Midnight's Kiss

One

Something happened to Julian as he stood in the San Francisco alleyway, looking down at his progeny and longtime friend.

Xavier lay curled on his side on the ambulance stretcher, the lines of his poison-wracked body rigid. Blood was everywhere — the stretcher, the concrete underneath. It had poured like a river out of him and had run in a thin red line down the gutter. The EMTs had had to drain out the poison and infuse him with as much fresh, untainted blood as quickly as they could.

Julian didn’t know what it was, the thing that had happened to him. He wasn’t like Xavier. He wasn’t especially introspective or philosophical. He was most comfortable with taking action.

Whatever it was, his reaction ran deep. It felt like something essential had broken inside him.

His patience, maybe.

Yeah, that was pretty much broken all to hell and back.

Xavier gazed up at him, his young-looking face drawn with pain. His eyes still leaked crimson at the corners. While he had passed the danger point, or “magic hour” as the EMTs called it, the brodifacoum would make every joint and muscle in his body ache for the next three weeks, as his immune system worked to rid itself of any remnant of the poison.

Mindful of that, Julian kept his hand gentle as he touched Xavier’s shoulder, when all he really wanted to do was grab the other man and clench him in a bear hug.

No, he wasn’t ready to live in a world without Xavier in it. For too many decades to count, Xavier had been his Jiminy Cricket and the one example Julian could always look to whenever he wondered what it meant to be a fine man.

He spared a quick glance for Tess, the human woman who hovered so protectively near Xavier’s dark head. When Julian had first seen Tess at the Vampyre’s Ball, she had been rigid with terror and antipathy. Now as she gazed at Xavier, her expression was filled with so much love, Julian felt as if he was witnessing something naked and profound.

Cynically, he wondered just how long that would last. Weeks, or months?

Even if her feelings lasted for a few years, what concerned him most was that Xavier looked at Tess with the same expression.

Xavier didn’t fall in love lightly or as a passing fancy. He would not stop loving Tess after a few fleeting years, and she had made no secret of the fact that she had serious issues with Vampyres.

However, any potential outcome of their liaison was an issue to be confronted on another day. Right now, Tess looked more than happy to look after Xavier, which was all that mattered, because Julian had a traitor to hunt down, and he needed to focus all his attention on the task.

And he planned on enjoying every minute of it.

Justine, the woman behind the assassination attempt, was an old, Powerful Vampyre and a member of the Nightkind council. For years, Justine had been undermining him, quietly and sometimes not so quietly sabotaging all of his attempts to genuinely unite the council members. Trying to kill Xavier was just her latest gambit — but this time, with her attacking a Nightkind government official, Julian was fiercely glad she had finally gone too far.

This time, he thought, I’m going to destroy you, and every one of your co-conspirators, even if they sit on the Nightkind council too.

It was time for him to clean house, and if his hands got a little dirty in the process, why then, so be it. The Roman politician and philosopher Cicero, who had lived and died two hundred years before Julian, had once said, “Laws are silent in times of war.”

If that was true, so too was Julian’s threadbare, incomplete conscience.

As he strode toward his black Jaguar, he ran through the names of the twelve who sat on the council. Of all the members, he trusted Dominic the most.

The other Vampyre had been a Norman lord under William the Conqueror, and had run one of the most successful mercenary companies in Europe during the Middle Ages.

He was calculating, calm in a crisis, and along with another council member, Marged, he was also the most neutral of all the council members. Unlike Marged, whose main abilities lay in commerce, Dominic knew how to respond when situations escalated to violence.

Pulling out his cell phone, Julian dialed Dominic’s number.

Just when he thought the call would roll to voicemail, the ringing stopped and Dominic’s deep baritone voice sounded. “Good evening, Julian.”

“Where are you?” Julian asked.

Despite his terseness, the other Vampyre’s voice remained courteous and neutral. “At home. Why?”

