Burning (Brotherhood of the Blade Trilogy #1) (9 page)

“
Rudolph is missed by all of us, especially by Gabrielle, and now she is gone from us, also kidnapped, like your daughter. Perhaps by the same vampires. We have a common enemy, Rand.”

She was right, of course. I ran my hand through my soot-filled hair. “What do you think this all means?”

“It means the vampires are getting extremely bold in their plans to take us down as vampire hunters. We are more than food to them now. I believe espionage may be next, through our kidnapping victims.”

“
You mean they plan to turn them into double agents, of sorts?”

“
Absolutely. Expect it. They have the means, Rand.”

I knew what she meant, of course. Mind control.

Goddamn vampires.

“
What else do you know about Rudolph’s death?” I asked suddenly. “Gabby knew the names of his killers. Your group was much further along than I ever was.”

“
We know he went off on his own. Always, he was looking for leads on who murdered your parents. Truth is, Rand, the vampires have stolen from all of us—and we are all driven to hunt.”

I nodded. “He wanted to meet with me. He had news.”

“Yes, he had discovered...something. We tried to stop him, however, as we believed he was being set up. Even Rudolph himself believed he was being set up, but he went anyway, even ditching Gabrielle in the process.”

“
Reckless. Sounds like him.”

“
There’s a lesson in that,” said Ambra. “To cleave to the safety of the group.”

“
Well, that didn’t help Gabby.”

“
True.” Ambra turned away, bit her lip. she looked back at me. “You snagged this coin in Griffith Park, before the police got there?”

“
Yes. It’s the key to the killer’s identity. Nero.”

“
Is there a coin near where you found your wife’s body?”

“
Her charred hand is curled around something metal. It looks like a bronze coin but it’s bonded to her burned flesh and bone.”

“
Let me take a look.”

Already I heard sirens. It was amazing it had taken them this long to respond. True, my home was in the most secluded plot of land here on the peninsula—a regular fortress—but there was no mistaking billowing smoke rising hundreds of feet into the air. Luckily, my nearest neighbors were miles away.

“You’re going to have to hurry.”

“
Right.”

Ambra got out a Swiss Army knife from one of the pockets of her slim-fitting black cargo pants and slipped over to my wife’s body. What happened next was too horrible for me to fathom.

Ambra came back a moment later, discreetly concealing the bag that now contained my wife’s charred hand.

“
Let’s get the hell out of here.”

I nodded, sick to my stomach. “I need to fetch something first.”

And I did.

Chapter Fourteen

We drove.

As we did so, and as the sick scent of soot and death clung to my nostrils, it occurred to me that Despite all of my precautions—booby-trapping this whole property—I now had no wife and my daughter was missing. I had no brother, no parents and no home. Except for clinging to the hope that Kristen still lived, everyone and everything else that I loved was lost.

“
I want to kill every last vampire,” I said suddenly, as we passed by a fast-approaching fire engine, “and I won’t rest until—”

“
Until you get your daughter back,” said Ambra, glancing over at me.

“
Yes. However, once I find her, I want to disappear with her,” I said, quite choked up. “Just be her dad and nothing else.”

“
When you find her, the safest place for you two will be at the castle. It’s becoming a fortress and with your expertise, even more so. We need you to help us retrieve Gabrielle, if she still lives.”

“
It should be a no-brainer for me to join your league of extraordinary vampire hunters, but I have my own way of investigating, pursuing and killing vampires. And what makes you think Gabby isn’t a vampire by now? She killed Elizabeth Bathory, Vlad the Impaler’s lover. In his twisted mind, I wonder if he means to replace Elizabeth with Gabrielle.”

“
It’s a certainty.”

“
If that’s the case, I almost pray for her death.”

Ambra teared up. “Don’t say that. She’s my dear friend, a member of the Sisterhood of the Scythe. I love her.”

“I’m losing it, Ambra.”

“
We’ll help you, but we need you, Rand. Our ranks are thinning. We enhance who we are as vampire hunters and give each other support. Most of all, we help keep each other from getting killed. What’s
that
worth?”

I looked out the passenger side window. “I don’t bond easily with others.”

“We all have trust issues, Rand. Get past them if you want to find your daughter alive.”

“
What would be my time commitment?”

“
We’re a family, not a convent. A few have left us. They may have wanted to kill vampires, but found they didn’t have the stomach for it. It’s a job, not a cult. You can quit if you don’t like it.”

“
I have no problem being an assassin of vampires, or swearing my temporary allegiance, but when I get Kristen back, I need time to be a father. She will be very damaged.”

“
Indeed. It’s a very personal choice to join us.”

“
My quest for vampire blood is intensely personal.”

“
As is mine,” Ambra said.

“
Something happened to your loved ones, too?”

“
All of us at the castle have lost someone, Rand. There’s a reason why we are united.”

“
Who did you lose?”

“
My husband. We met on the streets of Zürich, where we were both doing parkour stunts in an action movie. He had already lost someone in his family. I followed him into vampire hunting. And then, they took him from me.”

“
I’m sorry.”

“
My grief is not as fresh as yours.”

