An incoherent cry of denial burst from my lips. This was what I’d worried about when Lucius first mentioned my friend — that he’d somehow find a way to use her to hurt me. I began to surge forward, only to have Silas’ hand clamp down on my forearm.
“Hello, Serena,” Lucius said, his tone almost conversational. “I had a feeling you might try something foolish like this, so I thought I had better give myself an insurance policy.”
“Let her go,” I told him fiercely, at the same time wishing I had a useful psychic power, like being able to reach out and choke him with my mind. “She has nothing to do with any of this.”
Candace’s wide blue eyes met mine. Although I knew she had to be scared out of her wits, she sounded calm and in control when she spoke. “It’s all right, Serena. He hasn’t hurt me.”
“Oh, no,” Lucius said, as Tristan McVey and Leticia Carver also emerged from the shadows to flank him. I spotted more movement as five men I’d never seen before came forth to take up protective positions around the vampires. Lucius’ new semivives, no doubt. To either side of Silas and me, the gula were still and quiet, clearly assessing the situation, trying to determine their best plan of attack. “I haven’t hurt her…yet. In fact, I must admit she is a worthy specimen, full of fire and determination. Perhaps she’s a likely candidate to walk the otherworld and survive and return changed. What do you think, Serena?”
I guessed all too well what he was hinting at. For all I knew, Candace was tough enough to survive the transformation into a vampire state. However, I couldn’t allow Lucius to do such a thing to her. She needed to stay here, among the living. “I think you’re just trying to get a rise out of me, Lucius,” I returned, my voice level. “You’d think that someone who’s survived for more than three hundred years could do better than resort to cheap tricks.”
He laughed then, but I thought I detected something forced about the sound, as though he’d made himself laugh in order to prevent me from seeing how angry he really was. “Oh, I don’t think it’s a cheap trick. But perhaps you’re only trying to suppress a certain level of jealousy?”
Silas made a low growling sound in the back of his throat, but I could only offer Lucius a pitying smile and a shake of my head. “Hardly. Are you still trying to flatter yourself that I wanted you, Lucius? I would have thought that my escape this morning — and the engagement ring I left on the nightstand — would be enough to erase any doubt.”
The vampire master’s mouth tightened. “That was rather declassé of you, Serena. One would think that someone with your background would behave better.”
Maybe he’d been attempting to wound me with that comment, but I couldn’t have cared less what he thought of me, or my background. I held his gaze, even as I felt rather than saw the tension of the Watchers who stood around me, ready to pounce. Four of them, if you counted Silas, against three vampires and five semivives. Not exactly an even fight, although since those semivives were new, and possibly not fully acclimated to having someone else in control of their minds, it might very well be that they wouldn’t put up much of a fight.
Silas stepped forward. “You’ve been outmaneuvered, Lucius. You thought you could reshape the world the way you wanted it to be, but you should have known that we would never allow you to do such a thing. Just as you should have known that Serena could never love you.”
“Love me?” Lucius’ lip curled, and he shot a contemptuous glance at Silas that seemed to take me in as well. “It didn’t matter whether she loved me or not. I certainly cared nothing for her. All I cared about was gaining access to her visions. They were what was truly valuable, for they told me what my future would be. And that future does not include you or your fellow goons destroying the research being conducted in this building.”
Although I didn’t love Lucius Montfort — the exact opposite, actually — his words still felt like a slap in the face. All the time I’d been acting, he’d been acting as well. I had been stupid enough, and naïve enough, to believe that he’d somehow found it in his black heart to harbor a little bit of affection for me.
I should have known better. Lucius Montfort never did anything for anyone except himself.
“Enough,” Felix growled. He’d been standing off to one side, listening to this exchange, but clearly he was done listening. “The future is not yours, vampire. It never was.”
If he gave a signal to the other gula, I didn’t catch it, but somehow they got the message, because in the next instant they all began to transform, dark wings sprouting from their backs and tearing the garments they wore. In response, the semivives moved forward, shifting positions so they could protect their vampire master and his fledglings.
