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  A band of fear tightened around Jess’s chest when she entered the house. Too quiet inside. No lights on. The creaking floorboards on the second floor suddenly stopped. She hesitated and listened, grabbed her blade and pulled it out of its sheath.

  A mantle clock in the living room on the first floor ticked so loudly above the screaming silence that it marked the urgency of time.

  Suddenly, something shattered upstairs. Glass. More vampires on the third level of the house.

  She reached the second floor within seconds. Her perfect vision honed in on the vampire in the corner. For some reason, he was digging through the files in James’s desk in the corner of the bedroom.

  “Help you?” She’d managed to creep up behind him without him sensing her. She held her dagger in her right hand.

  The vampire’s head shot up and his black eyes glittered at her. His mouth slid back into a vile grin that showcased his feral vamp eyeteeth. “Why, look who’s here. The infamous Jess Vandermire.”

  His thick accent made goose bumps break out on her arms. Not an easy thing to do to a vampire. He obviously wasn’t from North America. For the most part, vampires stuck to their own continents.

  “What are you doing in my friend’s home, rifling through his desk?”

  He laughed. “James vacated suddenly a few days ago. He probably expected help from his friends.” The vampire shrugged. “Guess he must have been disappointed when no one came. Everyone was too focused on the missing human corpse. Quite a kick in the teeth to James after all his years of devotion to you, I would imagine.”

  Jess flew at the man, rage and hatred filling her. An overwhelming drum of her ancient instincts filling her veins. Fury overrode reason and judgment to the point that she didn’t notice the silver paper opener in the vampire’s hand until he stabbed her in the shoulder and it began to burn and smolder.

  “Oops, somebody’s not paying attention,” he said, laughing. Then with one hand, he picked her up under the arm and tossed her backwards. She landed on her ass on the other side of the room. Not her finest moment.

  “No sense ruining our fun right away, bella. We can make the process of your total conversion painful or pleasurable. “I, myself, would prefer pleasurable.”

  “Hell would be preferable to what you’re proposing.” Jess yanked the letter opener out of her shoulder and shot it at him, but he deflected it with a raised elbow.

  She looked down at the tear in her outfit. He’d just ruined her best set of leathers. Britt’s favorite outfit. That made it even worse. Now she was pissed to the nth degree!

  The vampire’s eyes glittered with malicious excitement. His mouth twisted, and he slammed both hands down on James’s desk so hard it split wide open and slammed onto the hardwood floor. “You’re going to be fully undead within the next few seconds. Then you’ll be more than happy to help me in my quest,” he roared.

  “What quest might that be?” she asked, leaning forward and getting ready for his next attack.

  He raised his index finger and moved it back and forth. “You don’t really think I’m going to tell you quite so easily, do you?”

  “You’re a little out of your neighborhood right now, aren’t you, vampire?”

  “Maybe, but you have no idea what converting you is going to do for my reputation and my bank account.”

  “You’re being paid to attack me?” Jess asked. “Someone in another country wants me in their ranks?” The thought was startling.

  He made an exasperated exhalation. “You have no idea that you’ve pissed off some of the most affluent vampires in the world, do you? Surely even you can’t be that naive?”

  “Maybe I am,” she said, hoping it would make him angry enough to enlighten her.

  “Come now,” he said in his thick accent. “It hasn’t been that long since you shut down Senor Drago Vaslov’s operation. He supplied master vampires with powerful women—quite a coup, really.”

  Jess’s eyebrows shot up. Maybe she really had been that naive. “Drago Vaslov?”

  He folded his arms across his chest and frowned. “I thought you were supposed to be the best of the best. Someone I almost feared facing.” He laughed. “Strange how a person can be tricked my mere words. You’re obviously not at all what the ranks are saying. Good news for me. It’ll be that much sweeter when I collect the ransom. I’ll earn a reputation for being the one who took down the feared Vampire Hunter of New York City.” He sneered. “I just won’t tell them how easy it was.”

