Secrets in the Shadows (28 page)

Why hadn’t she been able to shoot him? Sure, it was hard to shoot an unarmed man in the head, but he was worse than any human serial killer in history. How many people had he killed in five hundred years? Even if he only fed once a month—and she was quite sure he fed more often than that—that would mean six thousand people had died at his hands. She shuddered.

Jules must have noticed, for he reached over and put his hand on her thigh, giving it a firm squeeze. She glanced over and met his gaze for an instant before returning her concentration to the road. It was dark out here in the boondocks, with no streetlights. She hated not being able to see beyond the glow of her high beams. She was tired enough that she could easily drive off the road if she wasn’t careful. Not to mention the deer she felt sure were lurking behind every bush, just waiting to hurl themselves into her path.

Time dragged, and Hannah’s eyelids were heavy with exhaustion. She drove like a robot, turning when Jules told her to, no longer having any sense of where they were or how far they’d come. Everything looked the same out here in the dark of the night. Sleepy farmland and even sleepier little towns, with the occasional lighted window or lone car the only signs of life. Hours passed in excruciating tedium, and still Gabe sensed nothing. She’d have thought he’d fallen asleep, sitting back there with his head resting against the back of the seat and his eyes closed, but a creepy sense of danger lurking behind her told her he was wide awake.

“Maybe I got it all wrong,” she said, stifling a yawn.

“We’ve still got a lot of territory to cover,” Jules said, holding the map close to his face. “I’d say we’ve only covered about half the circle so far.”

Hannah glanced at the dashboard clock. It was almost five already. “It won’t be long before the sun comes up. Maybe we should call it a night and get you back to the hotel.”

“No,” Gabriel said. “I’m sensing something up ahead.”

“Bully for you,” she said, pulling onto a side road and doing a U-turn. “We can pick up from here tomorrow. Jules needs to be back in the hotel by the time the sun comes up.”

Gabriel leaned forward. She felt his eyes on her, though she refused to look in the rearview mirror to see what he was doing. “If the daylight becomes a problem, we can always put him in the trunk,” Gabriel said.

“Sounds like fun. But no.”

“I’ll be fine, Hannah,” Jules said.

She shot him a death glare.

He shrugged sheepishly. “He’ll just use glamour to get his way, so it’s not worth fighting.”

“Dammit!” God, how she hated vampires!

As usual, Gabriel was amused by her outburst. She flipped him the bird as she made another U-turn. Beside her, Jules winced, but Gabriel ignored her gesture.

Hoping she wasn’t about to run into any speed traps, she put the pedal to the metal in the vain hope that they could find Ian, kill him and his fledglings, and escape Gabriel all by the time the sun rose high enough to put Jules into his coma-like daytime sleep.

***

Although Drake was familiar with how the Guardians hunted their quarry, he’d never done the tedious task of searching through the newspapers for clues. He didn’t work on cases until well after the Guardians had confirmed the existence of a Killer and narrowed down his hunting grounds. Given Camille’s state of mind, however, he didn’t feel inclined to inform her of his lack of experience.

Even if he’d been a veteran at the job, he doubted he would have had an easy time of it with Camille hovering over his shoulder. The fledglings gathered downstairs weren’t much help, either. With their maker under attack, the fledglings were on edge, fighting amongst themselves, their raised voices breaking his concentration.

It was perilously close to dawn when he felt he had sufficiently narrowed down the possibilities to report his findings to Camille. A strange glow lit her eyes when she snatched the map from his hands.

“You’re sure he’s around here somewhere?” She studied it as if she could discern her son’s whereabouts just by looking.

Of course he wasn’t sure! It wasn’t like vampire hunting was an exact science.

“It seems highly likely,” he said.

Her eyes fixed on him and narrowed. “But would you stake your life on it? Because that’s what you’re doing.”

He’d have been alarmed, except his instincts had already told him this. “What about your agreement with Eli? I’m helping you in good faith, but I’m hardly infallible.”

“Eli and his high-handed tactics have cost me my son!”

“Gabriel hasn’t made all those fledglings in the last week. Whatever’s brewing in his heart was brewing long before Jules and I came to Baltimore.”

“That’s right, Drake. It’s been brewing ever since Eli broke our family apart and drove me and Gabriel from Philadelphia.”