Besides me, Silas murmured, “I must go to their aid,” even as he pulled off the leather jacket he wore so it wouldn’t get destroyed during his transformation.
As much as I hated to let him go, I couldn’t stop him. He loved me, but he was one of their brethren, sworn to protect all his kind…and mine as well. “I know,” I said. “Be careful.”
He didn’t answer, but began to transform as well, skin darkening, his frame growing larger as those enormous bat wings protruded from his back. Even though I’d seen him make this change before, witnessing it again brought home to me just how alien he was, at a cellular level I couldn’t quite understand.
And yet…I loved him. I needed him more than I’d ever needed anything in my life.
One of the other gula — Micah? It was almost impossible to tell, once they were in their gargoyle forms — reached with clawed hands for a semivive, catching him by his shirt and tossing him against the side of the building, which he hit with an audible crack. I winced, even though I knew the gula had no choice. They had to get inside the lab, destroy the blood samples and everything related to them. It still hurt, though, because I knew that semivive was blameless, had been innocently living his life before Lucius descended and transformed him into a slave.
From somewhere behind me, I heard the roar of a car’s engine, followed by a squeal of brakes. I whirled, expecting to see one of the office park’s security officers pulling up in his patrol car, but instead I realized the vehicle that had just arrived was the dark green Range Rover my brother Jackson drove while he was here in Southern California. He got out of the SUV and ran forward, shouting, “Stop this! Stop it!”
A distracted part of my mind wondered how he’d managed to ditch his Secret Service detail. But that was as far as I got, because another of the gula hurled one of the semivives aside and charged for the front doors of the building. Almost at once, Tristan McVey moved forward in a blur, hands outstretched so he could grasp the gula by one of his wings and tear at it, partly wrenching it from his back. The Watcher — not Silas, thank God, although otherwise I couldn’t tell who it was — let out an unearthly howl and staggered backward, dark blood pouring down from the wound.
At the same time, Leticia Carver darted sideways in a blur, heading for a gula I was fairly certain had to be Felix. Her hands were curved into claws, and I worried that she was about to attempt the same maneuver with him, rendering him incapable of flight and leaving him badly wounded. However, he seemed to see the attack coming, and backhanded her with a blow that made her fly backward at least five feet, where she landed with a heavy thud on the sidewalk in front of the building.
Jackson stopped beside me, chest heaving, his eyes wide, as though he couldn’t quite take in the scene before him. “What — what are they?”
I knew he wasn’t talking about the vampires. They looked more or less human. “The Watchers,” I told him. “The ones sworn to protect humanity from the vampires. They couldn’t let you do it, Jackson.”
“I — ”
He stopped there and looked away from me, toward Lucius Montfort and the woman he still held captive. Candace’s eyes were wide with terror, but she wasn’t trying to get away. How could she, when the vampire master held her with a grip of iron? I knew all too well how impossible it was for a mere human to try to escape a vampire’s grasp. Thank God Candace was the type to stay calm in a crisis situation — she seemed to realize that struggling with Lucius would be pointless, or downright dangerous.
Hands balled into fists at his sides, Jackson called out, “Stop it, Montfort. You have no right to drag Serena’s friend into this.”
“Rights mean very little to me, senator,” Lucius replied calmly, as though oblivious to the battle going on around him. “We had a deal. I am only trying to protect my part of the bargain.”
Jackson’s jaw tightened. I could tell he was wrestling with himself, trying to decide whether it was worth it to keep arguing with the vampire, or whether he should take more direct action. If Lucius had been an ordinary man, the two of them might have been evenly matched. My brother was tall and worked out regularly to maintain his athletic build, was in fact a good bit bulkier than the vampire. But mere muscles weren’t of much use here. Right then, I wasn’t sure what any of us could do to prevail against Lucius Montfort and his minions.
All around, the gula and the semivives went still, watching the exchange between the two men. Leticia Carver pushed herself to her feet, blood dripping from a cut along her cheek. Her eyes were narrowed with rage.
Lucius went on, his voice soft and insinuating, “You must think of your daughter, Senator Quinn. If you allow these monsters to destroy the samples and the research, then all hope for her is gone. Will you be able to sleep at night, knowing that you had the cure within your grasp and you still threw it away?”
