Master of the Night (2 page)

Westlake licked his lips, a sick sheen of sweat rising on his face. “Calm down, sweetheart. Nobody's going to hurt you.”

“Liar!” Lizzie scuttled away from him, pulling at her own hair in agitation. “They're coming, coming with their magic swords.” Her eyes narrowed as she suddenly straightened. “But I have magic, too. You gave it to me.”

Light flared around her body with such intensity both vampires had to look away. When it faded, she was covered head to toe in armor that shone with an eerie green luminescence. “That's better,” Lizzie said, pleased with herself. “Now I'm ready for them.”

Her attention was focused on the sword she held in one hand. She waved it like a child with a new toy, watching the trail of sparks it left in the air.

Hell and damnation.
Reece and Westlake retreated a wary pace. Vampires could heal virtually any injury except those inflicted by a magical blade. Mad as she was, Lizzie could kill them both.

The Maja drew a figure-eight pattern in the air with her new weapon, admiring the dancing sparks. “We're safe now, lover,” she told Westlake. “Now I can get them first.”

Not very damn likely. She might be a menace to Reece and Westlake, neither of whom was wearing armor, but the Knights had been fighting magical battles since Merlin walked the earth.

She was simply no match for them.

“Lizzie, don't,” Westlake pleaded. “Sweetheart, you're only going to make them angry. And they'll be angry enough at me as it is.” To Reece he added softly, “You'd better go. I shouldn't have pulled you into this to start with.” He shook his head. “I panicked. I thought if anybody could save us, it would be you. But now…”

Reece felt his heart clutch. They'd been friends for years; Westlake had coached him through his first days as a vampire. To be unable to help when his friend needed it most was agonizing. “God, Tom—” He broke off helplessly, unable to think of anything comforting to say. This was not a situation in which comfort was possible.

His expression resigned, Westlake turned to Lizzie, who'd been distracted again by some new magical delusion. “Give me the sword, sweetheart,” he said gently.

She started, her gaze focusing on him as she shrank back, clutching her weapon protectively. “No. I need it.”

“Lizzie—” Thomas reached for the blade as Reece moved a little closer himself. Maybe while Westlake distracted her, he could…

“No!” She backed away a pace, bringing the weapon to bear on her lover's chest. “No. I see now, you're helping them. You want to kill me!”

“No! Lizzie, I—” Westlake took another step forward.

She swung.

Reece ducked under her arm and grabbed her, expecting Tom to leap clear. “Dammit, Lizzie, would you—”

A choked, wheezing sound interrupted him.

Lizzie's eyes flew wide. “Thomas!”

Reece snapped his head around. Westlake stood a pace behind him, looking blankly down at the blade embedded in his chest. She'd chopped into his side, the magical sword biting halfway into his rib cage. He looked up, his gaze meeting his lover's. “Sweetheart, I'm so sorry.” His voice was faint, wheezing.

Reece released Lizzie and jumped to catch him as he toppled. “Jesus, Tom, why the hell didn't you dodge?”

Westlake looked up at him, eyes already glazing. “It didn't”—he stopped to gasp in a bubbling breath—“didn't seem worth the trouble.”

“Tom!”

Westlake drew in a rattling breath as his gaze tracked past Reece to the woman he'd loved and destroyed. He made one last wrenching attempt at a smile the instant before his face went slack.

“Damn you, Tom,” Reece whispered as the vampire's heart stuttered and stopped.

“You should have saved him.” Lizzie's breath hitched. “You were supposed to save him.”

Eyes burning with tears, Reece looked up to snarl at her. “And you weren't supposed to kill him, you bloody bi—” He broke off.

Energy shimmered and sparked around her fingers in a lethal corona. “No, it's
your
fault!
You were supposed to save him!
” She flung out both hands.

As her first strike seared the air, Reece snatched the sword free of Thomas's body and rolled clear, tumbling right to her feet as thunder echoed in his ears.

“Bastard!” she spat, dancing back a step. “Traitor! I'll kill you!” From the corner of one eye, Reece saw the energy blazing brighter around her hands as she gathered herself for another blast. “Die!”

Knowing her next strike would kill him, Reece thrust the sword blindly upward. The blade bit home with a sickening jolt he felt in his own gut.

Lizzie gasped. Her eyes met his over the sword he'd driven through her heart. For an instant, the madness lifted from her gaze, replaced by a pitiful kind of gratitude. Then she toppled backward, sliding free of the blade.

Reece stared wordlessly at the body of the woman who'd been his friend just hours before. His knees gave out from under him and dumped him to the floor.

He was still sitting there, surrounded by stillness and the smell of cooling blood, when yet another silent explosion lit the room. He didn't even bother to look around. He knew the Knights of the Round Table had arrived.

