“Wait a second.” Joseph gestured for her to join him in the theater. He stood in front of the huge movie screen, pressing his fingertips here and there. A grin broke across his face. “Check this out.”
Something behind the screen clicked. It slid aside to reveal a small room filled with video monitors, recording equipment, and a control panel covered in switches, dials, and labels. On the floor next to one of the chairs lay her backpack.
“Are you any good with this sort of stuff?” she asked the bodyguard.
“Passable. I can get someone better from the Denver office.”
“We need to find out if they have anyone else here and get a look at what they’ve got in the data banks. And…” She paused, looking toward Aaron, who hovered at the entry, “There’s some footage I want destroyed.”
The vampires arrived in a rush of wind. From the control room where Angie and Joseph watched the security monitors, they saw the abrupt appearance of dozens of the creatures, and he used his comms unit to warn his people. The Ruler of Denver had brought a small army, it seemed, at least thirty. They swarmed into every room of the mansion. Angie stepped into the main entry and looked for the leader.
One vampire stood in the doorway, a heavyset female with an expression as cold and grim as a gravestone. When her eyes came to rest on Angie, she took a step forward.
“Angie Clark?”
“Yes.”
“I am Elsa Burnett, the Ruler of Denver. Where is my vampire?”
Loud cries sounded from the hall. The Ruler looked past Angie and vanished. Angie ran after her.
Joseph and his people stood back from the trap door, hands raised, guns pointed at the ceiling. Vampires with bared fangs surrounded them. A scream echoed in the silver cage below, and when she saw her captors had vanished, the prisoner at last escaped. Three vampires converged on her immediately. They pinned her down while she snarled and snapped her teeth like a rabid dog. Two others stepped forward, holding several IV bags fat with dark red fluid. They opened a hole in one, sat it on their sister’s lips, and squeezed. Blood gushed into her mouth.
She drank. As soon as one bag was empty, they replaced it with another. Elsa Burnett watched for a few moments before turning to Angie. “Where are the people who did this?”
“In a bomb shelter. Joseph and his men can show you where.”
“We haven’t much time. Hurry.”
Joseph’s team moved at a brisk trot with the vampires following in eerie silence.
“What will you do?” Angie asked. “There’s less than an hour before sunrise.”
The Ruler of Denver’s smile made her shiver. “Our human servants will have arrived by then. We’ll pry the turtles from their shells, and our people will secure them while we go to ground for the day. You will stay until we rise?”
The last sentence wasn’t really a question. Angie nodded.
“Good. We shall see to this in our own way. James says we can trust you, and I am inclined to believe him. Have you called the human authorities?”
“No.”
The vampire cocked her head. “Why not?”
“Human authorities let people as rich as Lockhart get away with murder and worse, but vampires are a different story. He deserves whatever he gets.”
“Do you really believe that?”
Angie took a moment to find the right words. Slowly, she said, “The Covenant has made it clear we humans have the right to protect ourselves if a vampire tries to kill or enslave us. Shouldn’t that work both ways? You have the right to justice, and you won’t be able to get it from our legal system, not in this case.”
“You’re comfortable making that judgment call on behalf of your species.”
“No.” She sighed, rubbing her forehead. “But I haven’t got a better alternative.”
“And your people? Will they follow your lead?”
She wondered what the vampires would do if she said no. Angie gazed into those cold eyes, knowing she didn’t dare lie. “I think so. Let me speak with them.”
Booms echoed from deep below in a slow, steady rhythm. Burnett’s people had gone to work on the bomb shelter.
The Ruler whipped her head around, and every inch of her body tensed. Angie looked to see what had caused her alarm. Aaron stood in the doorway.
“Fallen,” the Ruler said.
“Vampire,” he answered. “Thank you for coming.”
“You would have killed Irina if I hadn’t.”
He shook his head. “Only if it was necessary. I didn’t want to hurt her. She’s been hurt enough.”
The vampire drew back, eyes widening. “Is this compassion, from one of the Fallen?”