Jackson’s head went up, eyes blazing. “I know my daughter,” he said clearly. “I’ve been thinking ever since I talked to Serena earlier today. And I realized that Addison wouldn’t want this. She wouldn’t want the world put at risk just so she could live.”
“You expect me to believe that a nine-year-old can be so noble?”
“Not really,” my brother replied. “I doubt you’re able to see nobility in anyone else, since you obviously lack it in yourself. All the same, this is my facility. I pay the bills. And so I’m the one who has the final say in what happens here.” He shifted slightly so he could look look over at me. “I don’t want to continue. This needs to end.”
“Thank you, Jackson,” I murmured.
“I’m glad I have a little sister like you who can keep me on the right path,” he said. Then he transferred his gaze from me to Silas. How he was able to pick out my lover from the rest of the gula, I didn’t know, but Jackson always had been perceptive. Raising his voice, he went on, “The security code is 79437. Here are the keys.” And he lobbed a plain metal ring with a set of three keys on it to Silas, who caught it in midair with one clawed hand.
Even as Silas began to hurry toward the front door of the office suite, Lucius spat, “You wish to betray me? I’ll make sure you’re incapable of ever doing such a thing again.”
With a shove, he pushed Candace away so she stumbled and fell to her knees on the concrete walkway. In a blur, he was moving toward my brother, reaching for him, fangs bared. For a second I couldn’t figure out why he’d give up his hostage, but then I realized what he intended.
If Lucius couldn’t get Jackson to cooperate, he’d turn him into a semivive, incapable of doing anything except his bidding.
“No!” I screamed, and hurled myself between them. The vampire crashed into me, knocking me to the ground. Grit from the walkway stung my palms, while the shock of the impact sent a searing flash of pain through the leg with the pin in it, but I ignored the throbbing in my thigh, pushed myself to my feet. I had to stop him, although I had no idea how.
I wasn’t given the chance, because in the next moment Silas launched himself at the vampire master, the impact when he plowed into him so fierce that I could hear it from where I stood. Lucius let out a whoosh of a breath, but clearly the blow wasn’t enough to stop him, because he reached for my lover, hands ready to tear. I’d already seen how the wings seemed to be the gulas’ one vulnerability, and it seemed that was where Montfort planned to strike.
A dark blur seemed to come from nowhere, and I realized, in my shock and fear, that the blur was Michael St. John, who’d been conspicuously absent up until that moment. I began to move toward Silas and Lucius, thinking for sure that Michael must have come to assist the vampire who’d made him.
But then his fingers wrapped around Lucius Montfort’s neck, and he yanked him backward, pulling him away from my lover. Lucius writhed in his fledgling’s grasp, but Michael held firm.
“Traitor! You cannot go against your master!”
“Watch…me,” Michael grunted, eyes slitted with the strain of holding the older vampire back.
From the corner of my eye, I saw Tristan and Leticia turn and begin to run toward him, clearly intent on helping their master. They weren’t given the chance, however, because the gula, even the wounded Micah, blocked their way.
And Silas, seeing his chance, grasped a branch from a nearby tree, breaking it off so one end formed a sharp point. Muscles bulging in his arms, he flung the branch at Lucius Montfort.
It drove through his dark shirt, directly into his chest. Blood, an oily reddish-black under the illumination from the sodium vapor streetlights that lined the streets of the office park, sprayed outward, hitting Michael in the face, some of it even spattering against the leather jacket I wore.
The master vampire collapsed, slipping from Michael St. John’s grasp like a pile of limp laundry. For one second the vampire’s silver-bright eyes caught mine, angry, confused. “You…should…have…chosen…me,” he gasped.
And then he was gone, body dissolving into dust. Leticia and Tristan both cried out then, guttural cries that sounded more like they should have emerged from the throats of wild animals. Nothing else from them, however, because as they stood there in their shock and dismay, the other gula descended on them with their own makeshift stakes and drove them through the vampires’ hearts. Before I could blink, the two fledglings were gone, dwindling into the same sooty gray dust as their master.
