The Darkest Kiss (25 page)

I gave him the address, then sniffed back the blood still running from my nose. “Sorry,” I said, when I could.

He shrugged and shoved the car into gear, taking off so fast the tires squealed. “I am old enough to control my hunger, Riley. And there isn’t that much blood.” He glanced at the rearview mirror. “Though there deserves to be.”

“Try losing someone you love and see how you react,” Rhoan retorted.

“I have. And people died because of it. My point, however, is that Liander is
not
dead, and you should not be acting like he is.”

“For fuck’s sake, did you
have
to bring him along?”

For all the annoyance in Rhoan’s voice, Quinn’s gentle chastisement seemed to have some effect. The scent of fear retreated a little, and the anger and determination came to the fore. Hopefully, it would sustain him through whatever the next few hours had to offer.

Hopefully, those hours
wouldn’t
contain death. Not Liander’s death, anyway.

We sped through the darkened streets at breakneck speed, Quinn’s sharp reflexes getting us through red lights and what traffic there was with equal ease.

The shattered sides of the old government housing block came into sight. Spots of light gleamed here and there, but mostly the building was dark. My gaze was drawn to the top floor. No lights shone there. But then, Vinny’s room had been draped in heavy velvet and it was unlikely light would show anyway.

Quinn drove over the footpath and right up to the main doors. When he stopped the car, we climbed out. The scent of vampire spun through the air, thick and cloying.

“There’s a lot of them in there,” Quinn said, distaste touching his expression as his gaze swept the building.

“At least forty,” I commented.

“How in the hell can one vamp control forty fledglings?” Rhoan asked in disbelief.

“She’s not a blood vamp.” I pushed through the shattered front doors. Footsteps scattered and the slight taste of fear touched the air. I glanced at Quinn as I began to climb. “Why are they retreating? They didn’t last time I was here.”

His smile was decidedly dark. “Last time you were here, you weren’t accompanied by one of the old ones.”

“They can tell what you are?”

“No. I’m letting them
know
what I am. Trust me, in an emo’s nest, it’s always better to advance warn what sort of trouble they’ll be getting into should they try any tricks.”

Rhoan frowned. “What sort of tricks are emos likely to get up to that would be different from a blood vampire?”

Quinn glanced at him. “They feed off emotion. Therefore it is to their benefit to amp it up where possible.”

“Ah.” Rhoan considered this for a moment, then said, “So my anger and fear for Liander is something she’d likely play with?”

“Most likely. If she doesn’t take heed of the warning.”

I glanced back at him. “Is that warning going out telepathically?”

He nodded. “And emotionally. I’m empathic, remember.”

He was also something else entirely—something that wasn’t just vampire. Though his mother had been human, his father came from a race known only as the priests of Aedh—beings who were more energy than flesh, and who were seen by humans as being tall, golden, and winged. They were, in fact, the race that had apparently instigated the legends of angels. I didn’t know a whole lot more than that, but I had a sneaking suspicion that the skills inherited from his father were coming into play, as well.

After all, Vinny didn’t seem the type to be scared by the presence of an old one—but an old one who was something that no longer existed in anything other than myth? Yeah, that would shake her overly confident little world.

We reached the top floor. A different girl guarded the door, but like the previous girl, she was dressed casually and again had a suspicious bulge on her right hip. Unlike the previous guard, this girl also looked worried.

“We’re here to see Vinny,” I said, stopping little more than a foot away from her. Her scent was orangey, but underneath it ran fear.

Not of me, not of Rhoan. Of Quinn.

She licked her lips and said, “Vinny is rather busy—”

“If Vinny doesn’t want a busted door, you had better open it,” I said.

Her gaze went blank for a moment, then she said, her voice several octaves lower than it had been moments ago, “The old one stays outside.”

“The old one will rip this place apart if you do not open this door, Vincenta.” Though Quinn’s voice was still decidedly mild, there was a hint of steel underneath that was warning enough to anyone with sense.

Vinny had sense.

The guard stepped back and opened the door. Quinn held out his hand and said, “Give me the gun.”

The note of command was in his voice and the girl obeyed without question. Quinn pocketed the weapon, then waved us on.

