Blood Born (16 page)

It had better be soon, or everything was lost.

“How are Emily and Justin?” she asked, as she did
every day. She had been very close to her younger sister and brother.

“They are well.”

“My folks?”

“Also well.” His answers to both questions were true, but he didn’t say how frightened her parents were. They had figured out who, or more important
what
, had taken them. In another day and age, that knowledge might’ve been a death sentence, but once the rebellion began in earnest the existence of vampires would no longer be a well-guarded secret. The entire family had been spirited away when Nevada’s existence and dormant powers had been discovered. She thought they were being held somewhere else, but in fact her family was housed in the basement of this very house.

“When can I see them? I need to see them.”

“Not until you do what you were brought here to do. They’re alive, and that’s all you need to know. Just be thankful I let you speak to them.”

Kidnapping her family had been the only leverage they had to force her into doing what they wanted. If he’d thought he could glamour her into serving him he would’ve done so months earlier, but glamoured humans never had full possession of their faculties, and Nevada needed every brain cell to be at maximum working order.

He might’ve turned Nevada—and might still, in time—but a new vampire was often weak and he needed her to be strong. She was likely to be so overcome by her new hunger that she wouldn’t be able to give her task its proper focus. And there was no guarantee that her natural powers would survive the change; becoming a vampire might very well completely wipe away her gifts. There were so many variables, there was simply no way to tell how she might react to being turned.

No, this was the only way. But after the spell was broken … then he might turn her. That might well be the
only way to save her life. Regina would already have faced the fact that a witch powerful enough to break the spell of sanctuary would also be powerful enough to recast it. Nevada wouldn’t be allowed to live, at least not as a human. But if she were vampire …

Even that wasn’t a guarantee that she would be allowed to live. If her witch powers survived the turning intact, Regina might insist that someone so potentially powerful be killed before that power threatened to surpass her own.

“I’m doing everything you asked. Letting me see them, just for a few minutes, wouldn’t hurt anything and it would stop me from worrying—” She broke off, but he knew what she was about to say. She worried that they were dead, and he was tricking her somehow. She shoved her hair back again. “I’ve learned so much, I can do things I’d always thought were impossible, but …”

“But what?” Sorin asked when she hesitated.

“But there’s a block of some kind, a shield I can’t get past. The spell you want me to break is very strong.”

“If you want it badly enough, you can get past that shield. You’re strong enough, you just have to learn
how
.”

She looked down at the table that was scattered with crystals, cracked leather-bound books, tarot cards, and vials of dull-colored powders. All the tools were there, if she learned how to use them. “Maybe I’m the block,” she whispered. “Maybe I’m more afraid of what the world will be like if you win than I am of losing those I love.”

“It’ll be a good world,” he replied.

Nevada tilted her head back to look him in the eye. “For you.”

“Things will go on pretty much the way they do now, but vampires will be in control. Government won’t operate on emotion and politicians prostituting ideals
just to get re-elected.” He paused. “We already have three of us in Congress.”

Her mouth fell open, then after a minute she began to laugh. “Bloodsuckers in Congress! What a surprise—
not
!”

He was almost insulted—almost. Instead, he grinned back at her, because he’d had the same thought a time or two. For a moment they shared a look of complete agreement.

Then she sobered, and heaved a sigh of fatigue. “I want to go home,” she said, her voice so low she might have been talking to herself. “I want to not be afraid all the time. I want my family safe, and more than anything else I want not to know what I know.”

“About yourself or about us?”

She didn’t answer. Didn’t have to.

“I can give you many things, Nevada, but I can’t return your ignorance.” Not without completely wiping her mind, anyway. Her witch blood had ingrained the knowledge too deep, until it was so much a part of her that a simple glamour wouldn’t return her to what she’d been before.

