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Charles hated a mystery, and he resented Jude for leaving so many behind in need of unraveling. For instance, the mystery of why Maysun had been selected as a member of the Table when she had such lengthy stretches of time where she vanished to untraceable locations. Why had Jude allowed so many small bands of renegades to live outside of the Tribe? Why had he created Jerusha and kept her alive when he must have known she could be his undoing?
Now, Charles resented the interruption into his delightful mental broadcast. He’d been channeling the thoughts and activities of vampires he’d charged with rounding up the rebels. One had shoved a young vampire into the sunlight for the pleasure of watching it ash in the light. That one has potential. A smile turned his lips up at the corner when another mental transmission intruded: the vampires following Jude’s curious project had chosen to feed and bed the female they tracked that night.
Another damned mystery. Why had Jude left three impetuous vampires stranded in an upper-middle-class town in South Carolina for years to monitor a woman? Three rebellious, bloodthirsty vampires who had followed Jude’s orders for a decade and a half without argument. Not so much as a complaint. Why? Was it because they were as addicted to this Amara woman as she was to them?
Why was it that he, Charles, sensed it whenever the young vampires sated the young woman? He was hundreds of miles away. He shared no direct ties with her or them. There was no logical reason for it. If Charles bore a connection to every vampire Jude had fathered over the centuries, he’d feel like a switchboard that never stopped lighting up. What was it about Amara that alerted him?
When Jude had told Charles about Amara, Charles worried she would grow into another Jerusha situation—a plaything that Jude fed with his ancient blood alone until she became dependent and blind to his abuse, but also incredibly powerful. Unlike Jerusha, Charles would have had the advantage of age over Amara—at least at first. If Jude fed her a steady diet of his blood alone, he suspected that her strength would, in time, outpace his.
It never came to that, though. The companions Jude had assigned this odd duty monitored her from afar, but they occasionally toyed with her and diluted Jude’s blood with their own. They trailed her and taunted her and reported back diligently. Why had Jude bothered? Why did they, when there was a world of young women and men for them to enjoy?
Charles suspected that the young vampires’ inability to turn her held Jude’s fascination. Perhaps he believed that her resistance was a sign that she held a secret in her physiology to healing vampirism. Not that Jude would want to become human again, but the threat of taking immortality away from another vampire, forcing them to live deprived of their potential for eternity, could be a weapon in Jude’s arsenal. The Shévet ha Dam lab that created photoprotection, the tool that kept younger vampires safe from the sun, studied other things. Maybe it was time he paid closer attention to what the lab was concocting, and how this woman may be playing a role.
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AS THE LAST HUMAN REVELERS slept, a handful of vampires lingering at Linda’s farewell nursed half-empty bottles of whiskey and beer. Exceptional metabolism gave them the benefit of extraordinary healing speed, but it made it a bitch to get intoxicated.
Michael finished the last of his Courvoisier and set the snifter down. An empty stretch of wooden table showed where over seventy liquor bottles once stood, wet half-moons from cold beer bottles the only evidence of what had once been there. Vivian suspected the kegs in the garden were similarly empty.
“So,” Michael said and stopped.
“So,” Vivian echoed. Lukas and Megan caught her eye from across the smoke-filled room full of sleeping bodies, and she smiled at them solemnly.
“It’s daylight. Everyone here is probably going to be crashing here for the rest of the morning, so we have time to talk,” Michael observed, keeping his voice low, so the conversation stayed between them. “I think it’s time that we come up with a plan. We’ve been talking about moving forward with different things, but it’s like we’re all not sure what to do. Megan’s quit her job. Lukas has cut his hacking into the Tribe’s websites down to a couple of times a week. And hell, I’ve been floating around in a haze, acting like I’m on autopilot.” His hands floated up from his sides in a shrug and dropped. “We need something to do. We’ve been resting on our laurels since the war, waiting for the Blood Tribe to make a move rather than being proactive. Not that I want to be the one to start problems, but we all know a confrontation is inevitable, and we’re acting like we’re helpless.”