Rhoan went through the door first. I followed, my gaze sweeping past the velvet lushness to come to rest on Vinny’s cozy little setup at the far end of the room. Like before, she was attended by several toga-clad teenagers but, unlike before, their tension was something I could taste. There was no caressing, no languid eyes or secretive little smiles.

How many weapons did they have hidden under their outfits? More than a few, I suspected.

“I do not appreciate my home being invaded like this,” Vinny said, her voice as frosty as her expression. Her gaze barely even touched me or Rhoan, but rather centered on the man who walked behind me. “It is outside vampire custom, as you well know, old one.”

“Vampire custom is adjustable according to the circumstances,” Quinn replied, voice dry. “A fact you’ll learn if you live long enough. Which is a debatable event at the present moment.”

The air filled with sudden murmuring, and the anger of many different minds seemed to lash at my senses.

“Is that a threat, vampire?” Her voice was soft. Deadly.

Quinn merely smiled. “Simply a fact, Vincenta. I am not, however, the one you have to fear in this little trio. Though I can be, if you wish it.”

Her gaze flicked to Rhoan and myself, seemingly dismissing Quinn for the moment. “Why are you here uninvited, wolf? Have you caught the bastard who murdered Ivan yet?”

“No, but we will. Because you’re going to tell us everything you know about him.”

She smiled and leaned back in her chaise lounge. “You know the cost of information.”

I didn’t get a chance to answer. Rhoan simply stepped forward, wrapped a hand around her pale neck, then yanked her off the lounge and into the air.

The toga-clad vamps behind the chair blurred into action, some leaping across the leather lounge at Rhoan, others whipping out weapons.

I didn’t move. I didn’t have to.

Rhoan casually battered away the two that attacked him, then swung the dangling Vinny in their direction. “Shoot, and she dies. Move, and she dies.”

“You can’t—” Vinny’s voice was hoarse and, while vampires didn’t actually need to breathe, her face was going an interesting shade of red.

“Oh, I can,” Rhoan said, voice all calm iciness. The voice of the killer, not my brother. “We guardians have the power to kill pests on sight. The question that has to be answered now is whether you’re a pest or not.”

“I can’t—” She stopped, gasping for air like a fish out of water.

I glanced at Quinn, and opened the link between us.
Is she faking it?

His amusement rolled down the psychic lines.
Hell, yeah. She could win an Academy Award with this performance.

One of the toga-clad teenagers shifted slightly. Energy whispered down the link, a mere echo of the power that Quinn flung across the room at the kid who had moved.

“Stop,” he said, voice holding the steel of command. The kid froze and his eyes went wide. As wide as his mistress’s suddenly were.

“And drop that weapon,” Quinn continued. “All of you, drop your weapons.”

Weapons clattered to the floor. Every kid had at least two.

“Kick them under the chaise lounge, out of reach.”

They did so. I glanced at Vinny. For the first time, there was fear in her eyes.

“Ready to be a help rather than a hindrance?” Rhoan asked softly.

She nodded. Rhoan lowered her back to the ground and eased his grip on her neck. “Now, be pleasant and answer Riley’s questions.”

Vinny licked her lips, then said, “What do you want to know?”

“Why is Aron Young kidnapping and murdering those who were in tenth grade with him?”

“As I told you before, he seeks vengeance for his death.”

“Why now, though? Why not in the years immediately after his death?”

“Because he was unable to get out before now.”

So he
had
been kept prisoner by his parents. “How did he get out?”

“His mother—she was sick. Her heart or something. She let him out.”

And then she’d died, and he’d buried her rather than let her rot where she lay. I guess even evil bhutas had one soft spot. “Tell me where he is.”

“I gave you an address—”

“One address,” I cut in sharply. “Vampires intent on foul deeds always have more than one hidey-hole.”

I’d learned
that
the hard way.

Amusement flitted briefly through her eyes. “That is true. I cannot, however, give you that information, because I do not have it.”

Shit. I was
so
hoping that Vinny would give us the easy answers, but I guess I should have known better. Fate was never one for giving me the quick way out.

“Is there anything else you can tell me about him? Anything that might help us find him?”

She considered me for a moment, then said, “Try his home. I tasted memories of it in his thoughts.”

“We have people in his home. He’s not there.”

