Sophia (2 page)

If she was breathing, he couldn’t see it, but he leaned over and placed two fingers against her neck, expecting to find nothing but confirmation of what he already believed to be true. Instead, he felt a weak pulse—barely there, but she was alive!

He straightened immediately, pulled the cell phone from his belt and speed dialed 911. The closest trauma center was a good sixty miles away, and most of that was twisting mountain roads, but he didn’t know what else to do, who else to call. He knew battlefield medicine, had spent hundreds of hours in training sessions. He’d dealt with bodies torn apart by guns and explosives, but this . . . He forced himself to think clinically, to ignore the brutal nature of the attack. Okay. Shock was probably her greatest enemy right now. He cast about for something with which to cover her. He needed to raise her body temp and keep her warm. But all he could see were blankets as bloody as she was. Towels. He ran back into the bathroom as he waited for the 911 operator to come on the line. It would probably play hell with any forensic—

“Nine-one-one, what is your—”

The rest of her spiel was lost as the roar of an angry vampire filled the house.

Chapter Two

Colin backed two quick steps away from the bedside, grabbing up the shotgun as he went. In the blink of an eye, Jeremy was in the room, fangs fully distended, eyes flashing red fire as he confronted the invader.

“Jeremy,” Colin said evenly. “You know me. You know I didn’t do this.”

The vampire stalked across the bedroom, his movements eerily graceful, gliding forward like a big hunting cat. He growled softly, threateningly, but his gaze kept flicking to Mariane, anguish replacing the rage on his face.

“I’m calling nine one one, Jeremy. Let me get some help for her.”

The vampire’s head snapped around at that, his gaze deadly cold despite the fires burning there. “You touch her and I’ll kill you, human. I don’t need your help.”

Faster than Colin could follow, Jeremy was at the bedside, lifting Mariane in his arms, bloody tears rolling down his face as he saw what they’d done to her. A low keening rose from his throat, rising in volume until it became a furious howl.

“There will be justice for this,” he snarled, his gaze once again pinning Colin in place. “Mark my words, human. This will not go unavenged.”

And then he was gone, nothing more than a blur of movement and a slam of noise as the front door hit the wall in the living room.

“Well, shit,” Colin whispered. He lowered his head and just breathed, letting his body recover from an adrenaline rush that dwarfed whatever he’d been feeling when he’d first entered the house.

“Jesus H. Christ.” He sucked in a last deep breath and called 911 again, canceling the earlier call. Then he walked out to his truck and grabbed his gear. Jeremy might not want his help, but he was going to get it anyway. This was a crime scene and Colin was the closest thing they had to a police department in Cooper’s Rest. Not that he was a real police officer. Legally, he was no more than private security, which meant this case fell under the jurisdiction of the
County
Sheriff
. But the people around here didn’t want the Sheriff or anyone else poking into their affairs, and that went double for the vampires who’d elevated privacy to a fine art. That’s why the self-appointed town council had hired him in the first place. He hadn’t been to any police academy; the nearest he’d come were a few criminology classes at the college down in the city. But he was qualified to handle just about every weapon that existed and could put a man, or a woman, on the ground in nothing flat, regardless of weight or training. He also had the ability to size up a situation and the confidence to deal with it. Which was what he intended to do with this one.

Cooper’s Rest was his home now, the place he’d somehow ended up in after leaving the Navy. This tiny village in northern
Washington
state was about as far from where he’d grown up as it was possible to be, but it was a quiet, peaceful place, full of mostly good people who wanted to be left alone. And it suited him just fine.

But now someone had invaded this peaceful place, had invaded his home, and Colin wasn’t the kind of man to sit back and wait for someone else to see justice done. He was going to find whoever had done this. And when he did, he wasn’t going worry about reading anyone their Miranda rights.

Chapter Three

Vancouver
,
British Columbia

Sophia gripped the edges of the armrests, her nails gouging holes into the fine leather. She hated flying. She especially hated flying through the daylight hours, hated trusting her life to humans. She might be nearly three hundred years old, but that didn’t mean she lived in the past. She watched CNN, went online and read the newspapers. She knew how often these planes fell out of the sky, right along with their human pilots and, maybe, vampire passengers.

It was possible, she mused, that a vampire could survive such a crash. Possible, but not certain. It was definitely not a theory she wished to test, nor did she want to learn whether a vampire could breathe underwater for however long it would take to reach land if the plane went down in the middle of the ocean.

Not that that particular outcome was a problem at this point. The ocean was no longer beneath her. Nor was the sun shining on the other side of the airplane’s thin skin as it had been for much of the previous leg of her journey, which had taken her from her home in
Rio de Janeiro
to a stop in
Toronto
. She thanked whatever gods smiled on vampires that she at least had the resources to travel by private aircraft, one with a suitable sleep compartment for her daylight needs.

Of course, it would have been even
more
convenient if she’d been able to fly to
Texas
, or even
Mexico
, from Rio and gone on from there to
Vancouver
. She could have limited her flying time to the hours of darkness. But the North American vampires, unlike those in most of
South America
, were obsessively territorial. She couldn’t even pass through one of their stupid airports without getting permission, something she wasn’t willing to do. Not for this trip.