A smile touched his lips. “Yes.”
One last boom sounded, and everything went still. Then the screaming began.
The Ruler’s human allies arrived with only minutes to spare. Burnett issued swift orders. Irina, who had only begun to recover from her ordeal, was already at a nearby haven where she could not harm anyone while still in a maddened state. As the humans took over, vampires disappeared one by one. They flew into the woods or elsewhere on the grounds of the estate and sank into the earth, which would protect them from the killing light of the sun.
Elsa Burnett lingered to speak one last time with Angie.
“We owe you a debt.” She looked at Aaron. “Both of you. When I rise, we will discuss it further.” She started to turn away, then paused and looked at the Fallen again. “Two of my humans have consented to meet your needs, if you wish. Yours is weak.”
“Thank you.”
With that, she was gone.
Aaron moved closer to Angie. Whispers of sensuality stretched out to caress her. He must be hungry, she realized, and despite her exhaustion she couldn’t help wanting him. Angie inched closer, and he leaned in, but before they touched, he pulled back. “Ruler Burnett has provided for my needs. I must allow you to see to yours.”
She nodded, both relieved and disappointed.
Chapter Nineteen
Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature's inexorable imperative.
—H. G. Wells
Sarah Miller
Twelve Years Ago
After the judges left the stage, the vampires in the auditorium moved about and murmured in small groups. Some stepped into the hallway while others got out their cell phones. A few watched Sarah as she walked down the side aisle. It made her feel very small, and at the same time, strangely large, to command the attention of such beings. She slowed to a stop in front of Vanessa.
“How bad is it?” she asked.
Vanessa looked more pale than usual. She and James Morgan both rose. The older vampire took a half step forward and bowed. Sarah stared, speechless at this sign of respect. She didn’t know how to react.
“I wish to thank you, Miss Miller. I understand Vanessa would be dead were it not for your intervention. Allow me to introduce myself. I am James Morgan, Vanessa’s creator.”
He held out his hand, and she hesitated, then placed hers in it. The vampire squeezed gently before letting go.
“It’s…nice to meet you,” she said. “What are they going to do? Vanessa was just trying to help us.”
Neither answered right away. Sarah couldn’t read anything on James’s face, but Vanessa looked frightened despite her attempts to hide it.
“This is not a simple question,” James said at last. “The Tribunal is caught between a rock and a hard place. They will seek a middle ground, if they can.”
“Like they always do.” Vanessa sounded bitter.
“What is this Covenant? No one will tell me anything; they just keep saying they’ll explain later.”
Morgan blinked and raised his brows a fraction. “How can you have lived among our kind for so long and not know about the Covenant?”
“Antonio and the others made it sound like a bunch of old men yelling at kids to get off their lawn. What is it really?”
James frowned. He glanced at the door through which the judges had disappeared, then back to Sarah. “I will explain as much as I can while we wait.”
At his invitation, Sarah settled into the seat beside him, leaning away a little. She didn’t like to get too close to any of them, not even the ones who seemed to treat her with respect. It bothered her that there were so many at her back. They were too quiet for her to hear what they were up to.
“The Covenant was formed shortly after World War Two,” James began. “Some of the sovereigns here in America had begun to talk about the dangers presented by new human technologies. It was all informal at first, but it gained momentum as we saw those technologies used for more and more advanced methods of warfare. Some of them were powerful enough to be dangerous even to us. In the past, we discouraged human aggression by making severe, indeed vicious, examples of those who managed to kill one of us. But your technology is changing the balance of power, and I believe one day it will tip in your favor.”
Sarah nodded. These creatures must have seemed invincible to primitive humans. Even in the nineteenth century, a vampire would be virtually invulnerable against what puny resources a human might have. Unless one was found in its hiding place during the day, when it was helpless, human beings did not stand a chance. But now there were machine guns and grenades, flamethrowers, ground-penetrating radar…she could see how they might be worried.
“When you put it that way,” she said, “I wonder why we haven’t made more weapons especially for you guys.”
