The Den of Shadows Quartet (13 page)

“I’ve read it, and I … recognized you as the author,” Hasana fumbled. “You just have a look about you …”

“What
look?”

“Never mind,” Hasana said, shaking her head. “Take the book and the advice, and ignore me.”

She turned away, suddenly very busy with some papers, and Jessica left in a daze.

A
UBREY HAD LEFT THE STORE
to avoid hurting someone — probably the witch.

Though he had a house on the fringe of town, he preferred to spend his time in the heart of New Mayhem, in his room behind the nightclub known as Las Noches. There he paced angrily wondering what to do about the human called Jessica.

She didn’t know that everything she wrote was true. She thought vampires were just another myth. She thought her characters were just figments of her own imagination. She had no idea what Alex was.

That wasn’t quite true. He knew that Jessica had recognized him the instant she saw him. Only her human rationality had kept her from believing that Alex Remington was actually Aubrey.

Aubrey had heard of the author Ash Night through a young vampire who worked as an editor at Night’s publishing company. The vampire had even given Aubrey a copy of the
Dark Flame
manuscript. The news
of this book had quickly spread through the vampiric community, as it had when Elizabeth Charcoal had published her autobiography.

The difference was that Ash Night was not writing about herself, but about things she had no right to know.
Dark Flame
was Aubrey’s own history, which no one but he knew in total. Yet Ash Night had written his past correctly, down to the last detail.

Aubrey didn’t mind the thought of
Dark Flame’s
being published. In his history he had almost always been stronger than those around him. However, the others who were mentioned in the manuscript came across as often weak, and in the vampiric world, there was no worse threat to one’s position than an apparent weakness.
Dark Flame
had earned its author some dangerous enemies.

The vampire from the publishing company had not worked with Ash Night directly, and she must not have known about the author’s first book. Seeing
Tiger, Tiger
in the store today had taken Aubrey completely by surprise. The cover made it strikingly clear whom the book was about. Despite the artist’s ignorance of his subject, Aubrey had instantly recognized the portrayal of Risika. He had lived this book as well — or unlived it, as the case might be. He knew what would be printed on its pages.

Aubrey lightly touched the scar that stretched across his left shoulder, which Risika had given to him a few years ago. For the first time in nearly three thousand years he had lost a fight, and he had lost it badly. Risika could have killed him in the end. Instead, she had taken his blood and let him live. The action had opened his
mind to her completely; she could now read him as easily as he could read most humans.

The sight of the book was like the thrust of a knife into his still-bleeding pride.

Aubrey had been the first of his kind to search out the author, and most of the other vampires were satisfied by the knowledge that he was dealing with the problem.

Though Jessica had requested that her true name and address remain private, Aubrey had easily pulled the information from the mind of her editor. Her town, Ramsa, New York, was only a stone’s throw away from his home in New Mayhem, one of the strongest vampiric cities in the United States. Aubrey had drifted into Ramsa to see how much of a threat this Ash Night was.

What had he expected? Anything but what he found: a seventeen-year-old human who had no apparent connection to the vampire world. She did, however, have a darkness in her aura that was almost vampiric. This close to New Mayhem, Jessica’s aura was strengthened by the vampires in the area. Humans reacted to it instinctively and drew away from her, as they had from Aubrey until he had started influencing their minds.

He had tried to influence Jessica. He should have been able to reach into her mind and tell her to stop writing. With any other human the task would have been easy, but with Jessica he had been blocked completely. That fact alone had fascinated him enough to refrain from killing her the first time he’d been given the chance.

Indeed, there were many things about Jessica that interested him despite his usual distaste for humans.
Foremost was her unnerving lack of reaction when he had caught her eye earlier. Most humans would have become disoriented, momentarily trapped in his gaze, but Jessica had been unaffected.

Aubrey closed his eyes for a moment, taking a breath to calm himself. He stopped pacing and once again wore the dispassionate mask that he had developed over his many years of life.

But the craving for movement would not die as cleanly as he had hoped, so he left his room and walked down the short hallway to Las Noches.