  “Vaslov is dead. You’re wasting your time,” she said, grating her teeth. Vaslov! The mere mention of his name made her want to retch. He’d been a human who’d learned about vampires and how they existed in the underworld of illicit gambling, drugs, and gangs. He’d created a niche market to help elevate their status in the human world, and it didn’t take long for him to learn that very rich master vampires had everything they wanted—except powerful women to slake their thirst. Vampires who were tired of having to stay low key and avail themselves of the lower class women whose disappearances wouldn’t make headlines.

  That’s when he began researching his latent mind control abilities. He’d found a paste that contained a rare drug in a Mayan archeological dig over thirty years ago, and he’d used that paste to control the women the vampires wanted. All he’d had to do was touch a victim enough times to get the paste’s properties circulating through her body and they were hooked on it and under his control.

  By providing powerful women to these vampires, even for a couple of days, he’d been on the road to becoming richer than he ever dreamed possible. And the women couldn’t remember a thing when they got home. Only his plan went horribly wrong when he tried it on Jess. And in the process of their investigation, Britt had died.

  “Vaslov was a weak human who had no idea what he had. It was good of you to expedite his demise.”

  She frowned at him. “I don’t understand.”

  The vampire looked incredulous. “Mamma mia, you really aren’t as bright as I’ve been told.”

  “Oh my God. You’re looking for the Mayan paste that he used to control human minds?”

  “Bingo, as you say in the States. I heard you were one of his victims, so you should realize that the paste isn’t just for humans.”

  “Why?” Jess shuddered, recalling how the paste had affected her. It had made her a zombie under Vaslov’s control. Not something she ever wanted to happen again.

  He shook his head and tapped his fingers restlessly while the sounds of rummaging continued upstairs. Suddenly, it hit her. He was trying to keep her occupied until they found what they wanted.

  “James doesn’t have the paste. You’re wasting your time.”

  The Mayan paste was locked up in her vault beneath the chemical company, in the same building where her forensic laboratory was housed. No one, living or dead, could get inside without her. Not even Sampson, her trusted longtime colleague.

  The vampire she faced had long but neatly trimmed hair, which was unusual. He also wore a suit and tie, and polished Italian leather shoes. It was true that evil came in all shapes and sizes, but until now, male models hadn’t seemed to fit into that category.

  The foraging stopped upstairs.

  “Guess your thugs came up empty,” she said, grinning and exposing her own feral canines. “You’ll have to go home empty-handed.”

  “Not until we find where you keep the paste. And …” He leaned against the wall in a casual, unworried stance. “… if you don’t tell us, we’ll rip apart everyone you know to find it.”

  She inhaled deeply and knew these vampires were old. Great timing. Alone against a pack of olde worlde vampires with more experience than her.

  Just by looking into his eyes she could tell the vampire in front of her was no stranger to killing, and he had a lust for blood so strong she could feel it. He projected that need as easily as she could fog a human’s mind.

  “I don’t have the paste anymore. We destroyed it in the polic
e incinerator.”

  The vampire lifted his head and looked up the staircase. Immediately, footsteps tore down to the second floor. He had some sort of mind connection with them? She’d never heard of that. Is that what happened when one got to be his age?

  Two more overdressed vampires entered the room and backed her into the corner. She let them do it. Indeed, she’d do anything to keep their attention off Regent.

  “This is it? The vampire hunter extraordinaire?” a dyed blond vampire with a dark five o’clock shadow said. If his swarthy complexion, by vampire standards, and his expertly clipped coif were any indication, he was also European.

  The third vampire, shorter and squatter, looked more like a Mafia thug than a model. Teeth elongated and eyes blacker than jet, he said, “One more chance to join us, bella.” The thug hung back, watching the other two circle her. Looks could sometimes be deceiving, but it was pretty evident he was the boss of this little group.

