“You ever find yourself questioning your life choices?”
Silas had been half-dozing — sleep was a welcome respite from the hell his life had become — but he jerked awake as soon as he heard Michael St. John’s voice. After sending an ironic glance around the cellar where he was being held captive, Silas replied, “Sometimes.”
The vampire came farther into the cellar. He had on a black leather jacket over a dark shirt and faded jeans, but that didn’t tell Silas much about what was going on outside. Like gula, vampires didn’t feel heat and cold quite the same way as ordinary humans did, and so the clothing they wore was mostly affectation, rather than a response to the world’s changing temperatures. Of course it must be nighttime, or else St. John wouldn’t be up and about, but that was all Silas could know for sure.
“Lucius not home again?” he asked. The reason why Michael St. John continued to come visit him in his cell eluded Silas. Boredom? A perverse desire to engage in an activity that would surely annoy his master, should Lucius ever find out? Impossible to say.
“No, he left a while ago to pick up Serena. I don’t know where they were going, though.”
It took a few seconds for those words to penetrate Silas’ brain. Then he frowned. “Lucius went to pick up Serena? She wasn’t already here?”
“No, apparently he sent her home last night. I don’t know why.”
St. John’s expression was guileless enough. As far as Silas could tell, the vampire wasn’t lying. But what could this development mean? Clearly, she hadn’t entirely escaped from Lucius’ web, because he was going to fetch her. She wasn’t a prisoner, though.
Not a prisoner here, Silas thought then. It’s not as if her condo is neutral territory, not with her neighbor turned into a semivive. That arrangement would allow Lucius to still keep an eye on her, even if she isn’t in his house.
And that meant it would be much easier to get her away from him, take her north where she would be safe. Of course, the problem with that particular scenario was that Silas happened to still be locked up here. But perhaps one of the other gula would see that she had returned home, would realize the safest thing to do was remove her from her condo.
Whether they would risk such a thing while he himself was held captive by the vampire…that was more difficult to guess. They had already lost two of their own because of Lucius Montfort. It could very well be that the members of the Conclave wouldn’t make that call, not when they couldn’t be certain of the outcome. And they would not want to endanger Serena. That realization offered some comfort. Not much, but a little.
“Surprised?” Michael St. John said, correctly interpreting Silas’ silence. “Yeah, me too. But I’ve given up trying to ferret out all of Lucius’ motivations.”
“And yet you remain,” Silas remarked.
“Well, of course I do. You ever hear of a vampire’s fledgling just taking off into the great unknown?”
“No. But then, I would also have to admit that I’ve never met a fledgling quite like you.”
St. John shrugged. “Is that a compliment?”
“No. Just an observation.” Silas shifted his weight slightly; he tried to change his position every so often so that his limbs wouldn’t get too accustomed to being in a particular orientation. Since the vampire seemed to be open to conversation, Silas decided he might as well try to see whether he would answer any more questions. “Do you remember when Lucius made you?”
That question elicited a lift of an eyebrow. “I wasn’t aware that I was granting an interview.”
“You’re not. You don’t have to tell me. I was just curious.”
Michael St. John came a little farther into the room, and took a seat on a stack of empty pallets. He glanced toward the door, and then back over at Silas. “Yes, I remember. I was playing at a club in Los Feliz.”
“You’re a musician?”
“Classically trained guitarist, actually.” The vampire ran a hand through his hair, then shrugged. “Anyway, I provided background music at a Mexican place. Good gig — five nights a week. Steady work, which is more than a lot of musicians in L.A. can say.”
That might have sounded like boasting, but even though he’d only lived in Los Angeles for a few years, Silas knew that what Michael St. John had just told him was nothing more than the truth. He inclined his head, and the vampire continued.
“So one night this guy comes up to me and says he senses a real passion in my music, tells me that he thinks I have a real future.” Another lift of the shoulders. “To tell the truth, at first I thought he was gay, was trying to pick up on me. That’s kind of the vibe Lucius gives at first, with those perfectly tailored suits and that not-quite British accent of his.”
“I assume that wasn’t his intention,” Silas said, his tone dry. In truth, it would have been much easier if Lucius Montfort’s predilections lay elsewhere. Then he wouldn’t have to worry so much about the vampire master’s intentions when it came to Serena. Unfortunately, if Michael St. John’s comments on the topics were even halfway accurate, then Lucius definitely had an interest in the psychic that was far from the merely cerebral.
