Blood Legacy: The House of Alexander (28 page)

Julien watched the girl carefully. He motioned for Jean-Luc to move, who did so reluctantly. Ryan felt Julien settle in beside her, and any goodwill she felt toward her companion immediately dissipated with his next comment.

“Can we at least watch?” Jean-Luc asked.

Julien nodded, his irritation obvious. He returned to his prey, and again there were titters from the shadows as all watched him seduce the Young One. He kissed her throat sloppily, and Ryan had to will herself not to move as another wave of dizziness overtook her. She could not, however, control her thoughts.

He certainly doesn’t have any of his “father’s” finesse, she reflected, then was angry at herself for the reflection.

The anger somewhat cleared her vision for a moment, and she saw Julien in a state of massive self-absorption, preparing to bite her neck after his miniscule attempt at foreplay. He leaned downward, lost in his passion, preparing to take what was his.

But it was not to be, for he was stopped by something that felt like a vise grip. He opened his eyes to find the girl calmly looking up at him, holding his throat between a thumb and forefinger. She gazed at him curiously, turning her head slightly as if she examining some strange insect she had found. She began to sit up, and astonishingly, Julien felt himself lifted upward. She stood to her full six-foot-plus height and he felt his feet dangling off the ground.

She brought him very close to her face, tightening her grip on his throat, causing him to claw helplessly as his eyes bugged outward. She leaned forward even more, now centimeters from his face. Her eyes were aflame but her words were calm.

“My father, Victor Alexander, will always be the leader of Our Kind,” Ryan said between clenched teeth, “and in his absence,” her grip tightened further, “I am King.”

She flung him across the room as if he were a rag doll. Her comment brought immediate pandemonium to the room, which was amplified by the fact that she released the perceptual veil she had been hiding behind. Those in the room were horrified to realize that the hunter was in the room with them.

And more horrified to realize that Rhiannon Alexander was far more terrifying than they had imagined.

Ryan felt the heat rise in her veins, both from her fury and from the virus. Normally she could control the violence that spilled out of her, the ferocity that Kusunoki had spent decades teaching her to restrain.

But the virus seemed to add fuel to a fire that was already burning out of control, and Ryan’s vision went blood red as she stared at the frozen sheep in the room.

And then, quite surprising her, it went black.

Ryan’s head was pounding, and her mouth was painfully dry. A dim light shown through her closed eyelids, and she opened them slowly to see a beam of light shining through a pair of ripped curtains. She closed them again, wincing at the brightness. She sat up, leaning back on her hand as she did so.

She opened her eyes again, raising the hand to her face. It was covered in blood. She slowly focused on what was beyond the hand, and she swallowed hard.

The room was in shambles, and there was blood everywhere. There appeared to be body parts lying in some of the larger pools of blood, but they were so mangled it was difficult to tell what they used to be. There wasn’t a single piece of furniture that wasn’t in splinters.

Ryan slowly stood, and looked down at herself. She was covered in blood, from the top of her head to the bottom of her feet. And none of it appeared to be her own. She looked back at the room.

I did this, she thought. I killed them all, and I don’t even remember it.

She slowly moved through the wreckage, wondering if anyone was left alive. There had to have been almost a hundred people in the room. She moved down a hallway where the carnage continued. She didn’t even remember being here.

She staggered out into the alleyway, which was now lit brightly in daylight. The blood on her clothes was garish in the sunlight. She glanced down at a huddled form near a trash dumpster. It was the woman who had offered her the goblet. Ryan wasn’t certain if the woman was still alive, but didn’t think she had been the one to attack her. The figure shivered, although it wasn’t cold, and turned to look up at Ryan.

Ryan gazed down at her, unblinking. Although expressionless, the woman realized Ryan was not going to kill her.

Ryan gazed at her a long moment, then spoke. “You were right,” she said, still slightly unsteady. “My father is very handsome.”

In a flash, Ryan was gone, moving too quickly for anyone to see the blood, or in fact, see anything at all.

Abigail picked her way delicately through the ruins, dabbing her nose with a scented handkerchief. The blood had dried, but the body parts remained, and they were beginning to smell. Preternatural senses were not always advantageous.

Aeron walked through the debris as well, glancing around him. He was followed by Kusunoki, who had come because he had to see this for himself.

“Well,” Aeron said, unperturbed, “I’m impressed. I didn’t think she had it in her.”

Abigail glanced around at the slaughter, less disturbed by it than one would think. “She did try to eat her father,” Abigail reminded him.

“Oh, that’s right,” Aeron said with obvious pleasure. “I forgot.”

Abigail assessed the bloodbath without emotion. The actual killing did not concern her. Ryan was a predator, and had killed thousands long before she had been tasked with the cleansing. But she usually did so with cold effciency, without passion or sentiment.

This was an act of pure, unadulterated rage.

Kusunoki agreed in his own, lyrical way. “I spent decades caging the dragon.” He turned with obvious disapproval to Aeron. “And now you have released it.”

Aeron did not take kindly to being scolded by some would-be samurai. He turned sharply to Kusunoki, staring down at him. “Maybe I like the dragon,” he said bitingly.

Kusunoki was not the least bit intimidated. “You will not like it so much when it comes for you.”

Abigail put her hand on Aeron’s chest, pushing him gently but firmly away. He stepped back, but only because he had nothing more to say.

“These were your offspring,” Abigail said.

Aeron shrugged, “The nearest was fourth or fifth generation, and none that I was particularly fond of.” He was thoughtful. “The girl does have a knack for taking out the least desirable amongst our Kind.”

