The other vampire heard as well as Jay did the telltale hitch in her voice as she
described one of her “best works,” but neither man challenged Brina on the untruth.
Her best works had been destroyed by her own hands.
“Far be it from me to deprive you of such a joy,” the other vampire replied.
Liar!
Jay wanted to shout.
He drew back mentally and tried to put a face to the mind.
The vampire was dressed in a modern tuxedo. The shirt was a cream color that sat better
against his burnt-sienna skin than classic white would have. His hair was long and
dark, though it had been tied back out of the way.
He looked at Jay, his mind clinically analyzing him in a way that was cool, cautious,
and utterly unconcerned as he noticed the aura of a witch and the smell of a recently
oiled blade in a leather sheath, and instantly deduced,
Hunter
.
“And who is your companion?” the vampire asked Brina.
“Oh,” Brina said. “This … Hmm, I’m not sure. But he’s pretty, isn’t he?”
“My lovely lady, it looks like you have a companion better suited to dancing than
I am, so I will leave you to that,” Jay half rambled, trying to take his leave of
Brina gracefully, without attracting the further interest of this predator. Jay hadn’t
studied all the collected sketches and photographs of known vampires as much as some
of his kin had, but he was pretty sure he was looking at one of Midnight’s infamous
trainers.
He knows what I am
, Jay thought, forcing back the itch to try for a kill he knew was impossible.
He’s prepared. Even if he were alone, it would be a long shot
. Many had tried, but in Midnight’s entire history, there was no record of a hunter
ever getting a knife into one of the trainers.
“Don’t go!” Brina cried like a child at a tea party, grabbing Jay’s wrist before he
could take more than a step. Her sudden intensity was unsettling, and brought to mind
Xeke’s warning that this was not a woman who distinguished what or whom she did or
didn’t have a right to possess.
Jay gently but firmly extracted his wrist. “My apologies, Lady Brina, but I need to
tear myself away from your company for a moment.”
“Jay.” Arms wrapped around him from behind as a familiar mind and body snuggled against
him. “Dear Brina, you don’t mind if I steal Jay for a while, do you?” Xeke crooned.
“I’m sure he’ll have time for you later, but you know how boys are.”
Brina bit her lower lip, then said, “If you
insist
.”
Xeke looked at the trainer and nodded a cool greeting.
Something passed between the two men, something Jay almost wanted to analyze further,
before he realized that Xeke felt he was protecting Jay from a double threat.
“Jay here is one of Kendra’s guests,” he said to the new vampire. “He was invited,
with the full knowledge of his pedigree, and has behaved himself perfectly well. And
now we’re leaving.”
With an arm firmly around Jay’s waist, Xeke led him away, thinking furiously,
What kind of idiot are you, witch? Do you want to be her lapdog?
“She can’t—”
“
Witches
are freeblood,” Xeke hissed, “as long as they violate none of Midnight’s rules.
Hunters
are an entirely different matter, especially once they put themselves in our territory.
You were invited here and weren’t shy about what you were, so you’re marginally safe,
but if Jaguar had decided you were a threat to Brina, he could have handed you over
to her in a heartbeat, and not a person in this house would have objected.”
Why does he have so much power in Kendra’s home?
Jay wondered, just before Xeke swatted him upside the head, in a semi-playful yet
very serious fashion that distracted him from pursuing the thought.
“What are you doing back here?” Xeke asked.
“Why shouldn’t I be here?”
Xeke gave a long-suffering sigh before saying, “I don’t think you came back to see
me, and I hope you didn’t come back to
see Brina, which means you put in a great deal of effort to find a place that you’re
not supposed to find.”
“Who is the woman from the woods?” Jay asked.
Xeke turned around and, in one smooth movement, slammed Jay up against the wall hard
enough to knock his breath out, effectively distracting him from hearing Xeke’s first-thought
response.
“I don’t know,” Xeke answered honestly while Jay’s eyes were still wide with surprise,
“and I don’t
want
to know. And you
shouldn’t
want to know. If she’s unconscious, maybe she’s better off that way. If she wakes
up and she wants you to know who she is, she’ll tell you. So drop it, okay?”
