Darkness Dawns (32 page)

Who was Lady Bethany?

Was Marcus one of the immortals Roland had mentioned who had loved a human? Had she died recently?

As Chris motioned for them to adjourn to the spacious dining room, Sarah made a mental note to ask Roland later.

Lisette and Étienne took chairs beside each other at one end of a table long enough to seat twenty.

Roland guided Sarah to two chairs opposite them and sank down beside her. All business, he propped his elbows on the wood surface, splayed his knees, and shifted slightly so his thigh would press against hers.

“Has Lisette filled you in on all that’s been happening with Roland and Bastien?” Chris asked Étienne as he seated himself in the chair at the end closest to them and dropped his file folder on the table.

The Frenchman frowned. “She tells me you think he’s an immortal, but—”

Sarah gasped and jumped when Seth suddenly appeared beside the table.

Everyone else reached for their weapons, then swore and relaxed.

“Damn it,” Marcus muttered, “give us some warning before you do that.”

Raising one eyebrow, the towering leader seated himself at the far end of the table and looked to Chris. “You’ve confirmed that Sebastien is an immortal.”

“Yes.”

Everyone glanced uneasily at Seth, whose face was like granite.

Even without knowing him, Sarah could tell Seth counted this as a personal failure. Everyone else knew it, too, and seemed to have no idea how to respond. It was a bit like watching children realize for the first time that their parents weren’t infallible.

As if they had never before known Seth to make a mistake.

Nietzsche chose that moment to slink into the room and, giving everyone else a wide berth, jump up into Seth’s lap.

Chris opened the file folder and thumbed through several pages. “Sarah was right. Roland’s enemy is definitely an immortal. He was born Sebastien Newcombe and became the Earl of Marston upon his father’s death in 1807. After faking his own death in 1815—he was presumably killed by highwaymen, though, of course, his body was never found—he adopted the name Julien Marston. Julien for his father. Marston for the title. Since he didn’t have our resources, he left a sporadic paper trail, moving every twenty or thirty years, sometimes varying his name, though he always used family names. The network’s European branches did a phenomenal job locating historic papers that bore his signatures, so we were able to map his movements fairly well.”

He passed each of them, Sarah included, a sheaf of papers.

“Whatever made him want Roland’s head on a platter happened in London,” he continued, looking at Roland, “because he’s been dogging your footsteps ever since.”

Sarah stared at the papers before her. One half of the page (and all of those that followed) catalogued the many cities in which Roland had lived since his sojourn in London in the
early nineteenth century in chronological order. The opposite side did the same for Sebastien, aka Julien Marston, Julien Newcombe, Sebastien Marston, and Marston Newcombe.

Wherever Roland had gone, Sebastien had followed. It had sometimes taken him years to find Roland, but find him he would, usually just in time for Roland to pack up and move again.

“What the hell?” Roland muttered.

“You lucked out when you moved to the States,” Chris said, drawing their attention to the last few pages. “He lost you completely and, as you can see, spent the next several decades traveling the globe, I assume in search of you.”

Roland slammed the papers down. “I’m telling you, I have never seen this bastard before. Not until the morning he staked me out for the sunrise.”

Marcus shook his head. “I don’t remember seeing him before either.”

Étienne spoke up. “Well, he sure as hell saw Roland.” He looked to Roland. “Maybe you killed the one who turned him. He’s immortal, not vampire, so he may have been more loyal to the one who infected him.”

Roland waved to the pages in disbelief. “To
this
extent?”

Seth cleared his throat. “He had no one else. It’s plausible.”

An awkward silence fell.

Chris shuffled his papers. “Anyway, Roland’s self-imposed isolation worked to his advantage. Once you moved to the States, you forwent servants and refused to have a Second. You very rarely interacted with the other Guardians. So he basically had no way to trace you. When he finally found you roughly twenty years ago, it was probably just dumb luck.”

Roland scowled. “So why not try to kill me then? Why wait?”

“This is why.” Withdrawing a multifolded piece of paper, Chris spread it open on the table. “I traced him to an old farmhouse outside of Mebane—Julien Marston was the name
on the lease—and took some satellite surveillance photos. Here’s the first.”

