Blood Entangled (5 page)

Andre shrugged. “Let us hope your ad works, then. She will be happier away from me. And we have far greater concerns.”

Kos went to his computer where the ad for Lena was still displayed. To the existing text he added,
Exquisitely beautiful. Contact current employer for more information
. With the click of a button, he re-listed the ad.

With the windows rolled down and an early morning breeze blowing through the cab of his pickup, Leo Caroli waited outside California Bottle and Container for the delivery truck. Man-sized fennel weeds grew in the cracks of the sidewalks, making the morning smell just like his grandma’s homemade sweet Italian sausage. Of all the Hunter clans, the Italians ate the best.

In the sprawling outskirts of Santa Rosa, the streets were nearly silent before seven a.m. when the trucks went out for delivery. Crickets chirped, and the highway droned in the distance. Inside the warehouse, a forklift groaned and wheezed, and men shouted instructions about which pallets went where.

His pistol was loaded, but he hoped he wouldn’t have to use it. After all, a delivery truck full of empty wine bottles wasn’t exactly an armored car. It was just full of something the vampires wanted, and so Leo wanted to prevent them from getting it. When the eighteen-wheeler pulled away from the dock, Leo’s pickup crawled out of its parking place.

Between the warehouse and the highway, he’d scouted several ideal spots for a hijacking. He got lucky. In the very first stretch of straight and narrow, there wasn’t a car to be seen. He gunned the Toyota’s reluctant engine and passed the big rig. Then he came to a complete, road-blocking stop in the middle of the lanes. He vaulted out and opened the hood of the truck, hunching over the engine.

The eighteen-wheeler screeched, grunted and finally ground to a halt. “What the hell was that?” the truck driver shouted from his window. “Cut me off and then stall out in the middle of the road!”

“I know, man. Sorry. It was a lousy move. Give me a hand steering, and I’ll push it onto the shoulder, out of your way.”

Suspicious, the driver hesitated. Leo had dressed his unintimidating five-foot-eight self in boring wrinkle-free khakis and a polo shirt. He didn’t look like a carjacker. And, the driver’s cargo was inexpensive, if important enough for Marasović to order on rush. Just as Leo had calculated he would, the driver climbed out of the rig and hurried toward the driver’s door of the pickup, ready to be on his way. Leo slammed the hood closed. When the driver sat down and put his hands on the wheel, Leo pulled out his handgun. His palm sweat around the grip, and he reminded himself that he was a good shot, thanks to endless target practice with the other Hunter initiates last month. Turned out, he’d learned one thing of use in that bunk operation against Andre Marasović.

Ethan Bennett was stupid to call off the Hunt. Leo wasn’t going to sit on his hands while Bennett jerked off over some ancient artifacts. Maybe he was little, and was no expert in weapons or torture, but Leo did have an area of expertise. He could make the Internet do anything he wanted. He’d hacked into all the email at the Kaštel winery, where he’d seen confirmation about the shipment of bottles. He hadn’t found his way through that shield or anything, but he could be a major nuisance, and make damn sure Marasović could not accomplish anything.

“Slide over,” Leo said to the truck driver, remembering to turn off the safety before he brandished it.

The man’s eyes grew wide and watery. He began to shake. “Hey. Just take the truck, kid. Leave me alone.”

“Can’t. And I’m not a kid.” Leo waved his gun, motioning for the driver to move over. He felt sorry for the guy, but he couldn’t drive a manual transmission, and he sure as hell didn’t know how to handle all the gears on a big rig.

“Please. I’ve got a wife, and a baby.” The driver scrambled across the bench to get away from Leo.

“Listen. I’m not going to hurt you. I just need the bottles.” Or, more precisely, needed Marasović not to have them.

With his gun aimed at the driver, Leo drove the Toyota into the tall grass alongside the road. Then he forced the driver back into the cab of his eighteen-wheeler, and gave him directions to the empty garage waiting for them.

Ten minutes later, he locked the driver into the trailer with water, some power bars, and a bucket. Now Leo had two hundred cases of empty wine bottles, a hostage, and a lot of time on his hands.

He opened up his laptop to see what else he could learn about the Kaštel Estate. The email that popped up on his screen was interesting. An advertisement for a cook seeking employment. Marasović’s cook was the blonde that the initiates had called a swimsuit model. If another vampire hired her, Leo might just learn the location of another household.

Chapter 4

E
THAN
B
ENNETT
E
MERGED
from the subway in Morningside Heights to search for a cup of coffee. A glance at his watch showed ten minutes to spare before his appointment with Professor Gwen Evans at Columbia University. He found a café that pressed him a shot of espresso with perfect
crema
on top, and he had just enough time to savor it, watching the last of the morning’s commuters bustle past. Ethan loved Manhattan, the whole East Coast really.

Once he exterminated the Marasović vampires and their household, he would return home to lead the Hunters from Boston, with Zoey Porter at his side. His stomach flopped, pushing espresso back up his throat. He didn’t mind the burn in his esophagus. In fact, he marveled at Zoey’s ability to elicit feelings in him—an anxious excitement he’d never experienced before.

He didn’t care that she was being fed upon and fucked by his enemy. It would have repulsed him, if he were a normal Hunter. But to him, only two things mattered. He wanted to control the ragtag army of Hunters around the world, and he wanted Zoey—his beautiful, broken, ice-cold Zoey—the only woman who stirred his abyss of a heart.

