He spun the weapon smartly, slapping it solidly into his palm. A bloody palm print? “You just signed your death certificate, Slater.”
He stood and, with a keystroke, put the computer to sleep. In the closet at the back of his office hung a long, leather cleric’s coat with a bladed collar and reinforced Kevlar panels on the chest and back. Leather pants, a cotton undershirt and a Kevlar vest hung inside.
Stripping off his crisply ironed gray dress shirt, he tossed it aside and caught a glimpse of his bare chest in the mirror inside the door. He proudly fisted the raised brand of the Order of the Stake on his left shoulder and announced, “Tonight I’ll turn this city gray with vampire ash.”
* * *
With full intel on the Zmaj tribe, Rook had headed toward the seventh arrondissement, where most of the attacks marked with the bloody handprint had been reported. It was an affluent quarter where old money mingled with the new. The Eiffel Tower and Les Invalides attracted tourists, which led Rook to believe Zmaj was hunting either unknowing tourists or the established, yet oblivious, rich.
His steel-toed boots took the cobblestones swiftly, quietly. His senses were alert for sounds beyond the incessant traffic noises. The city never slept. It was something he had in common with Paris. The air was crisp with imminent autumn, a season he enjoyed because it softened the city’s harsh odor as the ominous dread for winter settled in.
As the principal trainer and supervisor for the Order, Rook took knight trainees out in the city on the hunt, but he hadn’t hunted alone in years. Not for lacking desire to stake some longtooths. He had simply been too busy training and running the Order. The paperwork involved in keeping their secret order an actual secret was ridiculous. He never could have imagined, four centuries earlier, filling out computer database profiles or making duplicates over an office copy machine.
The vampire population in Paris was high, but most of them enjoyed their anonymity from mortals and worked hard to keep it that way by not killing humans and thus raising the Order’s ire. Best way for a vampire to ensure immortality? Avoiding a stake to the heart.
Yet there would always be the young and reckless vamps who deemed the world their playground and enjoyed the kill. They never survived long. And although the Order served only to protect mortals from vampires, Rook knew many breeds appreciated the work they did because keeping all vampires mythical in the eyes of the mortal population benefited everyone.
Some mortals believed in vampires, werewolves, faeries and all the other breeds that shouldn’t exist. Those mortals were few and were rarely considered a problem. It was those who did not believe but then had been attacked by a vampire—forcing them to believe—who Rook wanted to keep far from the fangs of hungry vampires. Those victims who would scream, raise a holy stink and invite investigation, and Rook wanted to avoid that.
And the only way to do that was by ashing the culprits.
Closer.
Directing his attention inward, Rook questioned Oz’s statement.
Something feels…familiar.
Rook always paid attention to the entity within him. Asatrú, an incorporeal demon, had been trapped within him for four centuries, accompanying him through this thing called life.
“What seems familiar?” he asked Oz. Sometimes he spoke aloud to the demon, but he could think the question and the entity would understand just as well.
It is a feeling. You are close…to something important.
Not far ahead of him, a female cried out.
Rook fitted a stake into both hands and ran toward the harrowing sound. It was before midnight, yet this section of the city was quiet and dark with only intermittent vehicle traffic. Ancient buildings that had seen war, revolutions, and the rise and fall of monarchies closely paralleled the street. The alleys in between buildings were claustrophobic. Street lighting was at a minimum. Not the optimal place for a lone female to go walking.
Nowadays mortals had lost their sense of danger. Their naïve complacency never ceased to astonish Rook. One must always be vigilant.
He spied a crowd of young men looming around something, or someone, he could not see. Yet he could feel fear in the air as tangibly as he could read a person’s truth by placing his hand over their heart. Had to be the woman who had screamed.
One of the men hissed dramatically and exposed fangs.
“Thought so,” Rook muttered. He picked up his pace.
What was that?
A fireball, small and tight and flaming orange, zipped through the air and singed one of the vampires on his bald head. The vamp yelped and batted at the flame, hissing and cursing at the one who had lobbed the attack.
Was the woman they had surrounded a witch? Had to be to throw fire like that. A rare witch, though. Few practiced such magic because fire promised a witch’s sure death.
Another ball of flame looped in the air but fell onto the cobblestones like a deflated balloon. Sparks sputtered, and the flame hissed to smoke. She didn’t have control. Had her hands been shackled by an attacker?
Rook shouted, catching the vampires’ attention. Four charged toward him. He took one out with a plunge of the stake to his chest. Ash formed in the air in the shape of a man. The remaining three vampires scattered in the inky darkness.
Rook ran through the ashy cloud toward the woman clinging to the brick wall. In the confusion of having one of their comrades ashed, the vampires had left her alone. Fire burned in patches on the ancient cobbles before her, finding tinder in the dry autumn leaves littering the ground. She huddled against the wall, her dark hair spilling over her face and wide eyes taking in the scene. Hands out before her, her fingers shook, and he thought perhaps the flames on the ground danced at the command of those shaking fingers.
Rook lunged to kneel beside her, laying a hand high over her breast to feel her frantic heartbeats. It was a conditioned touch. He could read a person that way, but—not this time. What the hell? Perhaps her fear blocked his read.
“You okay?”
She nodded frantically.
He was getting nothing from her. Not the clear read of truth he always did when touching another. Yet he felt a strange sensation of recognition surge through his system. Something familiar but so distant he couldn’t touch it. He’d lost it so long ago.
That is it!
He winced at Oz’s inner outburst. Looking into the woman’s shadowed eyes that flickered with small red flashes from the flames, he wondered aloud, “My…soul?”
“Get him!”
Jerked away from the woman by a vampire’s claws, Rook switched from the sudden, overwhelming knowing that clenched about his heart to fierce and ready fighting mode. He twisted at the waist, swinging out an arm and slashing the stake across a vampire’s face.
Behind him, three vamps lined up. He caught a glimpse of the woman. Now on her feet, she ran away from them.
Get as far away as you can, he thought.
No, we need her! Oz said.
Perhaps, but right now he stood his ground surrounded by vampires. All thoughts focused on getting the job done. This night, no longtooth would walk away from him alive.
* * *
Verity ran down the dark street, her heartbeats racing her strides. A short skirt and heels were not optimal running attire, but when her ankles threatened to buckle, fear pushed her.
After a long night at the gym practicing her performance piece for the Demon Arts Troupe, she’d looked forward to strolling home in the crisp night air to walk off the strain in her muscles. Her mind reviewing the new routine she’d been perfecting, she’d walked right into the gang of vampires. Though she’d never feared them in numbers before, immediately she had known they hadn’t wanted to chat.