Sliding into the driver’s seat of his car, Julian did some quick calculations. Dominic’s estate lay in Napa Valley, a couple of hours’ drive away, but the other Vampyre had a helicopter and could make the trip to Evenfall much quicker if necessary. That, however, was assuming Dominic would be willing and able to drop everything and come at a moment’s notice.

Starting his car, Julian headed for his house in Nob Hill. While the great, hulking Norman-style castle Evenfall was the Nightkind King’s official residence, it lay in Marin County across the Golden Gate Bridge. For the sake of convenience, Julian also owned a house in the city, a nineteenth-century mansion that was located not far from Xavier’s own townhome.

As he negotiated through the heavy traffic around the site of the attack, Julian told the other man, “Justine tried to have Xavier assassinated tonight.”

A brief, intense silence took over the other end of the connection. Then Dominic said, “Tried?”

“He survived, along with one of his attendants, but he’ll be incapacitated for a few weeks.” Julian’s voice turned savage. “It was brodifacoum poisoning.”

The other Vampyre drew in a breath, the quiet, telltale reaction as strong as a curse. “Do you have proof that it was Justine who tried to kill him?”

Dominic’s neutral tone was beginning to grate on Julian. He growled, “Don’t tell me you don’t believe what I’m saying.”

“Not at all,” Dominic said. “I’m trying to ascertain what you know, and whether or not you have enough to take to the council.”

Fuck the council.

Julian caught himself up before he said it aloud. Instead, he replied between his teeth, “I have two surviving witnesses.”

Dominic said, “I realize you’re very angry. If someone tried to murder one of my progeny, I would be too, but think for a minute. While Xavier’s integrity is well known, the council won’t accept testimony from either him or his attendant. Attendants can be spelled into believing something is true when it isn’t, and as your progeny, Xavier would have to say anything you compelled him to.”

The fact that Dominic’s cool reasoning was correct made Julian even angrier. He snapped, “Goddammit.”

“All I’m trying to point out is that you’re going to need more than just their stories,” Dominic told him. “But never mind that for now — what actually happened?”

Julian yanked his unruly emotions back under control. “Justine bribed one of Xavier’s attendants in order to get him into the city. If everyone had been killed in the attack, there wouldn’t have been any witnesses at all. Xavier nearly did die. If his one surviving attendant hadn’t known what needed to be done when he’d been poisoned and taken such quick action, he would have died.”

“Where’s Justine now?”

“I don’t know. That’s what I need to find out.” Julian pulled in front of the black wrought iron gates to his house and keyed in the security code. As the gate swung open, he told the other man, “Maybe going after Xavier was an end play for Justine. She’s certainly held a grudge against him for long enough. But maybe assassinating him was just the first step in a broader agenda, and maybe Justine wasn’t the only Vampyre involved. I need to track her down, and I need for you to get to Evenfall as quickly as you can to keep things stable while I’m gone.”

If Xavier had been killed, his loss would have indisputably weakened Julian’s political position even further. Setting aside the friendship factor, not only would Julian have lost his staunchest supporter in the Nightkind government, but he would have also lost his spymaster and most reliable source of information.

Dominic said, “I need some time to wrap up some personal matters, but I can be in Evenfall by tomorrow evening. Will that be soon enough?”

“Yes. I’ll be in touch when I know something.”

“Be smart, Julian. Use your head. Justine has allies. Whether or not you find her, just make sure you bring back proof that you can take in front of the whole council, enough so that even her allies would have to back down. That way, if nothing else, you can see that she’s discredited and removed from office.”

“I hear what you’re saying,” Julian said. Finally, for the first time in their conversation, he achieved a semblance of equanimity.

He did, in fact, hear exactly what Dominic was saying — and not saying. Dominic knew very well Julian had no intention of bringing Justine back to Evenfall, and he was warning him to get all his ducks in a row. It was sound advice.

With a punch of a thumb, Julian disconnected the call. As soon as the gate opened wide, he gunned his car down the short, curving driveway and braked in front of the huge, sprawling mansion.

