Nightwalker

Eight

The black limo glided out of the flow of traffic and pulled up to the corner just after ten o’clock. We were in what I lovingly thought of as the theater district, even though there was only the Johnny Mercer Theater in the vicinity. It was an enormous building with tall arched openings that adjoined the Civic Center Arena. The whole area was lined with beautiful parks and tall oak trees draped with Spanish moss.

Beside the historic district, this narrow strip was yuppie central. All that glittered, glowed, and drove a BMW strolled through this area. And the hunter stuck out like a dirty street urchin at the queen’s diamond jubilee.

I hadn’t actually meant to make him stand out so much, though a part of me wished it had been a conscious effort. The corner of Hull and Jefferson was near the edge of the historic district, and everyone knew the Civic Center. It would be easy for him to find. That had been my only concern.

Danaus stood on the corner outside the lamplight, still in his black leather duster. It was far too hot for the jacket, but was clearly the only way he could walk around the city with his assortment of weapons. A black duffel bag lay at his feet, and I had a feeling that it held a great deal more than clothes. It was nice that I didn’t have to tell him we would be going on a journey. Of course, we both knew that the next sacrifice wouldn’t be here. We had to get moving so we could pull the triad back together.

The driver alighted from the limo and circled around to open the door for Danaus. The hunter’s eyes darted from the car to the man, his grim face expressing his confidence that the man had lost his mind.

“Mr. Smith?” the driver inquired, motioning with one hand toward the interior of the car. I had informed the poor man that we would be picking up a dark-haired gentleman by the name of Mr. Smith at the corner of Hull and Jefferson.

Struggling to keep from laughing, I called to Danaus from the shadows of the limo. “Come along, Danaus.”

The driver picked up Danaus’s bag and placed it in the trunk, all under the dark gaze of its owner. When it was carefully stowed, Danaus climbed into the limo and took the seat across from me.

When he was comfortably seated against the soft leather bench he got a good look at me. I laughed when his eyes flared and frown deepened. Anyone else’s mouth would have been hanging open, but Danaus seemed to be the king of composure. He would have made an excellent nightwalker, but I had a feeling vampirism might not actually be an option for him.

I lounged in the seat wearing a pair of black slacks and a matching black blazer over a deep purple shirt. My dark red hair had been carefully twisted and pinned to the back of my head, showing off my high cheekbones beneath pale white skin. A pair of lilac sunglasses sat balanced on my nose. In our two other meetings, I wore my usual attire of leather, and very little of it. Unfortunately, I had to make these travel arrangements through my human assistant, and she needed the reassurance that her employer was a normal, human businesswoman. Though her mouth did fall open when Danaus took a seat beside her in the limo.

As his gaze moved over me, my hand drifted up, my fingers briefly dancing over the faint scar that now stretched along my collarbone and the base of my neck on the right. Barrett’s bite had only partially healed since last night. It was rare for nightwalkers to scar, but lacking adequate rest and blood, it was possible. I’d lost too much blood during the battle and hadn’t left myself enough time after leaving Barrett to hunt. The lines on my neck weren’t the first scars I had acquired since being reborn, and considering my lifestyle, I knew they wouldn’t be the last.

“Mr. Smith…” I started then paused. Toying with Danaus was too easy, and I struggled to keep from smiling and exposing my fangs. After the unexpected debacle of last night, I need something to lighten my mood. “This is my assistant, Charlotte Godwin,” I continued, motioning toward the petite woman seated next to him.

Charlotte extended her hand, but Danaus only nodded at her then turned his glare on me.

“We are dropping Ms. Godwin off a couple blocks from here. She decided to tag along in an attempt to get me to look over some papers before our trip.”

“It’s just that you are so hard to pin down for a meeting, Ms. Jones,” chided the slender brunette with chocolate-colored eyes. Her words slipped through the limo with a sweet, Southern drawl. She wore a mint green suit, very composed and professional, and her long fingers grasped the stack of papers in her lap.

My gaze drifted back to Danaus, and he arched one eyebrow at me when she mentioned my surname. So they were obvious fakes; that was half the fun. It gave sweet little Charlotte something to sweat about when she lay awake at night.

With an indifferent wave of my hand, I attempted to brush off the topic. “It’s completely unnecessary. You have everything well in hand.”

“But the investors are demanding to know why you won’t approve the mining expedition in Peru,” Charlotte countered.

