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“You’re the fucking top of the line now. What do you mean, you don’t know?”
A flash of impatience. “I will conduct a survey for you as soon as I determine how.”
“What about Serge? Did you ask him?”
“No need. He tells me things whether I ask or not.” Dominique shook his head. “He claims to feel a difference, but he is close to me and actually expected this madness. He is not a typical blood-drinker.”
Jackson cleared the knot out of his throat, almost able to draw a full breath again. “You’re supposed to be connected to them all.”
“According to thousands of years of legend, yes, perhaps. But all I sense is that they exist, and that Kambyses never tried to direct them. His fears controlled him, and so they controlled all of us. How long it will take for that to change, I cannot say.”
“Change,” Jackson repeated. “Are you planning to convince the world’s vampires to stop killing?”
Dominique spread his hands, palms up. “A better solution than condemning them all to death, non?”
“Like they’ve condemned their victims?”
“Often not by choice.”
Jackson rubbed a hand over his face, trying to stop his head from reeling. “That’s why you’re here instead of at the facility. Now that you’re the one with all the power, you won’t let us wipe you all out. Is that it?”
The vampire gave him a long, unfathomable look. “I would like to try this first.”
“Oh, by all means.” Jackson made a grand, sweeping gesture with one arm. “How long do you think you’ll need? A week? A month? A year? Uncle Garrett will want to know how long to hold off coming after you.” Not that he would. By Garrett’s standards, the only thing Dominique had inherited was a bigger bull’s eye on his forehead.
“He will not hold off. He relishes the hunt too much,” Dominique said, echoing Jackson’s thoughts. “Nor will I stop him, or you.”
“Come again?”
Tiny, rueful smile. “The only blood-drinkers you can track are the inept and insane, the truly dangerous ones. I have not tolerated these in the past, and I will not tolerate them now. You are welcome to them.” The smile widened a little. “Their numbers are inconsequential compared to those you have no hope of finding.”
Jackson swallowed. “Nice. Just how many of you are there?” The smile didn’t budge. “I see. Well, I doubt you can just erase part of their psyche like that. Something will have to take the place of your sire’s insecurities. So let me ask you, Nick—what are your fears? What rules you?”
The vampire tilted his head, his sweeping brows drawing together in contemplation. “Love rules me,” he said. “I fear a world without love.”
“That is a fear you will never know,” Cassidy said as she emerged from behind the Christmas tree. “Not as long as I’m around.” The vacant husk he had left on the sofa was gone. In its place stood a sleep-rumpled woman in an oversize sweater, PJ bottoms, and socks, blue eyes sparkling and freckled cheeks flushed. She had never looked more beautiful.
The vampire seemed to agree. At the sight of her, his face lit as though fired by an inner sun.
Without hesitation, she walked up to the most lethal supernatural creature on earth and fisted both hands in his shirt. “But you better be done trying to save me from yourself by leaving me, because I can’t do that again. I just can’t. Do you hear me?”
Dominique kissed her forehead and folded her into his arms, as if trying to absorb her into his being. “Neither can I, mon amour. Neither can I.”
Jackson felt like an intruder on his own driveway, but he was spellbound, unable to look away from the quiet embrace that bordered on the erotic. Every tender caress, every relieved sigh, every shift to cleave closer together, conveyed two souls coming home to each other.
Not even at their most familiar had Jackson and Cassidy shared a moment like that. Strange how his resentment seemed to crumble before it was half-formed. If this was what the new lord of the vampires would flood his subjects with, there might be a chance, however remote, that he could persuade them to change their murderous ways.
This audacious plan might just work.
But if not, if it failed or even stumbled, Jackson and the Striker Foundation would still be there to sweep up the refuse—and scatter it in the sun.
44
World of Night
Three months later...
Secrets.