At the same time, the semivives blinked, as though waking from a nightmare. The man who’d been thrown against the wall pushed himself to his feet and rubbed his shoulder. Thank God. At least he hadn’t sustained any lasting injuries.
“What the — ?” said one of them, glassy eyes focusing on the monstrous forms of the four gula.
Immediately, all of the Watchers transformed, shifting into their human selves. Felix bent and picked up his own discarded jacket and shrugged into it as if there was nothing particularly strange about the sudden alteration in his appearance. “Are you all right?” he asked the semivive who’d spoken. “Do you know where you are?”
“No,” said the man, who looked to be in his mid-thirties, brawny but already balding. “Weren’t you…?”
“We work security here,” Felix said. “Someone reported a group of men wandering around, looking drugged. I think someone’s played a cruel trick on you.”
The former semivive blinked and glanced back at his compatriots, all of whom appeared equally disoriented. Like the first semivive, they appeared to be in their thirties, athletic in build. Well, I supposed Lucius wouldn’t have bothered with specimens who couldn’t hold their own in a fight. “Drugged?” the man said. He put a hand to his head, as if it hurt him.
“Yes, I think so,” Felix told him. “Let’s call the police, see if we can get this straightened out….”
He led the semivive away, while Micah and Aaron did the same with the men who remained. The wound on Micah’s back appeared to have healed, or at least had stopped bleeding, because once he put his jacket on, I couldn’t tell that he’d been hurt at all.
Candace came up to us, rubbing at her elbow. “Well…that was different.”
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“I’m fine. Some bumps and bruises, that’s all.”
“I’m so sorry about this — ”
She held up a hand. “It’s okay. The most exciting Saturday night I’ve had in a while, that’s for sure.”
Silas looked over at his brother, who stood a few feet away from us. “Why did you do it?”
Michael’s shoulders lifted slightly. As usual, his expression appeared vaguely ironic, as if he didn’t want anyone to guess at what he might be truly feeling. “He might have made me, but you’re my brother. Besides, once I knew what he was up to, I realized he had to be stopped. We vampires are powerful enough without getting all those extra advantages.”
My brother had been listening to all this with a mystified expression on his face. “Wait — you’re a vampire?” he asked Michael. “And you’re also Silas’ brother?”
“It’s a long story,” Michael said. “One I don’t feel like telling right now. Anyway, don’t you still have work to do?” He looked over at the building that contained the lab.
“You’re right.” Jackson’s gaze moved to me. “We need to end this.”
No alarms went off. No armed guards came to ask what they were doing. But why would they? Jackson Quinn had the codes, and the keys to the office suite. There was no reason for anyone to raise the alarm.
As Candace and Michael and Serena waited in the lab’s break room, Jackson and Silas went to the refrigerated storage area and methodically destroyed the samples one by one. The senator’s expression was blank as the vampire blood swirled down into the drain, gone forever. Was he regretting his decision? Or was he simply trying very hard not to think about the future to which he’d doomed his daughter?
Silas didn’t know the man well enough to ask, and so he remained silent until the task was complete. After the last vial had been dumped and rinsed out, he said, “Can you get us into the computer systems? I can wait for Felix to come back — he’s our expert on that sort of thing — but if you have access….”
“I do,” Jackson said.
“Good. Then let’s take care of it.”
The senator nodded, and led Silas out of the storage area and down the hall to a office with “S. Gutierrez” stamped into the plastic nameplate affixed to the door. Using one of his keys, Jackson Quinn unlocked the door and went inside, then sat down at the desk there and booted up the computer, a thin, elegant iMac with an enormous screen. After typing in the password that would allow him access, he got up from the chair and said, “Your turn. I wouldn’t know what to look for.”
Silas took the seat and pulled a jump drive from his pocket. On that drive was a copy of the program Felix had created to search out every file related to the program and zap them all into nothingness. How it all worked, he didn’t know for sure; that wasn’t his field of expertise. But Felix had yet to let the gula down when it came to technical matters.
“Would your project manager have made backups?” he asked as he shut the computer back down.
