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Four of them, Fain, Kaltenbach, Black Wolf, and herself, piled into an open Jeep and went for a long drive. Kit had never liked riding in a Jeep, especially not in the back seat. She felt like a wrench in a toolbox for all the comfort it had, jerking up and down over the numerous cracks and divots in the dirt road, jostling uncomfortably. Black Wolf sat behind Kaltenbach, and if anyone said anything, it wasn’t at a volume she could hear. There weren’t any streetlights, and the night was so dark it seemed to swallow the headlights. Then Fain shut off the headlights and drove in the dark. She jerked in fear before realizing they could probably see just fine. Overhead the carpet of stars shone down from an inky black sky. It felt too warm for this time of year and smelled like dust and something medicinal and resinous. She felt, rather than saw, the Jeep pull off the road.
Fain turned off the engine and the others got out. They’d disconnected the dome lights, so the stars and the faint glow of the rising moon were the only light around. Kit started to climb out of the car by feel and felt a hand reach her arm to guide her out. The moon was starting to rise, but the night still looked like charcoal on black, with only the stars overhead and the dim yellow glow in the distance marking Red Rock.
“Take my arm,” Fain said in a faint whisper.
She held him by the crook of the elbow and walked with him through the desert. He guided her, sometimes nudging her to one side, whispering when there were rocks or cactus to step over. She still stumbled. She hadn’t realized how much she relied on her vision for balance. After a few minutes the moon came above the hills and her eyes had adjusted enough that she was able to stop collecting cactus spines in her socks.
“This is as close as we can come,” Fain said. “We’ve mapped out where their external perimeter with the motion detector and electrified fence is, and we ought to be able to cross here, but as you can feel, there’s some kind of a barrier.”
Kit walked forward, but she felt it just as Fain had described. The magical ward and the electric fence didn’t overlap perfectly, and she couldn’t approach the fence because the ward here was outside it. She could barely see the faint glint of wires of the electric fence in the faint moonlight, but with her second sight, she saw the ultraviolet shimmer of the ward. She could put one hand in, and even two hands in, but stepping across the border just didn’t work. It was like lifting a leg to stand on one leg, and then trying to lift the other one.
“We’ve tried to enter,” Fain said. “If you fall against it, it pushes you out. If you try to drive across, you’re compelled to brake.”
“Freaky shit,” Black Wolf said.
“And effective,” Fain said. “There may be another alarm system on the house itself, but we don’t know yet.”
“It’s almost like they’re afraid you’ll come in and kill them all,” Kit said sarcastically.
“You will address El Patron as ‘sir,’” Kaltenbach said.
“We’re working out how to get past the alarms,” Fain said. “But we need you to get past this force field.”
“It’s a Levantine ward,” Kit said. “It’s what we used to have in Seabingen before it got destroyed by French. Who did it?”
“You will address El Patron as ‘sir,’” Kaltenbach said.
“We don’t know who did it. We think they hired someone from outside. Is it hard to break?”
Kit paused. She debated not telling him. “You can get in with black magic, sir. A human sacrifice and the right kind of witchcraft will blast a hole right through it. But I don’t do that.”
“Can’t, or won’t?” Fain asked.
“Both, sir. I don’t know how and if I knew how I wouldn’t.”
“Is there another way?” Fain asked.
“I think so,” Kit said. “I’ve worked with Levantine wards a lot. It’s powered by a keystone. With a ward of this size, there’s probably no more than one. That will be in the house somewhere, no doubt. There are two ways of dismantling it. One is to get into the perishables and unwrap them, replacing them with your own that allow your own people inside, or disabling them so the ward falls apart. The other is to get access to the keystone and destroy or deface it. Once the runes are unreadable, the spell stops drawing power from the earth and the energies will dissipate.”
“Can you do it now?” Fain asked.
“I’d have to get inside, sir. Since I’m not on the guest list, that means fooling the spell into thinking I am. I think it’s theoretically possible.” She had no idea if it was possible. “I’d have to do research and practice.”
“How soon until you know?”
“A few weeks? If I can’t do it, you’ll have to find a witch who’s okay with black magic, and you’ll have to find someone you’re willing to murder,” Kit said. “But I want no part of that.”
“You will address—”
“Sir,” Kit said, looking at Kaltenbach. “I want no part of that, sir.”
“Sire, what if they needed someone to get into the property for another reason?” Black Wolf said. “Wouldn’t they have to turn it off?”
Kit nodded. “You have a point, Black Wolf.”
“I don’t use that name anymore. It’s just Wolfe.”
“You’re right, Wolfe. If they have to get a repairman in or something, they’ll have to release it temporarily. Unless whoever created the ward is still living there, in which case they would have the ability to undo it just for the person who is coming in.”
“You could follow close on the repairman’s heels invisibly,” Fain said. “Just like you demonstrated tonight.”
“Yes, sir,” Kit said. “But cameras can see me. It’s not a true invisibility.”
“Can you handle the cameras, Medina?” Fain asked, though Kit couldn’t see who he was talking to.
“Almost got it, Sire.” Brenda’s voice came out of the darkness.
Kit peered into the darkness and saw a faint glow of a laptop screen, turned down to the lowest dimmer setting and hidden partially behind a sprawling creosote bush.
“What is that, a coffee can?” Wolfe asked. “Is that how you’re going to break into the house’s wi-fi? I thought you were supposed to be some kind of hacker, Brenda.”
“I did that an hour ago. The house wi-fi password is ‘biteme.’ Then I got bored and decided to hack into the smart home system,” Brenda said, holding up her phone. The screen seemed impossibly bright in the darkness. “Look, Sire.”