Kusunoki bit down hard to keep from adding to that comment. The dragon would be visiting him for sure.

“I understand there was a survivor?” Abigail asked calmly.

“Hmm, yes,” Aeron said. He motioned to someone standing in the doorway, and the woman whom Ryan had allowed to live was brought in.

Abigail stared at the woman curiously. There was nothing particularly noteworthy about her, and she wondered why Ryan had spared her. The woman was obviously terrified, and Abigail calmed her, not out of any altruistic motive but because she needed information from her.

The woman felt the calmness descend upon her, and relaxed in spite of circumstances. First she had come face-to-face with the hunter, and now she was in the presence of power she had not known existed. These Old Ones made Julien look like an immature fool.

“Perhaps you could give an account of what transpired here?” Abigail said, more than a hint of suggestion in her voice.

The woman nodded, and began relating how the young, beautiful stranger came with Jean-Luc.

“And no one recognized her?” Aeron asked in scorn and disbelief.

The woman shook her head. “She appeared to be nothing more than a Young One. Julien insulted her father right in front of her, then disparaged her.”

Ah, Abigail thought, there was the spark that lit the inferno. And most likely the former rather than the latter.

“Did she say anything while she was here?” Aeron asked.

The woman again nodded. “I saw and heard from the doorway,” she said, motioning to what was now a gaping hole in the wall. “Julien thought to feed from her.”

Aeron’s blue eyes grew icy. Good thing for Julien that he was already dead.

“She had Julien by the throat, dangling him above the ground. And she said, ‘my father, Victor Alexander, will always be the leader of our Kind’.” The woman’s voice trailed off, and Aeron knew there was more.

“And what else did she say?” he prompted, vaguely threatening.

The woman swallowed hard. “She said, ‘And in his absence, I am King.’”

Abigail glanced at Aeron out of the corner of her eye. She now knew why Ryan had spared this insignificant. She had left a message for Aeron.

And Aeron had certainly received it, although he did not react as expected. “That cheeky little whelp,” he said with more amusement than anger. The girl was continually full of surprises.

Abigail motioned to the woman, who bowed low and backed quickly from their presence, disappearing. Abigail took one last look around at the carnage, then turned to both Kusunoki and Aeron.

“So how does one slay a dragon,” she asked, “When the dragon cannot be slain?”

CHAPTER 17

RYAN KNELT BESIDE VICTOR’S BED. He lay in peaceful repose, unmoved from the last time she had seen him. She held his hand for a moment, then settled into a lounge next to his bed, extending the footrest outward so she had a makeshift bed. She leaned her head back into the soft cushion, gazing at his beautiful features with unblinking eyes.

She was trying to will the pain from her head to go away. She knew it would eventually subside, but it seemed to be staying longer. This forced her to visit the island more often, and to stay for longer periods of time. Fortunately she had already done ample damage in her hunt, and was no longer concerned about the Council’s edict. She had obeyed Victor’s wishes, and that was suffcient.

Ryan returned her gaze to her father, feeling a great heaviness descend upon her. Susan was working feverishly, but had found nothing substantial since her discoveries with the mitochondria. Ryan still did not understand why the internal damage was not affecting her the way it had affected her father.

Ryan became aware of Edward’s presence in the door. He was mindful of her mood and stood respectfully at a distance. But the pain in her head was passing, and her thoughts were returning to coherency.

“Edward, I need you to do me a favor.”

Edward bowed low. “Anything, my lord.”

Ryan was thoughtful. “I need you to pull all the records from the hospital we purchased, the one that Dr. Ryerson used to work at.”

David Goldstein sat in the dimly lit cafeteria of The Sister Guadalupe Hospital, wondering how his life could have come to this. At the height of his career, he had been a well-paid, highly-respected doctor at a major medical research facility. Now he was working graveyard shift in this dive, treating uninsured patients for whatever exotic diseases they had smuggled across the border. Although he couldn’t say exactly how, he was certain that Susan Ryerson was somehow responsible for this.

He smiled bitterly. His only consolation was that, after her brief stint in the limelight, Susan Ryerson had dropped off the face of the earth. After he had been “let go” by the hospital’s new management for a series of trumped up sexual harassment charges, he had tried to track her down, certain she had been the one behind the allegations. But she had been impossible to find.

He leaned back in his chair. He had been briefly flush with funds after his windfall, thanks to the blood sample he had stolen from Ryerson’s laboratory. But he had gone through that money quickly. And now he was forced to make ends meet by treating the dregs of humanity in this hellhole.

“Dr. Goldstein, we have a patient coming in by ambulance.”

Goldstein gave the nurse in the doorway a look of irritation. “I’ll be there in a minute,” he said. Probably another drunk Mexican, he thought to himself, fresh from driving his family into a tree.

Goldstein stood, tripping over the leg of his chair then kicking it in frustration. He didn’t see how this night could get any worse. He was given an immediate answer when the lights flickered and then went out.

“Well, that’s just fucking great,” he muttered under his breath. The electrical system in the place was about as reliable as a condom made of cheesecloth. He smiled to himself. That was pretty funny. He’d have to remember to use that later in front of the ladies.

What little light in the room slowly disappeared as the door whispered closed. Goldstein’s irritation grew. “That’s real fucking funny,” he said loudly, his words echoing in the sudden silence. The refrigeration unit to the vending machine kicked on, startling him. He turned around and gave it a kick as well, cracking the plastic logo.