  “You’ve picked the wrong vampire,” she said, gritting her teeth and flexing her shoulders. “I’m not just tough, I’m the bitch who’s going to kill all of you. And I’m going to have fun doing it.”

  One vampire gave an exaggerated shudder of feigned excitement. “Promise?”

  Jess tamped down her anger, reminding herself that she had abilities on her side that pure vampires didn’t. She had a partial soul, and that meant she had reasoning abilities they couldn’t understand, no matter how old they were. Evil had a way of being confounded by common sense during a deadly battle.

  “Bring it on, vamps. Let’s get this over with. I’ve got better things to do with my time.”

  The leader laughed while he crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed where he could watch. “And James, your partner? Are you going to annihilate him when you find him?” he asked, leaning on one arm in a relaxed pose. Her heart lurched, but her face remained impassive as he added, “He’s one of us now.”

  She made the first move toward the two vamps circling her like it was a child’s game of ring-around-the-rosey. She tapped her heel on the floor twice to activate the blade in the toe of her boot. When she jumped high and kicked out at the closest vampire, he grabbed her leg and stopped the stake from making contact. She flipped herself backwards into a somersault to escape his grasp. His wrist twisted and cracked, and he howled in pain and dropped to his knees.

  She landed on her feet in front of him. With the other vampire directly behind her, she grasped her blade tight in her hand and spun to stab him before he knew what was coming. He screamed and disintegrated. Not even old ones could stand up against her specialized, thrice blessed blade.

  Only two left. The leader, relaxed on the bed, and the blond vamp with the broken wrist. At least the odds were shifting to her favor.

  “You must be joking if you think I believe you know where James and his family have gone.” Jess crouched lower, giving herself the time to dive again.

  “The human and the brat are safe—for now.”

  So they did know!

  Ancient evil flared in the vampire’s black pupils. He adjusted his silk vest under his designer suit jacket, and tapped one toe of his shiny, Italian leather shoe on the hardwood floor. He could barely reach the floor to do it. That didn’t make him any less dangerous.

  Did he have a toe spike, too?

  She braced herself, readied for his attack.

  He sprang off the bed in a lithe movement that belied his height and breadth, then charged her, diving sideways in an acrobatic maneuver while the spike in the toe of his shoe whizzed past her left ear.

  Too late she realized he’d merely been distracting her while the blond vampire regenerated and moved in. And much to her disdain, she had been distracted. She’d left herself vulnerable.

  Focus!

  Worse, the vampire who’d had the broken wrist pulled a container filled with liquid out of his jacket pocket. The liquid sloshed inside. He popped off the cork top and held it high for her to see.

  Holy water!

  No!

  She’d been seriously burned by Holy water. Had nearly died. But the last time Britt had been there to save her. Images of her flesh sizzling and burning and hanging off in meaty chunks surfaced and she pushed them away. She had to concentrate long enough to survive this attack.

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  Chapter Five

  A key turned in the door, but no one entered. Britt heard whispering outside. When, at last, the hinges squealed and the door pushed open a man in a business suit stepped into his room. Not sure who or what he’d expected, but this man wasn’t it.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked.

  “Like shit,” Britt mumbled, not able to raise his voice lest he again set off the jangling raw nerves flaring across his brain. It took every ounce of his strength, but he’d managed to sit up. Unable to do anything else, he pressed his hands to his temples Even the slightest noise evoked pain similar to a drill boring its way from his brainstem to his forehead. His skin crawled, and a million spikes of icy torment assaulted his body at once. Adjusting his neck to try to accommodate his aching head, he tried to remember anything about himself. His life remained a void.

  The stranger strode toward the bed and leaned over him. Looked into his eyes.

  Exerting as much effort as possible, Britt turned his head away to break eye contact. Anything to prove he had a mind of his own.