“No. He said he had a business proposition for me, that he was opening a restaurant of his own and was scouting talent. He asked me to meet him at his house the next evening. It was a Monday — my night off — so I figured it couldn’t hurt to talk to him, see what he wanted. If he tried to get physical, well, I thought I should be able to take him.”
If they had both been human men, and the odds at all even, then Michael probably would have been correct. He was slightly taller than Lucius Montfort, and a little more heavily muscled. No doubt he’d thought he would come out ahead in a physical confrontation, should matters progress to that level. What he couldn’t have known was that Lucius was not an ordinary man, but a vampire possessed of unnatural strength and centuries of cunning.
“I assume it didn’t turn out well.”
“No.” Michael St. John drummed his fingers on his knee, a nervous gesture. Silas wondered then whether the vampire still played the guitar, or whether he’d abandoned that pursuit as the long, weary years of unwanted immortality began to stretch before him. “He — well, he talked about the club he was setting up, a tapas kind of place, and how he wanted to have background music there. We had a glass of wine, something Spanish. He said it was something he wanted to serve at his club. Then he gave me a strange look and asked me if I’d like to live forever. I told him that usually I didn’t think much beyond the next week. He smiled, and then he lunged and sank his teeth into my neck. I could feel myself dying — literally. Everything was going black. But there was this one pinpoint of light…this one thing I could hang on to. I realized later that was Lucius, being my lifeline. I didn’t want everything to end there. It felt like when I was a kid and my parents took me to Santa Monica to swim in the ocean. Lucius was my buoy. I swam to him, and he pulled me out of the water. Problem was, when I dried off — to continue the metaphor — I realized I was a vampire.”
It was the first time Silas had ever heard a vampire describe the process of being made into one of the undead. Although the gula had contact with vampires, in general it was only to face off before one or other of them ended up dead — permanently dead, that is. Most vampires were not exactly in a confessional mood when they had dealings with one of the Watchers.
“What did you do?”
“Well, I was pissed off at first. I didn’t ask for any of this.” St. John looked away, his gaze fixed somewhere beyond the racks of wine that filled the cellar, far away from this dark, windowless chamber. “But you know, there are worse things than being forever young, than not ever having to worry about making the rent or any of the other thousand pieces of piddly shit that made up life before. Even so….” His words trailed off there, and in the gloomy illumination given off by the emergency light over the door, Silas could see the way the vampire’s mouth twisted.
“Even so?”
“Even so, I wish he hadn’t done it. I couldn’t lie to my parents. I mean, how the hell do you tell your mother and father that there’s been a sudden change in your circumstances, and you can’t go out in daylight anymore? They’re going to think you’re crazy, you know?”
To be honest, Silas hadn’t given a lot of thought to what happened to fledglings once they’d crossed over into the land of the undead. For one thing, a master vampire generally sought out those who were open to that sort of lifestyle, who didn’t have a great deal to cling to. Orphans often made very good vampires. “I suppose that would be difficult,” he allowed. “So what did you do?”
A thin smile. “Lucius helped me fake my death. What other options did I have? I was close with my family. They were proud of me for being a full-time musician, even though I wasn’t exactly drowning in fame and glory. So…I decided that Lucius was right, that it would be better for everyone involved if they just thought I was dead. With his resources, it was easy enough. He had my car totaled, and one of Leticia and Tristan’s victims placed inside the burning wreck. The guy matched my general physical description, was wearing jewelry my parents would know was mine, so no one asked too many questions. No autopsy. No matching dental records or anything like that.”
That made sense. Silas had sometimes wondered how he managed to get a recent fledgling like Michael “off the grid,” so to speak. Both Leticia and Tristan had died at a time when records were far more haphazard than they were today, so covering up their deaths wouldn’t be nearly as difficult. “So no one ever knew?”
“No.” Michael pushed himself up off the stack of pallets where he’d been sitting and took a few steps toward the door, every movement filled with nervous energy. Truly, he was the most “human” vampire Silas had ever met, but that made sense. He hadn’t been living this undead existence for much more than a decade. “And I never told anyone. I wish I could say that I got used to it, but….” A negligent shrug, but Silas could see the nonchalance was feigned.