“They want to go digging in the Sacred Valley, and I won’t have it. If they want to load up on the sweat of the sun, tell them to pick another country. Try Chile,” I said. Gazing out the window, I watched as the city slid by in a motley of lights and color. I was part of a consortium of investors that ran a gold-mining company. We had made a great deal of money so far, and now they wanted to venture into the heart of the Incan empire. They had set their sights on some mountains in the shadow of Machu Picchu. I wanted nothing to do with it.

“They won’t be happy.” Charlotte’s soft voice intruded on a set of less than happy memories.

“Tell them to take it up with me.”

Charlotte quickly broke eye contact, looking back down at the stack of paperwork in her lap. Luckily for her, the limo pulled over to the sidewalk again in front of a set of office buildings in the heart of downtown. Charlotte maintained offices both in Savannah and Charleston, where she generally reigned supreme until she had to check in with me.

It had to be frustrating. She had her own assistants and made multi-million-dollar decisions on a daily basis. Most of it was my money, though she did run a few other partnerships that I was involved in. But for all she accomplished, she was still forced to jump when I asked. Last night, I’d called at four in the morning from my town house as I waited for Barrett to awaken, and demanded that she make arrangements for the trip. And I knew that Charlotte had most of it completed by dawn. No matter how high she rose or how much money she acquired, she would still be my flunky.

The delicate brunette with the pale rose complexion tidied up the papers, drawing in a deep breath. “I hope you have a good trip. I have often wished to see the pyramids.” The words escaped her in a rush of air.

“Thank you,” I said. “I will contact you in a day or two to arrange for travel.”

Her head snapped up to meet my eyes again. “Back home?”

“Hopefully. You’ll hear from me.” She nodded and nearly leapt from the limo when the driver opened the door. My soft laughter followed her out of the vehicle and onto the street.

Danaus waited until the driver shut the door before speaking. “She doesn’t know?”

“No, she doesn’t know what I am. Her only fear is losing her job.”

“It’s more than that,” he corrected.

“Really?” I leaned back into the corner of the seat and stretched out my legs, crossing them at the ankle. Draping my left arm along the backseat, my index finger drew a lazy infinity sign on the slick leather. “What else does she fear?”

“Losing her soul.”

I laughed, letting my powers flare out from my body. It was like relaxing a muscle after holding it tensed for a long time. I tried to rein my powers in when I was in close quarters with Charlotte. Being human, she might not have been able to sense them, but that extra bit of self-preservation that all humans possess would have picked up something. She would know that something was slightly off about me.

Danaus flinched against the unexpected wave of power, his right hand flexing at his side. Being a hunter, I suspected he would have felt infinitely more comfortable with a dagger in his hand, but he’d kept up the act of being civilized in front of sweet Charlotte. In the front of the car, the sound of the driver climbing back behind the wheel snapped me from my amusement. I pulled my powers back into myself and sighed. While the pane of glass muffled our words, it would not have stopped power from eddying out beyond it.

We pulled back out into traffic and headed out of the city. I saw brief flashes of the river as we passed through wide intersections. I had scanned the area intermittently since awakening that evening, pushing my powers as far as they would reach. By sunset all the lycanthropes were outside the city limits and settled in the surrounding countryside, while all the nightwalkers were in the city. Barrett had even changed the hours of the restaurant temporarily so it now closed before sunset. As much as we both hated it, the boundaries had been drawn. When the naturi were once again defeated, Barrett and I would begin rebuilding the trust between the shifters and the nightwalkers.

“We’re going to Egypt?” Danaus asked.

“I had hoped to keep it a surprise.” I let the silence sink into the car for a moment, trying to see if I could get him to demand more information, but he was proving to be a very patient creature. “We are flying to Luxor with a brief layover in Paris. From there, we take a barge down the Nile to Aswan.”

“A car would be faster from Luxor, or why not fly straight to Aswan?”

“True.” I nodded, my gaze darting back to my restless fingers and their infinity sign. “But you are now traveling with a vampire, and certain…rituals must be observed. I am entering the territory of an Elder and must move slowly as a show of respect. You never go directly into the known domain of an Ancient. It’s a sign of aggression.”

“I thought you said Jabari was dead?”

My eyes jerked back to Danaus’s face, studying his intent expression. “So you didn’t kill him. I doubted the rumors.”

“I was in Egypt briefly, but I have never seen Jabari.” His shoulder-length hair hung close to his cheek, casting dark shadows about his eyes.

“I don’t know what to expect,” I said with an elegant shrug, as my eyes strayed to the window. After you reach a certain age as a nightwalker, you can make almost any gesture seem elegant. It’s part of the package. “Jabari has disappeared. I don’t seek him, but I think he may have left some valuable information behind; journals describing the seal and the triad. It’s a starting point. However, I think it would be wise if we proceed with caution. If he does appear, I would prefer to remain in his good graces.”

