Burning (Brotherhood of the Blade Trilogy #1) (8 page)

I choked and fought for breath. What a horrible death my love had endured.

“Kristen!” I scrambled back into the nearly engulfed house and looked again for Kristen, under beds, under the bathroom sink, even in the freezer. Where was she?

I searched, lungs rasping and eyes burning. My hands were a mass of blistered skin, my hair was singed, and my soul was raped. I frantically searched the flaming house.

Where was she? I couldn’t find her body, which was a relief, but birthed the rising fear that she’d been kidnapped.

When I could no longer bear the heat and the interior walls began to crash down with massive booms, I got the hell out of there.

I kneeled upwind in the wet grass, blistered, stunned and grieving.

Where was my daughter? We didn’t have the kind of casual lifestyle where she would go to a friend’s house to play. My wife was
always
with our child. She even home-schooled her. The absence of Kristen was shocking, overwhelming.

I could not fathom that anyone would kidnap her, except for...
vampires.

I closed my eyes and leaned my face into the sky to wash my tear-streaked cheeks, when I got sudden Hollywood-like flashes of final moments of a life existence. However, it wasn’t my life that unrolled in slow motion like a poignant film trailer...it was my wife’s.

Being there with skin from her burned corpse stuck to my own hands, Megan’s life rolled by in my mind in a mental movie reel of significant dates, and ordinary days. Birthdays, Christmas, pancake suppers, lovemaking, building things, and the birth of our daughter. More events—a lifetime of them. I tried to visualize my daughter’s life unrolling and could not. If I could not see the life of my daughter flash before my eyes, did that mean that Kristen was still alive? I knew that I had seen Rudolph’s life flash before my eyes, too—I had held him when he had taken his last breath in Griffith Park.

I sank to my knees, holding my wife’s charred hand, her wedding ring fused to the finger bones. I slowly came back to myself and saw that it had stopped raining. I tried to think of what to do.

Vampires had killed my parents, my brother, and now my wife—and had, apparently, kidnapped my child.

Vampires.

I needed help to find Kristen, but I also realized that I only knew one person in the world who I could tell, who would believe me, and who would help me.

Not even knowing if she was off the cruise ship, or even if she was in Hawaii or Los Angeles, I pulled out the new prepaid phone I had just bought in the airport. I texted Ambra at the phone number engraved on the silver business card that she had given me:
187, 278.5, 451

The grouped numbers were standard American police codes for:
homicide, child abduction and arson.

Within thirty seconds, I received a text back from her:
10-31?
She was asking if the crime was still in progress. Good, she was up to speed. Smart girl.

I texted back:
10-74,
or ‘negative.’

Her response was nearly instant.
10-20.
She wanted the location.

I texted the street address and added:
10-10
(home).

She texted:
10-77 45

She’d be here in 45 minutes.

I texted:
10-0
for caution.

Next, I wondered why she was in Los Angeles, so soon after docking in Hawaii.

Chapter Thirteen

Know thine enemy.

The words had been burned into my brain by my parents’ death, and then by my brother’s. Now, with the death of my wife—the
burning
death—and the abduction of our daughter, the Sebastian family had been absolutely shattered by vampires.

I stood on the cliff overlooking the rough, wild Pacific Ocean. But for Kristen’s unknown fate, I would’ve leaped from that cliff. I stood on the cliff edge, shaking, the misty drizzle billowing around me like cold, gray arms that beckoned me to step out to my death.

But I didn’t.
My daughter needed me. I screamed my rage until I tasted blood from broken blood vessels in my throat. I had to get my little girl back. I hoped to God she was still alive. And...
human.

I backed away from the cliff and sat on the wrought-iron garden bench in my mother’s overgrown perfume garden that overlooked the Pacific near the burned-out, blackened ruins of our once-beautiful hacienda in a remote area of Malaga Cove on the Ranchos Palos Verdes peninsula, the part that was often rocked by earthquakes and the occasional landslide. Sobs wracked my body.

I heard a car approach and looked up through blurry vision.

A slender, blonde figure got out of a black Equus and walked slowly toward me. I recognized her and jumped up. “Stop!” I shouted. “The yellow-brick path is booby-trapped!”

Her eyebrows went up, but she did stop. Smart girl.

“
Stay on the gravel path until you reach me,” I added, motioning toward the safer route.

To my surprise, she ran onto a boulder and took an impossibly long leap
over
the yellow-brick path, landing on the gravel path. She zigzagged and leaped from tree branches and rocks, vaulting over tree limbs and somersaulting to reach me. She sat next to me on the garden bench, not even out of breath, her eyes looking far out to sea, watching something that I could not see.

“
What the heck was that?”

“
Le parkour
. Freerunning.”

“
I’m not that athletic.”

“
You just need training and practice.”

“
I’m scared of heights.”

“
We all have fear that needs to be conquered.”

“
Why did you come, Ambra?”

“
After the vampires somehow got Gabrielle off the ship at Hilo—the entire ship was searched—I also took a plane back to Los Angeles. I was at LAX, almost heading out to Switzerland, when I got your text. I would never leave you without support at a time like this.”

“
Thank you. It hasn’t really hit me yet.”

