Sometimes being a pretty blonde came in handy.

CHAPTER 17.

LEA.

Calvin was, to say the very least, p.i.s.sed. His knuckles bulged on the steering wheel, white from the tension in his hands.

"Head toward the city center. Victor's father had a safe house there. I don't think he knows I'm aware of it, so I suspect that's where he'll be." I spoke softly, the words just loud enough for him to hear.

He nodded, but said nothing. Yes, p.i.s.sed was an understatement.

I leaned forward so I could rest my hands on the console between us. This was still not a conversation I wanted to have, yet I knew the time had finally come. "Cal, it's time. I need to take on a new Cazador. We both know that a part of you has hated me since that night in France, and that was thirty-five years ago."

He jerked the wheel to one side, parking the car by jamming it against a curb. His eyes stared straight ahead; his shoulders were slightly hunched. "Lea, we have a break in this, we might be able to find every vampire-"

"Calvin." Just his name, as soft as I'd only said it once before.

"Calvin, please don't turn away from me. Not this time. I can barely remember what it means to love anymore. If I lose that, I'm no better than the rest of them. I might as well hand you a vial of holy water to pour over me."

His hands slid up around my face. "No, this can't happen." But he didn't move away from me. Didn't walk away as he'd done so many other times.

The seat creaked under him. "Why now? Why are we having this conversation right now?"

"Because it might be the last chance we have. If this gets as ugly as I think...I don't know if any of us will survive." There, I'd said it. The feeling that had been growing in me for the last twenty-four hours had finally been aired.

He slowly twisted in his seat, reached over and took my hand. "I don't hate you," he said quietly. "I hate that I let anything happen between us. I swore that I would kill every vampire I met after my wife and son were taken from me. And not only did I not kill you, I slept with you."

Why, oh, why did Calvin have to be the one my heart picked? There had been other Cazadors, other helpers. Many who would have jumped at the chance to be in my arms. Yet it was Calvin, with his stoic nature and determination, who had caught my eye. And I hadn't been able to catch his for more than a brief blink.

I stared at the old man who sat before me, but all I saw was the young, strong man with jet black hair and piercing blue eyes who had stolen my heart even as he told me how much my kind disgusted him. Maybe I was the twisted one. I pulled my hand away. "I will never regret it, Calvin. For as long as I live, however that plays out."

A low grunt slipped out of him. "Then we stand on opposite sides of that divide, too, because I will never forgive myself."

If he had slammed a silver-tipped stake through my heart, I was sure the pain would not have been as bad. Leaning back in my seat, I struggled to breathe past the hurt in my body.

But I was disgusting. A monster of the worst kind. What did I expect from him? A sudden and undying devotion? Teeth clenched, I looked out the window at the slow-building storm clouds above us, the sudden splotches of rain on the gla.s.s making me wish I could let my own emotions unleash like the storm growing around us.

Then again, maybe I could.

Calvin pulled into an underground parking garage, found an empty spot, and turned the engine off. "Am I coming up with you?"

He never asked. He always did whatever he wanted. "Go back to Rachel's. Give her a hand if she needs it. If not, see what you can find out about the Asclepius Project online. Surely there is something you can hack."

I slid out of the car, hands reaching down to touch the silver stakes tucked into the tops of my boots in a subtle gesture to ensure they were there. Adjusting the cowl around my head, I walked away from the car. The engine started up, and Calvin pulled away. But I didn't glance back, just went straight to the stairwell on the far side of the dim parking garage. I refused to give him one last look.

A few moments later, I slowed my steps as the sound of a heartbeat reached my ears.

Shadows flickered and moved to my right, a s.h.i.+fting of bodies in the darkness. I stopped and turned carefully, lifting one hand. "I know you're there." The air was stale and still, which made it hard to scent whoever was trying to hide. A scuttle of feet and a pair of glowing eyes peered at me from around a cement support column. It took all the willpower I had not to gasp and step back because what I was looking at was not human.