“My presence will not help that endeavor.”

“No, it will not.” There was no reason for me to tell him that I intended to hand him over to Jabari and/or the Coven if necessary. Let them extract the information his brain held. I would have preferred to handle it myself, but there was no time to waste on my own interests. My domain was beginning to tear at the seams.

I looked down to find that I had unconsciously begun to fiddle with the silver band on my ring finger. The ring had been a gift from a lover years ago, etched with what looked like ocean waves. The Greek design whispered of old, half-forgotten memories.

Danaus let the conversation drop and stared out the window. I wondered what must be going through his head. He was willingly walking into the den of the enemy. Why? He could have left after showing me the pictures, leaving it to the nightwalkers. Of course, I doubted he trusted us to handle it. I wished I knew exactly how much he understood of this whole horrible mess. Yet, any question I asked might give the vampire hunter valuable and even deadly insight into my world.

Stretching my legs, I relaxed against the seat. I would leave it for now. If I found Jabari, he would handle it. If not, I would find Sadira. I hadn’t seen her since that night at Machu Picchu, and wasn’t particularly looking forward to the reunion. Our relationship had never been a happy one during the century we spent together. We both wanted control over me, and only one of us could win. It resulted in some ugly battles, and there were some wounds that even five centuries couldn’t heal.

“Did you encounter the naturi last night?” I asked, forcefully redirecting my thoughts away from my maker.

“No. Did you?”

My teeth clenched so tightly my jaw ached. Before I’d left the Dark Room, the final body count was seven nightwalkers, six lycans, and nine humans, against the death of only two naturi. What did we face if the naturi returned to this world en masse? “A pair attacked the Docks, killing several people. They appeared at the Dark Room later. Several nightwalkers and lycanthropes were killed.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yes.” Surprised by his solemn comment, I finally looked over at him. “So am I.”

We traveled in silence to a nearly empty airstrip almost a half an hour outside of the city. My private jet was fueled and waiting for us. I preferred to travel this way. Items could be loaded and unloaded from the plane outside the glare of a large airport and prying eyes.

The limo stopped a few yards away from the plane and the driver hopped from the car, leaving the engine running. I was his only task of the night, and I could feel his eagerness to have it done. Picking up and dropping off strange people at deserted airfields was not a part of his normal chores. He opened the door for me and bowed his head, as if he could feel my power. I smiled and slipped a fifty dollar bill into his fingers; I liked it when my servants were quick and efficient. A brooding Danaus followed silently behind me as the driver rushed to grab our bags.

A few steps away from the limo, Danaus reached for one of the knives at his side. I laid a restraining hand on his shoulder and smiled. He had just caught sight of the two large men flanking the short staircase that led into the jet. They wore shoulder holsters with a pair of lovely guns over their tightly stretched black shirts plus a thigh sheath for a knife.

“Down, boy,” I said, patting his shoulder. “They belong to me.” He stopped walking, his hand resting on his knife. “I don’t like to travel without protection.”

He released his hold on the knife at his side and continued to walk a step behind me. I smiled at my two bodyguards and let my hand run across the chest of the one on the right as I started to climb into the jet.

“Wait,” Danaus said. “We’re being watched.”

I turned, my right foot on the first step, my hand on the shoulder of my bodyguard. Stretching out my powers, I searched the area. Deep black night stretched in all directions for several acres, hemmed in only by a thin line of trees. All the humans nearby were employees, and the closest nightwalker was almost fifteen miles away. I sensed no one else, which sent a chill up my back. Was Rowe hunting me now?

“Let them watch,” I announced. “Let’s go.” I forced myself to climb the rest of the way into the jet causally, turning my back to the darkness.

Once inside, I stripped off my blazer and tossed it over the back of one of the white leather chairs. An exquisite piece of machinery, the plane always made me wish I traveled more. The front had two long benches in soft white leather along the sides of the plane. A pair of chairs faced the benches in the same white leather. The floor was covered in thick, creamy white carpet, muffling the footsteps of the passengers. Toward the back was a bar with a fridge and microwave, along with another set of chairs. I never used it, but my bodyguards found it nice for the long trips. Behind all that was another room with a bed and a door that locked.

I stretched out on one of the benches while Danaus took the bench opposite me. It allowed him to keep an eye on my assistants and me. For the first time, he looked uneasy. I doubted it was a fear of flying. I think maybe everything was sinking in. He was in a dire situation and would have to fight his way out of it. And to make matters worse, he was forced to rely on a vampire to guide him through this maze of snarls.

