"A translation, huh? In English?" Ben glanced at Reese. The magician was wide-eyed, and he looked scared. No doubt he was taking in the conversation and coming to realize that their open mention of vampires might be more than crazy talk, and that it might not bode well for him - a witness to an argument between a pair of vampires.

"English," Martina confirmed.

"The Council forbids translations of spell books."

"I know that. Ca.s.sio knows it. Ibis knows it. But the truth cannot be hidden forever."

Ben put a hand on Reese's shoulder. The man radiated power like pent-up lightning. "You know, I agree with you on this one." Ben hadn't known how he was going to pay up on his promise of revealing real magic to the stage magician, but now it looked like it might be easy. He'd have a little talk with Ca.s.sio about getting his own copy later.

In the meantime, Ben made the best of it. He even managed a falsely sincere smile for Martina. "I'll leave you to your meeting."

She was smugly pleased that he'd said he agreed with her on something, and gave him a grand, gracious nod in response. Ben half expected her to give a little stiff-fingered queen of England wave.

"Come on," he said, guiding Reese away from the crazy vampire woman. "I'll walk you to the theater."

Chapter 6.

"THIS DOESN'T FEEL right."

Geoff watched Valentine as she paced back in front of the window of their hotel room, her bare feet padding silently on the thick carpet. The lights of the city glowed below, bright and beckoning. "You are not unaware of the irony of our changing places, are you?"

She stopped and glowered at him. For a moment she looked confused, then she said, "You mean I'm as nervous now as you were before we went to sleep last day?"

"Yep." He leaned back on the bed, supporting his weight on his elbows. He gazed up at the ceiling, aware that she was staring at him on more than a physical level. "I'm fine now," he added.

"Uh-huh," Valentine answered slowly. "And full of plans and schemes that have nothing to do with our reason for being in town. I told you Las Vegas was seductive - "

"You warned me about the lights," he corrected.

"Same thing."

"Is not."

Valentine grinned. "This isn't getting us anywhere, but it's kind of fun."

He sat up, and glanced at his watch. "We're supposed to be at a party. You're not dressed yet."

"Going out doesn't feel right."

"That's not what you meant."

"But it's my story, and I'm sticking to it. I hate parties. I should never have let you talk me into this."

"You liked the idea until we got here."

"There's nothing going on at the party that we can't deal with in a few calls."

"We should put in an appearance. Not like that," he added.

She was wearing an old Lakers' T-shirt and thong underwear. Her black curls were tousled, and there was a glow about her full lips and dark eyes that made her look like she'd spent the day having wild s.e.x when he knew very well she'd been lying beside him, as out for the daylight hours as he was. Of course, it was likely Valentine's interior life during the day had been as interesting as his had been.

"No, it wasn't," she answered his thought. "I always look this good. You don't always notice. You look lovely yourself this evening, Mr. Sterling."

At her sarcastic tone, Geoff looked at his reflection in the mirror across from the bed. Even though he'd showered and shaved and put on a black shirt, pants, and jacket, he looked about as wasted as he felt. He ran a hand across his face. "There was a girl," he muttered.

"A cla.s.sic opening line," Valentine, ever the storyteller, supplied.

He gave her a dirty look. "What were you doing while I was - "

"Up in the air? That was a nice trick, by the way. I only caught a bit of it, but the effect was mighty strange. Not quite a dream, certainly not a dreamride. Who was the girl?"

"I have no idea." He intended to find out. Needed to find out. Something about her called, blood to blood. "She was one of us," he added.

"Of course she was."

"One of yours," he clarified. "Nighthawk." He rubbed his face again, and a thought occurred to him. "Enforcer of the City? Is the Enforcer of Las Vegas a woman?"

"I don't keep track of such things. No Enforcer stays in Vegas for long. Last I heard, it was an old boy the Council almost literally dug up off an old English estate and put to work. That was twenty years ago. Don't know if the old duke is still around."

"Maybe they brought in someone new," Geoff said thoughtfully. "Someone fresh and smart, because of the Silk Road."

"Maybe. No business of ours," she reminded him. "We're here for a convention. Which reminds me..." She pulled off her T-shirt as she marched toward the bathroom. She had magnificent b.r.e.a.s.t.s and he enjoyed watching them as she moved past him. "We're supposed to be at a party," she added, before closing the door.

Geoff waited until he heard water running in the shower before he stood. The room felt too small. The idea of spending the night socializing and doing business with mortals was too small as well. He wandered to the window, where the lights below called to him. He could feel the heat and sizzle of neon in his blood, like a drug. He closed his eyes against the siren brightness, and decided he was going to have to get a pair of sungla.s.ses.

Something more important than production and distribution deals was going on out in the city. Something fit for a vampire's energy.