  From his peripheral vision, Britt thought he saw a shadow behind the stranger. Maybe he was so dehydrated he was hallucinating. He tried to moisten his lips, but they were terribly dry. He’d been thirsty for what felt like forever.

  Finally, too weak to hold himself up any longer, he flopped back and let his head drop down. Fresh starbursts of agony erupted behind his ears.

  The stranger lifted a glass and poured liquid into it from a pitcher. The low thrum of voices outside was louder now that the door was open. Where in the world was he? Who in the world was he? He couldn’t remember anything but the name he’d spouted to the priest on the phone. Britt.

  “Why am I here?” he asked. Come to think of it he couldn’t remember living anywhere else, either, so his question seemed redundant.

  “Do you know who you are?” the man asked.

  He thought. Again the name Britt sprang into his head, but there was more. He closed his eyes and forced the name to transform. “John? I think my name is John.”

  His observer nodded in agreement, his facial expression unreadable. “Good sign. I didn’t think you’d be able to remember without intervention.”

  “That right?” Britt sucked in a long, ragged breath. “What the hell is wrong with me? Was I in an accident? Did I have a stroke? What?”

  “Let’s not worry about that now. Sometimes past traumas should be forgotten, at least during the healing process.”

  “But I don’t want to forget. I want to know. I phoned a priest a minute ago. Who is he?”

  “You what?” The man became instantly alert. “Really!” He grinned and pressed his fingers together against his mouth. Then he dropped them and said, “You have an amazing spirit, John Brittain. You certainly are the right person for this job.”

  He’d called him John Brittain!

  But wait … job? Britt stiffened under a new wave of debilitating pain. This time it felt like burning rivulets of acid were licking up his legs. He grunted and gritted his teeth hard. His muscles turned rigid and straightened him out until his back wasn’t even touching the bed.

  “Not able to work,” he said through teeth that were virtually glued shut.

  “You’ll be fine. I’m here to help you.” The man bent over him again. “All will become clear over the next few days. You’ve been through a traumatic event, and I’m guessing you’re experiencing great pain right now?”

  “No shit, Sherlock! That’s the understatement of the year. Who are you? My doctor?”

  “I am what you need me to be.” A cool hand reached out and covered Britt’s forehead. T
he pain disappeared.

  Instantly. No pain in his head. None in his bones and muscles.

  Pain free.

  Shocked, Britt breathed through teeth that had been grinding from the rigors that had wracked his body seconds before. “How the hell did you do that?”

  “You’re going to be just fine, my son.”

  “I am? Damn, maybe I am delusional, because until you touched my forehead I thought I was in hell and being tortured. So how’d you stop the pain?”

  “Modern medicine. It was in your drink.” He took a step back. “Call me Zeke, by the way.” Britt didn’t remember drinking anything, but he turned his head long enough to see the empty glass on the bedstand.

  Whenever Zeke spoke his name, it didn’t roll off his tongue the way it should have. And he had a foreign accent that Britt didn’t recognize. Which was kind of funny when he thought about it. He barely even knew his own name, so how the hell could he recognize a foreign accent?

  Zeke held out a helping hand. “Get up, Britt. You have to hurry.”

  Britt grunted out a rough laugh. “Hurry? I can’t.”

  “You can. You have a friend in trouble. She needs you.”

  Britt’s gut twisted. She? Vibrant yet unattainable memories swirled to the surface, but he couldn’t quite reach them. He sensed that a woman had been very important to him, but he couldn’t picture her face. “Who is she?”

  “Do you remember her?”

  Heat rose to his face and he felt a vein throbbing at this temple, even so the experience was painless, almost as if his body had reacted to his attempt to access memory. “Tell me what the hell is going on? What happened to me? Why can’t I remember?”

  Zeke spread his hands in front of him. “Calm yourself, Britt. You’ve been through something most people couldn’t survive and have never experienced. Will never experience.”

  “Enough of this bullshit!” He sat bolt upright, surprised by his sudden ability to move.