He stifled any number of curses. Whatever arrangement Eli’d had with Camille, it was shattered now. And that told Drake more than he wanted to know. He wasn’t staking his life on this hunt. Camille was going to kill him anyway, to hurt Eli. And she’d kill Jules and Hannah too, if she could get her hands on them.

“Come now,” Camille purred. “You must be getting tired. I’ll see you to your room. And then I believe I’ll have Roger take me on a relaxing drive to the country.”

Drake was powerless to stop her from locking him in his room once more, so he preserved what dignity he could by not resisting. He hadn’t wanted to die one hundred and ten years ago, when he’d become vampire. And he certainly didn’t want to die now. But unless Eli personally came to Baltimore to rescue him, he didn’t see how he could avoid it.

***

Hannah glanced over at Jules and was alarmed by what she saw. He had ducked his head and hunched his shoulders in an attempt to keep himself in the shadow of the brim of his hat, but she could have sworn the sun was rising faster than usual. His eyes were heavy-lidded with impending sleep, and his skin seemed to have a rosy cast that was all wrong.

“Please, Gabriel,” she said, hating to beg. “We’ve got to get Jules out of the light.”

Gabriel sighed. “Very well. We’re almost there anyway.” He leaned forward, putting his head between the two front seats and pointing. “Pull in to that driveway.”

He was pointing at a picturesque white clapboard house, complete with a white picket fence and a red barn in the back. The place belonged on a postcard, though she’d seen more picturesque farm houses in the last few hours than she could count. This just wasn’t the kind of area you’d picture when you thought about vampire hunting grounds. All the more reason why Ian’s kills stood out like the proverbial sore thumb.

Obediently, Hannah pulled into the driveway, but she frowned at Gabriel in the rearview mirror. “What’s the plan here, Gabe?” Surely they weren’t going to go knocking on the door and ask if they could take shelter for the day here!

“There’s no one home,” he said. “Park the car around back and we’ll spend the day in the barn. There shouldn’t be much sunlight in there, and we can cover Jules with some hay just to make extra sure he doesn’t fry.”

If she weren’t so worried about Jules, she might have objected to the plan. As it was, she pulled in and practically leapt from the car in her hurry to get him out of the light. He was alert enough to get his door open but faltered when he tried to get out. Hannah ran to his side, but Gabriel beat her there, dragging Jules’s arm over his shoulders and hauling him out effortlessly.

“Get the door!” he commanded, and Hannah hurried to pull the barn door open. This being sleepy farm country, it wasn’t locked.

Gabriel dragged a semi-conscious Jules through the doorway, into the dark of the barn. The place stank of horses, though its occupants were apparently away from home today. Gabriel deposited Jules in one of the stalls, then started covering him with handfuls of hay.

“We’re close,” Jules murmured, at least half asleep.

“Yes,” Gabriel confirmed. “I’d say they’re about a quarter mile away.”

“Can sense them,” Jules agreed. Gabriel dumped a handful of hay on his face, and Jules pushed it away.

“We need to cover your face,” Gabriel said, but Jules shook his head.

“There’s a mortal …” Despite what looked like a massive effort, Jules’s eyes slid closed and his body went limp. When Gabe tossed hay over his face again, he didn’t protest.

Hannah leaned against the side of the stall and watched as Gabe made Jules disappear in the hay. “He won’t suffocate, will he?” she asked.

Gabe stood up and brushed the dust from his hands. “No. He’ll be fine. Why don’t you lie down and get some sleep. I’ll keep watch.”

But Hannah shook her head. “What was Jules trying to say? There’s a mortal … ?”

Gabriel gave her one of those assessing looks, then shrugged. “Ian’s fledglings are very nearby. Nine of them, and one mortal.”

Ian’s fledglings, eh? He’d said that as if he knew none of the nine was Ian. “And what about Ian?” she asked, just to be sure.

Gabriel pursed his already thin lips and shook his head. “He’s not there. They’re all young fledglings.”

“And how do you know that?”

She must have sounded too eager, for Gabriel gave her a suspicious look. “Why should I tell you? Surely for a mortal you know too much about vampires already.”