It was the size of a road map and showed a large farmhouse and barn surrounded by a sizable clearing, then dense forest.

Sarah’s gaze swept over the others. “You have your own satellites?”

Chris shook his head. “Launching satellites into space would draw unwanted scrutiny. I just have friends in interesting places.”

“Oh.”

“It’s why he’s the best Cleaner,” Marcus commented, then motioned to the map. “So this is his lair?”

“Yes, and this is where the unbelievable factor increases exponentially.” Pulling out a second map, Chris unfolded it atop the other.

Sarah, and everyone else, leaned forward with interest.

“I wanted to find out how many, if any, vamp followers he had left, so I had my friend do a broader spectrum sweep with one of their keyhole satellites. The yellow figures are the humans. The violet ones are the vampires sleeping underground.”

“Oh shit.”

“What the hell?”

Sarah stared at the map.

There were four yellow figures. And dozens of violet ones.

She looked at Roland. “I thought vampires didn’t travel in more than twos or threes.”

A muscle leaped in his jaw. “They don’t.”

Lisette’s eyes were wide. “There mustbe atleast fiftyof them.”

“Fifty-seven,” Chris corrected.

Étienne stood and spread his hands on the map. “This extends well past the boundaries of the farmhouse.”

Chris nodded. “According to the original blueprints, the house had a basement when he bought it, but he’s clearly enlarged it.”

Marcus frowned. “If it were aboveground, it would fill the whole bloody clearing. Do you have a better layout of it?”

“No, my team checked with every contractor employed in North Carolina and the surrounding states and got nothing. Bastien did the work himself.”

Roland tapped the map with his index finger, pointing out a red figure that was distanced from all the rest. Judging by the color, he was too cool to be human and too warm to be vampire. “This is him. He sleeps away from the others.”

Marcus grunted. “Probably doesn’t trust them. They’re fucking vampires.”

“Do you think he knows?” Lisette asked. “Do you think he knows he’s an immortal?”

Her brother shook his head and retook his seat. “Vampires kill those they feed upon. No immortal could abide living with them, knowing innocent lives were being taken.”

“Actually,” Chris said, “that’s another thing.” Out came more papers. “My tech team hacked into his computer via the Internet and found this.”

Sarah studied the papers handed to her. It was a list of names and addresses in various cities and towns throughout North Carolina. Some in Virginia and South Carolina.

“We weren’t sure what it was until we started looking up the people on the list and tracked Bastien’s Internet activity. Or rather his human minions’ activity. Most of it took place during the day.”

“What is it?” Roland asked, still frowning.

“A list of the vampires’ victims.”

“He keeps track of them?” Sarah asked.

“No, he
picks
them. Everyone on that list is linked to kiddie porn, either as a buyer, a seller, or a producer, and has either recently gone missing or is dead. Sebastien is telling the vamps whom to feed on and making sure the deaths don’t appear to be vampire related.”

Étienne shook his head in disbelief. “How the hell is he controlling them?”

Sarah cleared her throat. “Doesn’t the medical examiner or whoever examines the victims notice the lack of blood in the bodies?”

“Sure,” Marcus said. “But
vampire slaying
isn’t something that typically comes to mind when investigating apparent homicides, suicides, or accidents.”

Roland nodded. “They usually assume the victims were killed and bled out in an unknown location before the bodies were dumped elsewhere. That sort of thing.”

Lisette stared at the map. “It must have taken him the full twenty years to gather so many. They should all be mad by now.”

“Unless he’s turning them himself,” Roland pointed out grimly. “He could have infected them all only recently.”

Chris sat down once more. “Or not. All our digging turned up something else I found interesting. I can’t be certain, but I’m pretty sure he’s making them eat food.”

Everyone looked at him as if he were nuts.

Except for Seth.

Seth frowned and continued to stroke Nietzsche, who purred like a Harley-Davidson.

“I sent my ops team out to surveil the place this afternoon—”

Roland scowled. “Then he knows we’ve found him and could have already relocated.”

Chris shook his head. “They were quiet and stayed out of sight. He never knew they were there.”