The building had a hint of European flair. Built out of golden limestone, it had tall, stately windows trimmed in black iron. Alerted by the house security system, Gregoire, Julian’s majordomo, opened the double front doors and stood waiting attentively, his intelligent, plain features impassive.

As Julian jogged up the front steps, he was already dialing another number.

Evenfall’s IT administrator, Gavin, answered on the first ring. “Yes, sir?”

Julian nodded at Gregoire as he swept past. He said to Gavin, “I want Evenfall on a total information lockdown within the next ten minutes — five if you can manage it. No Internet, no cell phone reception. The only lines of communication I want open are the dedicated phone lines under our control. Got it?”

“Yes, sir.” Gavin sounded somber and unsettled. “But I have to warn you, I might not be able to make the lockdown total.”

“What do you mean?” Julian raced up the stairs to his suite.

“These days, a lot of people have independent Internet access with hotspots in their cell phones,” Gavin said. “I don’t have any control over shutting those down. Evenfall is a big place, but I can see about putting out enough interference to scramble their signals.”

“Do that until you receive further instructions from either me, Xavier or Dominic.” He disconnected and dialed his head of security, Yolanthe. When she answered, he told her, “Two things. I’m putting Evenfall on a lockdown. Until further notice, nobody is allowed to enter the castle walls or leave, except for Dominic, who will be arriving tomorrow evening.”

“Very good,” Yolanthe said. Unlike Gavin, she sounded calm to the point of sleepy. “And the other thing?”

“I want a strike team to meet me here in the city,” he told her. “Keep it lean and mean, no more than ten fighters. Get them here as soon as you can.”

That woke her up. Sounding very alert, she said, “We’ll grab a chopper and be with you in twenty minutes.”

“Good enough.”

Twenty minutes. Thinking quickly, Julian did some math.

It had taken him fifteen minutes to navigate through city traffic to get to the house from the alley where Xavier had almost died. Before that, Julian had spent some time on the scene, waiting to hear if Xavier would survive and questioning various officials who had been first responders. And it had also taken him time to get to San Francisco from Marin County.

How long ago had he kicked Justine out of Evenfall?

Even though the Nightkind political season was over for the year, Justine had been insisting upon reconvening the council. She had claimed that Xavier had exceeded his authority when he had made this year’s trade agreements with the Light Fae heir Melisande.

As always when Julian’s thoughts turned to Melly, a hard knot of old pain and anger tightened in his chest.

She had once meant the world to him, and the affair they had begun so lightly in defiance of all convention had quickly turned into something much more serious. The kind of serious where a man started thinking of ways to change his life in order to be with the woman he cared about.

At least it had for him. Clearly it hadn’t for her, or she would never have betrayed him with the Elven heir Ferion.

The whole thing had happened decades ago, in the 1990s, and time wasn’t the only thing that had moved on. Melly and Ferion’s affair hadn’t lasted either. Just recently, Ferion had become the Elven lord of his demesne, while Melly still lived the carefree life of a rich, jet-setting single.

Virtually everyone had gotten on with their lives, except for him. Some part of him still remained frozen in that terrible moment of realization when he had stared at the photos of Melly and Ferion together.

Now, every time he saw her photo online or in the papers, he snarled and snapped like a wounded tiger at anyone who had the misfortune to be in the vicinity. He couldn’t even summon a pretense of indifference. Whenever he was forced to be in the same room as Melly, any attempt at conversation quickly devolved into a shouting match.

Their troubled dynamic made it even more difficult to understand why Melly’s mother, Tatiana, had sent Melly to conduct this year’s trade negotiations with the Nightkind — unless Xavier was right, and Justine had been behind that ploy too. Julian and Melly had flamed out as usual, and none of the trade agreements had been approved until Xavier had stepped in and talked to Melly personally.