“I’m sure she did. She’s very thorough. I’ll request those when I talk to her first thing tomorrow morning.”
“What if she asks why you wanted the research shut down?”
“She won’t.” Jackson offered Silas a thin smile. “I pay her very well to do what I ask. She’ll take care of it, especially once I offer to give her a sterling recommendation for her next position.”
“Ah.” Yes, Jackson Quinn did have the resources to make sure Shelby Gutierrez was very happy, and unlikely to ask too many questions. For a moment, Silas wondered what that would be like, to have the money and power to know that people would do precisely as you requested, no questions asked. But then he realized he wouldn’t want to be in that position, wouldn’t want to have the means to make the world do as he wished. Far too much temptation to do the wrong thing.
For a moment Jackson was silent. Then he gave Silas a long, penetrating look. “Do you love her?”
“More than anything.”
“Then I won’t blame you.”
“For what?”
“Taking her away from us.”
Silas and Jackson emerged from Shelby Gutierrez’s office, both of them grave-faced and not speaking. I got up from the couch where the rest of us had been waiting, but Jackson held up a hand. “Do you all mind if I speak to my sister in private?”
“Of course not,” Candace said at once. She rose from her own chair, and after a brief hesitation, Michael got to his feet as well.
“I think my work here is done,” he said. His gaze shifted to Candace. “Need a ride back to Pasadena?”
Now it was Candace’s turn to hesitate. Usually she was not one to be diffident, but I could see why Michael’s question might have given her pause. “Uh…aren’t you a vampire?”
He grinned. “Yeah, but I don’t bite.”
“It’ll be all right,” Silas said. His dark eyes, so like his brother’s, fastened on Michael. “Won’t it?”
“Of course.”
Candace looked at me. “I guess…call me when you can?”
“Absolutely,” I assured her.
“Okay,” she said, and turned to Michael. “So you live in Pasadena, too?”
“Yes.” Michael stopped there, a frown pulling at his brows. “Or at least, I guess I do. I’m not really sure what happens next, except I’m sure the neighbors are going to wonder why the Mediterranean place they lived next to suddenly turned into a faux-gothic mansion.”
Of course. Once Lucius was gone, the illusion that had shielded the house would have disappeared with him. That would take a bit of explaining. And had the vampire master even left a will? It would be just like him, to set his fledglings adrift to fend for themselves in the unlikely event of his true death.
“But that’s to worry about later,” Michael went on. “In the meantime, I have a car, and you need a ride. Shall we?”
Even my hyper-competent friend appeared a bit flummoxed by Michael’s comment. After another pause, she shrugged, then offered him a reluctant smile and gave a half-wave to me as she followed him out of the room. Silas went after them, leaving me alone with my brother.
“Well,” he said, and paused.
“‘Well’ is right.” I looked up at him, trying to detect some clue as to how he felt about what had just transpired. He appeared weary but calm, as though glad that he’d faced his fears for Addison and had managed to come out on the other side. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry?” A shake of the head, and he came over to sit next to me on the sofa. “You don’t have to be sorry. I’m the one who should be sorry.”
“Considering the circumstances, I think you’re forgiven.”
He ran his hands over the knees of his khakis. “I let myself be blinded by my worries for my child. And I’m running for President? Someone who wants to be the leader of the free world can’t allow himself to be swayed by personal issues.”
“Again, Jackson…I don’t think too many people would blame you. I certainly can’t, since I’m the one who brought the idea to you in the first place.” Prodded by Lucius Montfort, but still. My mind flashed back to the terrible pile of gray dust that lay on the ground in front of the building. I still wasn’t quite sure what to feel about that. Yes, the world would be a safer place with the vampire master gone, and I could only be glad that Tristan and Leticia had faced justice, but it had all happened so quickly that my mind hadn’t quite processed everything yet. Aware that my brother was watching me closely, expecting me to say something else, I added, “I’m certain that in the future you’ll be sure to examine all the ramifications of a decision before you make it.”
A silence. Then, “Do you think I should withdraw my candidacy?”