“Indeed. We have been careful in recent decades. We kill less frequently, and when we do, it is among your poor and disenfranchised, those who will not be missed. Our tactics have changed, as well. We have learned to seduce instead of using force. The human authorities will not get involved if our victims are willing.”
Sarah looked at her hands. She had been a willing victim, at first. “You don’t need violence to feed on us. You could probably drink your fill whenever you wanted, with your entrancements and your seductions.”
He sighed. “Unfortunately, we cannot stop craving other things.”
“Your fear and pain feed us as much as your blood.”
Sarah jumped, nearly falling out of her chair at the sound of a new voice from behind. She twisted around to see another vampire looming over her, and got up to edge a couple of steps away. Once she was on her feet, she realized this creature was the tallest vampire she’d ever seen, as tall as basketball players at college games she’d gone to when she was young. She met his eyes. They were a blue so pale they were nearly translucent and seemed to reach under the mental defenses she’d built. He raised the small hairs at the back of her neck.
The vampire's eyes creased at the corners. “I’m sorry. I did not mean to startle you.”
She folded her arms around her waist and looked down. “I’m just a little jumpy.”
“I imagine you are.” He spoke in a deep baritone, quietly, as though he expected others to make the effort to hear whatever he had to say rather than raising his voice to demand their attention. For the first time, she wondered just who these spectators were at the Tribunal. What made you special enough to be allowed inside when so many others were kept out?
James had risen to his feet, as well. He gave the tall vampire a thoughtful glance before saying, “Allow me to introduce you. Sarah Miller, Lord Scott.”
What was a Lord? Was it anything like a Monarch? And then there was Sutherland, whom they called Ruler. What was the difference among those three?
“Please don’t let me interrupt,” Scott was saying. “I find the conversation interesting.”
The way he stared made Sarah think it wasn’t really the conversation that interested him. He reminded her of Raphael—too good looking, too sure of himself. His bloodred hair was long and shaggy, and his clothes hugged his body in all the right places. She was attracted to him, and that made her twitch with the urge to run out of the room.
“Mr. Morgan was just explaining the Covenant to me. I think. You were building up to that, right?” Sarah turned to James, finding him easier to face.
“Yes.”
They all looked at her, and she knew they expected her to sit back down, but she couldn’t bring herself to get any closer to this newcomer. She tried to pretend she didn’t care he was there, and failed. Perhaps he understood the problem, because Scott strolled forward to perch on the edge of the stage, several feet away. Relieved, she returned to her seat.
“All right.” She went back to what they’d been discussing. “Humans have been making you nervous for a while now. From what you said to the judges, I assume the Covenant means to do something about it?”
“So we hope.” Scott slipped his hands into his pockets and nodded to James to continue.
“The elders among us came to the conclusion that we must make a fundamental change in how we see humans if we are to survive as a species. You have always been intelligent beings, deserving of more respect than we have given you, and soon you will be able to demand such respect. The Covenant is an agreement among the heads of the vampire nations to enact reforms. We have never had a codified law like humans have developed, but we are now beginning to create one.”
“What Antonio and his friends did to me and the other slaves was against the new rules?”
“Yes,” Scott said. “The laws have been made. The difficulty now is enforcing them.”
“That’s what we’ve been trying to do.” Vanessa spoke up for the first time. She leaned toward Sarah. “It’s going to take more than a few announcements to make things change. We can use the havens to teach our young to respect humans, but others are too set in their ways. The Covenant members don’t want to do what’s necessary, so they make excuses about not having enough proof to do anything about groups like Antonio’s. My friends and I have been trying to get the evidence that will force them to act.”
“And how has that worked out for you?” Scott drawled.
“At least we’re doing something!” Vanessa flared back.
“Hush.” James put a hand on her arm and gestured toward the stage door. A moment later, it opened, and the judges filed back inside.
Scott pushed off of the edge of the stage and gave Sarah one last look as he walked past to return to his seat. She shuddered.