And it wasn't a vampire either. A bat face was attached to a tiny human body, grafted somewhere around the neck. The thing scuttled forward, bobbing and weaving, its hands held above its head in some sort of weird supplication.

I made myself hold still, though everything in me wanted to back away. In my time, I'd seen monsters, but none had looked so alien as this being.

"What are you?"

Its head tipped to one side and its mouth dropped open to reveal needle-thin teeth. "Kill me." The creature reached out and touched my left leg. "Please. Kill me."

I pulled a silver stake from my boot, whipped it out and across the creature's upturned throat. The blade edge sliced the creature all the way to the spine, sending blood spurting out and over my hand. At the last second, it lifted its own hand to its bat mouth and then held it toward me. A kissing gesture of thanks, perhaps.

I brought my hand to my nose and sniffed the blood. Not human. Not animal. I dared a taste and my whole body convulsed in disgust. It was the vilest of blood, like an animal dead for a month, rank and old.

I grabbed the body and dragged it into the shadows. "Be at peace, little creature." I whispered the words in Spanish over it, knowing there was nothing else I could do. Instinctively, I knew that somehow this bat/human hybrid had something to do with the facility. The pieces were piling up, but where did they all go?

Wiping my hands off on the creature's body, I strode toward the stairwell once more. The door was locked, but a sharp kick was all it took to break through the flimsy attempt to keep people out. Inside the stairwell, it looked as if you could only go up. But I knew better. If you looked carefully enough, you could see a faint outline on the far wall. A door. I pushed in the top right corner of the outlined area while pus.h.i.+ng on the bottom left hand corner with my foot. The whole door sucked in piece by piece, like a puzzle being opened up.

I stepped through the opening, and there was the soft hissing of air slipping out around me. The door closed behind me as motion sensors picked up on me. The near darkness of the long hall would have most humans fumbling for light, but there was enough that I could easily see. More importantly, I could see the dim glow of light thirty feet away at the end of the echoing hall. That, of course, was not something that Victor and his father had banked on when creating their failsafe.

The steel girder my feet were balanced on was only three inches wide and hung over open s.p.a.ce. I walked forward, balancing on the b.a.l.l.s of my feet with ease. Only two people had ever breached the safe house, and both were at the bottom of the pit, rotting away.

But since I was the one who'd helped Victor's father develop the safe house, it only seemed right that I should be the first one to bypa.s.s all the failsafes.

A few minutes later I reached the next door. Four feet thick and made of fire-hardened steel, this door would be harder to break through. It had to be hoisted with a winch from the other side. I crouched and dug my fingers under the tiny lip I'd made sure was built into the door. With a quick burst of energy, I heaved the door up and shot through the opening as it clanged to the floor behind me.

I stared into the bright s.p.a.ce, taking the scene in at a glance. Victor lounged on a chaise with two of his bodyguards, one on either side of him. A polar bear rug lay on the black tile floor at Victor's feet, the mouth open and snarling my way.

"Lea, I'm surprised you managed to find me here." Victor stood and took several steps back, fl.u.s.tered. He waved his guards back, though the scent rolling off him was full of fear, the flavor heavy on the back of my tongue. The guards melted against the wood grain of the walls, almost as if they weren't there.

"Your father never told you?" I slipped the cowl back and off my head, shaking my hair loose, watching from the corner of my eye as Victor stared, his eyes wide and the throb of his heart apparent in the hollow of his throat. At least I still had that card to play if need be.

Victor seemed to regain his composure, remembering that I'd asked him a question. "Told me what?"

I waved a hand as if to encompa.s.s the whole room. "I helped him design this place. It was part of the deal we made. Part of my end of it, anyway." I took two steps forward and dropped into the only other seat in the room, a lovely overstuffed chair that allowed me to lean back. As if we were having a chat instead of a deadly repertoire that would likely end with Victor dead.

