Lucas (8 page)

Kathryn chuckled, shivering intentionally. “
Minnesota
’s a little too cold for my bones. No, I work out of
Quantico
.”

“I see. And what does
Quantico
want with Lord
Donlon
?”
Magda’s
tone was just as casual as it had been, but her gaze was abruptly intent.
The lawyer emerging at last.

“I’ve made no secret of the reason for my visit, Ms.
Turkova
. I’m investigating the disappearance of someone.
A photographer from
California
who was here to shoot the
Badlands
.
He’s an artist of some repute and has friends in high places. Hence, the FBI’s interest in what normally would be a matter for state or local authorities.”

“I see. And what is this photographer’s name?”

Kathryn smiled, knowing that
Turkova
almost certainly knew Daniel’s name already. “I’m here to interview your client,” she said mildly, but firmly, “not you, and not to be interviewed by you, either. Is Lucas
Donlon
available?”

Magda
bared her teeth in an unfriendly smile. She wasn’t as blatant about it as the sphinx-like guard had been, but Kathryn clearly caught sight of two delicate white fangs. “It never hurts to try,” she said.

“Understood,” Kathryn agreed.

Magda
pulled a cell phone from her pocket and hit a number. “Agent Hunter is here,” she told someone, then disconnected and slipped the phone back into her pocket. “Lord
Donlon
will see you now.”

* * * *

Kathryn followed
Magda
Turkova
out of the comfortable living room and down a long, tile-floored hallway.
Turkova’s
high heels tapped loudly on the hard surface, and all Kathryn could think of was how cold these floors must be in winter. This was
South Dakota
, after all. She’d never lived in any of the truly cold states, but she saw the weather reports like everyone else, and
South Dakota
was usually buried in snow for months at a time. The heating bill for this house must be cosmic. But she supposed if you could afford a place like this on a ranch this big, then you didn’t worry much about heating bills.

Turkova’s
cell phone rang. She glanced at the ID and scowled, but she answered before it rang a second time.

“
Magda
.”
She listened,
then
said, “Yes.”

And that was it. Kathryn figured it was
Donlon
calling, maybe asking if they were on their way or something. Maybe he was anxious to get the interview over with and return to his vampire business, whatever that was. Actually, her data run on
Donlon
had listed considerable financial holdings, but everything was owned under his corporate identity of
Donlon
Inc. It was a private corporation, which meant he wasn’t required to make the details of his holdings and/or earnings public unless he wanted to. And he clearly didn’t want to. Usually, even private corporations made
some
things public—charitable stuff that was good for their public image, or information they intentionally let slip to influence a particular business transaction. And sometimes political donations were revealed, when it served their corporate interests. But
Donlon
didn’t seem to care about any of that. She hadn’t been able to find a single article on him or his corporation, not in the major journals, not even in the local newspaper.

Kathryn and
Turkova
were met halfway down the corridor by what she took to be another gatekeeper.
Male, presumably a vampire, six-foot-three, blond and brown, big shoulders and arms, so probably two twenty-five or more in weight.
He was good-looking in an all-American football captain sort of way and gave her an openly friendly smile before stopping them in front of a pair of big wooden doors with iron belting.

“I’ll take it from here,
Magda
,” he said, as if he was the one in charge. “Agent Hunter,” he said, turning his attention Kathryn. “My name is Nicholas. Lord
Donlon
is waiting, if you’re ready?”

Kathryn scowled inwardly at the use of the honorific for
Donlon
, but outwardly she only nodded briskly and said, “Yes,
thank
you.” Unfailingly polite and professional, that’s what the FBI expected of their agents.

Nicholas opened the door. Kathryn started to step forward, but stopped in surprise when he strode in ahead of her. It threw her off enough that she paused on the threshold until
Magda
made an impatient noise behind her.

Kathryn continued into the room, her gaze sweeping the space, cataloging everything she saw. It wasn’t quite what she’d expected, but then so far, nothing about this vampire’s lair
had
been. The room was big and airy, very masculine, but tasteful, with a grouping of dark leather furniture to one side, in front of an even darker row of wooden bookshelves that lined the entire length of one wall. There was a fireplace on the opposite wall, with a carved wooden mantle, and above that a beautiful oil painting depicting moonrise over what she assumed was the nearby Badlands, although it could just as easily have been
Monument
Valley
in
Arizona
or another similar desert setting. She wasn’t that familiar with any of them. But the artist had caught the surreal look of those landscapes, and the rising moon gave it such an alien cast that if someone had told her it was another planet, she would have believed them.

On the side of the fireplace nearest the hallway door, the wall was unadorned except for a series of black and white photographic prints. Kathryn’s eye ranged over the photographs as closely as she could without being obvious about it, and there was no doubt. She had none of Daniel’s talent, but she had a terrific eye for detail, and she knew his work. They were from a series he’d done on
Ireland
some years ago.

Her gaze shifted to the vampire she’d come to see, Lucas
Donlon
, but the broad-shouldered Nicholas was still in the way. Impatient now, she started to walk around him just as he addressed
Donlon
, saying, “My lord,” and stepped aside, like a magician revealing his trick.