Ethan set down the demitasse. It was time to find this Gwen Evans, expert on ancient Britain’s culture and language. She was the only academic remaining alive who knew about his book. He’d shot one, poisoned the other, and he would eventually kill Evans too. But first he would find out if she had discovered anything of value in the book—or codex, as the ivory tower types called it.

He found her in what she’d aptly described as her shoebox of an office. She was a cute little Welsh fairy—petite, with an upturned nose dusted with freckles. Just what someone named Gwen Evans should look like.

“Hello, Mr. Lovac?” Her lilting Welsh accent completed the profile.

“Hello, Doctor Evans.”

“Gwen is fine,” she said, offering her hand.

“All right. I’m Edwin.” He gripped her thin fingers carefully, but firmly.

“Well, Edwin, I must say that your codex keeps blowing my mind.”

“What do you mean?”

She waved for Ethan to take the seat across from her as she sat down. “How much did Doctor Oliver tell you before…before he was murdered by that deranged graduate student?”

Her eyes shimmered with tears. Quite a display of emotion over the death of her colleague. She was cute, but definitely not his type. Too emotional. He preferred Zoey—a wise and aloof Pallas Athena.

“He told me it was the only written text he’d ever seen in that language—British?”

“Brittonic. That’s true. Until I saw this text, I believed it had never been written down, only spoken.”

Her Welsh lilt had become hard-edged and didactic. He liked it better that way. “So it’s really a rare artifact?”

“The most unusual I’ve seen. It’s completely uncharacteristic of the Celtic mind.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Celts saw the world as a place of natural harmony and balance.” She tapped her finger on a book, its cover depicting a branching tree. “They didn’t see forces of good and evil in an eternal battle. But your text is about a battle between the worshippers of the sun god and those of the god of the night, who happen to have very long fangs.”

“Yes. The teeth are curious. What about the translation? Were you able to complete the portions that stumped Oliver?”

“I did, yes.”

“May I see it?” he asked.

She squinted at him across the desk. She was no pushover, even if she grieved the death of Oliver. “Edwin, how did you come by this text?”

“It’s been in my family forever.”

“I find that hard to believe. It’s been expertly preserved. Why has no one brought it forward for study before now?”

“My family is extremely private.” He looked her in the eye and spoke firmly, as if that should answer all her questions.

She was not appeased. “Are there other artifacts?”

“Excuse me?”

“You seem rather nonchalant about possessing the codex, which leads me to believe there may be other artifacts. Perhaps they are of family interest to you, Mr. Lovac. But to me they are invaluable objects, keys that may unlock the mysteries I obsess over. They may be of great historical importance. So I ask you again—are there other objects?”

Ethan considered lying to her. He was a master at deception, his whole personality a lie. But something told him he couldn’t easily fool her. He leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees. “Yes, Gwen. There are other artifacts.”

She leaned in too, shortening the distance between them. “Where are they?”

“My family home in Boston.”

“Books?”

“No. Tapestries, weapons, household objects.”

“From the same period as the book?”

“And older.”

“Damn.” She leaned back in her chair and twirled a ring on her index finger—a band of gold Celtic knot work. Her hands were dainty, manicured but with unpolished nails.

Her eyes focused on the space immediately in front of her nose. At last, she looked at his face but waited another beat before she said, “You already know what I’m going to propose. That’s why you told me about the other objects.”

“I believe so, yes.”

“
Quid pro quo
. My full translation for access to the objects.”

“You may study them in my home, but they will not leave the premises.”

She nodded.

“When do you want to start?” he asked.

“Today. Do you have a car?”

“No.”

“I’ll rent one,” she said. “We leave this afternoon, before rush hour.”

“I’ll read the translation in the car.”

“No. You’ll have it when I see what else you’ve got. I’ll pick you up at your hotel at two thirty.”

He told her where he was staying and went back for a second espresso. Sitting in the café, he replayed his interaction with Gwen. Underneath her perky façade was a surprisingly firm backbone. This was working out even better than he had hoped. In addition to translating the book, she might provide him with information about the other artifacts.

Whistling a happy tune, he reached into his pocket and took out his little green soldier. He’d brought it on a whim, to mock his father’s bumbling attempts to lead the Hunters’ operation against Marasović. But now Stephen Bennett was dead, and the plastic toy had become Ethan’s talisman, symbolizing the army he would command—a tribe of Hunters, zealous, full of hate, and at his disposal. The more he knew about the Hunters’ past, the better. Those ancient secrets might very well be enough to incite a war, and he would be the Hunters’ commander in chief.

That left him with only one problem—how to get Zoey back.

Chapter 5

A
FTER
S
ERVING
B
REAKFAST
to the human members of the household, Lena canned tomatoes. Yesterday it was corn, the day before, green beans. Since the Hunters attacked, she’d added to her pantry every day, making certain the household could survive a lengthy siege.

Hands in thick kitchen gloves, she carried the heavy rack of steaming-hot mason jars to the pantry to cool. Her muscles burned from their weight. She grunted as she set the rack down and leaned against the wall to take stock. The shelves spanned all the way to the twelve-foot ceiling, lined with orderly rows of jars—jam, peaches, all sorts of vegetables.