What a question…and one I couldn’t possibly answer for him. “That’s up to you, and Bethany, and Addison,” I replied. “I can’t tell you what would be best for all of you. I do know that you did the right thing here. In my book, that makes you a great candidate for President.”
His eyes met mine. “And what about you, Serena?”
I hesitated. In my mind, I saw a green field, and a small dark-haired boy laughing as he pulled a kite nearly bigger than he was. “I don’t think my place is here anymore.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for what?”
“Sorry we couldn’t be a better family for you. Sorry that we really didn’t try to understand what you were going through.”
He looked so troubled, so overcome by self-recrimination, that I had to move closer and put my arms around him, give him a fierce hug. “It’s not your fault,” I told him. “It’s just…life.”
“I suppose,” he said. He touched my arm. “Then go make your own, and don’t worry about us.”
That night Silas and I slept in the safe house, wrapped in one another’s arms. Candace had texted me to say that she was home and she was fine. Michael clearly had been on his best behavior, not that I doubted he would be. After all, Silas knew where he lived…for the moment, anyway.
The next day we went to my condo so I could begin to pack up my things, although I knew the bulk of the furniture and household items would end up being donated to charity. There were some personal items I wanted to take with me, though, things I didn’t want to leave behind, books and clothes, a few pieces of jewelry, an album of pictures from my childhood…possibly all I’d have to remind me of the family I would leave behind.
My mind was as at peace as it could be, since Felix had called Silas early that morning to let him know that he’d just had word of a new experimental program at Loma Linda University Hospital, one he was sure Jackson hadn’t heard of because it was so new. I passed the information along to my brother, and he had an appointment set up for Addie for the following afternoon. No promise of a cure yet, but I allowed a little hope to bloom in my heart. After all, I’d had my own personal miracle in surviving Lucius Montfort and finding the man I loved. Maybe Addison would have her miracle, too.
And Silas had contacted Detective Ortiz, had told him as much as he dared of what had happened with Lucius Montfort, just so the detective’s mind could be somewhat at ease, now that the loose end of my disappearance had been cleared up. He also passed along the photo I’d found in the pocket of Michael’s victim. With any luck, the police would be able to find the dead man’s family, give them as much closure as they could. I didn’t have to worry about the police connecting Michael to that death, however, because he’d sent a note to us soon afterward, saying he hoped the best for us, but that he needed to disappear for a while. While I hated the idea of the two brothers being separated yet again, I thought I understood. We’d all been through a great many changes in the recent past, and he needed time to come to terms with the shift in his circumstances. I did hope he wouldn’t disappear forever, though. Vampire or not, he was family, too.
As Silas and I were coming back upstairs after putting some suitcases in the back of my Mercedes SUV, Brian came out of his place and paused on the landing, staring at the two of us with some of the same fuzziness I’d seen in Lucius Montfort’s newly minted semivives the night before.
“Are you going somewhere, Serena?”
At least he still remembered my name. “Yes, Brian. Silas and I have decided to move in together, so I’m getting some things packed.”
“Oh.” His gaze shifted to Silas. “Have we met?”
“Not formally.” Silas extended a hand, and Brian took it.
“I could have sworn you were someone else, but my brain hasn’t been itself lately. Distracted by work, I guess.”
“It happens to the best of us,” I said with a smile. “I’m sure it’ll pass.”
“Probably,” he agreed. “Well, back to work. ’Bye now.”
He closed the door, and I looked up at Silas. “Will it pass?”
“I think so,” he replied. “In the grand scheme of things, he wasn’t enslaved for very long. Not many semivives can return from a vampire’s mind control, but Montfort’s grip on him was lighter than it was on his other slaves, probably because Brian had to function in the real world. It may take a few more days for him to return completely to himself, but in the end, he’ll do all right. Lucius Montfort will just be a memory of a bad dream.”
“Like he is for me,” I said, and Silas bent down and kissed me gently on the cheek.
“Yes. And I’ll make sure you’ll never have to worry about bad dreams again.”
Another kiss, this one warmer and deeper. After everything we had been through, I was ready to take him at his word.
I knew that would be enough.