Lucas (16 page)
“My lord,” Nicholas shouted as they hovered well off the ground, preparatory to landing. “Let me go ahead—”
That was all Lucas heard as he leapt to the ground and raced toward the battle, his vampire speed taking him out from under the whirring rotor of the descending craft. In a split second, he identified his own vampires, separating them in his mind’s eye from those sent by
Klemens
. He ripped into the first enemy with a roar, tearing him bodily off the male vampire he was fighting and ripping his head from his body with a vicious twist. He tossed the two pieces aside and kept going.
“Inside, my lord,” someone shouted, and Lucas’s head turned, following the voice as he kept moving.
“The main house, Sire!”
Lucas recognized Thad, bleeding and broken, in a fight for his life. He started toward him to help, but Nicholas appeared out of nowhere, stepping between Thad and the brute he’d been holding off despite being outclassed by fifty pounds or more.
Lucas raced into the main building, taking the outside stairs at a single leap and bursting through the door. Time seemed to slow as he took in the huge room with a sweeping scan. Blood and bodies were everywhere. A battle raged at the foot of the big staircase, and he recognized twelve-year-old
Dex
holding a thick-bladed ax, tears rolling down his cheeks as he swung the heavy weapon in a wide arc, trying to hold off the two hulking vampires who were toying with him. What the hell was
Dex
—
A very human scream sounded from upstairs, and Lucas understood.
Dex’s
head swung toward the sound, and one of the enemy vamps grabbed the ax, yanking it from
Dex’s
hand, nearly pulling the boy with it. The brute reached for the human child, but his fingers never made it that far. Lucas rammed his fist into the vampire’s back and tore his spine in two. Before the injured vampire had even begun to collapse, Lucas had taken out his sadistic buddy, as well, lifting him bodily and tossing him in the direction of the door where Lucas’s fresh and bloodthirsty warriors were following in their master’s wake.
“Watch the boy,” Lucas growled and tore up the stairs faster than the human eye could follow.
He didn’t have to look for the attackers; he followed the scent of blood.
Human blood.
The women had been gathered upstairs.
For safety, no doubt.
Thad and his troops had made their last stand in this building, and God knew they’d lasted longer than anyone had the right to expect. But it hadn’t been enough.
Lucas rounded a corner and howled furiously at the sight that greeted him. He’d feared a bloodbath awaited him, and there was blood enough. But it was savagery of a different sort that caused it.
Klemens’s
vampires had attacked the compound’s women and raped at will, while their
And not for rapists.
Lucas advanced slowly, holding the two attackers in place with a thought. He felt more than heard some of his own vampires enter the room and spoke without turning. “Get the women out of here.
Gently.”
The women whimpered in fear when Lucas’s vampires approached them, and he spared a wisp of power to send them all into sleep. He would speak to Thad when this was over and recommend the leader permit him to wipe the women’s memories of the events in this room. Not the attack. People had died here today. There could be no forgetting that. But these women didn’t need to remember the rest of it. Not if they didn’t want to.
He focused again on the two enemy vampires now cringing before him, trying to shrink into the floor itself. They were covered in the blood of their victims, fangs fully distended, and they were both huge.
Taller even than Lucas, and far more heavily muscled.
The vampires in the yard had been the same.
Klemens
had apparently been gathering thugs for some time, preparing an army for the day he would make his move. Lucas sneered privately. It would take more than a few slabs of beef to win this war.
He crouched in front of the nearest attacker. He hadn’t touched the vamp yet, but then he didn’t need to.
“What were your orders?” he asked.
The vampire had the good sense to shake his head. He might be terrified of Lucas, but
Klemens
was no one to cross lightly either.
“How about you?”
Lucas asked, addressing the second prisoner.
Clearly emboldened by his fellow thug’s success, he too shook his head and uttered a grunting sort of noise that Lucas took for a negative.
Lucas bared his teeth. “Oh, I
so
hoped you’d feel that way. Nicholas,” he called over his shoulder, having felt his lieutenant enter the room. “Ask Thad if he has a soundproofed room where I can converse with these two. If
not .
. .” Lucas turned back and eyed the captives lazily. “I’ll just have to rip out their vocal cords and take the truth from their tiny
brains .
. . after we play a bit, of course. I bet Thad and his people would love to spend some quality time with them first.”
One of the vampires whined in fear. Lucas studied the bastard as he would a piece of shit on his heel. “You’d rather I kill you quick?”
The vampire nodded, his eyes begging for mercy. But Lucas only laughed. “Where would be the fun in that?”
Chapter Six
Kathryn turned off the alarm on her cell phone before it could ring. Despite what she’d thought the night before, there hadn’t been any flights into
Minneapolis
until this morning. So she’d booked the first one at six o’clock this morning, and then gone looking for a gym to work off some of her nervous energy. That had been a bust, too. She’d driven up and down every street before admitting a 24-hour
Fitness
Center
wasn’t going to materialize on the next corner. She could have driven to Spearfish, or even
Rapid City
, but that was a good hour’s drive each way, and she hadn’t been
that
eager to work out. She’d finally stopped at the local Starbuck’s—apparently there was no town too small for Starbuck’s—and forced herself to stick to decaf coffee while using their Wi-Fi connection to dig up what she could on Carmichael and his gallery. That hadn’t taken much time, and without caffeine there didn’t seem to be much point to the coffee, so she’d gone back to the motel and tried to grab a few hours of sleep. She didn’t know why she’d bothered. Every time she closed her eyes, the facts of Daniel’s case would appear—her personal checklist imprinted on the inside of her eyelids, with every item checked off and the inescapable conclusion that she still knew absolutely nothing.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, when she managed to erase the checklist, it was only to be replaced by an endless loop of speculation as to where Lucas had been off to in such a rush last night.