Moodily, he surveyed her. Everything he wanted hinged, in large part, on this small human who smelled so hauntingly familiar. Victory was close; Sorin could almost touch it, it was so close. The life he desired stretched before him, a life without secrecy, without being forced to hide from those who were beneath him. The fighting might continue for years, in pockets of resistance across the country—and then across the world, as the war moved beyond the United States. But in the end, he and those like him would win. Once they had access to every home, once there was no place for the fragile humans to hide, the war would effectively be done.

Against his will, he’d become fond of the little witch. Without doubt Regina would want to kill her, so he
had to decide what
he
wanted to do. Turn the witch, or not?

How vicious would Nevada be, when—if—he turned her? How strong? Turning a human was always unpredictable. Some spent years unable to do more than feed; their new hunger eclipsed everything else. Those usually didn’t last long, because their hunger was more important to them than the codes they were required to live by—including the all-important secrecy, which was strictly enforced by the Council.

Then again, other new vampires were more balanced, more powerful from the day of their new birth. Part of it depended on the strength of the vampire who did the turning; vampires were not created equal. He suspected Nevada might be one of the stronger … if she were allowed to survive.

Luca’s cell phone vibrated gently in his pocket. He had been sleeping—again in the bathtub with all light banished, in another motel—rebuilding his energy after the long vigil before following Enoch. He’d also fed beforehand, choosing a big guy who had just left a gym; not only did the adrenaline make his blood pump faster, but a large human could give more than a small one, and not feel the effect as much. Luca preferred feeding from women, simply because they tasted sweeter, but he wasn’t after a sweet taste now; he needed volume. He had planned to feed a second time if the first one wasn’t enough, but the big weight lifter had come through with flying colors. Luca hoped the guy didn’t have a competition coming up within the next week; he wouldn’t fare very well if he did.

The message was from Theodore, and was unusual in its brevity:
Don’t come in
.

Luca’s eyebrows rose. That was interesting. Doubly so, if he had to consider the possibility that someone had stolen Theodore’s cell phone and texted him pretending to be Theodore.

He and Theodore had never been best pals. In fact, he’d have said that Theodore would have voted to give him the boot at any time if he’d thought he could convince
the rest of the Council to back him. So this text telling him to stay away was … what? A warning? Or was Theodore the traitor, and using this method to make sure Luca didn’t interfere?

There were so many variables to this latest development that Luca needed to think about them for a while. He was a hunter and a fighter, not a damn politician; figuring out what anyone on the Council was thinking at any given time was enough to make him wish he could get drunk. His own gut, however, told him to stay away from headquarters, and his gut he would definitely listen to. But he was interested, to say the least.

He shifted in the tub, stretched out his legs by propping his feet on the wall. Now that he was awake, he realized how uncomfortable he was. He needed to find a place with blackout curtains, so he could sleep in a bed. Yawning, he rubbed his hand over his face and heard the rasp of beard. He hadn’t shaved in—what?—four days now? If he hadn’t glamoured Chloe, she probably would have run shrieking from the sight of him.

He checked his internal sense of the sun’s position: almost sunset. By the time he showered and shaved, twilight would have deepened to the verge of complete darkness. Chloe Fallon should be safely at work, surrounded by people. He’d check out of the motel and arrive at Katica in plenty of time to see if any vampires arrived to lie in wait for her outside the restaurant.

He’d also find out for certain that his power had worked, that for whatever reason it had simply taken a few seconds longer for her to forget him. She might have some little quirk that kept her from forgetting as fast as everyone else did, but the end result would be the same: He would be as anonymous as ever.

* * *

Chloe glanced at her wristwatch: little more than an hour until closing time. There were a handful of customers still sitting at their tables, but they had finished their meals and were just chatting and sipping wine or coffee. It had been another good night, with a steady stream of customers. She was proud of the restaurant. Proud of the decor—which was warm and intimate, with a lot of brick and leather, a real wood fire burning in a huge central fireplace in the winter. Proud of the cuisine—which tended toward Pacific Rim but sometimes the chef went off on French tangents, sometimes on a southern tangent, which tended to keep the clientele guessing about what they might get. Everyone seemed to like it, because they kept coming back.

