THREE.
It wasn"t Julian"s sweet, pleasant odor, either. It was a carrion odor, the smell of vampires who still very much subsisted on the taking of human blood.
She sat up straight in bed, staring out at darkness. Light oozed in through the blinds, painting stripes on the floor. She could hear nothing from the other room. Eyes and ears told her she was alone, but her nose said differently. So did the small hairs standing up on the back of her neck.
As silently as she could, she eased out of the bed. Her toes touched the floor, then her heels. She had no weapon she could think of. Barely breathing, she scanned the room, to see only darkness and the stripes of streetlight.
"You can"t escape."
Lorelei gasped. The voice had come from right next to her, but she saw nothing, felt only a vague stirring of air against her arm. A woman"s voice. Lorelei froze where she was, still perched on the edge of the bed, feet firmly against the floor, ready to run.
"I"m here to take you," the voice went on. It was a low alto, pleasant if not for the threat it held. Lorelei still saw nothing and no one.
"Take me where?" The words came out of her in a choked whisper. She was surprised she"d been able to make them at all.
"Away. Away from him."
"I don"t understand."
"You don"t have to understand. The battle begins here."
"What battle?"
Then she saw her. The vampire, barely illuminated by the light from outside. She was taller than Lorelei but waif-thin, long, nearly white hair cascading around an unlined, porcelain face. Her ghostly pale eyes met Lorelei"s and held them.
That"s how they take you, Lorelei thought. With the eyes.
She knew the vampire was trying to hypnotize her into 189 submission. The power emanating from her flowed along Lorelei"s skin, cold and black. But even when Lorelei looked into the vampire"s eyes, the power didn"t move deeper than her skin.
The vampire"s eyes widened, then narrowed. "Who are you?"
Lorelei clenched her teeth. "I"m the Senior"s woman." She turned and ran.
In the living room, next to the fireplace, lay the same poker she"d shoved through another vampire"s chest just a few weeks ago. It seemed like another life. In a way, it had been. She s.n.a.t.c.hed up the tool and brandished it.
This vampire was smarter than that one had been, though, and showed no inclination to impale herself on the poker. Instead she walked easily-glided, almost-out of Lorelei"s bedroom and stood clean and white next to the door.
"What has he taught you?"
"As much as he could."
The vampire sneered. "Julian is a disgrace to his kind."
"Julian is his own kind." Clenching her hands on the poker, she ran straight at her rival, wielding the makeshift weapon like a lance. The vampire smiled and moved her hand in front of her. Lorelei kept coming. The vampire stopped smiling.
Cold fury mixed with triumph in Lorelei"s chest. Whatever tricks her opponent was trying, they obviously weren"t working.
She kept coming, as fast as she could given the limited distance between them, determined to plant the poker hard in between the white vampire"s annoyingly perfect b.r.e.a.s.t.s.
At the last second, the vampire"s hand came up and caught the end of the poker, flinging it aside, as well as Lorelei, who let go a half-second too late. Lorelei fell hard against the wall and lay still, looking up at her attacker.
"Who are you?" she managed.
The white vampire looked down at her, the thin smile back on her lips. "I am Lilith. I come on the orders of Ialdaboth, to take you away."
The eyes had her now, almost. Lorelei"s skin went cold and clammy as her head spun. d.a.m.ned hormones, she thought. 190 I could have taken that b.i.t.c.h . . .
Then everything went black.
Julian lay stretched out on the bed he"d once shared with Lorelei, looking at the maps Lucien had sketched for him. They lacked detail in some areas, but gave him a general idea of where they might start in their move against the Dark Children.
He"d never been to Eastern Europe. Somehow hanging out in the shadow of the Carpathians just seemed too cliche.
These so-called Dark Children, though, seemed to have no such reservations. They had an enclave in Sarajevo, and another in Transylvania, for G.o.d"s sake. Of all the ridiculous places for vampires to hang out en ma.s.se.
Then again, they could probably make a killing with the tourists. He frowned at the maps, noticing the location of the Transylvanian enclave-nestled in a spa.r.s.ely occupied curve of the Carpathians. That story of Lucien"s . . .
Lucien hadn"t been able to tell them exactly where he and the other First Demons had been born. Geographical concepts hadn"t been nearly as clear-cut twelve thousand years ago as they were now. But he"d thought it was somewhere in what was now Eastern Europe. Had these Dark Children maintained that ancient settlement? Many of the older vampires Julian knew, excluding himself, were creatures of habit, so it wasn"t outside the realm of possibility that they might have maintained an enclave for twelve thousand years. But it begged the question: had they done it for reasons other than sentiment?
He circled the place on the map. Just a hunch, but someone would have to go there at some point. Back, perhaps, to the very beginning.
His head spun at the thought, strangely, then he realized it wasn"t the thought that caused the sensation.
Lorelei.
He felt her then, inside his head, her presence steely but crying out for help.