“Thomas West—” a voice began, only to break off. Somebody else swore, the words weary and profane.

Reece looked up. They'd sent the whole team for this—Arthur, Lancelot, Galahad, Gawain, all the others. All twelve armed in mystical armor, with Morgana Le Fay to provide whatever magic was needed.

The vampire who'd once been High King of Britain looked down at the crumpled bodies and shook his dark head. “Oh, Westlake,” Arthur said softly, “you made a botch of this.”

“He loved Lizzie.” Reece's voice sounded hoarse and choked to his own ears. “And he knew you'd never let him stay with her unless he made her a Maja.”

“Yes, well, if Westlake loved her so much, he should have walked away,” Morgana said coldly, her elegant lip curling in disgust as she bent to examine the wound in Lizzie's chest. “We told him she wouldn't be able to withstand gaining a Maja's powers, but he had to go and Change her anyway. And look what happened. They ended up killing each other.”

“For once, Morgana, you're wrong. She killed him, but he didn't kill her.” Reece rose to his feet, feeling stiff and old. “I did.” He started toward the door.

Arthur caught his arm before he could brush by. “You did what you had to do, lad. There was no saving her.”

“I doubt that.” He looked at Morgana, bitterness and grief making him reckless. “With your powers, you could have found a way to cure her.”

The Maja sighed. “No, actually, we couldn't have. Oh, we could have restored her to sanity for a few minutes, but the energies of the Mageverse would have quickly overwhelmed her mind again. And once a Maja has access to her magic, the connection can't be severed.” She shook her head, her long hair swinging around her lean, elegant face. “Their fates were sealed the moment Westlake came in her that last time.”

Reece pulled free of Arthur's grasp. “I knew that before I walked in the door.”

Avalon, Mageverse Earth
Present Day

Reece sprawled on one of the iron benches around the central square, watching the witches dance in the moonlight. Ageless, immortal, and beautiful, the Majae circled in an energetic eighteenth-century reel, jeweled hands glittering as they clapped and stamped.

The Desire stirred, hungry for a taste. He quieted it with a sip of donated blood from his goblet. It tasted of heat and magic, as different from mortal blood as aged bourbon is from tap water. Reece preferred to drink from a witch's throat, but in lieu of that, the goblet would do.

Swallowing another sizzling mouthful, he eyed the dancers, wondering if he'd be able to seduce one of them into going home with him for the night. It was a distinct possibility. Majae needed to give blood as desperately as vampires needed to drink it; otherwise they both suffered unpleasant health effects. He'd never been sure whether that erotic symbiosis was a very neat system or simply Merlin's wicked joke at their expense.

Perhaps a bit of both.

“You know,” Lancelot du Lac said in his ear, “I don't remember that particular dance being so damned sexy.”

“Probably because the dancers weren't wearing miniskirts and tight leather pants at the time,” Reece retorted as his friend threw himself onto a nearby bench.

“God, I love progress.” Lance sighed.

Reece grinned, noticing the way Lancelot's hungry gaze tracked his new bride, Grace, as she sang and spun her way through the dance. “How's married life, newlywed?”

“Anything but boring. You should give it a try.”

He snorted. “What right-thinking Maja would have me? If I'm not on a mission for the High Council, I'm hunting spies or terrorists for the Americans.”

“Hey, you were the one who agreed to be the Champion of the United States.”

Arthur, himself Champion of Britain for the past sixteen hundred years, had asked him to work with the fledgling country's government as the Magekind's eyes, ears, and hands. Since then, Reece had fought Redcoats, Johnny Reb, Apaches, and Germans—twice—as well as communists and terrorists. He'd spied, lied, and killed, walking an uncomfortable tightrope between the needs of his country and the demands of Avalon. The two did not always coincide, particularly since he had to keep his allies in the CIA and the FBI in complete ignorance about the Magekind. As far as they were concerned, he was merely a lone vampire with a patriotic streak.

“Yeah, I agreed,” Reece said. “Two hundred and twenty-eight years ago. A man's entitled to a little time off.”

Lance laughed. They settled into a companionable silence, watching the Majae dance as other vampires shouted ribald encouragement from the sidelines.

All around the square, the city of Avalon thrust into the Mageverse sky. Medieval castles, French chateaus, and thoroughly modern townhouses shouldered against one another, each designed to suit the individual whims of its magical owner. Towering Mageverse trees stood between them, draped in swags of fairy moss, surrounded by drifts of jasmine and roses.

Listening to the music, Reece let his head fall back. Something small and glowing shot past overhead, almost lost against the shimmer of the Mageverse. “Look,” he said to Lance, “there goes a fairy.”