After shutting the door, the pilots fired up the engine. My bodyguard, Michael, walked over and knelt before me. He was a handsome man of less than thirty with beautiful blond curls brushing his shoulders. They made him look younger than he was. He had served me as a bodyguard for the past five years.

Yet for the past three he had helped to keep the loneliness at bay. He gave me laughter and diversion when the nights seemed to stretch out before me like the vast Siberian tundra. But that’s all there was for us. No matter how I tried, I could not give my heart to a creature I knew needed protection from me and my kind. Some nightwalkers could. The tale was older than I was…a centuries-old vampire falls in love with a human, and then turns him or her so they can spend eternity together. Yeah, right. Humans can’t make a marriage last more than a few decades. Do you honestly think a pair of vampires can stay together for centuries? I’ve yet to see it happen.

Biting back a weary sigh, I smiled down at Michael, my right hand smoothing back his hair and idly touching his cheek. He reached up and pulled my hand down so my fingers rested against the pulse at his neck. My eyes drifted shut as I let its siren song beat through me for a couple of seconds. My lips parted slightly and I touched my tongue to my fangs. A hungry longing rose up in my chest, but I smothered it, lifting my hand back to his face.

“Not now, love,” I whispered, opening my eyes. “When we reach Aswan, I will need you.” Michael turned his head and pressed a kiss against the palm of my hand before rising to his feet. He turned, walked toward the back of the jet and took a seat across from my other guardian. Brown-haired Gabriel had served as one of my bodyguards for more than ten years, but he still could not keep the look of envy from his eyes. I’d fed off both men in the past and neither had uttered a complaint.

Danaus’s dark growl drew my attention back to the hunter. “A donor?”

“I thought I’d pack lunch,” I said. “It will take us nearly twenty-four hours to reach Aswan. I don’t want to walk in weak and hungry.”

“They both know?”

“They have both assisted me in the past when I was in need.” I watched Danaus as his forehead furrowed with this bit of information. He seemed genuinely surprised. “What has confused you? That any human would do such a thing?”

He sat forward, balancing on the edge of the seat, his elbows braced on his knees. “You can feed without killing?”

“Of course,”

“I thought it was necessary for you to kill for your survival.”

“If that were true, we would have completely wiped out humans long ago.” I shook my head and then threaded a loose lock of hair behind my right ear. I had thought we finally put that old superstition to rest, but apparently it still lived on in Danaus, and maybe within this group that he was a part of. “Few kill, and most of the time it’s an accident. In this day of DNA and fingerprints, it’s too hard to kill and then deal with the body. We have a secret to keep so we feed carefully.”

“But some still kill for sport.” Fresh tension seemed to hum in his frame as his hands clenched the edge of the bench.

It became a fight not to clench my teeth. “Yes, and we take care of them.” I had personally taken out more than my share of fellow nightwalkers who went out of control. I might like to poke the beehive of the Coven Elders, but knew better than to stir up the humans. I liked my comfortable lifestyle.

Staring at my new companion, I was surprised by the new thought that occurred to me. “You’ve not actually spoken with many of us, have you?”

Danaus snorted and shook his head as he sat back against the seat, resting his hands limply in his lap. “Why? So you can try to convince me that you’re not soulless killers, spreading evil by converting humans? Nerian was right—you’re parasites, feeding on humanity, your only drive to fulfill your own desires.”

My head fell back and I laughed, my right hand covering my eyes. “How is that any different from humans?” I dropped my hand back to the leather seat, where I tapped my nails softly on the bench. “Haven’t you just described humanity? Creatures surviving off the lives of others, driven to fulfill their own desires?”

He remained silent and I let the subject drop as the plane lifted into the air. We both had our own issues to work out, but I was still curious about him, and he was at my disposal for several hours.

“What are you, Danaus?” I asked. His eyes darted over to the bank of windows over my right shoulder, avoiding me. “I’ve been turning that question over in my head for more than a month now,” I continued, as if he’d spoken. “I’ve known several odd creatures in my time, but nothing like you. You have all the trappings of a human—wrapped up in your very human anger—but at the same time you sit over there pulsing with power. Are you even aware that you’re doing it? Your powers are so warm and alive, so wonderful. And the angrier you become, the stronger the pulse.” He still hadn’t looked at me, but I knew he was listening. His jaw hardened as he clenched his teeth and his eyes narrowed. I wondered how much he understood of himself.

“You know, you smell of the wind and of some distant sea. Sometimes I think it’s the Mediterranean, but it has been too long since I stood where it lapped the shore. You also smell like the sun.”