The nightclub’s atmosphere was intense. Red strobe lights flashed through the room, disorienting everyone but those who had spent as much time inside the place as Aubrey had. Bass-heavy music pounded from speakers hidden somewhere in the shadowed ceiling, and mirrors covered the four walls. Risika had shattered every inch of these mirrors during her fight with Aubrey, so the numerous reflections were now distorted.

Until Jessica saw Las Noches, walked inside, and tried to keep her mind from spinning, she would never be able to accurately imagine the psychedelic bar and nightclub that was the dark heart of New Mayhem.

Of course, Jessica didn’t believe that New Mayhem even existed.

Now, in the hour before sunset, the crowd was the usual mix of humans and vampires. The mortals were comforted by the sunlight that still bathed the world outside; most of the vampires in the room would not hunt until after dark. The bartender on duty was an ebony-eyed girl named Kaei. With her pale skin and the
curtain of ink-black hair that fell down her back, Kaei had looked like the traditional vampire even when she’d been human. She had been born in Mayhem and had been responsible for its nearly complete destruction three hundred years earlier. She had offered Aubrey her blood more than once, and in return he had probably saved her life a dozen times.

“Moira was looking for you,” Kaei told Aubrey as he approached. “She mentioned something about helping you ‘dice the writer into bite-sized pieces.’” Moira had complained many times recently that Ash Night had made her seem weak. The author had not needed to try very hard. Though Moira was strong in comparison to most others of their kind, she was one of the weakest of their line. She had been changed more than five hundred years before Aubrey but had never gained his strength.

Most of their line had been strong as humans; that was how they attracted the attention of the vampires who would ultimately change them. Fala had met and fallen in love with Moira, then changed the human woman to save her life.

Despite Moira’s weakness, she and her blood sister Fala were feared because of their reputation for being fond of causing pain. Moira had been born before the Aztecs, and shortly after she’d been changed, she had pulled the heart out of one of their priests with her bare hands.

“Fala asked for you too,” Kaei continued, her expression grim. “She was talking about turning the author into ash — making her ‘fit her name better.’” Unlike Moira, who preferred weaponry, Fala was fond of fire.

Aubrey sighed, having no desire to deal with either of the two vampires. “Maybe they could draw straws,” he answered wearily.

“Do what you will,” Kaei answered, knowing that what she said rarely mattered. She walked away without another word.

Aubrey pulled one of the unlabeled bottles from under the bar. Though not exactly sure what it was, he knew it wouldn’t harm him. He could down a liter of cyanide and not notice any effect. Some of these bottles held wine, others liquor, and others blood that was always cold. How the bar was kept stocked was a mystery, as there was rarely a bartender working and the drinks were all free.

A
UBREY WAS STILL AT THE BAR
when he heard a familiar voice behind him.

“Welcome back,” Jager said in his usual cool tone. Jager was the second oldest in their line and one of the few vampires who might rival Aubrey for pure strength. However, he was rarely interested in fighting.

“Did you meet Night?” Jager asked when Aubrey did not instantly volunteer the information.

“I did,” Aubrey answered, not elaborating.

“Did you kill him?” It was an offhand question. Killing was the logical way to deal with a human who could be a threat to their kind. Whether or not she knew it, Jessica possessed truths that were dangerous to the vampire world — and she had chosen to share them.

“Her,” Aubrey corrected. “No, I didn’t kill her.”

He didn’t know quite why he hadn’t killed Jessica. It would not have been difficult, and the death would not have created much of a stir, after a few whispered
words into the minds of Anne Allodola and Ash Night’s business associates.

“I hope Risika isn’t a bad loser when it comes to bets,” Jager commented. “She assumed you’d kill the author.”

“She would,” Aubrey answered dryly.
What would Jessica think
, he wondered,
if she knew there were bets being made about her potential death?

“May I ask why you
didn’t
kill her?” Jager said, not disguising his curiosity.

Aubrey wondered about the answer himself. The phrase “she’s beautiful” came to mind, and of course it was true. Jessica seemed almost to embody the graceful perfection of a vampire. But Aubrey had never before hesitated to kill someone because she was attractive.