His friend shot a jaundiced glance skyward. “Probably spying.”

“Relations haven't improved with the Sidhe court, I gather.”

“Not since the Majae's Council turned down King Llyr again,” Grace said, dropping down beside her husband, delightfully sweat-dewed and panting. She was a lithely muscular woman, as blond as her husband was dark, an elegant match for his power. “I warned Morgana they're pissing him off for no good reason, but as usual, Grandma ignored me.”

Reece lifted an interested brow as she wiped sweat from her forehead with the back of her wrist. “Is he still set on marrying a Maja?”

“Yeah, and if we had any sense, we'd let him. We need all the allies we can get, given the situation on Realspace Earth.”

“What, with the terrorists?”

Grace stared at him. “No, the Death Cults. Didn't you get CNN in Iraq?”

“Oh,
those
cultists.” Over the past year, dozens of cults had sprung up from D.C. to California. On the surface, none of them seemed related: Their rhetoric ranged from white supremacist to far-left ecco-looney, while their preferred weapons ran the gamut from poisoned cold medications to human sacrifice. Their only common denominator was the murders they committed and the panic they'd inspired in the public. “So we've decided they're nasty enough to warrant attention.”

“Exactly,” Lance said. “Seems one of the Majae has had a vision the cults really are using magic.”

Reece stared. “The High Council thinks a Maja is involved?”

“No, and that's the really terrifying part,” Grace said. “They swear the magical signature is not one of ours.”

Oh, that wasn't good news. “Sidhe, then? Llyr?”

“I doubt he'd get involved in something like this,” Lance said. “Though I wouldn't put it past that psychotic brother of his.”

Reece grunted. “I'll see what I can find out from the Feds. I'm probably going to be stateside for several months anyway.” Catching Grace's questioning look, he explained, “Hunting a mole.”

“The CIA thinks they've got another double agent?” Lance asked, interested.

“No, it's the FBI. One of their counterintelligence guys asked me to look into it. Unless I get lucky, I'm going to spend months talking to bureaucrats to see who lies.”

His acute vampire senses allowed Reece to hear a liar's heartbeat jump, or smell the faint trace of fear in sweat. Once he had a suspect, he could bring in a Maja for a little surreptitious mind reading. The Feds didn't know about the Majae, so Reece had to conduct the bulk of such investigations without magical assistance. It was annoying, but he had to ensure the Magekind's secret stayed secret.

“When are you heading to Washington?” Lance asked.

“Day after tomorrow. I've got to put in an appearance at Champion International first.”

Grace propped her head on her husband's shoulder and smiled at Reece. “Have I mentioned how cool it is that you founded that company to provide for your descendants?” She cut her eyes at Lance. “Instead of just fathering bastards all over the place and letting them fend for themselves, like some people I could name.”

“Hey,” Lance protested. “He's only been around a couple of centuries. They're easier to keep track of when there's not so damn many of them.”

“Which wouldn't be a problem if you'd use protection once in a while,” Reece told him. “Hell, just pull out…”

“Now wait a minute. First off, I'm married, so I'm not doing that anymore anyway….”

“Damn straight,” Grace said, and nipped his ear in warning.

“Back off, you. I do the biting in this relationship.” Laughing, he threw up an arm as she tried to get him again. “Second of all, if every Knight of the Round Table had pulled out every time he banged a girl, neither of you would be here to bitch at me about it.”

“He's got a point,” Reece reminded Grace.

“Except in my case, it was Morgana who did the bastard-spawning. Anyway, they could at least take an interest.” She punched Lance lightly in the ribs and told him, “When I was a cop, I never found one of
Reece's
granddaughters living in squalor.
They're
all pulling down a hundred thou a year working for one of the biggest multinationals in the world.”

“You want me to keep track of who Galahad's knocked up, too? Now, there would be a full-time job.” Lance rolled his eyes. “‘Virgin knight' my ass. I don't know where the poets got
that
idea.”

“They made it up.” Reece grinned as he took a sip from his goblet, remembering the legend that painted Lancelot's son as the saint of the Round Table. “Just like the one about vampires being sterile, walking corpses.”

Lance's eyes took on a wicked glint as he turned to Grace. “Speaking of not being sterile, has it occurred to you that Galahad is now your stepson? Which makes all his descendants your step-whatever. And then, of course, there's my sons and daughters and grandsons and great-great-et cetera.” As her expression became steadily more hunted, he purred, “We poor, limited vampires could never find them all, but with your goddesslike magical powers, you could. Given your keen sense of responsibility.”

She looked so horrified, Reece shouted with laughter. “I think you just lost that one, sweetheart.”

“No, he's right.” Cool determination sparked in her eyes, and she rose to her feet. “At the very least, I can make sure none of them are starving.”

