He didn"t. She was nearly to him before the next bullet struck. His blood spattered her face and they fell together. Like Christian, Ryan screamed as the UV bullet penetrated his body. Fleur cradled his head, holding his face in her hands and wanting to soothe his pain. "It"s okay, Ryan. You"re not alone." But her words of comfort were lost; he died almost instantly, his life extinguished like a flame.
Fleur couldn"t quite breathe. Gasping and choking on fear, she looked up at the mech. With his arm still suspended in midair, he surveyed the room as if cataloging its contents and looking for anybody else. Apparently satisfied that only she was left, he c.o.c.ked his head and studied Fleur.
She swallowed nervously as he reached down to his leg holster. He swept his forearm down and arched it back up in one graceful movement, snapping a new attachment onto its metal rigging. Fleur"s heart pounded. So this was what it was like to be at the mercy of a species you didn"t fully understand.
Ryan"s head still lay in her lap, and drops of his blood tickled her skin as they, slid down her face. Fleur stared straight into the mech"s intense aquamarine eyes and waited.
Maybe it was only what she wanted to see-in those eyes she was certain she caught a flicker of something alive, something more than just a programmed machine. But when she blinked and looked once more, there was just a dull gaze and a dead presence.
The mech raised his arm in a slow and calculated manner and shot her.
Fleur screamed in surprise and pain then realized he"d shot her with a conventional bullet. She wasn"t going to die. She"d have to get some blood back into herself, but... Through the pain and the pounding and the roaring in her brain, she could have sworn the mech lowered his weapon and said, "Play dead." Had she misheard?
"What?"
But maybe she"d imagined it. The mech took a step backward, the same shuttered look on his face. Fleur clutched her arm to her chest and let the red blood seep through her fingers, then collapsed in a heap with her eyes closed. She heard a series of clicks and hums, then one last sound: that of a boot on the windowsill, perhaps. Then there was silence.
She was counting to ten when the door burst open. The room was suddenly in chaos, medics rushing in with Warriors and Protectors of the defense force. All at once, as if everyone simultaneously realized what she meant to them now, she felt a million hands come at her, lifting and fussing and protecting and defending...
"I"m fine," she whispered, opening her eyes. She sat up so the medics could properly wrap her wound before taking her to the blood banks upstairs.
But then Fleur looked over and saw them cover Christian and Ryan with cloths embroidered with the Dumont crest. The blood banks would have to wait. As if the same thought had occurred to everyone else, they turned their faces to her, one after the next.
Don"t lose it. Do not lose it, Fleur. "It didn"t get me. I"m fine. It ran out of UV bullets and shot me with a regular one." She shoved all offers of help away and stood up, self-conscious to the extreme. The smell of the blood was making everyone incredibly edgy, and she was no exception.
"The humans did this," someone blurted. "Didn"t they? What do we do now?"
Fleur"s cousins were now in the room. Marius came forward and whispered into her ear, "This is your moment, but n.o.body is going to give it to you. You"ll have to take it."
She glanced over at the other two. "Take it, Fleur," Warrick mouthed.
Ian nodded. "Take the power."
She opened her mouth to answer, but they stepped away.
Arguments were already flaring about counterattacks, with several members of the other families discussing the transference of power. The medics attended to the bodies of her half-brothers, Fleur"s cousins stood in stony silence watching her. Fleur felt in danger of being swallowed up, in danger of just disappearing.
"Wait!" She drew the hair back from her face with blood-streaked hands. "It appears that the unthinkable has happened..." G.o.d, how ridiculous this must sound coming out of her mouth. She cleared her throat and turned to start giving orders. "This is what I want done: You-advance security measures on all of +1 to the highest level. You-get the defense teams into the skies. We"re looking for at least one... mech. I"m pretty sure that was a mech. It looks like a human but with mechanical upgrades. It"s armed and there could be more of them. If you can"t bring it in, collect whatever intelligence you can. The rest of you follow standard emergency procedures and meet me back in this room in one hour."
They stared at her like stone statues. Fleur pointed at the bodies on the floor. "Do you need more convincing than this? Go!"
The room emptied, leaving the ferric smell of blood swirling in the air behind them. And when the medics finally wheeled out the desiccating remains of her half-brothers, Fleur turned to the window from which the mech had escaped, and leapt right through.