* * * *

Lucas sprawled behind his desk, consciously projecting an image of negligent ease, which was at complete odds with what he was feeling. The timing on this FBI investigation sucked overall, although he was glad to get it over with at last. With his incursion last night into
Klemens’s
territory, war had been declared. Up until now, the Midwestern vampire lord had limited himself to an occasional, if irritating, foray along the border in an attempt to seize assets he knew belonged to Lucas. His success had been limited, but with the assassination attempt on Raphael, and now Lucas’s response, the gloves would be off. And
Klemens
was a dirty fighter.

Vampire wars in general were fought differently than human wars. For one thing, there were no grand battles. There weren’t enough vampires on either side for that, and most of
those
were civilians, who everyone agreed should be left out of the bloodshed as long as they didn’t insert themselves into the confrontation. Or hang around with traitors like
Heintz
.

Instead, the war would consist of a series of skirmishes, short-lived and bloody. Every vampire lord had his warriors, some more than others, but no one had more than a few hundred. Because wars were fought with a limited number of combatants, there were lulls in the fighting.
Like now.
With Lucas’s successful strike last night, and especially since
Klemens
had suffered the loss of both property and vampires, it would be at least a few days before
Klemens
could pick a target and rally his forces for a counterattack. That didn’t mean Lucas could relax. His people were on alert all up and down the eastern border, and his warriors were staged in such a way that at least a few of them could reach any attack point fairly quickly. Their job was to hold the line until backup arrived.

So, if Lucas
had
to deal with the FBI, this was as good a time as he would get for the foreseeable future. But this whole thing was a waste of time. He didn’t know anything about a missing person, and neither did any of his vampires. He’d questioned them specifically about this matter so that none of them could weasel out and lie to him. A vampire couldn’t lie to his Sire or his sworn master, and Lucas didn’t permit anyone to reside within his territory unless they were at least sworn to him. Most of the vampires living on the ranch itself were his own children, and that included everyone who worked closely with him in the main house.

But then, this was
South Dakota
. There weren’t that many vampires in the entire state. There weren’t even that many
humans
. Fewer than a million people lived in
South Dakota
, which was one of the lowest population densities in the country. The majority of
South Dakota
’s vampires lived or worked right here on Lucas’s ranch. There was a small cluster in Sioux Falls, but they weren’t suspected in the FBI’s missing person case because this Agent Hunter seemed certain her man had gone missing while hanging around in the Badlands, which, by the way, was a good eighty miles from Lucas’s ranch.

Lucas had his main headquarters here because he loved the area. When most people thought of
South Dakota
, they thought of the crags of
Mount Rushmore
with its famous presidents, and they figured the whole state looked like that. But his ranch was beautiful and green—during most of the year, anyway. His estate was over a hundred and fifty acres of rolling grasslands and mature trees, with two separate creeks running through it. It wasn’t as green as his native
Ireland
, of course, but in the centuries he’d been alive, he’d never been anyplace that was. He loved his ranch, though. He loved raising horses, loved riding them through his land and knowing it
was
his land. He had other houses throughout his territory, some in much bigger cities. But he always came back here. This was home.

And now the FBI was invading his home. He didn’t trust the police; he never had. He’d grown up on the mean streets of
Dublin
when they were truly mean, and the Garda had never been his friend. That was another thing about
South Dakota
. They left a man alone. As long as he didn’t do anything to draw their attention his way, the authorities didn’t bother him. He wished he could simply tell this FBI woman to go away, but he couldn’t do that. Regardless of his personal preferences, he was responsible for thousands of vampires throughout his territory, which spanned several states. Anything he did could redound on them in unpleasant ways. So, he would see Agent Hunter, and he’d tell her what he’d already said on the phone. He didn’t know where her brother was. Speaking of which, he found it very suspect that Agent Hunter had never bothered to mention that the man she was looking for was her brother. Did she really think he didn’t have the wherewithal to find out details like that? She had surely done a data search on
him.
Did she think that he wouldn’t do the same on
her?

Granted, his contacts within the FBI weren’t what they’d once been. For years, the vampire community’s best and most secret asset within the Bureau had been Phoebe
Micheletti
, a former FBI tech and later forensic consultant. Phoebe’s loyalty had been unquestioned because she was a vampire herself. But recent events in
Washington
,
D.C.
had shown that perhaps someone
should
have questioned her more closely. The situation had ended with Phoebe and her longtime mate both dead and the loss of an inside track at the FBI.

But there
were
still some vampires employed by the Bureau, especially in the technical areas where they could work at night. They might not have the contacts that Phoebe had once enjoyed, but they were still good enough to know that Kathryn Hunter wasn’t here under official FBI auspices. As for discovering that the missing man was her brother, that took his computer guy all of seven minutes to find on the Internet. Thirty minutes more, and Lucas knew all sorts of things about Hunter.

He picked up his cell phone and rang
Magda
.

“
Magda
,” she answered immediately. Normally, she used his title to answer when he called, but since she was currently escorting the FBI agent to his office door, she wisely didn’t want to give away that he was the one calling.

“Reach out again to our people in the FBI,” he told her. “See if they’ve got anything more on Kathryn Hunter.
Personal stuff.
But make sure they’re discreet, Maggie. I don’t want to set anything into motion until I know more.”