Burning (Brotherhood of the Blade Trilogy #1) (4 page)

“
You seem to know a lot about me,” I said. Truth was my mind was racing. Jesus, was one of the vampires who killed my brother really on this ship? I could feel the familiar rush of adrenaline fill my bloodstream. My heart had picked up its pace, too. I was preparing for the hunt. But I forced myself to calm down. I still needed more info. Never before did I enter into a hunt blindly. I said, “I want to know something personal about you.”

“
Like what?”

The question I was going to ask—the one about the vampire, to be exact—got trumped by my sudden need for personal clarity. “Like why you broke your engagement to my brother shortly before he was killed by vampires.”

“Oh.” She looked stricken. “That is very private.”

“
Spill it, sister. Or I’m not interested. Anyone who crushes my brother’s heart, crushes my heart, too.”

She swallowed, looking clearly uncomfortable. I didn’t give a crap if she was uncomfortable. Knowing one of the vampires responsible for my brother’s death was here, now, was making
me
highly uncomfortable.

Finally, she nodded. “Okay, I’ll tell you everything.”

Chapter Five

“Rudolph and I were in love for a long time, as you know, but we only got engaged because I was going to have a baby. I lost the baby when we were on a vampire hunt together.”

I stared at her, searching for the truth of her words. I had not been aware of her pregnancy. Then again, there was much about my brother’s life that I didn’t know.

“I’m sorry,” I finally said. “What happened?”

“
Rudolph and I were climbing up a fire escape to pursue a vampire. They don’t usually turn tail and run, but this one was weak and hadn’t fed for a while. We were in pursuit, but at four months along in my pregnancy, I wasn’t well balanced and it was raining. I slipped and fell...” She looked away. She was either a damn good actress, or this really was hard on her. “I landed on the street below...I lost my baby shortly thereafter.”

Her baby,
I thought.
And my niece or nephew.

My brother, of course, had left no children behind. I suddenly felt ill. “I’m sorry,” I said again.

She nodded and kept looking away. “It might have been hardest on your brother. He was tormented that he had been above me on the ladder, walking point, instead of below me. He kept saying that he would’ve given anything to be able to catch me that night.”

“
That was a typical thing for him to do, blame himself. He held such high standards for himself that even he couldn’t achieve them.”

“
Very true. After I lost our son—”

Ah, my lost nephew,
I thought.

“—
he still wanted to get married and try for another baby. However, he wanted me to give up vampire hunting and continue only with my singing, which had been, by then, really taking off.”

“
Sounds sensible. I’ve got to say: there is no way in hell I would allow my wife to hunt vampires.”

“
As sexist as it seems—and it is, Rand—Rudolph came to that same conclusion. He thought that a pregnant vampire hunter was too dangerous and, perhaps, even a liability. But I
stood firm in my resolve to continue hunting because I didn’t want to be separated from him for too long.”

“
Not because you preferred to kill vampires, but because you wanted to always be with Rudolph?”

“
We were inseparable, Rand.” She held my gaze. “Please understand, Rand, that I still wanted to marry Rudolph, but I didn’t see how children could fit in the equation. I thought that the two of us would be enough because it always
had
been enough.”

“
But it wasn’t enough for Rudolph.”

She nodded. “The loss of the baby had him wanting us to be a family, not a couple. He wanted to try again, but this time, no vampire hunting for me.” She swallowed. “I couldn’t just ‘make’ another one. I had emotional issues, too. And I needed time to recover from the fall in which I broke my ankle. He wanted his uninterrupted dream back, the dream of a family.
Our
family.”

“
Gabrielle. You have been through so much.”

“
Oui.
As you might imagine, Rudolph and I quarreled bitterly. I broke the engagement because Rudolph broke
my
heart with his idealistic vision—in his eyes, I had failed in my part to fulfill his perfect little dream. By myself, I was no longer enough for him. He was still my vampire hunter partner and...and I was devastated when he was killed by vampires. The day he was killed, I was having ankle surgery.”

“
You did put your heart into that relationship.”

“
Is that personal enough for you?”

“
Yes. Thank you. I am sorry I pried.”

“
Rudolph and I never stopped loving each other.”

“
I’m sure.”

“
I still carry a torch for him in my songs. My one true love.”

Those words hit home, and I felt a stab of pain in my own heart. I said, “I don’t want to talk about Rudolph any more, not right now. It’s painful for both of us and we have other business to discuss.”

“Yes.”

“
What’s the reason that your group of vigilante vampire hunters is so hot to recruit me, so much so that I have been shanghaied?”

“
I do hate that word,
monsieur
.”

“
I was kidnapped, shanghaied and brought here to come on board with your organization. You have me at a disadvantage as I cannot exit the ship or even go to dinner without the ticket that you bought for ‘Rudolph.’ I’m your temporary prisoner, so own up to the scheme and then we’ll ‘parlay.’”

“
Okay, fine. We shanghaied you...not for your vampire-smelling talent, either. We need someone with your optical engineering background to provide expertise on alternate methods of killing vampires.”

“
Alternate methods? You know that silver to the heart is what kills vampires, don’t you?”

“
Or sunlight.”