The description made the corner of his mouth quirk. He was suddenly fighting a smile. The description was strange, but it was the image conjured in my brain when I breathed him in.

“If you will not tell me what, then tell me how old you are.”

He stared at the windows hard, and I had about given up when his lips finally parted. “I served as a guard under Marcus Aurelius.” The accent I had heard when we first met flared to life again, teasing at my thoughts.

My brain shuffled through the card catalog of names in my mind, digging deeper for a time and place. It took only a moment, and when I placed it, my mouth fell open. Several minutes passed before I could organize my thoughts enough to form a coherent sentence. “You’re nearly three times my age,” I whispered, bringing a smile to his lips as his eyes finally returned to my face. “You look good for an old man.” The smile faded. “It also means you’re Roman in the truest form of the word. You watched the fall of the empire.”

“I had left already,” he volunteered in a low voice. While his expression never changed, the light in his eyes seemed to dim. Had the fall of the great empire bothered him? I think I wanted it to—it made him seem a little more real.

“Where have you been?” The question escaped me in a whisper of wonder and awe. I was just over six hundred years old, but it always filled me with a childlike giddiness when I encountered a creature older than me. I envied the knowledge their brains held, the sights they had seen that were now forever gone from this earth.

“Everywhere,” he replied, his own rough voice sinking into softer tones. His eyelids drifted low, as if he were reliving some old memories. “Rome, then west across the Carpathian Mountains, through Russia and south through Mongolia into China. I came back through India, the Middle East, Africa, back through Europe, where I lived with monks.” His eyes flicked back to my face and his voice hardened. “And across all those countries and through all the religions, one thing held true. Vampires are evil.”

“How did you capture Nerian?” I asked. He blinked at me, his mind seeming to stumble over the abrupt change of topic. There was no discussing my species’ right to live. Words would not be what convinced this man: only actions would accomplish that feat. Of course, I didn’t expect him to live long enough for that.

Danaus pressed his lips into a thin line as his expression hardened. I was beginning to recognize that expression; his “I don’t have to tell you anything, bitch” look.

Sitting forward on the leather sofa, I balanced my elbows on my knees. “You’ll be asked that again, by those who have a lot less patience than I do. You can tell me now and we move on, or we can wait and let them drag it from your lips using pain. Whether you’ve realized this or not, I am the only buffer between you and them.”

I sat back again, draping my left arm over the back of the sofa. Danaus was a rare gift. He was strong, powerful, and intelligent. I wanted the pleasure of picking apart his secrets, and then I wanted to hunt him. The challenge he offered was worth a little work, a little risk.

Minutes ticked by with only the roar of the wind outside the plane filling the tense air. He stared at me, as if weighing his options. They weren’t great and I couldn’t promise to protect him even if he did deliver the information. If an Elder stepped in, I would have to back off.

“Luck,” he said at last.

“Luck?”

“He was following you. I caught him off guard and knocked him out.”

I smiled and shook my head. I don’t know whether I completely believed it, but only Nerian would be so cocky as to not pay attention to a human that close to him. Of course, I was beginning to wonder how badly I was underestimating Danaus as well.

“How long did you have him?”

“A week.”

I nodded, rising to my feet. I stood in front of him for a moment, hands on hips, my legs spread against the slight turbulence. He tensed but his hands didn’t move toward the knives concealed on his body. I didn’t know how much, if any, information he had dragged out of the insane naturi, but a week was enough time to get some juicy tidbits. I was going to have to kill Danaus soon. His interesting qualities would be outweighed by the fact that he was becoming too dangerous to leave alive.

“Have you learned anything about Rowe?”

“Nothing yet. My contacts are still digging,” he said.

I couldn’t begin to guess at whom he was in contact with or how they would acquire information about the naturi. While nightwalkers stuck to the shadows and were diligent about maintaining our secrecy, the naturi were mere ghosts in this world.

With a sigh, I walked to the back of the jet and curled up in Michael’s lap. He wrapped his large arms around me and held me against his chest. I placed my ear against his heart, letting the steady rhythm soothe my mind. My right hand restlessly played with the hair at the nape of his neck while the other rested on his shoulder. My thoughts calmed as I lay in his warmth.

I didn’t want to be a part of this. I wanted to live in my city and seek pleasures where I found them. My great deed had been done more than five hundred years ago, and I walked away from my kind after that, never seeking a nightwalker companion for more than a night or two. But now I was being pulled back down into their ranks, sucked deeper into the mire. I could struggle all I wanted, but there would be no escaping.