“He’s immortal. Have you forgotten our heightened sense of smell?”

“We aren’t amateurs, Roland,” Chris bit out. “They camouflaged their scent.”

“How?”

Sarah was with Roland. Immortals had noses like friggin’ polar bears. She found it hard to believe Chris’s men could have gone undetected.

“They bathed. No scented soaps, shampoos, or deodorants.
Wore clothes washed in fragrance-free detergent. Then hid whatever scent remained with cover scents and animal urine.”

Sarah wrinkled her nose in disgust and saw Lisette do the same.

“Animal urine?” Marcus parroted.

“Sure. Hunters do it all the time. Trust me. No one knew they were there.”

Gross.

“What did they see?” Marcus asked.

“A truck delivering a big-ass load of groceries. Mostly fresh vegetables and fruits. My hackers went to work again and found out Julien Marston has a standing order with the supplier. Every two days enough food to feed an army is delivered. According to his payroll, you’ve cut the number of humans serving Sebastien from thirteen to four but the deliveries keep coming. And even if you hadn’t, it would be too much for the humans to consume so quickly. Clearly the food isn’t solely for them.”

But vampires didn’t eat food. Roland had told her the bloodlust struck them so fast and hard, they lost interest in any other form of sustenance.

“He’s trying to save them,” Lisette declared sadly.

“Will that work?” Sarah asked the table at large. “Will eating food keep them sane?”

All eyes went to Seth.

“No. We tried that. Several times. Those who were already mad only consumed food when forced to through starvation, and it made no difference. Neither did denying them blood straight from the vein and instead feeding it to them in a glass or bag. Once the madness claims them, they’re lost.”

“And the newbies?” Chris asked.

Seth shook his head. “If we caught them within weeks of being turned, feeding them food didn’t prevent the madness from striking. It merely slowed the descent. If they were fortunate, they could have four—possibly five—years, but they were painful ones. The unceasing battle for sanity was
exhausting. They had to be watched constantly. And, if they slipped and tried to harm a human, they were tortured by memories of it during their lucid moments. They cannot be saved.”

A somber silence fell, ultimately broken by Chris.

“So what’s the plan?”

Sarah couldn’t see any remotely palatable way to end this.

Roland’s hand tightened around hers an instant before he spoke in a cold, determined voice. “We extract Sebastien, then raze the compound.”

The faces of Roland’s immortal brethren were grim in the aftermath of his proclamation. He didn’t look at Sarah, afraid of the condemnation he might see in her beloved face.

What a cold-blooded bastard she must think him.

As the other Immortal Guardians exchanged troubled looks, Roland braced himself for the moment she would withdraw her hand.

Étienne cleared his throat. “Am I the only one suffering qualms about killing vampires who have never harmed an innocent?”

Marcus sighed heavily. “No.”

“How do you know they haven’t?” Sarah queried, drawing Roland’s surprised gaze.

She was still holding his hand.

Chris held up the list of pedophiles. “Trust me, Sarah, no one on this list is innocent.”

“Yes, but you’re assuming they haven’t killed anyone
not
on the list. Is there some rule that prevents vampires from killing more than one person per night? Fifty-seven is a large number to keep track of. Couldn’t some of them have strayed without Bastien knowing it?”

Roland had had the same thought. “If they were careful not to get any blood on them so he couldn’t discern two different scents … yes.”

“We don’t know for sure that he would even object,” Lisette said slowly. “He has lived with vampires for two centuries. I know it is unpleasant, but we must consider the possibility that in some ways he may have come to think like them.”

“He certainly shares their hatred of immortals,” Marcus said.

A high-pitched ring pierced the air.

Chris pulled a cell phone from his pocket and gave it a glance. “Excuse me. I have to take this.” Rising, he held the phone to his ear and strode into the living room. “Yeah?”

“Sebastien’s approval or disapproval makes little difference in terms of our goal here,” Seth spoke. “I want him taken alive and handed over to me. The others are to be destroyed. If we let them live and do nothing until they lose their tenuous hold on sanity and kill, hundreds of innocents could fall victim before we manage to hunt them all down. That is unacceptable.”

Everyone murmured their agreement.