“
Sunlight? If you are planning on doing the deed tonight, it’s dark outside! Are you planning to make the vampire wait until morning to shove him into the sun or are you gonna stick him in the heart tonight with your necklace thingie?”

“
It’s a scythe, not a
thingie
. I have a bigger scythe in a hidden sheath in my right boot.”

“
Very slick. I wondered why you were wearing boots on a cruise.”

“
The vampire is coming to my show tonight. He won’t be able to resist his blood lust for me. While I sing my French torch songs, I want you to run the light show.”

“
I’m not quite following the logistics of your plan. How will this light show help to kill a vampire?”

“
I thought we might try wounding or killing him with a laser pointer beam. I mean, you are an optical engineer.”

“
I
was
. I haven’t done much in my lab for some time, due to running out of grant money. My initial take is that a laser won’t work on a vampire. I mean, of course, laser
is
light in a concentrated beam, but it’s not natural sunlight. We have no idea what spectrum of natural sunlight is even responsible for killing vampires. There are different types of light beams. We don’t even know for sure if it is UV light that kills vampires or some other part of sunlight, so how can we possibly emulate it to use it as a weapon? By tonight?”

“
You aren’t still working on a weapon like that?”

“
I can’t believe how much my brother told you.” I was livid at my dead brother. Talk about wasted emotion.

“
It is our hope that you will bring your inventions and innovations to our group. We need a technology edge that only
you
can provide. You have both the motivation to kill vampires and the technical skills to develop devices for killing them, too. Let there be light!”

“
Oh, brother.” I took in a deep breath and blew it out. “A little background here. Richard Feynman mentions the UV blocking of the flash from the Trinity bomb. He did it with a truck windshield. I don’t recommend it. But the fact remains, a simple piece of glass can block 90% of UV light. Obviously, vampires aren’t going to travel around in a glass box like the Popemobile, but we don’t know enough about the type of light that kills vampires to blow hundreds of thousands of dollars on making a prototype weapon.”

“
But you can generate UV light?”

“
Of course. You can even generate UV light with the same kinds of lights that are in a tanning bed. However, that would be assuming that the same UV spectrum of sunlight that gives people a tan is also the same UV spectrum that will kill vampires. We don’t know if that’s true without a test, a real live test of a vampire being exposed to the light of a tanning bed. And that’s just for starters.”

“
It’s not like any vampires are going to volunteer for that job,
n'est–ce pas
?”

“
That’s right, Gabrielle. It’s not like I can capture a vampire and take him to the lab and make him sit still.”

“
Don’t underestimate yourself, Rand.”

I shook my head at the insanity of it. “Look, if we did know the exact spectrum of light that could kill a vampire—down to the nanometer range—then, theoretically, I could either make a handheld device similar to a laser pointer, or perhaps larger, like a Jedi knight’s light saber. I have done some research, but I don’t yet have a prototype, nor do I have a vampire test subject,
nor
do I have the financial resources to develop such a weapon.”

“
If you had the financial resources
and
you had a vampire to test on, could you develop a prototype?” Gabrielle asked.

I laughed. “Like that’s going to happen, but yes. I’m an optical engineer with a few patents to my name from commercial and military work, so, in theory...yes.”

“We have the financial resources, Rand.” She held my eyes for a beat or two. “And we’ll get you the vampire. If you develop the prototype weapon. For
us
. And join our team.”

“
You’re going to get me a vampire? To test on?”

“
Yes. This is not a promise. It is in the works.”

“
Gabrielle, you’re crazy.” I paused. “I only know one decent vampire and that’s Samantha Moon, but I sure as hell am not going to test any vampire-killer weapon on her. She’s a mother!”

“
Moon is not an option, of course. We view her as an ally. For now, at least. Rand, we have the financial resources so you can continue your research,
and
we’ll get you a vampire to test on, so you can develop your prototype weapons.”

“
Not Samantha Moon.”

“
Not her.”

I thought about it, rubbing my temples. “Development could take months, years even. I’m not going to be separated from my family that long. That’s why I mustered out of the military. Mostly, I hunt vampires, which is an unpaid job, but to keep the groceries on the table, every couple of years, I take some highly paying corporate contract work or I invent something under a government science grant. And then, when I can afford it, I go back to vampire hunting.”

She glossed right over that and said, “We will find you a vampire, Dr. Rand Sebastian, optical engineer and vampire sniffer.”

“
I don’t like the idea of capturing a vampire and keeping it for a test subject, torturing it. That’s creepy, Gabrielle. Not to mention dangerous. Would chains hold a vampire?
No.
Would drugs put him out?
Unknown.
A just-fed vampire can break into a bank vault.”

“
I didn’t know that,” Gabrielle said.

“
I watched it happen once, and ran. I was a new vampire hunter then and wasn’t armed at the time. I was shadowing a bloodsucker, practicing my stealth mode, and what I saw from a just-fed vampire’s strength scared the hell out of me. They robbed a bank. Punched through inches of the steel-walled vault. With their bare hands.”

“
Jésus
.” She crossed herself. “Still, we need a vampire to test on. I’m not denying that it’s torture, but it’s not like the vampires show
us
any mercy,” she replied. “Nor would they, if given a choice.”

“
Samantha Moon did.”

“
She’s an exception and she was working for us when she snagged you.”