“And if I won’t?” Jay asked.
“Then I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” Xeke said, words clear and precise,
“and remind you that a hunter who trespasses on our land violates his freeblood privilege.
I don’t think you’re crazy enough to risk that.”
“Xeke,” Jay said, “you have no idea how crazy I can be.”
“You like risk. That’s fine; I like to play games too,” Xeke said with a brilliant
smile. “Trust me when I say you don’t want them to be real.”
“You wouldn’t keep me.” Jay knew that for certain.
Xeke’s response was chilling. “It wouldn’t be up to me—this isn’t my territory. You’d
go to Kendra, or Jaguar, or probably Brina, given the sheer number of people who want
to give her shiny baubles to keep her happy and placid. I don’t have the clout to
claim you as my own.”
This time, Jay could find the thoughts related to Jaguar.
Midnight. Slave trade
. Jaguar wasn’t discussed much by hunters these days, but Xeke’s caution made it clear
that the trainer had regained at least some of the power and influence he had once
had. That meant Midnight itself had become stronger than the hunters had begun to
imagine.
“You’re worried she belongs to someone,” Jay said as he finally picked the thought—it
should have been obvious, he realized—out of Xeke’s mind. “You’re worried the shapeshifter
I found belongs to someone, and if you—” He broke off, because Xeke shook his head,
still pinning Jay against the wall, and thinking,
He’s so determined to hang himself, he doesn’t even need rope
.
If the shapeshifter was an escaped slave, then anyone harboring or helping her had
violated vampiric law and forfeited any freeblood privilege. If Xeke learned who she
was, he and anyone allied with him could be claimed as payment unless Xeke turned
the slave in. More important—to Jay, anyway—was the fact that since Jay was the one
who had found her and taken her to SingleEarth, Midnight might decide he had stolen
her.
But even that wasn’t his biggest concern.
So far, Midnight was hiding, waiting in the wings … and gaining power. It hadn’t had
cause to challenge SingleEarth directly. No matter how badly Jay and other hunters
would love to plant a knife in any of Midnight’s trainers, no one wanted to start
a fight that pitted the peaceful SingleEarth against that ancient evil.
Xeke thought at him,
You need to leave. Now
.
J
AY DIDN’T WANT
to get himself sold into slavery over this. On the other hand, since the proponents
of the slave trade were in Kendra’s house for the party, they wouldn’t be in the woods,
would they?
And what did the vampires have to hide that was important enough and powerful enough
that it was concealed with a spell that Jay couldn’t even begin to discern?
Just one thing: Midnight.
The first version of Midnight’s empire had been founded in the sixteen hundreds, around
the time when Jay’s line had come into existence. The vampires had effectively ruled
the supernatural world through a combination of trade sanctions, economic incentives,
and an iron threat to back up their laws.
Despite protections given to nonhumans, many of the witches were killed. The Light
line was eradicated entirely, and the Arun and Vida lines, both of which were exclusively
hunters, were cut down to a bare handful of survivors.
When the original Midnight had burned to the ground in 1804, there had been celebrations
throughout the world. Unfortunately, though destroying its base of operations had
weakened the empire sufficiently for other groups to regain control, the hunters at
the time had not been able to eliminate the vampires themselves. Whispers of Midnight’s
return had become increasingly common lately.
The original Midnight had been out west, beyond the area claimed at that time by the
newborn United States, in the no-man’s-land where white men had not yet established
dominion. Could the new one really have its heart
here
, arrogantly close not only to human civilization but to the headquarters of so many
of Midnight’s most serious enemies? Most of Jay’s extended family, including almost
all the vampire-hunting witches he knew, lived in New England. The Bruja guilds—a
trio of mercenary groups that reputedly had originally been founded specifically to
oppose Midnight—had their guild halls in Massachusetts and New York. Jay couldn’t
help but feel that such placement was meant to be a deliberate slap in the face.