“You don’t enjoy it.”
“No.” St. John grinned, although the expression was more of a grimace. “I can admit that to you because Lucius knows it all too well. Tristan and Leticia — they’re good vampires. They like the hunt, the kill. Me, not so much. Most of the time I live off the bottled stuff. It tastes like ass, but that’s better than killing people.”
Truly, Michael St. John did seem to be rather an extraordinary vampire. Silas experienced another flare of anger at Lucius Montfort, but this time the rage was not for what he’d done to Serena or her family, but the victim he’d made of the young man who stood before Silas now. Usually, a vampire master would choose those who were ruthless and cunning — like Leticia Carver and Tristan McVey — because those qualities were necessary to the vampire life. However, although he could be capricious and bitter and sarcastic, St. John was neither cruel nor sly.
Whether Silas could use the vampire’s better nature to his own advantage, however, remained to be seen.
He settled against the wall, the chains of his manacles clanking slightly. “So why the allegiance to him, when you clearly have no desire to live this life?”
Michael St. John raised an ironic eyebrow. “You know the answer to that as well as I do, gula. A fledgling can’t betray his master. Loyalty flows in our blood, because it’s his blood that flows there as well. I’d like to help you…I really would. But I can’t. Although I do appreciate these little chats. For obvious reasons, these aren’t the sorts of things I can discuss with Leticia or Tristan, let alone Lucius.”
Of course not. Silas gave a weary shrug. “I thought so. But I must continue to ask. Serena’s life may depend on it.”
At that remark, St. John shook his head. “Oh, I don’t think so. As far as I can tell, he thinks the moon rises and sets with her. I still don’t know what he’s up to, but he seemed unusually excited about something this evening. Not that he told me where he was going, only that he would be fetching her.”
And thank God the master vampire had allowed Serena that small piece of freedom. She was smart enough that she would use it to her advantage as soon as she thought it was safe. What she planned, he couldn’t be sure, and it was better that way. Complete ignorance would prevent Lucius from getting any useful answers out of him.
“Well,” Michael St. John said, “I should probably leave you to it. Lucius didn’t really say when he would be back, and better that he not catch me down here. Sweet dreams.”
Those two words were the vampire’s parting shot, since he let himself out and locked the door immediately afterward. Silas didn’t bother to protest; St. John came and went as he willed. This captivity was onerous, true, but sooner or later it must end. In the meantime, his cell had been made somewhat more comfortable by the addition of a chemical toilet, a basin of water, and a few extra blankets. He had no idea whether Serena had requested those items for him, or whether Lucius had made sure they were put in place so she would have no reason to complain of his treatment. It didn’t really matter. He would survive this, and be with her again.
And in the moment he truly knew Serena was safe, he would be sure to drive a stake right through Lucius Montfort’s shriveled heart.
Lucius walked me to my front door. I didn’t bother to protest, to tell him he didn’t need to follow the little protocols a normal couple might abide by, because lord only knew we were anything but a normal couple. I had to keep pretending, had to make him think I welcomed every extra moment we spent together.
Once we were there, however, my heart began to beat a little faster. What if he wanted to celebrate by forcing his way in, by making me his physically? I had told myself I would make that sacrifice if I had to, because keeping Silas alive was more important than anything else, but….
I honestly didn’t know if I could go through with it, should Lucius press me.
But although he kissed me, thanked me again for the meeting with my brother, he didn’t try to come inside once I’d unlocked the door and disabled the alarm. No, he stood inside the doorway and said, “How soon do you think you might hear from Jackson?”
“I don’t know,” I replied. “He likes to think things over. He’s deliberate. So it could be a while. Or….” I stopped there, because the thought which passed through my mind right then was dreadful enough that I really didn’t want to voice it aloud.
“Or…?”
His expression was neutral, but I could tell he expected me to answer. I swallowed, then said, “Or it could be that the news he gets from the doctors at UCLA is bad enough that he can’t afford to wait. I just don’t know. Obviously, Addie is sick enough that she couldn’t get any help from the doctors back at John Hopkins or Walter Reed. But I know people who were told they were dying who got treatment at UCLA and lived, so it could be that they have the cure Jackson and Bethany are looking for.” I reached out and took Lucius’ hand, squeezed it slightly. “And I also know that I’ll call you as soon as I hear anything. Or rather,” I amended, since I remembered that communications with a vampire would by necessity be hampered by his sleeping habits, “I’ll contact you as soon as you’re able to take the call. Okay?”