“Which home, though? I do not speak of the home after his death, but rather the home when he lived. The place where it all started.”

Beechworth
. But how would he get that many people up there, let alone keep them contained? Beechworth was a good three-hour drive from Melbourne. There were eighteen teenagers in that school photo, which meant there could still be fifteen on Aron’s hit list. That was a whole lot of people to hunt down. A whole lot of people to control.

And then I remembered the plate number I’d gotten from Ron Cowden. Young owned a van, and that could certainly carry a number of people.

“Let her go, Rhoan.”

He glanced at me. “We got everything we need?”

“I think so.”

He released her and stepped back. Vinny retreated to the safety of her chair, but her toga-clad fledglings didn’t move to comfort or caress her. Quinn was still holding them immobile.

The scary thing was, it didn’t even seem to be much of an effort.

“You are no longer welcome here,” Vinny said, her gaze sweeping us and her eyes dark with anger. “Please leave.”

I turned and followed Rhoan and Quinn toward the door. But as I neared it, Vinny added, “I could have been a powerful ally, Riley. It is a shame you have chosen the other path.”

I turned to face her. “I have shared wine with old ones and dark gods. A young emo vamp is a long way down the ladder of the things I fear.”

She smiled her cold smile. “It is good to know even guardians get things wrong.”

“Oh, I get lots of things wrong, but there’s one thing you should always remember.” I met her cold gaze with one of my own, and saw something flicker through the brown depths. Just what that was, I couldn’t say, though it wasn’t fear.
That
scent had not been one she could claim through this whole event, even though it had been in her eyes. Which made me wonder if even that had been nothing more than an act. “I always bring down my enemies, Vinny. And you might want to consider whether you really want to be that.”

And with that, I turned and walked out the door.

Chapter 10

T
hat was a threat even Jack would be proud of,” Rhoan commented, as we climbed back into his car. “Looks like he’s going to make a proper guardian of you yet.”

“Bite it, brother.” I didn’t even
want
to contemplate actually having to back up my words if Vinny decided to make trouble for us all.

“Where to next?” Quinn asked, as he started up the car and drove off.

“Beechworth, obviously,” Rhoan said, then glanced at me. “If you believe what she said was the truth.”

“I do. You want to ring Jack, and see if he can get us an address? And ask if he’s had any luck with those names in Liander’s photograph. I’ll give the cow a call, and see if she can patch me through to the guy who used to be the cop there.”

“You know,” Quinn said conversationally, “for a woman who didn’t want to be a guardian, you’re sure doing a whole lot of guardian-type organizing.”

“You can bite it, too, vampire.”

“Oh, I have, and it tastes divine.”

A smile tugged at my lips. “How about you concentrate on driving, seeing as we’re going so fast?”

“Ah, but I’m old, and with age comes versatility. I can now manage to do two things at once. As I believe I demonstrated earlier this evening.” He raised an eyebrow as he glanced at me. “You enjoy it, don’t you?”

I smiled. “Sex? Vampire bites? Yes to both.”

“You know what I mean.”

I sighed. “Yes. There are still lines I won’t cross, but I can’t
not
do this job anymore. The thrill of the chase is highly addictive, I’m afraid.”

“Oh, yes,” Quinn said softly. “It can be
very
addictive.”

The odd note in his lilting tones caught my attention. “You were a cop sometime in the past?”

“I was a cazador.”

I raised an eyebrow. “And that is?”

“Cazadors are vampire enforcers. They were policing the vampire world for the old ones long before the Directorate ever came into existence.”

“I’ve heard tales of them,” Rhoan said, with the phone to his ear. “From what I understood, not all of them were on the side of the angels.”

“Unfortunately, that is true.” Quinn shrugged lightly. “It is very difficult not to become addicted to the kill rather than the hunt if you do it for a long time. Especially if you’re a vampire. That’s why cazadors are now employed for no more than a couple of decades. The risks of addiction are far less that way.”

So they still had them? Meaning there were worse psychos out there than what the Directorate dealt with? That was a scary thought. “Even if they are only doing the job for a few decades, wouldn’t the craving to kill still become a problem?”

“Vampires learn very early on in their rebirth to control their darker desires. It generally takes a lot of time—and bloodshed—to break that training.”