If Midnight
was
here, Jay needed to know. If he was right, this would give hunters a chance to bring
the empire to its knees before it could get back on its feet. He just needed information,
and then he could contact his allies and begin to plan the hunt of a lifetime.
He changed clothes quickly in the backseat of his car and then went hiking behind
Kendra’s home, which bordered the same unnaturally quiet forest he had explored behind
Xeke’s apartment. Jay might not have been able to sense the magic directly, but the
animals could.
Could the shapeshifter at SingleEarth have been damaged by this magic? She had an
ominous forest in her mind, choking her mentally and keeping her a prisoner in her
own brain. Could the menacing force Jay had sensed from her be Midnight?
He held his shields a little tighter. It would make it harder for him to sense magic,
but he hadn’t been able to do that yet anyway. He needed to make sure he was as protected
as he could be.
He could feel the forest’s heart. Most woods, especially older ones, had some sense
of their center, but this was a young forest, easily impressionable; if it had a heart,
it was probably one that had been thrust upon it magically, not one that had grown
there organically.
Jay headed toward that pulse, keeping an eye—literally and magically—on the ebb and
flow of the trees, underbrush, and snow. Magic’s presence changed how natural things
grew. The magic around this place might have been intended to hide something, so those
who stumbled across it couldn’t find their way back, but that power could also serve
as a beacon.
And there it was—that high wrought-iron fence with the metal ravens at the top. Beyond,
he could see stables and gardens. Following the fence brought him around to the front
of
the property, where a narrow road made a path like an arrow straight to the front
door of a sprawling structure that seemed to be the spawn of a manor house and a medieval
castle.
He sensed the guards at the front in time to avoid their notice, and stayed far enough
away that he knew he wouldn’t be seen from the road.
If Jay followed the road back, out of the forest, he would be able to determine where
it intersected with a main road. He would know exactly where he was. He knew many
hunters—some witches, some not—who would be interested in such information.
He kept parallel to the road from a safe distance away, trekking through the thick,
snowy underbrush and checking back occasionally to make sure he was on course.
That was the theory, anyway, and it should have worked.
He had walked for about an hour, with the road always on his left, but suddenly he
was facing the black gates of Midnight once again.
Impossible—except in the presence of a powerful spell, capable of disorienting him
and rearranging his memories.
Time to pull out the big guns
.
Jay Marinitch wasn’t an average witch. In polite circles, he was considered a prodigy.
Those less concerned with being polite referred to him as the idiot savant of his
line. He had never met a power he couldn’t match, and he wasn’t about to start now.
He sat in the snow and drew his magic up around him. The Marinitch line’s power was
organic. He could read and speak
to the trees and animals. He could feel the pulse and flow of natural power the way
other people felt wind or water.
He focused his magic until he was able to feel every tree around him, and where he
was in relation to every stone and every hibernating squirrel. He let himself flow
into that power like a leaf on the wind, dissolving himself in it. If this other magic
insisted on being invisible and subtly twisting his mind, he would give it no mind
to focus on. He would make himself into nothing it could touch.
First, he explored. There were dozens of living people inside the building, and a
couple of nonliving ones. The horses were happy, as was the large feline living inside … though
she was restless as well.
Next, he touched the power that had been influencing him. It was hot and utterly nonnatural,
and so not normally part of his own sphere of awareness. It twined into the land,
twisting it.
He could prod his body into moving where he needed it to without really
belonging
to it, so he pushed it toward the boundary of the circle of power. He moved through
the forest like the night, like shadow or a winter wind, without disturbing or being
disturbed by the natural flow of energy through the forest.
He slid under the foreign power, around it, past it. He was a crafty little mouse,
swift and agile but too small to be obtrusive.
Once finally outside the spell’s radius, he sensed the difference like a pressure
change. His ears popped as he returned
fully to his body and stretched, reminding himself of the limiting confines of his
flesh, bone, and muscle. He reminded himself of his human origin, and shook off the
chill of the unnatural power in the forest that … that …