“Medina, I don’t understand what I’m looking at,” Fain said, handing Brenda back the phone.
“The house systems are all controlled via a phone, Sire. Once you’re in, you can control the cameras, the thermostat, the lights, and the house security system. Shall I make the lights flick on and off?” Brenda tapped at her phone and some floodlights illuminated a saguaro, then flicked off.
“You can control the cameras with this?”
“Yes, Sire. The cameras are set up to play on screens in sequence. Front walk, front door, front hall, side hall, vestibule, kitchen, stairs, rear entrance. Each of them plays on a sequence, so the people watching the videos get a snapshot of what’s happening in the house. But I can time it so that it lags behind someone walking into the house, so that whoever is watching doesn’t see them.”
“Well done, Medina,” Fain said.
“Thank you, Sire,” Brenda replied, and Kit could hear the pride in her voice.
Kit glanced at Fain approvingly. That was exactly the kind of stuff that had cemented her loyalty to Holzhausen.
“All right, let’s pack it up and go,” Fain ordered. “Dawn is coming and we have a lot of work to do. Melbourne, we’ll drop you off at your hotel.”
Kit got stuck in the middle seat in the back. Kaltenbach took shotgun, and no one fought her for it. Fain drove for a few miles before turning the headlights back on. Kit held her arms close to her side, not saying anything. She could hear the others chattering in that almost sub-vocal way that vampires did occasionally, broken up by a quiet chuckle.
“You’re quiet, Melbourne,” Wolfe said. “Not getting cold feet, are you?”
Kit shook her head. Outside the car, the desert air smelled resinous and dusty, and bats flickered briefly in front of the headlights on the road. “If my boss is fine with me coming down here to help you with your project, you can count on me.”
“Wolfe’s right, Kit,” Fain said, “You look like you’re worried about something.”
“I just realized that everyone in this Jeep tried to kill me the last time we met.” Kit pulled her arms even closer, so she was holding her own elbows. “Except for Kaltenbach.”
“Oh, yeah, huh. I guess that was you,” Brenda said, and shifted in her seat to face Kit. “Didn’t I bite your arm? Oh yeah, and you slashed my face.”
“I already apologized for trying to drain you,” Fain said. “You going to keep bringing that up?”
“I feel so left out. I’ve never tried to kill Melbourne,” Kaltenbach said, which made everyone else laugh.
“You tried to kill me, Kaltenbach,” Wolfe said. “Does that make you feel better?”
“Oh, yes, that’s right!” Kaltenbach said, brightening, the closest thing to humor Kit had ever seen in Kaltenbach.
Kit shook her head, amused despite herself. Vampires. “Whatever happened to Brian?”
“Who?”
“Brian Coulter, and his faerie girlfriend. What was her name? Melise?”
The laughter died.
“He turned her,” Wolfe said.
“Would that even work? She wasn’t exactly human.”
“It worked,” Kaltenbach said in a voice so cold that Kit wished she hadn’t brought it up.
They started doing that subvocal thing again, having nearly silent whispered conversations with each other. The yellow lines in the road flicked past, and the road noise from the Jeep didn’t cut the tension. Finally, Fain broke the silence.
“She will need to learn eventually,” Fain said.
Kaltenbach turned her head away from him.
“Brian turned Melise successfully. She wanted to be immortal, and he turned her even though Kaltenbach forbade him,” Fain said. “For that we could have dawned him. Obedience to one’s sire is essential to survival. Do you know what the relation is between a vampire and his sire?”
“A little, sir,” Kit said.
“A sire is more than just the vampire who gives you his blood. There’s a bond, some say a supernatural one. I believe there is. There are times when I obeyed Albers, despite not wanting to. A fledgling obeys his sire out of survival, as a kitten obeys its mother when learning to hunt. It’s an ancient hierarchy, a pact that makes us stronger as a people. Making vampires and not caring for them disturbs this sacred lineage. It’s not about controlling one’s fledgling; it’s about protecting him.”
“I could not protect him from himself,” Kaltenbach said.
“Kaltenbach adopted Brian to try to keep him alive, but without the sacred blood bond, he was able to disobey her. And Brian was not strong enough to keep Melise in line, nor secure enough to help keep his fledgling fed. She frenzied.”
“That’s when a vampire gets so hungry they just go nuts and start killing,” Wolfe said, completely unnecessarily. “She bit three people in a sandwich shop. Brian called Kaltenbach and asked for help.”
Kit looked at Kaltenbach. “What did you do?”
“I did my duty,” Kaltenbach said.
Kit turned to look at the other two vampires in the back seat. Brenda was looking down at her hands, while Wolfe found the seat back in front of him intensely interesting.
“A guild is only as strong as its weakest members,” Fain said. “This is why we demand obedience to one’s sire. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Sire,” Brenda and Wolfe said in unison.
“Those who don’t obey can endanger us all,” Fain said.
“Yes, Sire,” Brenda and Wolfe said in unison.
Kit saw with relief that they were nearly at her hotel. The bright façade, with uplit palm trees and a line of concrete firepits leading the way to the motor court looked like a bastion of safety. All these humans with cheerful human lighting speaking in human-audible tones.
“Melbourne,” Fain said. “Ask your master what price he will accept for you.”
“Yes, sir,” Kit said. Let me out, let me out, she thought. Open the door and let me out. “I will.”
“And you don’t need to tell him about my other offer.”
“No, sir.”
Fain nodded and Brenda opened the door. Kit began to scramble out before Brenda had even stepped down from the car. Kit was through the doors leading into the foyer before the car door shut behind her. She spared one brief glance behind her before heading to the elevator. She wanted to get under the blanket and have a long video chat with her family while charging overpriced hot chocolate to El Patron’s account.