I studied him for a moment, seeing the darkness beneath his serene expression. Seeing the sorrow. Once it would have worried me to know what he was feeling, but not now. Maybe I’d grown up. Maybe I was simply more accepting of the gifts and intuitions that were mine. After all, even if they now kept me in this job, they also helped me survive it. “Who did you kill?”

He didn’t meet my gaze. “Someone who didn’t deserve to die.” He hesitated, then added softly, “Someone I loved.”

“Then she had no contract out on her?”

“No. But she was good friends with someone whose house was slated to be cleaned.” He glanced at me then, and the brief bleakness in his eyes left me in no doubt that the cleansing had been total—every man, woman, and child. “She was at their house when I went in there to fulfill the contract. I didn’t even see her—didn’t even realize what I’d done until afterward.”

“That’s when you gave up life as a cazador?”

He nodded. “When I came out of the killing haze, there I was, covered in her blood, with her broken body at my feet.” In his dark gaze I saw echoes of a pain that still wasn’t healed, even though I suspected this had all happened a very long time ago. “I swore to never again kill on somebody’s order. It is a vow I have kept to this day.”

Which wasn’t to say he
hadn’t
killed. I’d seen him do it more than once, and had no doubt that, even after that event, he had a history littered with bodies. He was a very old vampire, after all, and none of them were saints.

Even the ones who were descended from angels.

“How long were you a cazador?”

“Two hundred years.” A humorless smile touched his lips. “I was
very
good at it.”

“After two hundred years, you’d expect nothing less than expertise.” I hesitated, then asked, “So how long ago was all this?”

“I was a little over three hundred when I started.”

So it was over seven hundred years ago that he quit. “Three hundred years was a decent age for a vampire to reach back then, wasn’t it?”

“There have always been older ones, but yes, the past was a bloody place to survive.” He grimaced slightly. “Humanity might not have had the numbers that it has today, but it had a whole lot more superstition, and a tradition of killing anything it didn’t understand.”

“So why weren’t the old ones cazadors? I would have thought the older the vampire, the better cazador they’d make.”

“True. But also, the older you get, the more you appreciate the years and your life.” His smile regained some warmth, and amusement crinkled the corners of his eyes. “Like all Hollywood and literary myths, the one about old vampires mourning what they are or regretting their long existence has very little to do with reality.”

“And yet there must be some who do kill themselves, because in most myths there lies a kernel of truth.” Even the worst of the werewolf myths had the occasional grain of truth behind them. Besides, he himself had once believed that an old friend had walked out into the sunshine because a love affair had gone horribly wrong.

Of course,
that
had turned out to be little more than a cover story spread by a madman intent on creating an army of clones, but why would he have even believed it if it had never actually happened before?

“Indeed it does happen, but rarely.” He glanced at me, the warmth in his eyes growing stronger. “And before you ask, no, I have never loved anyone that much. Even if I did, I doubt I would contemplate such a thing.”

“Because you never give all of yourself to one person?”

“Because I love life too much.” He gave me an amused look. “And you’re a fine one to talk about never giving all of yourself to one person.”

“Hey, I tried. Not my fault it didn’t work out.” Not my fault he’d made demands that were just impossible for me to obey—even if I
had
been able to. “Besides, I
will
commit when my soul mate finally decides to make his appearance. Until then, I’ll just have to muddle along as I am.”

“Okay,” Rhoan said from the backseat. “Enough chitchat. Jack says eight of those fifteen names have gone missing in the last six hours. There were witnesses to two of the kidnappings, and both gave descriptions matching Aron Young. One of them also gave a description of the vehicle—a white van that matches the plate number you asked Jack to trace earlier. Jack’s currently trying to patch into the satellites to track him.”

I twisted around to look at him. “So the eight were definitely taken, not killed?”

“Yes.” Hope had dawned brighter in his eyes. “And we’ve got an address for the house he lived in at Beechworth. Apparently, it’s just outside the town itself.”

“No indication as to the current owners and whether it’s occupied?” Quinn asked.

“The current owners have no relationship to Young, apparently. He’s tried ringing the listed number, but there’s no answer.”

“Young wouldn’t be up there yet, anyway.” After all, he’d only taken Liander little more than an hour ago. “Besides, there’s no guarantee that
is
where he’s going.”