When Justine had tried to claim the agreements weren’t valid, Xavier had outmaneuvered her once again by recording Julian and Melly in verbal agreement with each other. Julian had confronted Justine with the recording, and she had left Evenfall just after sunset.

Now Julian reexamined things in a different light.

With the Nightkind political season over, the council had already met and disbanded for the year. Had Justine been looking for an excuse to get the council together one more time?

If they had reconvened upon her insistence, and the assassination attempt against Xavier had been successful, what would have been her next move — an assassination attempt against Julian?

And who would have made it with her?

Julian had a sense of time trickling away from him. The more time that passed, the more time Justine had to figure out her next moves. Even as she had left Evenfall hours ago, she would have been thinking ahead and rerouting any plans she had laid in place.

By now she had to know the attempt against Xavier’s life had failed, so she would be rerouting again.

I have questions for you, Justine, he thought savagely. Many questions.

What are you doing now?

Upstairs in his suite, he washed and changed quickly, donning black fatigues, boots, and a T-shirt. When he was finished, he jogged downstairs and called for Gregoire, who appeared again almost immediately.

He told the human, “I’m here for only a short while, and I don’t know when I’ll be back in the city. Evenfall is on lockdown. You need to keep the house here on lockdown too. Don’t allow anybody on the property, except for Xavier or Yolanthe.”

“Of course,” Gregoire said. “Do you need to feed before you leave?”

Julian shook his head. Then he paused to look into the other man’s eyes. While he did not encourage the kind of familiarity in his household that some other Vampyres did, Gregoire had been with him for almost forty years, quietly and unassumingly going about his tasks, and somehow always managing to ensure that everything was exactly the way that Julian wished.

He put his hand on the other man’s shoulder. “No, but thank you for thinking of it. Look after yourself and the others. I would be — most displeased if something happened to you.”

Gregoire smiled and somehow managed to look worried at the same time. “I will, sir. Please look after yourself as well.”

Over the normal sounds of the city at night, Julian could hear the steady chopping of an approaching helicopter. Yolanthe’s strike team was almost here. He left Gregoire and strode into his study, where he went to a weapons cabinet that was tastefully concealed behind a walnut panel. By the time he had armed himself, the helicopter had landed on the helipad on the grounds behind the detached garage.

Yolanthe met him at the rear door.

Standing at five foot ten, Yolanthe was tall for a woman, but not unusually so. She had a lean, muscled body and panther-quick reflexes. Her strong-boned, olive brown features were classic Greek, and she wore her sleek black hair cut short in a no-nonsense style that hugged her shapely skull.

Julian had met Yolanthe when he had been a young Vampyre and still a general in the Roman army. They had been on opposite sides of a small, nasty border war.

With the weight of superior numbers on Julian’s side, the war hadn’t lasted long. Impressed with Yolanthe’s fighting skills and intelligent tactical ability, he had successfully recruited her, then several years later had turned her. She was one of his first progeny.

He told her, “We’re not staying.”

She fell into step beside him. Together they made their way quickly to the military helicopter waiting on the helipad. She asked, “Where are we headed, and what’s our mission?”

Julian leaped into the helicopter, glancing around and nodding at the nine familiar faces inside. He was unsurprised to find who Yolanthe had picked for the mission — all of the fighters present had served him for a long time. He knew them well, and trusted them.

As Yolanthe joined him, he told the team, “Justine tried to kill Xavier, but she didn’t succeed. He’s survived and he’s going to recover. He was also able to tell me what had happened. We’re going to take control of her estate. I doubt she’ll be there, but I’m hoping we’ll find some clues about where she’s gone. Expect extreme resistance.”

“Understood, sir.” Yolanthe touched the pilot on the shoulder. “We’ll need to set down a good quarter of a mile away and jog in, so we can get an element of surprise. Let’s go.”

As the whine of the chopper blades increased, Julian took a seat. Justine’s home lay south of the Bay, along the border of Silicon Valley, just outside of a small, upscale town called Los Gatos. By car, the trip would take over an hour. By air, they would be able to get there much sooner.