He hadn't felt the need to hunt singe his blood for a long time. But the craving was there under the stunted, grieving surface, wasn't it? He hadn't wanted the way only strigoi could want since Moira's death, or at least he hadn't let himself.

"I would have given her immortality." He ran a finger down the cool surface of gla.s.s, the claw extended without his thinking about it.

Moira had been so weak, so vulnerable. She'd never had a chance against the nest that hunted, raped, killed, and consumed her.

Prey. Rightful prey. d.a.m.n the Laws, and all those who enforced them. At least the Enforcer of Los Angeles had seen the injustice, had allowed Geoff his revenge. So, he couldn't d.a.m.n all the Enforcers. He couldn't be one of them, either.

The woman he'd held in his arms high over the city was an Enforcer. Or at least she was a Nighthawk. He wanted to see her again.

Like calling to like? he wondered.

If nothing else, he wanted - needed - to know what they'd done and how.

If he thought about it hard enough, he could probably trace her. There was a scent about her, mental and physical, that was strong, familiar, and intoxicating. She'd sparkled. h.e.l.l, she'd burned. And she'd run - the scent of fear was the easiest to follow. He could find her.

He nodded at his faint reflection in the window gla.s.s. And he stared into the night and took a deep breath. He scented a kaleidoscope of life and blood and energy of all types and kinds. Out on the streets was the easiest place to start.

Valentine was going to have to go to the party without him.

"Why am I not surprised?"

Valentine looked around the room one more time, not that she really thought Geoff was standing in a corner waiting for her with the shadows pulled around him like Dracula's cloak. No, he was gone all right. It wasn't that she minded, exactly, it was just that his running off into the night without her was so predictable.

She didn't want to go to the party either. She was committed to tonight's affair only for Geoff's sake. He was trying to cure her nervousness about being around people. Mostly she suffered from genuine agoraphobia, but there were other reasons she'd tried to swear off parties. When she went to parties, she met people. Meeting people led to trouble, especially for the people she met.

Brought home. Bit.

Fortunately for the mortal population of the planet, she wasn't feeling particularly h.o.r.n.y at the moment. Fortunately for the vampire population, she wasn't feeling particularly hungry.

What she felt was - restless. Dreadfully restless. Restlessly dreadful? A restless sense of dread?

Valentine nodded. Yes, that covered the mood. Something was going to happen. Something was always going to happen, of course. Maybe she spent most of her life safely ensconced in her apartment, but that didn't mean she wasn't aware from a distance of all the twitches and tribulations that rode the psychic links which tangled her up with all her children. Generally, she tried not to tap into it, except for the occasional story idea. Too bad there was so little new to tell. Life was a soap opera, vampire life even more so. Eternity was the stuff of drama - and Valentine had always preferred comedy.

"Or at least satire."

She pressed her lips together firmly, adding annoyed at talking to herself to her general annoyance. At least if Geoff were here, she could hold a conversation with someone else. Not that she actually needed another's physical presence to hold conversations. If she wanted to talk to Geoffrey Sterling, all she had to do was reach out her mind.

And if she did that, she was likely to become aware of other vampire minds out there, not all of them the sort of persons she wanted any contact with.

Take Eddie, for example. Valentine had taken him a lot once upon a time. He'd never been a favorite of hers, but the pickings for companions were rather slim after the Black Death swept through the world.

She remembered even now how dark the world had been then. Even for those like herself who dwelled in the night, the darkness had been suffocating. Darkness of spirit, darkness of hope had been all around. Decay and silence everywhere. But it was a painful silence that came hard and heavy after the cries for mercy rose to heaven, then turned to curses, to rattles of death and wails of mourning.

The world of the Plague years existed in the sort of death-saturated atmosphere your modern Goth types would consider vamp heaven, but it hadn't been any fun at all. There weren't even that many vampires in the world at the time of the Black Death. So, even if it had been a vampire party waiting to happen, there wouldn't have been many guests to exploit the pain and anarchy of the suffering mortal world.

The grand experiment of a vampire city-state had died less than a century before. Most of the vampires in the world were destroyed when the Asian city fell. Valentine hadn't been there. She didn't know exactly what happened, but she hadn't mourned when what few refugees there were brought word of the city's demise. She hadn't thought founding the city was a good idea to begin with. Nothing good came from the insularity and growing decadence of the place as far as she was concerned. If the Mongols hadn't shown up to tear down the city walls, it would have blown up from the inside from slave rebellion or the experiments with dark magic.

There were rumors that slaves and companions had revolted, letting the Mongols into the city. Those rumors, and much other knowledge, had been ruthlessly quashed and hidden by the Council that was formed to regulate the survivors of the city.