“We’d better hope it is, because otherwise Liander’s a dead man.”

“Give him more credit than that,” Quinn said softly. “He’s a fighter, and he has something worth fighting for. You.”

Rhoan gave a soft, derisive laugh. “He might have decided otherwise after my stupid behavior tonight.”

“Well, with any sort of luck, you’ll get the chance to fix that.” I gave him a dark look and added, “And you had better.”

His smile was wan, but there nevertheless. “It’s like that old cliché says—you never know what you’ve got until you almost lose it.”

“Just make sure you tell Liander
that
when we finally rescue him.”

“I intend to, trust me.” He blew out a breath that didn’t seem to do a whole lot to ease the tension still evident in his body.

I resisted the urge to say “you’d better,” and asked, “I don’t suppose Jack found the files for Young’s disappearance?”

Rhoan snorted softly. “Apparently it’s regular procedure for regional police offices to purge computer files after twenty years. They have a hard-copy record, but it’s still being found.”

“Just as well we can go straight to the source, then.” I dragged my phone out of my pocket and pressed the button to ring the Directorate. “Has Jack got any other information about the house Young used to live in?”

“He’s going through the council records for house approvals. He’ll let us know if he finds site or floor plans.”

“What can I do for you, Riley?” Sal said.

I shoved the phone to my ear, and said, “I need to be put through to a Jerry Mayberry. He used to be the local police officer up in Beechworth. He’s retired, but apparently he’s still living up there.”

“Hang on, and I’ll see what I can do.” She put me on hold, and tinny elevator music blasted me. I winced and shifted the phone away from my ear.

“How is the cop going to help us?” Rhoan asked.

I glanced around at him. “He was the cop on duty when Aron Young disappeared. He might be able to tell us a little more than what was reported in the papers.”

Sal came back online. “Okay, I found an address and a phone number. You want me to patch you through now?”

“Yes. Thanks, Sal.”

“Hang on, then.” I went back on hold for a second, then there was a click, and the phone was ringing.

And ringing.

Come on, come on,
I thought, then glanced at the clock and realized I was actually ringing at an ungodly hour. The poor man was probably tucked up nice and warm in his bed.

Eventually a gruff voice said, “Hello?”

“Is this former sergeant Jerry Mayberry, from the Beechworth Police Station?”

“That would be me.”

“Mr. Mayberry, it’s Riley Jenson, from the Directorate. We’re investigating several murders that appear to be linked to an old case of yours, and I was wondering if you could help me with some details.”

“I’ll try, but my memory is not as sharp as it used to be.” He hesitated. “The Directorate, you say? Which section?”

“Guardian division, Mr. Mayberry.”

“Martin Bass still in charge there?”

I smiled. There was nothing wrong with this man’s mind. Nor, I suspected, his memory. “There’s no Martin Bass working in the guardian division, sir. Jack Parnell has been in charge for the last eight years or so.”

“Ah, yes.” His tone softened a little. “What case we talking about?”

“Aron Young’s disappearance.”

“Ah. That was a strange one.”

“In what way, Mr. Mayberry?”

“We had evidence of rope marks on a tree limb, we had blood splatters we believe came from the victim, and we’re sure he was killed. But we never found a body and none of the kids would talk.”

“But you think they knew something?”

“Oh, yeah. Half of them were drinking or taking drugs within weeks of Young’s disappearance.”

“How many kids we talking about?”

“Seven. They were good kids at heart, but a little wild. They tended to egg each other on when in a group situation.”

And that was when a lot of bad things had happened. Peer pressure could be an incredibly powerful thing, especially when you were a teenager and trying too hard to fit in. As I suspected Young might have been. “What do you think might have happened?”

“Probably an initiation gone wrong. We had a gang problem at the time—most of the kids were in one, except for a couple of the wolf cubs. These seven represented the rowdiest of them.”

“So initiations were common, as well?”

“Hell, yeah. Usually it was something simple like stealing a street sign or getting their head flushed down the toilet, but Harvey’s mob believed in testing the strength and commitment of their inductees.”

“How?”

“We had one kid crack his head open with a rock. Apparently he’d been told to hold it above his head for several hours—starting at noon, in midsummer.”