Justine’s estate was located some distance outside of the town, her land adjacent to Sanborn County Park. In an area populated with multimillion-dollar homes, her property was a lavish one by anyone’s standards. An elder Vampyre with a well-established wealth, she kept a household of over a hundred attendants, all of whom would have received some degree of weapons training.

As they grew closer, his muscles tightened in anticipation. The pilot set the helicopter in a picturesque, open clearing and powered down. Yolanthe handed Julian a headset, which he donned. While telepathy was by far the stealthiest method of communication, for most creatures it was only possible to telepathize within a range of a few feet, and it was useless for group communications.

He stepped out of the helicopter. The spring night air felt cool and damp against his skin. As soon as the other fighters hit the ground, they began to run.

A high security fence surrounded the estate, but that was no real obstacle for Vampyres. As Julian drew near, he put on a burst of power and speed, and launched into the air to clear the top of the fence by a good yard. He paused until all the others had joined him, then the team fanned out and stalked toward the mansion.

His sharp gaze scanned the area as they grew close, and he knew Yolanthe and the others were doing the same, looking for potential traps or security pitfalls. The scene looked perfectly domestic and peaceful.

A sense of disquiet stirred.

Julian didn’t bother to use his headset. Yolanthe was in charge of her team, and she would be the one to issue them orders. He told her telepathically, Something’s not right. We need to slow down.

She responded immediately, whispering into her mic, “Everybody, hold up.”

The team came to a halt. Julian studied the huge, sprawling mansion. Every interior light blazed, yet as he strained to listen, the house was completely silent. He could hear nothing. No music, or television. No sounds, anywhere in the area, until he grew convinced the property was deserted.

He muttered to Yolanthe, I don’t like this.

I don’t either. While she had straightened from her crouch, her expression remained hard and wary.

Keep your team here. He headed for the house.

She whispered a quick set of orders and raced to fall into step beside him. That hadn’t been exactly what he had meant, but other than throwing her an irritated glance, he said nothing and they continued the rest of the way together.

They came to the house at an angle and slightly to the rear, so that after they rounded a landscaped copse, the entire back of the building came into view.

A door stood open. Light streamed out, throwing a rectangle of illumination on the well-tended lawn.

Abandoning his cautious stance, he strode up to the doorway, Yolanthe at his heels. Stepping inside, he came into a large, luxurious kitchen.

Three people, two women and a man, lay in pools of crimson on the floor around a butcher-block island. Their throats had been cut. He recognized one of the women. She had been Justine’s latest lover, the beautiful woman Justine had kept on a leash at the Vampyre’s Ball. Now the dead woman’s pale features wore a bewildered expression.

He exchanged a sharp, frowning glance with Yolanthe, then moved into the hall. Throughout the ground level, he found more bodies, many more. A larger group was gathered in a family-style rec room. Those had been shot, each one double tapped with professional efficiency, a bullet to the heart and a bullet to the head.

Son of a bitch.

He stood staring at them, until Yolanthe stepped into the room. She swore softly when she caught sight of the group.

Only then did he turn away. His gaze fell to a small, telltale pile of dust, all of what typically remained of a Vampyre after they had been killed.

After walking through a few more rooms, he stopped and pinched his nose. A tension headache began to squeeze the back of his skull.

He had been right. There was nobody in the house — nobody left alive.

“There aren’t any signs of struggle,” Yolanthe said.

He said softly, “An outside attacker didn’t commit these murders. Either these people had died willingly, or Justine had spelled them into compliance. Either way, she slaughtered her entire household.”

Justine had known he would come here. Of course she had. She had realized that as soon as she heard that Xavier had survived. And she had made quite sure that nobody would be able to tell Julian anything.

His voice turned gravelly with the force of his emotion, he said, “You might as well call in the rest of the team. Have them search the other buildings, just in case. Let me know what the body count is when you’re done.”