Vivian considered his comments, her head tipping to the side. “I could channel the Source.”
Michael looked relieved at her suggestion, the tightness at the corners of his mouth and eyes easing. He scanned their surroundings. “Do you need a quieter room?”
“This will do,” Vivian said, a smile playing at the corner of her mouth. She found one of the few chairs free from debris with a lone jacket draped across the back, and she took care not to disturb it as she sat on the edge of the cushion.
Megan, watching what was now a familiar sight, noted a couple of petite half-awake humans murmuring, their heads nearly touching. Curled into an oversized chair, they looked like a pair of Gemini twins representing polar opposite, yet connected, personalities. One of them had honey-colored hair and tawny skin, and the other’s hair hung in tight, dark curls around a fair face.
The two young women, noting Vivian’s somber expression, stopped speaking.
“Is she gonna—?” the dark-haired one said.
“Shh!” Megan hissed.
Abashed, they shushed.
Vivian drew herself up, sent her shoulders back, and closed her wide brown eyes, raising her face to the heavens. Her toes were the only part of her feet touching the ground, and her arms draped loosely at her sides. Wavy brown hair tumbled down to the center of her back as she slowed her breathing. The atmosphere in the room grew charged, and energy filled the air, stirring it slightly, like the soft breeze of a slowly turning fan. Vivian exhaled and heard Megan’s thoughts: I think I saw her breath!
She blocked out any other interruptions and reached for the Source.
A fount of energy filled her with love and knowledge so strong it lifted her from her chair until she hovered above the seat. An electric charge flickered under her skin, and tiny lightning bolts set her body afire from within until she glowed with a faint, ethereal light. An irrepressible smile covered her face. She hovered for a moment, then allowed herself to drift back to the chair as the answers she sought found their way to her. The smile faded, and the room grew dark again.
“Wow,” breathed one of the women at Megan’s side, so emphatically that her tight, curls shook. “That was cool.”
“Amazingly cool,” agreed her fairer-haired friend.
Vivian stretched as if waking from a nap, arching her back as she reached her slender arms over her head. She regarded the two young women in the chair interestedly, but she communicated nothing to them other than sending them a faint smile of acknowledgment.
“You’ve gotten quite good at that,” Michael said. “What did you see?”
“Let’s go into another room first,” Vivian suggested. Michael followed her from room to room, seeking privacy but always finding slumbering people. Lukas and Megan trailed them as they searched. The four of them wound up squeezing into a bathroom. Vivian and Michael perched on the edge of the claw-footed bathtub, Megan sat on the lid of the commode, and Lukas leaned against the countertop. It was the first time that night Megan had been farther than two steps from Lukas.
The positive energy from the Source that had left Vivian with an expression of bliss became tinged with unease as she shared the flood of emotion and images she’d seen.
“It was the weirdest thing,” she murmured. “This connection was one of the most powerful connections I can remember making, but I don’t understand it. Doyle’s in trouble—that I’m sure of. Charles has plans to draw him in; he may already have. And there’s more. The Balance has shifted.”
“You mean it’s in favor of evil?” Megan asked, her voice rising in fear. Vivian shook her head.
“No, I mean the actual Balance—the—uh—the job. Maysun’s gone. Well, not gone, but she left her post. Someone new took her place. I could feel her the way I do any other human. And I don’t know who she gave it to. I guess I’m not supposed to.”
The four of them regarded one another and considered the implications of Vivian’s discovery.
Michael tilted his head in Lukas’s direction. “Get on your computer. See what you can find out. If the Balance has shifted, that may mean there’s news you can uncover in the Tribe. In the meantime, we should probably pack and be ready to move out by tomorrow morning at the latest.”
“Why leave?” Megan asked. “Don’t we want to confront them?”
“Not until we know Charles’ weakness.”
“If he has one,” Lukas added.
Megan frowned. “What if he doesn’t have one?”
“Then killing him might mean the beginning of Armageddon.”
