When Passion Lies: A Shadow Keepers Novel (12 page)

Right now, of course, the point was to find Drescher Bovil. Find. Kill. Get the hell back home.

Normally he’d take a bit more time with an assignment, but Tiberius had stressed the urgency of the matter. The Alliance vote was coming soon, and the new para-daemon rep needed time to get in the job, get settled, and make the right decision about whom to vote for.

But all of that meant that the old para-daemon rep needed to be removed from the equation.

Fortunately, Bovil wasn’t particularly popular even with his own kind, and it didn’t take too much effort for Slater to learn where he was tonight—tucked away in a five-star hotel with a steady parade of human hookers. At the moment, Bael was crouched in the hallway outside Bovil’s hotel room. The guard beside the door was lolling forward in his chair, most likely because Slater had broken his neck. He’d already taken care of the security cameras, so that wasn’t a problem. And while he would have liked to slip into the room as mist beneath the door, the room had been reinforced with hematite.

Apparently Bovil used this particular love nest a lot.

Bad, in that it made Slater’s mission that much more difficult.

Good, in that those precautions would make it harder to place blame on the vampire community.

According to his source, Slater’s men checked each girl for weapons, recorders, cellphones, the works in the lobby. Once they were cleared, they were given a five-digit code and told to memorize it. The code worked the keypad lock on the door. And there was no other way in. Slater had searched the guard just in case, but he’d found no key card, no traditional key, and no number scrawled conveniently on his body.

The girls were the only way in.

So now he waited.

The elevator dinged, and Slater stood at attention beside the slumped guard. The doors opened and a petite blond human stepped out. She licked her lips, squared her shoulders, and walked straight toward him.

“Code?” he demanded.

She glanced down at the guard in the chair, her face a question mark.

“He’s on break,” Slater said. “We rotate. Code?”

“Five, two, five, three, one.”

Slater nodded, as if satisfied. “Fine. Stand for inspection.”

“But I—”

“Stand for inspection.”

She stood straight, eyes wide, and he punched in the code. The lock clicked, he pushed open the door, and ushered her inside with a sweep of his arm.

He’d chatted up the front desk clerk earlier and learned the layout of the suites. He’d expected that Bovil
would be in one of the two back bedrooms and that the foyer and living area would be empty. He’d been right.

He took a guess, nodded toward the bedroom on the right, and told the girl to go on in. Then he positioned himself at attention in front of the door, just for show. He waited until he could hear moans and the creaking of bedsprings. Then he crossed to the bedroom door, pushed it open, and evaluated the scene: Bovil on top of the hooker, pumping his brains out, his back—not to mention his ass—right in Slater’s field of vision.

Damn, but he was making this easy.

He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the ice pick he’d stowed there.

Two quick steps and he was at the bed. One more economical move and he had his arm around the para-daemon’s throat. With his other hand, he pressed the end of the ice pick against Bovil’s right ear.

“I’ve got a message,” he said as Bovil thrashed, though he wasn’t certain Bovil could hear him over the girl’s screams. And then it didn’t matter, because he knew damn well that Bovil couldn’t hear him once the ice pick penetrated his ear, not to mention his brain.

The para-daemon went limp and Slater dropped the body. “Shoddy security, dude. You really should be ashamed.”

In the bed, the girl trembled. “Trust me,” Slater said. “He wouldn’t have been nice to you.” He pulled a wad of bills from his pocket. “Consider this a tip. Keep your mouth quiet, and I think it’s fair to say you earned it. Got it?”

She nodded, fear clinging to her like dime-store perfume.

“Go,” he said, and she was out the door before his voice faded.

“Nice girl,” he murmured as he pulled out his knife and removed Bovil’s head, just to be safe. You couldn’t be too careful with para-daemons. He’d learned that one the hard way.

A ringing phone interrupted his attempt to clean his knife on the bedspread. He looked around and found it on the floor beside the bed, the caller ID reading Private.

He answered, his voice deliberately low and raspy.

“What?”

“Sir,” a breathless voice said. “Sir, you were right. All those rumors. They’re true. Something’s up with Lihter. He’s working on something big.”

The speaker paused, and Slater debated only a moment before deciding to press his luck. He scratched at the mouthpiece, hopefully simulating static. “Tell me.”

Too much. The caller knew
.

He heard a gasp, then a click.

And that, Slater thought, was his cue to leave.

“Sir, they’ve arrived.”

Faro Lihter turned as Dr. Honas Behar hurried toward him, sweat glistening on his forehead. He wiped it with the sleeve of his crisp lab coat, then grimaced.

Lihter smiled. “Nervous, Doctor?”

“These creatures aren’t even supposed to exist anymore. To have the chance to study one …” He trailed off, and Lihter had the distinct impression he was literally buzzing with pleasure. “But, sir, the chamber. I haven’t had the opportunity to test it.”

“Do you think I’d bring you to a lab and not have it be sufficient for your purposes? Do you think I’d spend years building this complex without ensuring that everything is perfect?”

“No, no. I didn’t mean to insult. I only—”

Lihter held his hand up. “She comes.”

Behar fell silent as Lihter cocked his head, listening to the sound of his team’s footfalls on the long stretch of stairs that led down from the surface to the thick metal door. He savored the moment.

“Do you know how many years I’ve waited for this moment?”

“I … No, I don’t.”

“I was there, in Marseilles, right in the middle of the very last outbreak of the plague.”

“You were there?”

“I walked through the destruction with my head held high. I was a god walking through the valley of the shadow of death, and I knew then what I would do. Capture the hybrid. Use the hybrid. And repopulate the world the way that it should be.” He met Behar’s eyes. “The way we will.”