“Yes, of course.” He raised my hand and pressed it to his lips. “Sleep well, Serena. I will speak with you tomorrow evening.”
Then he let go, and turned and went down the hallway toward the staircase. I stood there, smiling, until he was out of eyeshot, then locked the door and reengaged the alarm. Not because I thought a locked door would keep him out — he’d already been invited into my condo, and therefore could come and go as he pleased — but because I needed the psychological reassurance that a Schlage lock and the burglar alarm provided.
I glanced at the clock on the stove. It was 10:17. Early, and once again I had to murmur a thanks to the universe that Lucius hadn’t tried to stay longer. Why, I wasn’t sure, except that I’d just done him a huge favor, and so he possibly sought to reward me with a decent night’s sleep.
Ha. Sleep was the last thing on my mind right then.
I went to the kitchen and fetched myself a glass of water, then went upstairs to my little loft office space. My laptop sat on the desk. I opened it up and logged in, then turned off the wireless. After that I got out the adapter which would allow me to plug directly into the cable modem. I still wasn’t sure that Lucius really could hack into my computer or the wireless in my house, but I figured I might as well take as many precautions as possible.
Next I opened up the VPN software that would allow me to go out onto the internet without anyone being able to track which sites I was viewing. The first thing I wanted to do was try to satisfy my curiosity, although I didn’t know how successful I would be.
I pulled up Humboldt County on Google Maps and started cruising around, just trying to see what I could find. The gula compound had to be there somewhere, but a county was a pretty big place to explore, and Silas had never mentioned whether the place where he’d grown up was near any of the towns I saw now — Eureka, Arcata, Ridgewood — or whether it was located out in what appeared to be vast expanses of heavily wooded lands. To preserve their privacy, the Watchers were probably out in the middle of nowhere, which meant I was basically looking for a needle in a haystack.
But then….
There was a road that led out of a place called Fortuna. It wound away into the forest, moving roughly northeast. I followed it along until it turned into not much more than a dirt track. That dirt track moved even deeper into the forest, this time due north. One might expect such a trail to peter out to nothing eventually…but it didn’t. It went to an area that looked like a large clearing in the forest, with apparently acres and acres of green grass. And in that clearing was a series of buildings, mostly houses, although there appeared to be a few structures larger than single-family dwellings. The school? The gula offices? I knew so little about how their compound was organized that I really couldn’t begin to guess.
For all I knew, I’d just found the private getaway of a Hollywood star or producer, but I didn’t think so. Somehow I knew in my gut that this was where the gula were located. What I was supposed to do with that information, I had no idea. It wasn’t as if I could get in my SUV and drive the five-hundred-plus miles to that flyspeck on the map, not with Lucius Montfort’s semivive lackey living next door and watching every single move I made. Still, it somehow comforted me to see those tiny indistinct shapes, to let myself think that was where Silas had grown up, that somewhere in all that green, so different from Southern California’s golden-brown hills, he and I might be able to make a future together.
Out of nowhere, the window for my Messages app popped up. Serena Quinn, perhaps you should have been a private detective.
I startled and nearly knocked over my glass of water. What the hell? No one should have been able to see what I was up to.
Who is this? I typed back.
My name is Felix. Perhaps Silas mentioned me.
The name wasn’t familiar. Then again, Silas and I hadn’t been given much of an opportunity to really talk about the gula before not-Brian kidnapped me and took me to his master. No, sorry, I wrote. He didn’t give me a lot of detail.
Understandable. We know that Lucius Montfort has allowed you back in your home. Are you well?
I’m fine, I typed. So you have been watching my house?
Of course. We’re Watchers. It’s what we do.
Even though I couldn’t see the expression on this Felix’s face, somehow I got the impression he was teasing me. Then come and get me, I wrote. I know where Lucius lives. I can take you there. We need to rescue Silas.
A pause. Then the message came back, We can’t do that. Not yet. We need to know what he’s up to, why he finds you so valuable.
What, other than my visions? Or maybe having a brother who’s running for President?
What does your brother have to do with it?