“
Self-preservation is a strength in you. I know what it’s like to come upon a scene like this, one’s own family murdered. I could not speak intelligibly for weeks.”

“
I have nowhere else to go and no one else I can tell.”

“
Come to Blackstone Castle in the Alps, where we live.”

“
How many are you?”

“
Ten, with you. We have a high-tech war room, a heated swimming pool and a gym. We even have cable TV.”

“
I don’t want creature comforts. I want my dead wife back. I want to find my daughter alive...and human.”

“
I’m very sorry about your daughter and your wife.”

“
I hope to God my wife was dead when they burned her. Jesus, I hope she didn’t burn alive. God help me.”

I was shaking nearly uncontrollably, and Ambra could see it. “You better let that out,” Ambra said. “You’re going to be sick if you don’t.”

I stood up and paced back and forth. “I don’t even know how to beat them anymore. They have completely shattered my family. My wife is lost forever—I’m sick with worry about my daughter.”

“
We
will
find her.”

“
But in what condition? There’s only one reason they would take her alive.”

“
She’s bait for you,” Ambra said.

“
Exactly. I’m going after her anyway.”

“
Of course we are.”

“
We?”

“
Yes,
we
. Any idea where they might have taken her?”

“
No clue, Ambra. But I’m sure we’ll hear from them.” I paused, looked at the still smoldering home. “I should have been home. What the hell am I doing? Chasing fucking vampires, putting my wife and kid in constant jeopardy.”

“
It’s not your fault, Rand.”

“
Isn’t it? And what if I had left well enough alone? What if I had moved on with my life? My wife would be alive today. My daughter would be here, playing.”

I covered my face, overwhelmed suddenly with emotion.

Ambra put a hand on my shoulder. “And live knowing that your parents’ killers walked free?”

She was right, of course. Revenge drove me daily, so much so that anyone close to me was bound to suffer. I hated myself for putting my sweet wife and daughter in harm’s way...but I hated the vampires even more.

A few minutes later, I turned and faced Ambra. “What’s waiting in Switzerland?”

“
A support system. Resources to help find your child. Grief counseling. Training. Advanced weapons. Free medical care. A legitimate paycheck with taxes taken out. Perhaps we can even arrange a legal Swiss citizenship.”

“
I’m American, with no desire to give up my citizenship. I have to find my daughter and get her back, if she is still alive.
That’s
my priority.”

“
I agree. But you can’t go up against them by yourself. You can’t find her by yourself. And you know now, that you cannot beat them by yourself. Not these old ones.”

“
I’m the last man standing in my family. Once you help me locate her, I’ll go by myself and get her.”

“
Don’t be foolish. What good are you to Kristen if you’re dead?”

I assumed if they had a dossier on me, they undoubtedly knew my daughter’s name, too.

“You worry that they will turn her,” said Ambra gently.

I nodded, ran a hand over my face. “God, I feel sick.”

“I doubt they will turn her, Rand.”

I was about to ask how she knew this, until it hit—and I felt sick all over again. So much so that I leaned forward and heaved the contents of my guts so strongly that I fell to my knees.

Yes, I knew what she meant. In the vampire world, children’s blood is a rare delicacy. A source of great strength. Sick, fucking world.

“
We will not talk about that,” I said, standing on shaky legs.

She nodded. “Sorry. Truly.”

Time to change the subject. “I was getting so close to finding out if they are some sort of a clan, and if they have a vampires’ nest where many live. Not the vamps that live like Samantha Moon and others like her—that is, those who have acclimated into society. I mean like a lair. A nest. Living like animals.”

Ambra raised her eyebrows. “An enclave of vampires?”

I nodded. “I’ve been building a database of killings in Southern California that seem to be vampire-related.”

“
You have enough for a database?”

“
Unfortunately, though some of the data goes back twenty years and had to be gleaned from newspaper morgues.”

“
Who were the victims?”

“
Homeless, prostitutes, drug addicts, runaways, anyone who stayed out all night.”

“
This is starting to sound like a Jack the Ripper situation. Where is the circle of terror?”

“
Griffith Park, where my brother, Rudolph, was killed. There is a lot of wilderness and a long history of murders in it, but only some of those killings do I attribute to vampires. I suspect a vampire nest in or near that park.”

“
How do you even know if they are the same vampires who killed your family?”

“
I wouldn’t, except for this.” I took a small object out of the secret pocket of my wallet and handed it to her.

“
A coin?”

“
A Roman bronze coin. The face on the coin is Nero Caesar. I found this five years ago, near Rudolph’s body in Griffith Park. I got there in time to see him die and the vampire get away. I didn’t even know their names until I talked to Gabby on the ship. She told me that she thought Nero, Vlad, and Delilah killed him. And then I understood the meaning of the coin: A killer’s calling card.”

“
This burning of your house has Nero’s signature all over it. We have seen it before. Additionally, he burned down part of Rome and killed a hundred thousand in order to enlarge his palaces.”

“
Sociopath.”

Ambra handed me back the coin. “I’m so very sorry about your wife.”

“If I had arrived a few hours ago, I could have fought them. If I had run the red lights or taken a different route, I would still have Megan. And that night, if I had come earlier to Griffith Park to meet my brother—he was going to give me some intel on our parents’ killers—maybe I could have saved Rudolph, too.”