Chapter Four.
"Where the h.e.l.l is the audio of this mission? Try again!"
Cyd fiddled with the controls. "I think it"s being scrambled." She tried again. "Whoa. The thing took pictures." She punched in her personnel code, frowned, then punched in Dain"s. A hyperlink appeared on the screen and, within seconds, pictures of the bodies loaded. They were pictures of an unfamiliar female, and of two vampires Dain recognized as Christian and Ryan Dumont. The photos were time-stamped about five minutes prior.
Dain whistled, then came to a screeching halt in front of Dumont Towers.
"What do we do now?" Cyd asked.
"We wait. Either for I-Ops to give us something useful or for whatever"s in there to come out. It"s not like the fangs are going to invite us in. They"ve just been jumped."
"This place is ma.s.sive," Cyd said, pointing to the compound. Ma.s.sive was an understatement. Du-mont Towers wasn"t just one lonely skysc.r.a.per. It was a complex of buildings, a one-stop shop for all vampire work, play, and living.
Yes, the vampires comprised most of the cosmopolitan upper-cla.s.s of Los Angeles these days. Designer clothes, flashy cars, serious jewelry and penthouse living were their hallmarks. They had a seemingly insatiable appet.i.te for luxury, which was actually lucky for the rest of the city. Rather than sating themselves on other species as they had in the past, now they got their food from huge, expensive blood banks. Most of them did, anyway.
Of course, every now and then a body would turn up, indicating the code of conduct the vampires now swore by wasn"t infallible. Which was bad, as the truce between the species rested on it. So far, such occurrences had been fairly rare. Dain was more concerned about the number of humans who"d gone missing only to reappear as vampires and werewolves. That wasn"t supposed to be happening, either. The increased vampire and werewolf populations in town were becoming uncomfortable, and he"d had the eerie sense for some time that the entire city was approaching a tipping point.
There might even be more turnings than officials were aware of. It wasn"t hard for vampires to walk amongst humans undetected. Some filed their fangs down to pa.s.s for human when they chose. High-tech protective fabrics and cosmetics could allow them to travel in sunlight, though they rarely took advantage of such scientific advances.
He wondered why. It certainly wasn"t a question of cost. Purveyors and consumers of luxury goods, monopolists of art and music, evangelists for bringing the extremes of beauty and style to everyday living, the vampires as a whole could pretty much buy anything. They held power over all the accessories of life in Crimson City; the humans still controlled most of the necessities. Not surprising, the vampires looked upon the other species as beneath them socially, monetarily, and intellectually. And not surprisingly, the werewolves and humans resented them for it.
"Anything yet?" Dain asked, squinting into the dark sky.
"Nope. Still trying to find something."
Dain looked at Cyd. She shrugged. All around them the streets were empty. Silent. Dain stared straight through the windshield into the gloom and knew in his bones that it was too silent.
The dashboard screen flickered and refreshed itself, with the words glowing nice and bright in the dark interior of the car.
MISSION COMPLETE.
"Something"s not right. Not right at all," Cyd murmured, shifting uncomfortably in her seat. A few seconds pa.s.sed. "Dain?" she drawled, as if she felt the same sense of disaster sneaking up on them both.
"Cyd?"
"Daaain?" She pointed.
He gripped the steering wheel. "Cyd?" he said again. Then he took a deep breath to clear his head and lowered the driver"s-side window to look out and up where she"d indicated. He turned on the vertical night vision strobes installed in the hood of the car. The beams shot straight up into the night.
The green strobes swept through the air, flicking left to right.
One pa.s.s. Nothing.
Flicking left to right... pa.s.s two. Nothing.
Flicked left to right... pa.s.s three...
And then, like a slide show when a new image clicks into place, the sky was suddenly filled with vampires.
"s.h.i.t!" Both he and Cyd cringed back into their seats. He could feel the fangs" energy-their angry energy-in his body.
And then, like a ten-ton weight, something came down on the hood of the car, the weight smashing it into the pavement. The car"s headlights crushed instantly and went out. Both Dain and Cyd hit their heads on the roof of the car as it rebounded from the momentum; and when Dain finally looked up next, he was staring into the eyes of a very beautiful, very p.i.s.sed-off female standing on the hood of his car, the green night vision strobe illuminating her for only seconds at a time.