The other Vampyre looked grim, her complexion pale. “Yes, sir.”

While Yolanthe’s team searched the property, Julian walked through the silent house. When he came to a darkened office, he flipped on the light and went to sit at the desk. A forensics team would scour everything in the room, including any files, but for now, he turned on a desktop computer and watched as it powered up.

The welcome screen appeared, with a prompt to set up the computer. It had been wiped and reset to the factory default.

Leaving the office, he walked upstairs and looked through the stylish rooms. Standing in Justine’s bedroom, he closed his eyes and inhaled the scent of expensive perfume.

What was she doing now? Where was she headed next?

If he didn’t find her in the next twenty four hours, his search could very well become lengthy. He could freeze her assets, at least those he could find. But Justine was not the kind of person to keep all of her assets in easily accessible places. No Vampyre of any age would. Long-term survival was often based on a wide diversity of resources.

So, she would have money. And as Dominic had pointed out, she had allies. While she might have slaughtered her household, she wouldn’t give up on her lifestyle in the Nightkind demesne so easily.

She had history here, and political aspirations. She had grudges.

“Ninety-two,” Yolanthe said from the doorway. She sounded furious. “What kind of monster kills ninety-two of her own people?”

The question was so clearly rhetorical, he didn’t bother to answer. Instead, he opened his eyes and said, “When news of what happened here gets out, let’s hope she loses a few friends over it.” He turned to the doorway. “We need a forensics team out here. Also, the computer in the office has been set to the factory default, but maybe Gavin will know some electronic voodoo that can recover data.”

Yolanthe nodded. “It’s four o’clock, and daybreak will be soon. I’ll get a human team out to go over the property. We can take the computer with us.”

He nodded. “Let’s get out of here.”

The flight back to Evenfall was silent and grim. Julian watched out the window as the eastern sky lightened with predawn. After landing, as he strode into the castle, angry Vampyres tried to besiege him with questions about Internet access and when they could leave.

In an instant, Yolanthe’s team surrounded him, fangs out and snarling a warning.

The complaints cut off abruptly. Shocked and staring, the other Vampyres fell back.

One of the team split off from the rest to take the computer to Gavin. Yolanthe stayed in the group that maintained a secure perimeter around Julian as he strode to his suite. Once he gained access to his rooms, he gave orders that he was not to be disturbed, and he got to work.

On a lockdown, only two dedicated lines were left open. One of them went to Gavin in the IT headquarters, and the other fed into Julian’s suite.

Gavin had also set up a program on Julian’s computer that kept a running total of who was in residence at Evenfall, including council members. At any given time, usually when the council was in session, Evenfall could potentially have up to three hundred souls.

Julian checked it quickly. One hundred and eighty-nine people were locked in, including two council members, Annis and Leopold. He couldn’t remember the business that had brought them to Evenfall, and it didn’t matter — they wouldn’t be leaving anytime soon. Right now, they were two less council members he had to worry about.

The icon for his email inbox indicated he had nearly a thousand messages. He ignored those as well. What he focused on instead was composing a letter to the human governor of California.

The demesnes of the Elder Races overlaid human states and governments. Humans were governed by human law, and those of the Elder Races were subject to the laws of their demesnes. The borders that separated them were invisible ones of race and community.

The global unifier was commerce. Sales taxes were split, and the taxes on income went to the relevant agency, either Elder Races or human. For the most part, the two different realms coexisted well enough.

Sometimes they didn’t, especially when the clashes of one spilled into the physical space of the other.

This would be one of those times.

As soon as the letter was finished, Julian put it in the body of an email and hit send. Afterward, he sent copies of the letter to local human officials.

When he had finished, he went to the doors that led to the hall, opened them and told Yolanthe, “See that the media room is ready, and let any press we have in Evenfall know that I’ll be making an official statement in a half an hour.”

Speculation shifted in her dark eyes, but all she said was, “Yes, sir.”

