding from the power she knew he possessed.

She
.

Out of respect, the attacker didn’t drink Hector’s blood before he drove a long-bladed knife into his heart. Three times, it took, before the heart was so damaged that Hector’s long life ended in a burst of bitter, gray dust.

It was late morning when Luca arrived in D.C. The sun was shining brightly as he stepped out of the terminal building at Reagan International Airport, and he pulled on a baseball cap before sliding dark sunglasses into place to protect his pale gray eyes as he crossed to Parking Garage A to pick up his rental.

Unlike vampires who were either younger or weaker—the two weren’t always synonymous—he could tolerate sunshine, but he didn’t like it. He protected himself with the cap and sunglasses, as well as long sleeves, but sunlight was still an irritant, making his skin feel as if he was being scrubbed with a stiff-bristled brush. His eyes were the most sensitive; when he’d been a fledgling, all of his senses had been so acutely sensitive that he hadn’t been able to tolerate anything other than complete darkness, and as he’d grown older he’d pushed his limits too far a couple of times and temporarily lost his sight. He didn’t want to repeat that mistake. As far as he was concerned, sunglasses were one of the humans’ best inventions, and it pissed him off that a vampire hadn’t thought of dark lenses centuries ago. Hell, why hadn’t
he
thought of it, instead of just enduring and waiting?

That was one of the weaknesses of being a vampire:
generally, his kind lived so long and were vulnerable to so little, that there was no need for them to be inventive. Humans, on the other hand, were vulnerable to almost everything and lived very short lives, so they didn’t have the luxury of waiting. They were like bees in a hive, constantly working and adjusting and coming up with a million little ways to make the hive more comfortable. Vampires certainly enjoyed those creature comforts, the entertainments, but they usually were nothing more than recipients. More vampires now were working in various fields of science and engineering, but identification was problematic, as well as the fact that they didn’t age, so anything long term was difficult to maintain.

His rental was reserved and waiting for him. He’d flown in under his real name, reserved the car under his real name. He had a very good forger who had provided him with the necessary documents for modern travel. If there was a traitor on the Council, and he trusted Hector enough to believe there was, then he wasn’t going to risk exposing his other, carefully established, identifications, which he used to travel when he wanted to remain totally off the Council’s radar. It would be child’s play for the rogue Council member to glamour a human who worked for the airline industry into checking any passenger list, so Luca put himself out there front and center. Very shortly they’d know he was in town anyway, so there wasn’t anything to hide.

He always preferred renting a car to taking taxis; not only did he still get a thrill at the speed—a hundred or so years wasn’t
nearly
long enough to dilute that particular joy for a man who had spent over nineteen centuries getting around on horseback or in oxcarts—but taking a taxi was a pain in the ass. He’d have to talk nonstop, because if he let himself lapse from the driver’s consciousness, even for a few seconds, the driver
would forget he had a passenger and either stop to pick up someone else, which would at least cause some confusion and usually hostility, or Luca would find himself in a part of the city where he didn’t want to be. If he wanted to amuse himself he might climb into a cab, but for the most part he didn’t have the time to waste.

After locating his reserved SUV, he threw his duffel in the back and slid behind the wheel. He liked the room in an SUV because he was a big man—at a little over six-two he’d been a giant, back in the day—and he didn’t like folding his long legs into a tiny tin can. He didn’t bother checking into a hotel first, but drove straight toward Georgetown. At his age Hector didn’t require much sleep; he usually napped during the day simply because there wasn’t much else to do, but given the urgency of his phone call, even if he wasn’t awake, he wouldn’t mind being disturbed.

D.C. had been the seat of the Council for the past ninety-odd years, so Luca had spent a lot of time in the city and didn’t have to consult a map as he drove. Before, the Council seat had been in Paris, but there had been an incident during World War I that had come perilously close to exposing the kindred, and the Council had thought it prudent to relocate to another continent. D.C. was a beautiful city, but Luca was always amused that the humans who lived here thought two hundred years was a long period of time, that buildings barely a hundred years old could be called historical.

Regardless of the subject, though, humans were endlessly entertaining. Take their obsession with jogging. They seemed to think that trotting around the city would make them stronger, lead to a longer life, when in fact even at their strongest their physical limits made them somewhat pathetic, and a human’s longest-lived life was nothing more than the blink of an eye to him.

It made no sense at all to get attached to something so fleeting and fragile. He’d had his moments of weakness, though, and greatly enjoyed them, even though for him any relationship was pretty much one-sided. A few times he’d developed a fondness for a friend, or a woman, and watched over them as best he could, given that they always forgot him as soon as their backs were turned. Seducing a woman over and over again could be a real challenge, too, but was not without its rewards. The trouble was, if they didn’t die from some disease or injury, they grew old and died; he watched them fade away while he stayed the same. Then they left, while he was still here. He hadn’t let himself become attached to a human for a very long time now; he’d grieved enough.

In a way, Luca could understand the vampires who were tired of living what they saw as a subservient life. Humans were truly less powerful, but because vampires had to remain hidden, the weaker race was the one in charge, and all their rules and regulations made things much more difficult for vampires without the humans even being aware of what they’d done.

The world had changed, and for vampires not for the better. Once vampires had been able to set up their own cities in unexplored areas of the world. With select humans as servants and food supply, they had all they needed to survive. But now there was no suitable part of the world left unexplored. Humans had busily pushed their noses into every nook and cranny, climbing into tiny, cramped ships and sailing unknown waters for months, then settling on every acre of land they could find.

They were like a rash that never stopped spreading. Now they outnumbered vampires to the point where any pitched battle, if it ever came to that, would go against the kindred, even with their superior speed and
strength. And then there was that damn spell, cast nearly four hundred years ago, which kept vampires from entering a human’s home uninvited.

Once vampires, or at least their existence, had pretty much been common knowledge, though most of the existing vampire lore was pure fiction, invented by humans long ago who had comforted themselves by pretending they had weapons that were useful against vampires. That suited Luca just fine, because that meant he could live among the humans without raising suspicion, provided he followed a few precautions. In most ways, he was like them. He was a living being, not some walking dead person like they thought. His heart beat, he was warm—warmer than they were, actually—and he was solid mass, so he had a reflection in a mirror just as they did. Crosses didn’t bother him at all, and holy water was just water. He could bathe in it if he wanted to. He didn’t much like sunlight, but he certainly didn’t explode or burn if he was exposed to it. Same with garlic; a human who’d eaten garlic simply didn’t taste good, but if he were starving he wouldn’t let that stop him.

A wooden stake through the heart would kill him, but so would a metal stake, or a shotgun blast. Destroy the heart or the head, and even the strongest vampire would turn to dust; immortal didn’t mean invincible, just that he wouldn’t age and die in the human manner.

But the bit about not being able to enter a home uninvited—that was true, and it was a real pisser. Several centuries ago a very powerful witch had cast the spell that effectively left vampires out in the cold; then some stupid vampire had let his temper get the best of him and he’d killed her before she could be forced to break the spell.

Luca had been dispatched to take care of the moron for putting the kindred at such a disadvantage, but the
damage had already been done. As long as that spell stood, as long as humans could protect themselves by being inside even the flimsiest shelter, vampires were forced to fade back into the shadows and let the humans assume they were nothing more than myth. They couldn’t take their place at the top of the food chain. Any battle between humans and vampires would be long fought and ugly, and in the end, the vampires would lose—because of that damn spell. There were very few vampires in comparison to the billions of humans, and with the spell limiting their access, humans always had the sanctuary of home from which they could fight.