There were too many unknowns this time. She didn’t know what her Sire, Lucien, wanted. Didn’t know why he’d issued such an urgent summons and then disappeared on her before she could even get ahold of him. But there’d been an undeniable note of desperation to his mental call, a desperation reinforced by the fact that he’d contacted her at all. Lucien was her Sire, and her loyalty was his alone, but she hadn’t even spoken to him in half a century. And now this. Whatever
this
was.

The ground rushed up to meet the plane and she closed her eyes, feeling every bump and skid as it finally came to rest. Sophia breathed a deep sigh of relief and whispered a superstitious prayer of thanks to the God of her childhood that she’d survived once again.

She only hoped she’d also survive whatever Lucien had waiting for her.

* * * *

“What do you mean, you don’t know where he is?” Sophia demanded darkly.

“Do we need a translator? Is that the problem, Sophia? I don’t fucking know where he is, okay? He doesn’t exactly check in with me.”

Sophia leveled a flat stare at the vampire sitting across from her. Darren Yamanaka was Lucien’s lieutenant.
In name only
, she thought viciously. She could squish him like a bug. She’d probably quite enjoy it, in fact. Her eyes narrowed appraisingly, but Darren met her gaze without flinching. He wasn’t as powerful as she was, but he wasn’t weak either. And he had courage. She’d give him that. What he didn’t have was even the slightest clue as to the whereabouts of their mutual Sire.

“When did you last see him?” she asked with forced patience.

“I’ve already told you, and no matter how many times you ask, the answer will be the same. Lucien walked out that very door eight days ago.” He pointed dramatically across the big conference room and through the open double doors to the heavy front door of Lucien’s
Vancouver
headquarters. “He said he was off to meet another of his women. You, of all people, should remember how fond Lucien is of his women.”

Sophia held back the snarl rising from her throat, forcing herself to remain calm. She hadn’t flown halfway around the world, risking her long immortal life, to lose her temper with this pipsqueak of a male.
Everybody
knew Lucien loved women. Hell, Lucien loved men, too. But the fact that Sophia had once been his lover, and that he’d made her Vampire because he’d been unwilling to lose her to human age and frailty . . . that was
not
something everyone knew. Although, Darren clearly did. Lucien had been telling tales before he’d disappeared, the bastard.

“Was he alone when he left? Not even a bodyguard?”

“No,” Darren admitted reluctantly. “He usually took someone with him, but not this time. He claimed the woman was someone he’d known a long time, that it was safe. And that he could defend himself if it came to it. I argued with him. But . . . you know Lucien.”

She did know Lucien. He was handsome, brilliant, utterly charming, and sometimes a complete idiot. Especially if a woman was involved.

“Why do you think he called me?”

“I have no fucking idea. I don’t even know if he really did. It’s awfully convenient that Lucien disappears and now you show up. How long’s it been, Sophia?”

“Not long enough, Darren,” she said with saccharine sweetness, before her voice hardened. “But if you’re suggesting I have in any way harmed our Sire, you should say good-bye to whoever is foolish enough to care for you because I will kill you where you stand.”

He stood, leaning across the table, his eyes gleaming yellow. “You can try, bitch.”

Sophia felt his power pressing against her, felt her own surging to meet his. She also stood, matching his aggressive stance, and pushed back just enough for him to feel the weight of it.

Darren’s eyes widened in surprise, and he froze for a full minute before he slowly sank back into his chair. His gaze was riveted on her, like an animal that has just discovered a predator hiding in its nest.

Sophia smiled pleasantly and sat back down, satisfied for now. She didn’t want to kill Darren. Not if she could avoid it. What she wanted was to find Lucien and discover what the hell was going on.

“Have you looked for him?” she asked in a mild voice.

Darren blinked, then said, “Of course I have. We all have. He’s alive, but you know that already. It’s odd, though—”

Sophia’s gaze sharpened. “Odd? What’s odd?”

“Have you searched for him since you’ve been in the city?”

She frowned, puzzled. “I haven’t, no.”

“Try. Then tell me what you find.”

Sophia regarded the other vampire silently. Obviously, she couldn’t trust him, but his concern for Lucien seemed real enough. And there was definitely something weird about all of this.

“Is there somewhere secure?” she asked abruptly. A thorough search for her Sire would require a level of consciousness that was almost a meditation. She would be vulnerable to attack, especially in this house.

Darren nodded. “I’ll show you.”

* * * *

Sophia waited until Darren had left, then shot the lock on the door and set her own barrier of power to secure it. She waited even longer, until the other vampire’s footsteps had faded and she could no longer sense him nearby. Then she turned to regard what was clearly Lucien’s private retreat. The sense of him was everywhere in here, and she was struck by a longing so sudden and so strong that it was a physical pain, as if her heart had stopped beating for a moment. What if the impossible had happened? What if someone had somehow taken down the powerful vampire lord who was her Sire? Was he dying even now, wasting away as she stood here squandering what little time he had left? She shook herself slightly and crossed the room, pulling open the French doors to the balcony beyond.