More than her physical appearance, Jessica had a rare aura of strength about her. Aubrey remembered Ash Night’s describing him as having the same kind of aura while he had been human, but he had seen it in very few others. Risika had been one of the exceptions; that strength had drawn Aubrey to her before she had ever caught Ather’s eye. Now Jessica was another.

“Is the question too difficult?” Jager asked, his tone patronizing.

Aubrey resorted to the simplest answer. “I wasn’t in the mood.”

Jager accepted the explanation, and the two vampires sat awhile in companionable silence.

Suddenly the fiery Fala appeared in front of them.

“I see you’ve returned from your little game in the sunlight,” she purred at Aubrey. Her voice was like poisoned chocolate, deceptively smooth and sweet. As she
brushed by Jager, she gave him a quick kiss on the cheek.

Fala was Jager’s first fledgling. Born in Egypt, she had naturally dark skin that had paled little in the almost five thousand years she’d been a vampire. Her black hair was pulled back from her face by bloodred combs, but that was the only bit of color in her otherwise black outfit.

“I suppose you’ve met Night,” Fala spat, as if the name was not one to be mentioned in polite society. “Is she quite dead, I hope? Even better, is she writhing in pain somewhere?”

“She’s alive,” Aubrey answered, not in the mood to exchange sadistic banter with Fala.

“Mind if I kill her for you?” Fala asked casually as she walked behind the bar and poured herself a drink from Aubrey’s bottle. “This is good,” she commented, holding the bottle up to the red light, which did not help to illuminate its contents. “Anyone know what it is?”

She emptied the rest of the liquid into her glass, then threw the unlabeled bottle over her shoulder. The bottle shattered, and several people at the tables turned at the sound. One human stood up and brushed glass off her jeans, but she didn’t seem upset. Breaking glass was hardly an unusual occurrence at Las Noches.

Fala sighed luxuriously as she turned back to Aubrey and Jager. “I love the sound of breaking glass. Now, about Ash —”

“No, you can’t kill her for me,” Aubrey interrupted.

“You’re going to stop me?” she asked, her voice going lower, slightly menacing.

“I have more of a quarrel with her than you do,” he
answered coldly, not bothering to explain the statement.

“Unless she has drawn blood, Aubrey, you have
nothing,”
Fala snapped back, stalking closer to him.

Fala was referring to one of the few standing rules of their kind: blood claim. Humans, unless they lived in New Mayhem, were free prey of any vampire. However, if a human drew the blood of a vampire, that human could only be hunted by the vampire who had been harmed. Had Jessica attacked Aubrey and somehow made him bleed, Fala would have been unable to hurt Jessica without Aubrey’s permission.

“She hasn’t, and she never will,” he answered.

“You wouldn’t admit to being wounded by a human even if you had been,” Fala scoffed. She finished her drink and threw the glass over her shoulder. “But I suppose you wouldn’t be in such a good mood if you’d lost
another
fight.”

She said nothing more. Aubrey struck her with his mind, and she fell backward into the bar, hissing in anger. Several heads turned toward them, and a few humans chose that time to exit Las Noches; it was dangerous to be in the same room with two fighting vampires.

Jager was still nearby, and he was watching the argument with narrowed eyes.

“Would you care to repeat that?” Aubrey asked Fala, his voice cold as ice as he casually threw another bolt of power at her, causing her to double over in pain. He hadn’t even broken a sweat.

“Aubrey” Jager spoke only his name, a calm but clear warning.

Aubrey answered by drawing back his power instead of hitting Fala again. Jager would not start a fight over what had happened thus far; Fala wouldn’t appreciate the help. But even so, Aubrey knew that Jager was too fond of Fala to look the other way if she was truly threatened.

“Damn you, Aubrey,” Fala cursed. She scowled but was wise enough not to insult him again.

“Already been done,” he answered calmly.

“Damn you again!” she shouted, delivering a glare that would have stilled serpents in their dens.

“Too late,” he quipped. “And after five thousand years, I’d think you could come up with something better than that.”