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Jackson came up behind Dominique. “The other two were conscious enough to run, but this one was still out cold. So I dragged him over here and secured him before the police got here. I thought you might want to talk to him.”
“That I do.” Dominique let his fangs emerge. “Merci beaucoup.”
There was no time for tenderness. This man had been ruthlessly compelled. Only an equally ruthless counter-compulsion would break through. Shoving the head aside, he went for the blood. Within seconds, Dominique found what he needed, the vampire who had cast the compulsion. It was a female he had seen before—behind the wheel of a Ford Mustang that had led him to a booby-trapped warehouse. Her victim knew her as Annabel, and he had done her bidding for months as her daytime eyes, ears, and hands.
He even knew her lair.
Dominique absorbed it all. Then he blasted it out of the human’s mind. By the time he was done, the man knew only that he needed to clean himself up, go home and sleep off a hangover, then look for a new job in the morning.
“When he wakes up, let him go,” Dominique said as he splashed water on his chin to remove a smear of blood. “He will be no more trouble.”
Jackson, who stood with arms crossed just outside the bathroom door, watched him dry his face. “What about the vampire who compelled him?”
“Will be no more trouble by dawn.” He reached for Isao, sending him an image of where he was going and who he was after. “I will contact you when I get back.”
He didn’t wait for Jackson’s response. The moment Dominique was out the door, he disappeared down the nearest stairwell and into the parkade where he had left the borrowed Ducati SuperSport. He sensed Isao and two others just outside, but was still surprised when he found them astride motorcycles as well. There even was an extra bike, carrying two “ghosts,” something of which he took only fleeting notice. As Dominique gunned the Ducati down the street and heard the roar of four other bikes giving chase, the web trembled with his rage.
We felt your need to act and made ready to join you, Isao said, responding to his half-formed questions.
Did others around the world experience this as well? Did Serge? And what of the two behind him who were not sired to him?
They are under my protection and will submit tonight,Isao promised.
Dominique refocused on reaching Annabel as fast as possible. That she was Esteban’s operative was a given. Where she had struck once, she could strike again. And where there was one like her, there could be more.
In Surrey, they roared past the burned-out warehouse and continued for several more blocks before turning into the parking lot for a row of townhouses. Dominique led the way, retracing the path Annabel’s slave had taken countless times. He broke down the front door with a single kick, sending it flying across the room. Then he stood and listened.
Cool wind gusted past him, ruffled a discarded magazine, and swirled back, redolent with a young blood-drinker’s fresh scent. Upstairs, a TV was on, and a faucet ran. But that was all. No sounds of movement. No beating hearts.
She was gone.
Douglas pushed past him and swept through the sparsely furnished rooms, long coat flapping in his wake. As a mortal, the kind-faced, unassuming man had been a police detective and the only human ever to unravel the mystery of Isao Kiyomori. Impressed with his skills, the samurai had befriended him and eventually offered him immortality.
The detective now wielded his skills at hyper-speed, scanning every inch, absorbing details Dominique would not have known to notice—such as the corner of a curtain caught in an upstairs balcony door. Douglas snapped the curtain aside, and Dominique looked through the glass just in time to watch the telltale glow of a blood-drinker aura disappear into a stand of trees at the edge of the development. He threw the door open with a crash and flowed over the rail.
The soft rain turned into a million stinging needles against his face as he moved too fast for even most supernatural eyes to track. His entourage followed, but soon fell behind, none of them capable of keeping up with a well-rested and well-fed Lord of Night. Annabel was moving at a relative jog when he stopped in front of her. With a surprised yelp, she leapt straight into the air. Her bare feet slipped in the leafy mud when she landed, sending her sprawling, but she was up again in an instant.
“Stop,” Dominique commanded with compulsion in his voice. She remained rooted to the spot and stared at him with undisguised hostility. She wore only undergarments, dirt splattered her legs, and wet hair clung to her shoulders. “You have one and only one opportunity to explain yourself. Speak.”
Her eyes turned black and huge, consuming her face, and her mouth opened in a fanged grimace of defiance.
“So be it.” He grabbed a fistful of hair and went for her blood without ceremony, finding a mind boiling with fury. Esteban had sired her, rescuing her from a destitute existence only a decade ago, and her devotion to him was complete. If there were others in the city like her, she neither knew nor cared. Getting leverage over Dominique was her sole mission at the moment, and to that end, nothing was off limits. Not even…
A strangled cry brought Dominique back to the moment. He stepped back and watched Annabel sway before falling to her knees. Five others surrounded him now, the eyes of three of them glowing in the misty darkness. It was one of the two ghosts—a young female with heavy makeup, black hair and yellow roots—who had cried out. An equally young male held her close. They had been teenagers when they were made not that long ago, a pair of pale street urchins sheltering from a brutal world.
Dominique watched them as he filtered through all the information he had just learned.Merde.Just when he thought he had found the bottom of this miserable treachery.
Turning back to the more immediate issue cowering at his feet, he let his anger vibrate in his voice. “Annabel Carmen Almiron Rivas. Do you submit to me?”
Pointless to ask. He knew what her answer would be, could feel it scream in her blood, and saw it in her beast-black eyes when she lifted her face into the rain. “Never!”
He watched her gather herself to leap at him, and the impulse to end her shot through him, but his hand didn’t move toward his sword. In fact, he didn’t move at all.
He didn’t have to.
His wish had already become Isao’s command.
The samurai’skatanaflashed in a silent arc.