Dain had his gun out in a flash, pointing it at her through the windshield.
The strobe swept across her body once more, and he realized that her face was spattered with blood and she had a bandage wrapped around her shoulder. No wonder she was so hyped up. Her lips curled away from her teeth. He couldn"t tell from where he sat if they were filed or human, but everything else about her screamed vampire. She held a very powerful short-nosed pistol up to the windshield between them, pointing her gun directly at his.
They looked at each other for a moment; Dain"s heart pounded in his chest. Though he did his best to remain objective as far as dealing with the fangs in the context of his job, the fact remained: Vampires had killed his wife. And yet, his heart wasn"t racing with intense of hate like it should have been. The way she looked at him, this angry creature who echoed Serena"s blonde, blue-eyed angel looks-the way they looked at each other, it was almost as if she were staring into his soul.
Dain looked over at Cyd, who was dazed and still holding her forehead. "Stay in the car," he said, "and be ready to back me up."
Slowly, he opened the car door and got out, keeping his weapon trained on the vampire. The fang followed him with her own gun, leaping gracefully off the car to the street with just the open door between them.
"Where is it?" she asked.
"I don"t know," Dain said evenly.
Her eyes narrowed. "1 think you do. Are there more?"
"I don"t know," he repeated. "We just got here." The adhesive on her bandage came undone and a thin line of blood began to trickle down the inside of her arm. Still holding his weapon aimed at her with his right hand, Dain slowly reached out with his left.
The vampire flinched at first, but held her ground. Her lips parted, revealing the tips of her fangs. It seemed as if they both held their breath as Dain extended his arm just a bit more and pressed the loose bandage back against her wounded arm.
When their eyes met again, he could see the surprise there. After a moment, she flipped the safety back on her gun. Dain did the same and, without referencing their actions, they simply put their weapons away.
A gust of wind rippled between them; the vamp looked up into the sky and turned to go as if she"d been beckoned by her people. Looking back over her shoulder at him, she paused, staring; she seemed to be committing Dain"s face to memory. As he was hers. Then she bent slightly at the knees and leaped off into the night.
Dain inhaled sharply, stunned. The pa.s.senger side door opened and Cyd got out. She cleared her throat. "Nice to know I can still get a rush like that," she said, walking around the car to have a look at the damage. Shaking her head, she delivered a swift kick to the front of the vehicle and the armored b.u.mper clattered to the concrete. Cyd lifted it up, walked around and heaved it into the backseat, then got back in the car. "I guess we know what I"ll be doing on lunch hour tomorrow. It"s cosmetic, though. Let"s go."
Dain settled back into the driver"s seat and put the car into drive, wincing at the metallic whine emanating from somewhere in the front. "You remember her from the files?"
Cyd shook her head. "No. Maybe she"s a newly made vamp."
He stayed silent for some time, and finally Cyd punched him in the shoulder. "Hey. Snap out of it."
A flickering light indicated an incoming transmission from Internal Operations. "Dain, here," he said as he punched a b.u.t.ton.
"It"s Bridget. The boss says he"ll meet you at the station."
"Already on my way." Dain cut the connection.
Cyd looked at him. "Why do I get the feeling this is the beginning of something big?"
"Either that, or we"re just in the middle of something that never really ended." Dain hit the gas and they sped off into the night.
They drove the rest of the way in silence, making good time to the station where Dain turned the car over to Cyd and then made the mistake of walking up to the front doors within sight of tabloid reporter Jillian Cooper. As he reached the entrance, the woman nearly shoved her recording device up his nose in her enthusiasm for getting the story. "Mr. Reston, do you have any comment about the strange activities at Dumont Towers?"
"What activities?" he deadpanned.
"There are rumors that the mechs are real. Can you confirm this?"
"The whats?" he asked, suppressing a smile. He and Jillian had played this game a hundred times before.
Without missing a beat, she asked, "Are we headed for trouble?"
"Could you be more specific?"
Finally she showed signs of frustration, huffing a little before moving on to the next question. "Can you give me a description of the current relationship between human and vampire leadership? Vampire and werewolf leadership? Werewolf and human leader-?"