Of course, no one asked the strigoi who'd never lived in the city to be on this new ruling Council. Most of the noncity vampires continued about their business, paying no attention to the refugees' pretensions.

When the refugees moved into Europe, Valentine took herself across the Channel to visit the White Lady, who'd been Nighthawk and Protector of the Isles since Roman times. The Lady didn't hold with any foreign vampires in her territory, but she made an exception for Valentine, who was, after all, the bloodmother of the vampire that had sired the Lady herself.

Valentine took up the life of a traveling minstrel, but at exactly the wrong time. As she roamed the country, she bore witness to the Plague running like wildfire through the towns and fiefdoms. Many, many of the Black Death's victims were those born with psychic gifts. Vampires could not be touched by the Plague, but those born with the ability to be reborn into the vampire life were particularly susceptible to it. Valentine felt those deaths and mourned them, each one the pa.s.sing of a child she would never have. It brought her to one of those black times in every immortal life where she would have welcomed her own pa.s.sing.

Then she met Edward. He was a feudal lord with a retinue reduced to a handful by the Plague. She'd felt the magic in him as she approached the castle where he'd hidden himself away. He was light after so much darkness. A feeble light, but enough to make a companion. Enough light to save her from her own growing darkness.

After several years of sharing bed and blood, she'd sent him out into the night a new-made vampire, to be nurtured in the nest of the White Lady, who released him into the night as soon as possible, Valentine heard. His transition into the underneath had not been one of Valentine's success stories. He'd been a born user, a petty schemer, lived his life as a n.o.ble without any n.o.ble intentions as a mortal. He hadn't gotten any better with time. That he'd ended up a neon junkie in Vegas didn't surprise Valentine at all.

She could feel him out there in the night, all grimy, greasy, and covered in fear sweat. She wondered what it was he had to be afraid of. She reminded herself it was none of her business. She also noticed that she was standing facing the closet, her back to the window and the outside world.

So, what were her choices for the evening? She could stay here with the curtains closed and be perfectly content. She could put on a slinky black dress and attend the party Geoff had already ducked out on. She could check up on Eddie... but the idiot was an over-six-hundred-year-old grown man responsible for his own life.

Of course, knowing Eddie, if he was in trouble, it was because he'd gotten someone else into even more trouble. She knew all about the Rasputin business, and some of the other scams he'd been involved in.

He's a neon junkie now, she told herself, not causing anyone trouble but himself. Then again, the atmosphere in this town was positively fraught with impending weirdness. She did not want to wonder what was up, but she did. And if anybody was going to be involved with nasty goings-on, it would be her old pal Eddie.

Valentine's conscience, and curiosity, nagged at her enough so that she took a seat on the edge of the bed, and closed her eyes. If any information flowed in out of the night, she'd absorb it. It wasn't as if she was obligated to do anything about it.

Chapter 7.

"WE HAVE HIM.".

There was more she wanted from him or she wouldn't be here. "I don't want to hear about this." He wanted to put his hands over his ears, but then he'd miss the music. He liked the way the music blended with the lights, and it was about to start. He wanted to look up and live in the lights. He didn't want to look at her. But she put her hands on his shoulders and shook him.

"There are too many cattle here," she said. "Come with me."

She took his arm and pulled him down the street, into the darkness of a parking garage. He could hear the music start in the distance. He whimpered, missing the lights. Needing them.

"I want your help."

He glared at the tall woman. The power in her was almost visible, almost glowing. She didn't have enough light to satisfy him, but he had no choice but to look at her now. "I've helped you."

"Not enough."

"It will never be enough for you."

"No," she agreed. "We must all serve - until we are all free."

"Yeah, yeah." Cynicism, and his own needs, were armor against her idealism. "I told you where he sleeps. That was enough."

"Having him isn't enough. We need a place to keep him."

"You didn't arrange that already?" Stupid woman. Stupid, plotting, plodding woman.

"One thing at a time. We had to capture him first, make sure he could be held." She put her hands on his shoulders, but at least she didn't start shaking him again. Her touch was mild, her voice even made an attempt to sound friendly. "Rumor says you have a place. The exact sort of place we need."

d.a.m.n. He thought he'd covered his tracks better than that. "It's an old rumor."

"Of an old place, an abandoned place where my slaves can work. We'll take him there. Show me the way."

It wasn't a request. Nothing was ever a request with this woman. He didn't even know if the building was still standing. He doubted she'd offer to pay him any rent. "I don't remember - "

"Yes, you do." Now she shook him. Then she laughed, low and ugly. "Be good, light sucker, and I'll let you play with a flashlight if you do what I say. Soon we will have physical proof. Then all we will need is the Scrolls of Silk."