“
Megan was my best friend, my lover, my life partner, a good mother. She was everything to me.”

She looked at me. “My advice is to leave the country.
Now
.”

“
It will make me look guilty of murder and arson.”

“
If you don’t come with me to Switzerland, precious time will slip away in which to find and recover your daughter, if she still lives.”

“
I know. When does our flight leave for Switzerland?”

“
When we get to the airport, we’ll get in line to take off as soon as we get clearance. It’s a private jet.”

I nodded. “Fine. I need you to stop at the next scenic overlook and turn off the headlights.”

“Last look at the homestead?” Ambra asked.

“
Something like that.”

After Ambra pulled over, we got out of the car.

“It must have been a magnificent house, perched on the edge of the cliff.”

“
Now, it’s a burned-out shell full of my footprints and other forensic evidence that could be used against me.”

“
We’ll get you out of the country, don’t worry. We’ll protect you in Switzerland.”

“
I hope I don’t need that protection.”

I got a remote out of my pocket and unlocked the device with a numerical password. I then pointed it at my family’s house.

“Is that what you got out of the hollow tree?”

I nodded, took in a lot of air, and pointed it at my house. I paused only briefly before pressing the button. A chain of explosions happened, starting at the girders that pinned the house into the bedrock at the edge of the cliff. After the last charge went off, our house, the burned-out shell and foundation, the rebar, everything, neatly slid off the cliff and into the ocean below.

Chapter Fifteen

“
Oui.
You are formidable.”

“
Not as formidable as that
le parkour
stuff. You could totally kick a vampire’s ass.”

“
I’ll teach you. If you want.”

“
I do.”

I wiped my prints off it and tossed the detonator over the cliff into the ocean below.

“Let’s get the hell out of here. It’s getting dark and I can’t seem to get the smell of vampires out of my nostrils,” I said.

The smell got stronger.

“Ambra!” I shouted.

We turned around—a vampire was almost upon us. I had no idea where he’d come from. Had he followed us in a car? Had he flown? I didn’t have any time to ponder. His eyes were alight with murderous intent and his mouth was open—fangs bared.

He came at us, and I recognized him as one of Vlad’s henchmen from the ship. No longer pathetically weak, he had had first blood and he was strong and agile. His topaz-colored eyes sent chills through me.

He was aiming for me first. Ambra did a bad-ass flip in the air and kicked him in the nuts toward the edge of the cliff. She grabbed the winged hood ornament of the Hyundai Equus so that her momentum wouldn’t take her off the cliff, too. I ducked and he sailed right over me. I felt his clothing brush mine as I flattened myself to the ground.

As the vampire spiraled over the edge, there was a split-second expression of horror on his face as he grabbed his nuts in astonishment—and then he gave us a smug smirk as he assumed that this big fall was survivable for him.

But I had a surprise for him. He would not live to see another day. I snatched my homemade, pre-loaded blowgun out of my smallest jeans pocket and blew a puff of air as hard as I could in his direction. I saw a flash of silver go out the end, and then there was a splatter, almost in slow motion, of blackish-red blood, as the slender, needle-fine dart hit the vampire right in the heart. Or, at least, I thought I hit the mark. He vanished from sight.

“That one couldn’t fly,” Ambra said.

He either disappeared into thin air when he died, or he was taking a cold, painful swim after bouncing off sharp rocks that were over the edge of the cliff. I probably knew better than anyone that there were only two things that killed vampires: sunlight and silver. Silver had won tonight. My wife’s genuine silver sewing needles, with a fletching added, made a deadly pocket-sized dart for a vampire’s heart.

“Good crotch kick,” I said to Ambra.

“
Nice blowgun,” she said, grinning. “I did the set-up and you finished him off. That famous sense of smell of yours is true. You saved us.”

“
You equally saved us. But Rudolph should not have told your group about my acute sense of smell. It’s top secret that I can smell a vampire at close range.”

“
I’ll keep it secret.”

“
I saw that vampire on the ship at Gabrielle’s kidnapping and now I saw him again, near my wife’s murder.”

“
I recognized him, too.”

“
Our two kidnappings are related.”

“
It seems so.”

“
I have probably killed the best lead we had to where Kristen is being held and finding out who killed my wife, too. And maybe who has Gabby.”

“
Rand, we still did the right thing by fighting him. We would’ve died.”

“
Agreed. I’ve learned something from shooting first, asking questions later.”

“
And what’s that?”

“
The best defense is to take the best offense.”

“
Indeed,” she said.

“
Was that my kill or yours?” I asked.

“
Yours. What does it matter?”

“
Eleven,” I said.

“
Eleven kills?”

“
Yes.”

I wasn’t sure if I was proud of that number or horrified. Shortly, we found the vampire’s car parked down the highway on the edge of the cliff. We ransacked the vehicle, and shoved everything loose that we could find into our car’s litterbags.

And that’s when I lifted up the floor mat and held up a plastic bag of Roman coins. “Bingo,” I said.

Ambra lifted up the other floor mats and found a notebook with strange writing in it.

“What do you think it is?” I asked.

“
The writing looks Cyrillic,” Ambra said, and shoved it in with the other stuff.