Her curiosity was unabated, but she was too freakin’ tired to play word games with Gabe. Let him go all prickly and mysterious on her if he wanted! She yawned hugely and sat on the pile of hay, careful to avoid Jules. Sleep would be pure heaven right now, but she wasn’t sure she could manage it with Gabe looming over her like that.

“Don’t you need some sleep?” she asked. “Or would answering that violate the Vampire’s Code?”

The corner of his mouth lifted, and he came to sit on the hay a respectful distance away. “Yes, under normal circumstances, I need to sleep. Right now I’m too … wired, I guess you would say.” He picked up a piece of hay and studied it with great concentration. “I’m sure you already know that as we get older, we get more powerful. When we’re young, we sense each others’ psychic footprints in a vague, amorphous way. The older we get, the more concrete that footprint is. I can practically ‘see’ the fledglings. And the footprint looks … darker, for want of a better word, as vampires age. These footprints are very light. I’m looking for one about the same as Jules’s, and it’s definitely not in that house.”

Hannah was more than a little surprised that he was being so forthcoming, but she wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. “What about mortals? Can you see our, er, footprints too?”

“How do you think I know there’s a mortal in that house?”

“Yeah, yeah, I got that. I mean, do we look different?”

“You look … muddy.” He grinned, then frowned. “Actually, the mortal in that house looks very muddy. I’d say he or she is badly injured.”

Hannah’s heart lurched. She’d somehow assumed the mortal was a henchman, like the idiots who worked for Camille. But if the poor soul was an intended victim …

“You said Ian’s fledglings were all very young, right?” she asked.

He nodded cautiously.

“Then if Jules is asleep, they’ll all be asleep too.”

Gabriel smiled. “True. You’re considering taking a little trip over there during the daytime?”

She hadn’t been able to save whatever hapless mortal Gabriel had killed last night, but maybe she could save this one before Ian and his cronies made a meal of him or her. Assuming Gabriel wasn’t going to stop her.

“There’d be no danger, right? Ian’s no older than Jules, so it’s not like he’s going to show up and kill me.”

“True. And what will you do with the fledglings?”

If she had the guts, she’d shoot them while they slept, but she’d already established that she couldn’t shoot helpless victims.

Gabriel gave her another of his gentle smiles, the kind that made him look almost human. “It’s all right. It’s best that the fledglings stay alive anyway—the better to lure Ian into range.” He gestured her toward the barn door. “Let’s go.”

She hesitated. “You’re coming with me?”

“Why not? You make better company than Jules at the moment.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “I’m not going over there to get you a free meal.”

One corner of his mouth rose in a lopsided grin. “Understood. I won’t harm the mortal unless it turns out to be an accomplice.”

She wasn’t a hundred percent convinced, but it wasn’t like there was any way she could keep Gabriel from coming with her. Besides, despite being a sadistic serial murderer, he seemed to be honest. If he wanted to kill the mortal, he’d probably tell her so and gloat that there was nothing she could do about it.

Hannah bit her lip and looked at the pile of straw that hid Jules. “Do you think he’ll be all right in there? I mean, what if the owners come back?”

“He’ll be fine. And we won’t be gone long. Now let’s go.”

Nerves tingling with foreboding, she followed him out into the early morning light.

***

Hannah pulled up in front of the building that Gabriel indicated and turned off the car.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said, shaking her head. The place was a quarter mile from where they’d stopped for the day but couldn’t have been more different.

She supposed that once upon a time, this had been a lovely, picturesque farmhouse, surrounded by clucking chickens and tended by a farm wife in a frilly apron. Once upon a time being maybe fifty years ago.

She got out of the car and shaded her eyes against the glare of the sun, but the light just made the house look worse. She had no idea what color the wood had once been, but now it was a uniform shade of gray. Vines had pulled many of the boards apart. The front porch sagged in the middle, the railing that surrounded it warped in some places, broken in others. There wasn’t a hint of glass in any of the windows, but the fact that they were all boarded up with new wood suggested it might be a vampire nest after all, despite its condition.

“What a charming home,” Gabriel muttered. “I can’t imagine why Ian chooses to spend the day elsewhere.”

A breeze rustled through the vines that were still working at tearing the house to shreds. Hannah nearly gagged at the stink that wafted from the house on that breeze.