His green eyes, cold as ice, raked over me. "I want far more from you than my father did. This silly game of yours, hunting your own kind, needs to stop. You do realize that you will never wipe them out? I want to be like you, Lea. And one way or another, you will give me what I want."

I stayed where I was, breathing slowly, but my eyes fastened onto his. "Really? Is that how you seduce women now? Demand they give in?"

He strolled toward me, circling to the back of my chair. There was a moment of hesitation, and then he slid his hands onto my shoulders, up my neck, and into my hair, ma.s.saging my scalp. "Is this more to your liking?"

"Hmm." The sound came out like a purr. How long had it been since someone had touched me like this? Knowing what I was, and still wanting me?

Since Calvin and I had our single night together.

I leaned back into Victor's hands. The idea of f.u.c.king him was not so repulsive. He was handsome, and if the ma.s.sage along my neck and scalp was any indication, he had some skills with his hands.

And he wanted me. More than any other man I'd ever known.

I leaned my head back and he dropped his lips to mine. Skilled, indeed. He slanted his mouth, his tongue darting in and out in a rhythm that hinted at other things. His one hand slid over my collarbone and down the front of my s.h.i.+rt while the other- A knife sliced across the side of my neck, the sudden pain snapping me out of the s.e.xual daze I'd stupidly allowed myself to tumble into. The two bodyguards rushed forward, moving with a speed that almost matched mine.

Almost.

I pushed off the floor, tipping the chair backward and smas.h.i.+ng against Victor, who struggled not to stab himself with his own knife. "You f.u.c.king dog," I snarled, kicking out at him as my knees. .h.i.t the floor, making contact with his ankle.

He crashed down with a cry and I scooped up his knife. Slas.h.i.+ng upward as I stood, I took out the first bodyguard's stomach with a single slice. His guts spilled out and he tried to catch them, but they slid through his fingers to the floor in a slippery mess. His buddy hit the brakes and tried to backpedal, but he hit the blood and gore next and went down beside his buddy.

Flipping the knife over in my hand, I threw it at bodyguard number two, driving the blade into his throat.

That left only Victor.

I turned and scooped him up as he tried to get away, his blond hair pink in places from the blood.

Holding him by the jaw with one hand, I raised him over my head. His feet dangled and his face went white, red, and purple.

I gave him a slow smile, showing him my fangs. "One way or another, Victor, you are going to tell me what I want to know. Every. Last. Thing."

CHAPTER 18.

RACHEL.

I took a shower and washed off the last remnants of blood and grime. Even after a year of being back in the States, showers still felt like a luxury. With my schedule, I had few luxuries in my life, so I refused to let myself feel guilty about taking long showers. Besides, I did my best brainstorming in the shower, and I definitely needed some major brainpower to sort through the crazy puzzle that had become my life.

I grabbed a bath crayon I kept in my shower caddy and wrote what I knew on the shower door-the occult-like murders, the Asclepius Project, the U.S. government's involvement, and bioterrorism. And what about the pile of ash in the alley behind the last murder victim's place? What did that have to do with it all?

And, of course, there was the most bizarre piece of all. Vampires.

Had Caine been the murderer responsible for the six strange deaths or was it someone-or something-else?

And if I let my mind accept the possibility, which I was coming around to, like it or not, it wasn't a leap to think the pile of ashes in the alley might have been the remains of a vampire. But I realized I really didn't know anything about vampires other than what I'd learned from horror movies and books. I suspected Lea didn't sparkle in sunlight, which meant my information was sadly lacking. Why hadn't I thought to quiz Lea?

Maybe because I was still in shock.

Unfortunately, I had no way of contacting her, and I had a couple of hours to kill before I could drop by the bar Morrison worked at without looking suspicious. It was a long shot that he was even working today, but I was determined to make an effort.

After my shower, I pulled out all the contents of Derrick's bag, going through everything again, then going through files in his computer, which was frustratingly bare. But there was a file, buried within the applications folder, that turned out to be a journal. While he hadn't given details about what he'd found, he recorded his concerns about the things he was finding.