She had wanted to show off her restaurant. Well, not hers literally, but hers in that, for her shift five days a week, she had total responsibility for it. Chloe hated to admit it, but she was more than a little disappointed that Luca hadn’t shown up to claim the free meal she’d offered him.

At the same time, she was terrified that he
would
show, because something strange was going on. Every time she thought about him she caught a glimpse of that strange shimmer behind her eyes, which should make her very nervous, only she wasn’t. Thinking about him made her feel very peaceful. Shimmery, but peaceful. Okay, if something was wrong with her—and seeing a golden, transparent shimmer definitely fell into the “something wrong” category—then she should be seeing the shimmer all the time, and not just when she thought of Luca. Something didn’t add up, and Chloe wanted to know what it was.

On the other hand, maybe she should count her blessings. She didn’t know him, didn’t know anything about him, not even his last name. He could be an ax murderer, or a lobbyist, for crying out loud.

Well, a very nice-looking ax murderer. She refused to think he might be a lobbyist; that would just be so wrong. Regardless of what he was or did for a living, with his pale eyes and that sculpted face, he would stand out anywhere. Add in the long dark hair, falling around those broad shoulders like some … the word “model” came to mind, but she instantly rejected it. What he sort of reminded her of was the movie
Braveheart
, the way the actors had looked in their roles with their long hair and kilts. Yum. Now, if he’d just had on a kilt—hmm. She tried to bring to mind what he had been wearing, but the memory just wouldn’t form. Something dark, she thought. Maybe. But his face … yes, she remembered every detail of that face.

Valerie Spencer walked by and lightly bumped Chloe with her shoulder. “Are you okay?”

Chloe gathered her thoughts. “Sure, why?”

“You’ve seemed kind of distracted tonight.”

That was the understatement of the year, Chloe thought, but before she could answer a late group spilled through the door, laughing and talking.

“Oh, shit,” Valerie murmured. “The kitchen is going to be so pissed.” The kitchen staff was winding things down, or trying to; a large group like that, if they ordered full meals, made for late hours for everyone.

“I’ll warn them,” Chloe said, watching as Valerie went to greet the late arrivals, her tall, slender form swaying in a way that pulled men’s gazes. She had an exotic flare, from her boyishly cut dark hair to her slanted dark eyes, but regardless of how many men watched her, Valerie was cautious about who she dated. She’d been burned a time or two, so she wasn’t in any hurry to jump out of the frying pan again.

Valerie was, well, she was just kind of on the same wavelength as Chloe. She worked at Katica five nights a week, usually as hostess, though she had been known
to fill in on the floor when the waitstaff was shorthanded. She was five years older than Chloe, divorced, a D.C. native, and over the past few years had become one of Chloe’s closest friends. They commiserated about men, went to the movies, had dinner together at least once a week, and basically kept each other sane. Chloe’s other friends were either younger and more interested in a party lifestyle than she was, or married and always on the go with husbands and kids. Valerie had done the party scene and wasn’t interested in it now, so they jibed in a lot of ways.

Chloe felt relaxed with Valerie; she could bitch when she was in a bitchy mood, let loose on the sarcasm instead of having to be nice all the time the way she did at work, and Valerie understood whenever the pressure built up and Chloe had to unload all her frustration and fear. For her parents, Chloe put on a brave face and pretended that the aneurysm didn’t worry her; with Val, she could blow off steam about not being able to plan for the future when she didn’t know if she even
had
a future.

The fact was, no one knew what might happen. Her aneurysm was fairly small and stable, and no surgeon she’d found wanted to touch it. The surgery to repair an aortic aneurysm was so dicey that evidently they did it only when it was a necessity, and Chloe hadn’t reached that point. They couldn’t, however, assure her that the aneurysm wouldn’t suddenly blow, no matter how small and stable it was at the moment. Still, she was lucky in that hers had been found early, so they could keep an eye on it, blah blah blah. It was enough to drive her nuts.