I hesitated. After all, I’d taken for granted that this person was who he said he was, but what if he wasn’t? What if he was one of Lucius’ vampires — not that any of them had seemed particularly tech-savvy, either — or someone he had working for him?
How do I know you’re really a friend of Silas?
You don’t, came the reply. Except that I know he was called to Paris by the Conclave, only to cancel his trip when he discovered you had been taken by Montfort. Just as I know that one of our own, Emanuel, was supposed to watch over you but instead was murdered by a gang of Lucius Montfort’s semivives. Again, this is all knowledge the vampire master might also possess. So you will have to make a decision, Serena Quinn. You will need to decide whether to trust me, or to go blindly on your own.
Damn it. More than anything I wanted to know I wasn’t alone in this, but saying the wrong thing to someone who might be an agent of Lucius Montfort’s would only expose me to him, would show I wasn’t quite as on board with his plans for world domination as he thought.
Then again…a few of the things Silas had mentioned made it sound as if the gula had their own computer experts and hackers. It would take someone like that to know their location was being explored. Maybe they had an alarm that went off when anyone surfed too close on Google Maps. I had absolutely no idea how that would work, but the notion sounded at least halfway plausible to me. Someone with that kind of technical skill would also be able to pierce my VPN, to talk to my computer even though I’d done my damnedest to mask my identity. So far I’d seen absolutely nothing from Lucius or any of his cohorts to show they had the technical skills to accomplish such a feat. And it couldn’t be any of the semivives, because most of them didn’t have the functional brain cells to do much more than carry out orders and possibly tie their shoes…on a good day.
I took a breath, then typed, Lucius is plotting to use the antibodies in vampire blood as a sort of cure for my niece Addison’s leukemia. That will get my brother Jackson — and all his resources — on board to fund the project. In exchange, those same researchers will be able to isolate the factors in human blood that keep vampires alive and immortal, and to alter those factors so they allow vampires a chance at a normal existence.
At first, I didn’t get a response. That last message showed it had been received at 10:38 p.m., so I know Felix had seen it.
Then he replied, Ah. Now I understand. And your visions?
My visions told him this thing was a possibility. More than a possibility, because I’d say they come true at least 90% of the time. I don’t think Lucius would have approached my brother if he hadn’t seen this as basically a sure thing.
Another pause, followed by, And you’re certain Silas is still alive.
Yes. I’ve seen him. Lucius is holding him captive in his wine cellar. As long as I continue to cooperate and give Lucius what he wants, Silas will be safe. Or at least, that’s what Lucius has told me. I don’t trust him, but I can’t risk anything happening to Silas. That’s why you have to go rescue him.
We will. Or rather, we will wait for the proper opportunity. These matters need to be handled with care and precision.
Just about the last thing I wanted to hear. I didn’t want care and precision — I wanted the gula to go storming in there like a bunch of commandos and get Silas out. Because if he was freed, then I was free, too. I could tell Jackson that Lucius was only using him to get what he wanted, namely, immortality without the nasty side effects of vampirism, and then we could all go on with our lives.
But then I thought of my niece’s pale face, of her listlessness, when she had always been a lively child, bright and curious. Could I deprive her of a chance at a cure? I knew that vampire blood clearly had benefits for humans, or else I wouldn’t have seen Lucius and Jackson talking about selling immortality in that one terrible vision.
Damn it.
So what is the “proper opportunity”? I typed.
I don’t know yet. We will have to wait and see. It is good news that Silas is alive, for we had feared the worst, after what happened to Emanuel and David.
I didn’t know who David was. Apparently, yet another body in Lucius Montfort’s long list of victims.
I will contact you again, Felix went on. For now, be careful. Be watchful. You are playing a dangerous game, Serena Quinn.
Didn’t I know it. Not that I had much choice. My heart had been given to Silas Drake, and now I could only continue down this path and pray that its end would see the two of us together, and not the dreadful future of my vision.
I’ll be careful.
Good.
Nothing after that. I wasn’t expecting more, and yet I sat there for a few more minutes, staring at the screen. I didn’t know this Felix person at all, and yet I’d been reassured by our conversation, by having the chance to talk to someone who knew the truth, who wasn’t part of this whole elaborate charade. There was no one I could confide in, not even my closest friend. But this stranger had offered me a lifeline.
Smiling slightly, I closed the laptop and went to get ready for bed.