The first was dated two days after our huge fight two years ago.

All my life I've struggled with the concept of fate. I felt the undeniable pull to investigate these medical experimentation rumors, but if this turns out to be as deadly as I suspect, my life and anyone close to me will be in danger.

I knew it was a stupid move to tell Rachel how I felt, especially on the heels of her finding out about Sean's cheating. But I had to go into the investigation with no regrets, knowing that I wasn't giving up a chance with the one person who could make me feel complete.

But it's better this way. Was it my fate to investigate these rumors and save the world? Or was it my choice to walk away from the only woman I've ever loved?

Tears stung my eyes. Had I been the one to condemn Derrick to his fate? If I'd only loved him, he wouldn't have chased this story.

I scanned further into the doc.u.ment, finding vague notes about how he felt about what he'd discovered, although no facts. He'd been to Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, even Iceland. But he'd been in the States for six months.

I walked past Rachel's apartment today. I almost pressed the buzzer to see if she'd let me up. She walked by the window, her hair up in the messy ponytail she always wore when she was hard at work on a story. She stopped and looked outside and for one brief moment, I thought she'd seen me. My heart stopped and I waited for recognition to spread across her face, but she turned and walked away.

Then so did I.

I couldn't bring her into this madness, for that is surely what this is, madness.

I'll protect her at any cost.

I continued to scan the journal, the words blurry through my tears. Until I reached the end, my breath catching.

Rachel, If you're reading this, then I've failed. I wish you hadn't found me. I wish I could have protected you from this. But now you must protect the world. I need you to go back to the place you found me, where we found the pile of ashes. Right before you showed up, I was looking for a gla.s.s vial. Its contents, or more likely what it contained before the ashes, is important. Find someone you trust to test the contents. I'm sure it's key. I would have gone back earlier but the alley was being watched. Be careful.

And yes, I knew you'd figure out my pa.s.sword-I created it with you in mind.

I had to get back to that alley. And I had to ignore all the emotions bubbling up inside me. I didn't have time to cry. I had to make sure that Derrick hadn't wasted two years of his life.

I stored his bag under the floorboard again, then headed back toward the crime scene. The fall air had a bite to it as I walked around the corner to the alley, making sure I stayed aware of my surroundings. It was a fairly good neighborhood, being on the Upper East Side, but there was no sense being stupid. Especially since Derrick was sure it had been watched, but today the only threatening thing was a three-legged dog being walked by its owner.

I wasn't surprised to find no sign of those strange ashes, but there was a faint outline of what appeared to be a human body. Since the body had been ash, I would have expected the pavement to be blackened from the intense heat. But it was a pale gray, almost the same color the ash had been, if memory served me right. I squatted to examine it more closely, then looked around the area, even holding my nose to look under the Dumpster. That's where I saw a tiny gla.s.s vial with a red capsule inside.

Derrick was right.

I tried to temper my excitement as I knelt and reached under the trash bin to grab the bottle at the top with my gloved hand. It was about two inches tall and less than one inch wide. It was missing its screw cap, but the red capsule seemed to be wedged against the sides of the bottle.

As I examined the vial, I wondered why Sean and his crew hadn't found it while searching the crime scene. But it had been dark and the vial was a couple of feet under the trash bin. When I held it up for closer inspection, I saw gray ashy fingerprints on the gla.s.s. I stood and stepped back several feet as I studied the outline of the body. The arm on the right was raised; it was conceivable that the person could have been holding the bottle in his hand when he turned into ash.

I pulled a tissue from my messenger bag and rolled it around the bottle. To give it more padding, I added my glove around it and packed it inside my bag. Then I pulled out my phone and called Tom, my friend at the coroner's department.

"I don't have any new information, Rachel," he said, sounding irritated.

"I might have some information for you, actually. On the last occult murders."

"That might have been helpful yesterday. Before the Feds took it over."

"Well, s.h.i.+t." But the news didn't actually surprise me.