He strode into his bedroom to change into a uniform, not parade dress, which was reserved for more ceremonial occasions, but somber black. Then he left the suite and, surrounded by his guards, he strode to the media room in the IT headquarters. More people had gathered in the large communal spaces and hall, but this time, no one attempted to stop or talk to him. Instead they watched him and his guards in tense silence.

Fifteen minutes later, in the media room, they were ready to shoot. Julian looked into the cameras. “Over the last twelve hours, there have been two significant attacks against Nightkind government officials, resulting in multiple casualties. The death count is now well over a hundred.”

At least it was, when you counted all the attackers who had died going up against Xavier and Tess. He said, “Significantly, most of those who died were humans.”

As he paused, no one made a sound, although everyone in the room stirred, including his guards. While technically, he spoke the truth — most of those in Justine’s household had been human — once humans became part of a Vampyre’s household, they were considered to be part of the Nightkind demesne.

Still, their deaths would have a hell of an emotional punch. The massacre signified a massive betrayal of the trust Julian had worked so hard to build between the Vampyres and the human population, and Julian was not above twisting the literal truth to his advantage whenever necessary.

Deliberately, he continued. “These terrible crimes must be answered. As King, I am placing the Nightkind demesne under martial law, effective immediately. From sundown today, any Nightkind creature found more than a quarter of a mile away from its domicile of residence will be subject to the severest penalty by law, up to and including death. Martial law is an extreme measure, to be used only in cases of emergency. The Nightkind demesne is presently in just that kind of emergency. People of the Nightkind demesne, the movement restrictions are for your protection, as we search for the criminals who initiated the attacks and we take every necessary step to make sure that another attack doesn’t happen.”

For a brief moment, he hesitated. The temptation to call Justine out in public grew so strong he had to clench his muscles against giving in to it. Publicly identifying her as the person responsible for so many deaths would be even more effective at stopping her movements than implementing martial law, but without acceptable proof to back up his claim, he knew the entire Nightkind council would turn against him.

None of them, not even Dominic, would tolerate an unsubstantiated attack against one of their own. The resulting backlash would end up hurting Julian’s ability to hunt for Justine far more than it would help. He needed to gather proof first, the kind of proof that the council would accept.

His frustration boiled over. For the first time in his speech, he let his fury show in his clenched features and burning gaze. He felt his fangs descend and let them show in an expression of naked aggression. “Rest assured,” he said softly, “we have no higher priority than this. We will hunt down those who are responsible, and they will be brought to justice. I won’t be taking questions today. That will be all.”

The room erupted into noise. Ignoring the shouted questions, he left the room. Yolanthe and the other guards fell into place around him.

This time, he headed into the secure part of the IT area. Gavin left his workstation to meet him.

Without preamble, Julian said, “You saw the statement?”

“Yes, sir.” The younger Vampyre’s eyes were wide and worried.

“I won’t be able to justify keeping the demesne under martial law for long,” he said. “It will help to have the human population outraged, so we might be able to get a few weeks. If Justine is still in the demesne — and even if she isn’t — it will make it harder for her, and anyone else working with her, to maneuver. In the meantime, we need to speed up the search.”

“I’ve frozen her assets,” Gavin told him. “At least those that I could find. You must know she’ll have hidden assets. Cash deposits, offshore accounts.”

Julian looked at him from under lowered eyebrows. “Of course.”

“I’ve programmed some searches to see what I can find.”

“Just do the best you can.” He moved on to the next thing. “What about the computer? Were you able to get any information from that?”

“No. I’m sorry.” Looking frustrated, Gavin rubbed the back of his head. “I’m going to try a few more things, but I don’t think I’ll be able to retrieve anything. Sometimes you can actually recover files after a factory reset, but I think she used another program to make sure the hard drive was wiped clean.”

“Understood.”

If she had gone to the trouble of making sure the hard drive was completely wiped, why hadn’t she simply destroyed the computer? Had she done it to taunt him?