She rolled out of bed, booted up her laptop and immediately began searching law enforcement databases for reports of recent and unusual violence. That made for a pretty broad search, but she didn’t know what she was looking for. She narrowed the time window to the last twelve hours, which helped a little, and limited the search further to cities within a helicopter ride of her current location. That was more problematic, since it depended on the equipment, and there was always the possibility they’d refueled somewhere. But even eliminating that possibility, the target area was so big that it was impossible to weed out any one violent event from another.
America
was a violent country. On any given night in a major city, there were too many crimes to count. Add in the problem of smaller jurisdictions that were represented in the search parameters, and it was the proverbial needle in a haystack. Worse, she didn’t even know if it was a needle or not.
Giving that up as a lost cause, she took a quick shower and got dressed. She didn’t bother to pack, taking only her briefcase, with her laptop inside. And her weapon, of course, which she wore in her belt holster. Everything else she left in the motel. Since she hadn’t been able to fly out last night, she’d have to make it a day trip, coming back in time tonight to meet Lucas for their visit
to .
. . what did Lucas call it?
A blood house.
Great.
Her flight this morning would get her into
Minneapolis
just after noon. She could go directly to the gallery, talk to the owner if he was available, or his staff if he wasn’t around. Three hours later, she’d be on her return flight, arriving in plenty of time to do some bloody clubbing with vampires.
* * * *
Kathryn stared at the sign in the art gallery window in disbelief. Closed for lunch? Who the hell closed for lunch?
And for two hours?
She looked around the busy
Minneapolis
street
to verify that she was indeed in a big American city and not somewhere in
Europe
where the two-hour, everything-shuts-down-for-lunch break was the norm.
She checked her watch. There was one hour left before the gallery would reopen. A gust of wind blew down the wide street, and she shivered, pulling her jacket closer as she searched the surrounding area for a way to kill an hour. Her gaze fell on the huge Mall of America in the distance, and she groaned inwardly. She hated shopping. But according to Lucas, she needed something
appropriate
to wear tonight, and a warmer jacket would be useful, too. She sighed and headed for her car with dragging steps.
An hour later on the dot, she was back, sliding her rental sedan into a parking space on the street which opened up just as she cruised past. Taking that as a good sign, she was feeling optimistic when she pulled open the heavy glass door on the gallery. It was fairly typical inside, with pale walls and track lighting which could be maneuvered to accommodate the varying shows over time. Floating walls hung blankly in midair, and Kathryn wondered if they were in the process of transitioning to a new showing.
The sharp click of high heels sounded on the hardwood floor, and Kathryn turned to find an intensely fashionable woman bearing down on her. She was older than Kathryn by at least ten years, with straight black hair parted in the middle and brushing her shoulders. Her makeup was
perfect,
her skin so pale Kathryn would have thought her one of Lucas’s gang, if not for the bright sunlight beaming outside the UV protected windows. Contact lenses changed what Kathryn thought were probably brown eyes into a brilliant turquoise that nature had never produced in the human eye.
A tight pencil skirt forced the woman to walk with mincingly short steps as she approached Kathryn. “Good afternoon,” she said in a pleasant but sophisticatedly cool voice. “And welcome to the
Carmichael
. How can I help you?”
Kathryn smiled back and produced her FBI identification.
“Special Agent Kathryn Hunter.
Is Mister Carmichael around?”
The woman studied the badge carefully before switching her gaze to Kathryn and saying, “I’m sorry, Mister Carmichael isn’t here.”
“When do you expect him?”
“I’m afraid I don’t. Mister Carmichael isn’t in town this evening.”
“I understand he has a gallery besides this one?”
“Yes, his main base of operations is the gallery in
Chicago
.”
“He’s in
Chicago
then?”
“I can’t say for certain. Mister Carmichael doesn’t need to clear his schedule with
me
.”
“But if you wanted to get in touch with him, that’s where you’d start?”
“If I wanted to reach Mister Carmichael, Agent, I’d call his cell phone,” the woman drawled, as if explaining the marvels of modern technology to an idiot.
Kathryn studied the other woman silently. Long enough that she finally reached up with nervous fingers to straighten her already perfect hair. “Was there something else?” the woman asked.
“I’m sorry,” Kathryn said. “I didn’t get your name.”
“Francoise.”
“Francoise? That’s it? Like
Cher
?”
Francoise pursed her lips unhappily, which wasn’t kind to her perfect makeup, revealing a starburst of unattractive creases around her lips that made Kathryn up her estimate of the woman’s age by another ten years.
“Francoise
Reyos
,” she said grudgingly.