“Hey, wait, where are you going?” Lance said to her retreating back as she strode away. “Grace, we had plans!”

Reece slapped him on the back and stood. The last dance was breaking up; it looked like a perfect opportunity to do some seducing. “Well, you'll have to excuse me. I want to get laid.”

“Yeah, well,” Lancelot said, staring glumly after his wife, “I'd say your chances just got better than mine.”

 

Atlanta

Reece hesitated at the door to the crowded ballroom, the scent of gin, caviar, and packed humanity teasing his senses. The light from dozens of chandeliers blazed over designer gowns and black tuxedos, and the air was full of practiced laughter.

With his vampire hearing, it was easy to pick up the dozens of conversations going on around him. Eavesdropping being a spy's old habit, he listened with interest as the CEO of Champion Steel chatted up the pretty president of Champion Electronics. The woman laughed and turned the conversation to his branch's search for new superconductors.

During the past two centuries, the little shipping company Reece had started with his son, Caleb, had grown and diversified beyond all recognition.

Not unlike his bloodline.

Most of whom seemed to be at this party. Some were legitimate descendants through his son, but others had been fathered inadvertently by Reece himself when a condom had broken, or—before modern condoms were invented—he'd failed to pull out in time.

The Maja's Council frowned on birth control spells. They wanted the available pool of Latents as broad as possible, since the percentage they considered worthy to become Magekind was so small.

Like Grace, Reece had always found the Magekind's careless attitude toward their mortal offspring a bit appalling. Whenever he learned of one of his own children, he made sure they were provided for. The High Council did not allow the Magekind to marry mortals, so the best he could do was to offer them or their mothers jobs at Champion International. Some branches of his extended family had worked for the company for generations.

“Reece!”

He turned to see the CEO of Champion International shouldering through the crowd. Steve Champion clapped him on the back and gave him a handshake, grip firm and warm despite the age spots on the back of his hand. “Glad you could make it,” the man said, his faded blue eyes lighting up in pleasure. “I know how busy you are.”

“Wouldn't have missed it,” Reece told him with genuine pleasure. “I don't see you enough these days.”

Damn, time didn't just fly, it was jet propelled. Reece could remember when Steve had been the bright-eyed protégé he had tapped to run the family company forty-five years before. The boy must be pushing eighty now. Soon—all too soon—Reece would find himself attending yet another funeral.

Years ago, he'd tried to convince the Majae's Council to send some pretty Maja to Turn Steve, but they'd refused. Evidently, the boy was one of those who couldn't withstand the transition. Reece didn't argue, having learned his lesson on that score two centuries before.

Now he was going to have to bury yet another child he'd come to love.

To make matters worse, he'd have to choose the lad's successor. He dreaded that, too.

On paper, of course, Reece was no more than a junior VP who should have no say in such a vital decision, which was supposedly made by CI's Board of Directors. Usually Reece let the board and CEO run the company without interference, but this was different. The board would damn well approve his choice, even if he had to have a Maja magically convince the holdouts.

When it came to CI's future, Reece could be as ruthless as any other captain of industry.

“I suppose you're aware of this deal I'm trying to put together to acquire ComTec,” Steve said now, dropping his voice. He was one of the few at CI who knew Reece was a vampire. Like the others, however, he was under a spell that prevented him from speaking about it to anyone else, a safety measure the Magekind High Council had insisted upon.

Reece nodded. “I've heard something about it.”

“ComTec's CEO is here tonight. George Gavel.” Steve hesitated delicately before his voice dropped even more. “I'd appreciate it if you'd have a word with him. See how serious he is about this deal.”

Reece smiled slightly. “For you, Steve, anything.”

 

An hour later
he was listening to Gavel drone on about his golf swing when he scented a Latent that was definitely no descendant of his. Her enticing blend of musk and spice seemed to bypass his brain and wrap around his sex like long female fingers. As his body hardened in instant response, Reece glanced around the crowded ballroom for the source of the scent.

Blue eyes met his over the CEO's shoulder, amused and faintly mocking. A delicate blond brow lifted. The Latent's carmine mouth quirked in a taunting half-smile.

Then she turned with a roll of a deliciously curved hip and sauntered away through the cocktail party crowd.

Reece's eyes narrowed, scarcely aware of Gavel's complaints about his new custom-made titanium driver. Her strapless gown was the same fuck-me crimson as her lipstick, in brilliant contrast to the cream of her slender shoulders. The dress clung to her tight, narrow waist and heart-shaped rump before ending at mid-thigh, displaying long, sleekly muscled legs. She wore her shimmering blond hair piled on top of her head like a crown, baring a tempting length of nape. He imagined pressing a kiss there.