Dain entered the station, slammed the door in her face, and kept going. He knew Cyd would throw the reporter some crumbs, but she wasn"t going to get squat out of him. Mostly because she had the annoying habit of writing stories that were true. If she"d actually been off the mark more or made stuff up like most of her coworkers, he might have been inclined to tell her more. The Crimson Post wasn"t taken seriously by many people, but it was still better not to give Jillian anything to work with unless he purposely wanted a leak. Cyd was savvy about the media; she"d know what to do.
The station was a flurry of activity, and Dain headed straight for the back. The conference room was much like the man he planned to meet there: a little sterile, with too many straight edges, but with just enough in the way of personal touches to keep things from being too impossible. Richard Kippen-ham didn"t mind going by "Kipp" on more relaxed days, but he was a suit through and through. He sported a head full of salt-and-pepper hair that was probably going to have a lot more salt before the sun came up, and a blue b.u.t.ton-down shirt with a tone-on-tone metallic blue tie. The blandness of his gray pinstripe suit relied heavily on a huge college football ring for flash.
If Dain were ever really going to hate a guy, Kipp would have been a contender because of his position. But he was actually a good man. And a d.a.m.n fine boss, if you had to have one. He trusted Dain and gave him wide berth on the job, and frankly, Dain couldn"t have asked for more. Dain owed him a lot.
Kippenham was stalking the room by the windows, looking out into the street, an electronic reader tucked under one arm. He turned as Dain made his way to the empty conference table and said, "I"ll get to the point. We didn"t send that mech. We did not send a mech to kill those vamp leaders.
We didn"t send a mech anywhere, for any purpose, at all."
Dain did a double take. "We didn"t send the mech?" he asked. How was that possible?
"No."
"And yet, we created the mechs and control every single one."
Mechs were cla.s.sified. The highest security clearance was required to have anything to do with them. And if his bosses hadn"t sent out that mech on this a.s.sa.s.sination job, that meant there was some kind of human double agent-maybe somehow even a vampire or werewolf pa.s.sing as human-operating with a game plan upon which Dain had no insight.
Kippenham put one hand behind his neck and tried to ma.s.sage a crick out of it. "Right. So, to put it bluntly, if we don"t figure out what happened ASAP, we"ve got a situation."
"I think we"ve got a situation either way," Dain said. "You saw the pictures of the dead?"
"Ryan and Christian Dumont. Yeah. But those aren"t the pictures that matter anymore. These are." Kippenham slammed the reader down flat on the table the way the vampire beauty had slammed down on Dain"s car. And there she was, staring out from the screen in a cycle of slide-show clicks.
Dain whistled and read the caption. "Fleur Dumont? She"s the one who dropped in on me and Cyd earlier."
"Definitely not dead," Kipp said. "She was shot in the earlier pics, but the mech must have run out of UV or had a weapons malfunction."
"She"s next in line, then?"
"Yeah. Unless they break tradition again, she"s up. There"s n.o.body else left who"s a direct descendant of these particular Dumonts."
Dain flipped through some more photos, these obviously older. Oddly, none of them looked particularly businesslike. Fleur Dumont shopping in Bel Air. Fleur Dumont heading in for a UV-defense treatment at an expensive Beverly Hills skin specialist. Fleur Dumont slumming it for a dinner in the human strata at a Valley diner that Dain had actually eaten at a couple of times. It all seemed so ridiculous for a Warrior-cla.s.s vampire of her lineage, he wondered how much of it was staged. "With her bloodline, shouldn"t she have been offered the leadership before Christian and Ryan?"
Kippenham shrugged. "They"ve either been keeping her quiet because she"s that important, or because she"s nothing more than a p.a.w.n. Which brings me to the point. They"re going to be pointing fingers right at us. Your job is to explain to her that we want to find out who sent that mech to kill their leaders just as much as they do. Keep tabs on her. Get her to confide in you if you can." He waved a careless hand in the air. "Just don"t let the vamps jump to conclusions. This is a perfect opportunity to get inside their heads. We all need to figure out who the real enemy is, and you"re our man in the field. Do what you need to do."
The boss tossed him a memory stick, which Dain caught neatly in one hand. "Your copy. We"re done. Good luck."