Maps and papers spilled to the floor as he shot out of the bed, heading for the door. Her apartment was too far. He could 191 never get there in time, even using every vampiric power he possessed.
But Lucien could.
He staggered for the door, reaching it just as it came open.
Lucien pushed into the room, colliding with Julian. Julian grabbed at the bigger man for balance.
"Lorelei-" he started.
"I know," said Lucien. "Hang on."
Julian already had his fists clenched in Lucien"s sweater.
Lucien put an arm around his shoulders and drew him in closer.
Julian had just enough time to be startled before the room disappeared.
An instant later they were in Lorelei"s apartment. The bedroom, Julian noted. The place reeked of vampire. Julian put a hand over his nose as Lucien pushed him away, heading for the living room. Julian followed.
The room was ablaze with white light. Julian caught just a glimpse of Lorelei"s black hair, and of another woman, slim and pale, before the light was gone.
He threw himself toward it, but ended up sliding across the floor on his chest, hands grasping at nothing. "Lorelei!"
"It"s too late," Lucien"s calm voice came from just behind him.
"s.h.i.t!" Julian came to his feet, looking wildly around the room. She had to be somewhere. She couldn"t have just disappeared into thin air. "s.h.i.t!"
"They made the first move," said Lucien quietly. "We should have done it, but they beat us to it."
"What the h.e.l.l could they possibly want with her?" He wanted to hit Lucien for his lack of response. He just stood there, his eyes on Julian"s, as composed as if nothing had happened at all.
And he said, very calmly, "To get to you."
They went back. There didn"t seem to be anything else to do. Julian detoured, though, before they reached his rooms in the Underground.
He kept his food in Vivian"s house because she had a 192 refrigerator. He doubted Lucien would protest a visit to Vivian"s.
In her kitchen, he poured himself a tall gla.s.s of unpasteurized milk and threw a raw chicken breast on a plate. Standing over the sink, he tore into the meat viciously, not bothering to use a knife. He still had his fangs, though he didn"t use them anymore.
Except for this. It felt good to tear into something. He would have preferred to tear into the throat of the vampire who"d taken Lorelei.
"You all right?" Lucien asked after a time.
"I want her back. And I want whoever took her dead."
Lucien nodded. "We"ll get her back." He sat at the kitchen table, folding his hands. "I sensed her strongly when they took her. She"s not seriously hurt."
Julian spoke through half-chewed meat, feeling as feral as he had two centuries ago, when he"d still fed on human blood.
"She"s pregnant, dammit."
"I know."
Julian closed his eyes, calming the rage in his chest. "So what do we do?"
"We wait."
He left Lucien at Vivian"s. She"d shown up not long after they arrived, and it hurt him to watch the way they looked at each other. It hurt to be in his room, as well, where he could smell Lorelei"s skin on the blankets.
He couldn"t sleep, anyway. He didn"t need to. He sat at his desk and booted up the computer.
He should have paid more attention to the e-mails he"d gotten over the last few weeks. He"d shown Lucien the last one, but even together they hadn"t been certain of its meaning.
They were strange, though, stranger than the usual offerings.
Verses from the Book, supposedly, speaking of the coming of Ialdaboth.
The name sounded so familiar, and not just because of its appearance in heretical Christian texts. No, there was more to it than that. Something to do with what had happened to Lorelei.
He put his head down on the desk, rolling the thoughts around in his head. 193 Ialdaboth.
And he saw a face. A long-boned, craggy face, with eyes as old even as Lucien"s. The memory was clear and clean, burned into his mind.
It wasn"t his memory.
It had happened to him before, on occasion, since the day he"d taken the life, the blood, and the memory of the previous Senior. He still wondered from time to time why the Senior had done it-why he"d so willingly given his life to Julian. Perhaps because of this: so Julian could have the memories, and the power to do something about them.
He lifted his head, suddenly groggy, as if he"d slept. The memories were valuable, but when they came to him they brought this weariness after them. He rubbed his eyes.
When he looked up, he was no longer alone.
A woman stood in front of his desk, slim and pale, with long, white hair and almost colorless eyes. Julian stiffened, recognizing her in a flash of realization. She"d taken Lorelei.
He lunged toward her, but she made a quick movement, then disappeared. Something fell on the desk in front of him.
He looked down. A computer disk lay there, blue, unlabeled.
He picked it up and popped it into the computer.
Five minutes later, teeth clenched so hard his head hurt, he went to find Lucien. 194
FOUR.
When Lorelei"s world returned she was stretched out on a mat on a hard floor. Carefully, head spinning, she sat up to examine her surroundings.
There was little to see. The room was small, dark, and damp, the floor and walls apparently of stone. It reminded her of places in the Underground, but it didn"t feel the same.
Whatever it was-smell, taste, aura-it didn"t sit well with her.
Her stomach lurched. She swallowed hard and closed her eyes until it settled.
"Welcome back."
Her head jerked toward the voice. The vampire-Lilith, she"d called herself-sat cross-legged on the floor against the opposite wall.