Scowling, Julian turned away and headed back to his suite. He had a million and one things to do before Dominic arrived that evening. After that, he would be free to go after Justine personally.

Even if he had managed to cripple Justine’s movements — at least for now — she had already crippled him by taking Xavier out of commission. He needed to get eyes on each of the council members, especially Darius, but aside from the two held in Evenfall, the others would be scattered all over Northern California.

Again, he got the sense of time slipping away from him. He spent the rest of the afternoon and evening working with Yolanthe to deploy handpicked soldiers to each council member’s home. Twice he talked to Xavier. While the other man was clearly tired, he was more than willing to help. He had a handful of people he could send out on reconnaissance as well.

By the time Dominic arrived late that evening, Julian had a plan in place. Those who were deployed would report their findings to Xavier, who would then contact Julian with anything newsworthy that looked suspicious. Julian would follow up the leads in person. The search would be brutally meticulous, but that was often how wars were won — by gathering painstaking intelligence and winning one battle at a time.

Meeting with Dominic strained his patience. Yolanthe’s team was rested and waiting for him. He forced himself to be thorough as he went over final details, while the part of him that had broken strained to be on the move.

If Dominic had been born in modern times, he might have been the star quarterback for his college team. Standing six foot four, the other Vampyre was broad shouldered and lean hipped, his powerful frame perfectly suited to wearing heavy armor and waging war atop a horse.

He had icy blue eyes and blond hair, and the kind of looks that made him a favorite with the opposite sex, while his handsome face bore a scar from temple to jawline that gave him an aura of danger. The danger was very real, but not so much the romance. Dominic was one of the most coldly pragmatic men Julian had ever met.

At the end of the meeting, Dominic asked, “How’s the search going?”

While Julian was willing to share administrative details about Evenfall, he had no intention of talking about the hunt for Justine. All he said was, “We’ll get her — and anyone else who is working with her.”

Speculation shifted in Dominic’s icy gaze, but he nodded. “Fair enough.”

Julian’s phone rang. Not his cell phone — thanks to Gavin’s efforts, that wouldn’t work until he left Evenfall. The phone in his office rang, on one of the two dedicated lines in the castle.

Very few people had that number. Quickly he strode into the other room to check the caller ID.

His eyebrows rose. The incoming call was from Tatiana, the Light Fae Queen in Los Angeles.

Reflexively, he checked the time. It was almost three o’clock in the morning.

He could think of no good reason for Tatiana to be calling him at three in the morning. Tatiana had hated him ever since he had broken off his affair with Melly.

He let the call roll to voicemail. After he listened to what she had to say, he would decide when he would get back to her.

Almost immediately, the phone rang again. Instead of leaving a voicemail message, Tatiana had called back.

Unease ran cold fingers down his spine. This time, he answered the call. “Tatiana, you might have seen in the news that I’m in the middle of something urgent right now.”

The Light Fae Queen’s voice sounded in his ear. Usually she was the epitome of elegance and iron, but this time the iron sounded rusted and strained. “So am I. Julian, I need for you to come as quickly as you can.”

What the fuck?

His stomach clenched. “What’s the matter? What’s wrong?”

“I can’t tell you that,” said Tatiana in measured tones that spoke of extreme control. “You know as well as I do that phone conversations might not be secure.”

His mind flashed to the one possible reason Tatiana might have for calling him. He demanded, “Has something happened to Melly?”

The possibility was inconceivable. Melly was so vibrant, so young, just a few hundred years old. An array of images flashed through his mind, each worse than the one before. Melly, in a car accident — Melly in the hospital, badly injured… or dead.

That last thought caused dread to wash over him in a sick, cold wave.

“All I can say is, please, for the love of all the gods, can we put our differences aside just this once? Will you come to help me?”

In an instant, he abandoned the one thing that had consumed him for the last forty-eight hours. He had already set his plan in motion. Yolanthe could take it over and spearhead the search for Justine.

He told her, “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”