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“Claire.” That one word stopped me in midrant.
“I had better be misunderstanding you,” I said softly.
“You are fond of the human, aren’t you?”
“If you had anything to do—”
“I did not take her,” he said calmly, “but I could arrange to get her back for you. I can call on the Senate’s resources, which you must admit are far greater than your own.”
“I’ll find her myself.”
He arched a dark, expressive brow and gave me his patented condescending smile. “In time?”
I didn’t answer for a moment, my brain being busy with a replay of that night in London. All I could hear was the faint sound of bootheels on cobblestones, far away but getting closer. That even, measured tread had echoed in my head for years. I didn’t think about what had happened after the steps stopped, right in front of where I was concealed. No. I never thought about that at all.
“Uncle Drac,” as I flippantly referred to him to keep myself from gibbering, was the only thing on earth that truly scared me. I think my laughter earlier had been less about Daddy finally admitting I was good for something, and more hysterics from the thought of going up against Drac again. I had lobbied hard for the final solution to the problem more than a century ago, since trapping him had been as much about luck as skill. With nothing else to do to while away the decades, he must have dissected that night a thousand times, analyzing it in that brilliant, broken mind of his, figuring out exactly where he went wrong. Dracula deserved his legend, however mixed-up much of it was due to that Victorian hack writer. He wouldn’t make the same mistakes twice; in fact, I doubted he would make any at all.
A mental picture of Claire’s face wavered in front of my eyes. She was one of the few friends I’d ever been able to hold on to for more than a few months. It wasn’t that the rages didn’t scare her, but rather that she had never been exposed to them. I had never thought of myself as a magical being before I met her, but there was no doubt that she had the same calming effect on me as on a spell or ward. Living and working alongside her had given me the closest thing to peace and a normal life I’d ever known. I still had occasional fits, but only when outside her orbit, and even then, they were rarer. The idea of never seeing her face screw up in thought as she surveyed my latest painting, trying to figure out what the hell it was supposed to be, was brutal.
But Claire was more than my friend; she was also the only chance for me to master my rage once and for all. She’s from one of the oldest magical families on earth, House Lachesis, who specialize in healing. They have access to ancient lore that even the Circle itself doesn’t know. Claire once told me that there is a branch of the family that does nothing but scavenge, in areas so out of the way as to make Antarctica look like Forty-second and Broadway, for unusual cures, potions and amulets. Another branch researches new treatments, and yet another comes up with debilitating spells to sell to malevolent types to ensure a steady supply of wealthy afflicted.
Despite the fact that she had worked in the business side of things rather than in research and development, she’d been using her contacts to try to find something that would decrease my fits. Because of my metabolism, human drugs don’t stay in my system long enough to register. I was hoping a magical solution would have more effect, but no one had ever thought to develop anything for dhampirs. There are so few of us as to make it impractical, and we’re not exactly top of the popularity chart. There was a good possibility that Claire’s work was the first of its kind ever done. And if I didn’t find her soon, it might also be the last.
I would find her—I had no doubt of that—but Mircea, damn him, was right. I might not manage it in time. Michael was only a low-level master, sixth at a guess, who ran errands for a couple of vamp bosses in Brooklyn. He was nothing I couldn’t deal with half-asleep, but the information I’d gotten from his thugs was that he’d recently skipped town. No one knew where he was, and tracking him with only my own resources to draw on was going to take time. Time Claire might not have.
Mircea, on the other hand, could put an organization on the search that made the CIA, the FBI and Interpol look like a bunch of retarded children—even more so than they usually do. By this time tomorrow, she could be back in our dilapidated house, clucking over her herb garden and two spoiled cats. And, if the pregnancy thing wasn’t a figment of Kyle’s warped imagination, I’d have time to talk with her and explain a few hard truths.
I glanced at the other vamp, only to see him regarding me with faint contempt. He probably thought he was hiding it, but I’d learned a few things about reading expressions over the years. Or maybe he didn’t care if I knew he thought me a coward. He was, after all, quite correct, at least when it came to my scary uncle. Anyone who wasn’t afraid of him was either a lunatic or really stupid. I wondered which type Mircea was trying to foist off on me.
“I’d want her back first. Payment only on delivery.”
“No.” Mircea didn’t even bother to look regretful. “Vlad has been on the loose for over a week. To give him more time to lay his plans is folly.”
“He’s had more than a century to plan already,” I pointed out. I didn’t like the Vlad reference. If Mircea would just once forget that the monster we were discussing was his brother, it would make things so much easier. But he has this weird affection for family that I’ve never understood. It ensured that he tracked me down every few decades, even knowing we’d end up in the usual knock-down, drag-out, and it had kept him from staking Dracula when he’d had the chance.
“True, but we dismantled his support network, if you recall. Unless he plans to move entirely on his own, he will need time to find followers. At the moment, he should be vulnerable. But he will not stay that way for long.”
I didn’t bother pointing out that “vulnerable” and “Dracula” really didn’t belong in the same sentence. At no point in time had he ever been anything but utterly capable and completely ruthless. But Mircea had a point. If I had to take on Drac, I’d vastly prefer for him not to have found any helpers. He was bad enough on his own, but the stable he used to control had been another source of nightmares, to the point that I’d spent more than a decade hunting the worst of them down. It had let me sleep a little better afterward, although only a little. Knowing that their lord and master was only one step away from being back in business had never gone down well. I felt my temper rising at the thought that if, just once, Mircea the perpetually hardheaded had listened to me, Dracula would be in a coffin permanently right now and none of this would be necessary. Of course, in that case, I wouldn’t have help with Claire.
“Fine. But if I start hunting him tonight, I want the search for Claire to start at the same time.”
“Done.”
I didn’t ask for surety. Mircea is a lot of things, but he keeps his word when he gives it. You just better be damn sure you know what that word is, because he is one of the slipperiest bastards out there when he wants to be. I decided I wanted things spelled out a little more. “If she’s alive, I want her back. If not…”
“Would you prefer to deal with the parties responsible yourself, or have us do so?”
“What do you think?”
Mircea smiled slightly. “I will order them held for you. I take it we have an agreement?”
I looked at the French guy and wasn’t pleased at what I saw. Yeah, there was enough power emanating off him to rival Mircea’s aura, which raised hairs on my arms every time I got within five feet of him, but taking down someone like Dracula was going to require more than raw power. A whole lot more. “Yes, but I’d prefer a partner I already know,” I said, trying to blunt the insult. “We won’t have time to learn each other’s styles. What’s Marlowe doing?”
Kit Marlowe, vamp, playwright and onetime Elizabethan bad boy, was head of intelligence for the Senate. He was one evil son of a bitch, as I could testify on a personal level, and we weren’t exactly buddies. But if I had to track the meanest vamp on the planet, I’d like to have one of the runners-up at my back. As long as he wasn’t gunning for me this time.
“We are on a wartime footing, Dorina. I can hardly pull the chief of security away for a personal errand at such a moment.”
“It’s not gonna stay personal for long,” I pointed out. “Our names may head Uncle’s list, but we’re hardly the only ones on it. The war may seem like a sideshow if he really gets going.”