“Sir!” He could see his own passion reflected in the doctor’s eyes, and he smiled.

“Unfortunately, my plan has taken longer than I’d hoped. Tiberius put a bit of a kink in it when he killed the last hybrid in Cluny.”

“The last?” Behar’s eyes darted toward the door.

“But—”

“The last,” Lihter confirmed. “At the time, anyway. That will be our first question for our guest. How she came to be. A new hybrid in a world without hybrids. A creature created from something that cannot be made.
It’s a mystery, and one that neither I nor my team have been able to solve.”

Behar was a relatively new addition to the team—he’d joined only a decade ago. But for centuries now, Lihter had been gathering like-minded werens around him, setting them to various tasks aimed at only one goal: the creation of a new hybrid.

It wasn’t easy work. Lihter had spent years researching ancient texts, trying to learn how a hybrid was made. He’d found only one clue, a transcript of a story handed down within a family. A vampire warrior in the third century who’d come upon a woman who begged the warrior to kill her.

As the warrior recounted the story, he’d refused at first. But then the woman had threatened to bring out the wolf right there in the middle of the Roman forum. And so he said he would do it. But first she had to answer one simple question:
How?
How had she come to be?

But the woman didn’t know. She’d been a vampire, and one night she met a werewolf prowling deep within a forest. They’d fought, and she’d somehow lost her senses. She remembered torture and pain. And when she came back fully to herself, she knew that she’d fallen under the curse, and that what she’d once believed was only rumor was alive within her. She had no explanation as to how, and assumed it must have come about by dark magic.

She could tell the warrior nothing more, and he had honored his promise. Right then, right there, he drove a stake through her heart, then lopped off her head.

At the time he’d discovered the document, Lihter wished the warrior had asked for a few more details.
And hoping that maybe the warrior had in fact learned the secret but had recounted the truth elsewhere, he began a systematic search for every document authored by the vampire warrior.

The process was long and tedious, but he knew he would succeed. Lihter had both confidence and patience, and he’d begun building this facility even before he had the first clue about how to create a hybrid.

His confidence and preparation had paid off. About eleven months ago, his research had taken a most extraordinary turn. He’d been perusing the collection of a small library in Peru when he had run across one particularly interesting tidbit: He was not the only one following the trail of hybrids.

There was another.

Another researcher was reviewing the same books. Another scholar was following the same leads.

Lihter had shifted his plan. He stopped searching for the warrior and instead began to look for the researcher.

That hadn’t taken long. The researcher had taken some pains to hide his identity, but not many. After only a few inquiries and bribes, Lihter was able to obtain a name: Cyrus Reinholt.

And as luck would have it, Reinholt happened to be a werewolf. A werewolf who lived in Paris and was a frequent guest at the château.

Truly the stars were aligning in Lihter’s favor.

His plan had been simple. Fabricate a security breach and bring all of the werens with château access in front of a Truth Teller. But apparently Reinholt got wind of the plan and ran.

It had been most inconvenient. At least until Lihter
had learned that Reinholt had a daughter. And children meant leverage.

He’d arranged to kidnap the bitch. A straightforward, simple arrangement that had turned out to be not so simple after all. Because during the course of the abduction, she’d been injured, and her blood had destroyed one of his men.

Acid blood
.

The hallmark of a hybrid.

Everything had fallen into place—Reinholt had found the answer in the research, and he’d made a hybrid of his own daughter. A horrible thing for a father to do, really, and Lihter felt no guilt about taking her away from such a worthless excuse of a parent.

But the girl was his now. His years of researching had been fascinating, to be sure. And he would still very much love to have Reinholt’s secrets at his disposal.

None of that, however, was critical anymore.

The girl was his weapon.

And he intended to use her well.

And soon.

The thunder of footsteps stopped outside the heavy steel door, and he heard the steady
beep beep
of the twelve-digit security code being entered. Beside him, Behar stiffened, anticipation coloring his face like a mask. Lihter felt the same way. The day the girl had been apprehended in Frankfurt, Lihter himself had been in Paris, addressing the day-to-day tasks that occupied him as the Therian representative to the Alliance table—and ensuring that he wasn’t directly tied to the girl’s disappearance.

Now they were in the small Liechtenstein laboratory that he’d so carefully—and secretly—constructed over
the years. He hadn’t even seen the girl yet. His unexpected prize. His glorious reward.

The moment would be unforgettable.

The door opened, and four of his most trusted men came in, each carrying one corner of the hassock on which the girl lay, unconscious.

“You used enough tranquilizer?” Lihter asked. “Her resistance will be as abnormally high as her strength.”

“Could knock out five circus elephants with the dose we pumped into her.”

She lay on the hassock, her arms at her side, her eyes closed. Her hand was scarred where it had been cut, but was already starting to heal. Except for the ten hematite straps that crisscrossed her body and the IV tube feeding into the back of her hand, she could have been simply sleeping peacefully.

“Beautiful,” Lihter said, then caressed her face. She was young, only about eighteen, and in repose she looked as innocent as she was deadly.

“Remove the straps and the IV and put her in the room,” he said. He glanced at Behar. “How long will it take for the drug to wear off?”

“Without a better understanding of her physiology, I can’t be certain, but I’m guessing four or five hours.”

Lihter nodded, then glanced at Rico, his right-hand man. “Run a complete diagnostic on the system. Make sure all vents are opening and sealing properly.”

“Will do,” Rico said. The console phone, the hard line, began to ring. Lihter gestured for him to answer it, then waited impatiently for Rico to finish.

“Sir.”

“I also want you to confirm all monitoring equipment is calibrated. We’ll run the first test as soon as she wakes.”