He began to run.
Tara shot back down the stairs, not pausing to find the others in the library, but bursting outside the front door, shrieking her cousin’s name.
There was no answer. The driveway was locked in shadow; clouds covered the moon. She called and shouted. There was no sign of Rick, Roland, the dog, or anyone.
She raced back into the house, bursting into the library. Jade stood guard, literally, straight and tall, posed behind her grandfather’s desk chair.
She paused for a deep breath, wet her lips, and told Jacques, “They’ve got Ann.” She was so sorry. His entire face went gray, and seemed to sink within. He might have been a skeleton with leftover flesh, watching her.
“Lucian will be back; Brent will be back.”
She shook her head. “We can’t wait. I’m going.”
“Tara, no!”
“They’re going to kill her if I don’t go.”
“You’re not going alone,” Jacques said.
“Grandpapa! You can’t come with me. Then I’d have to worry about your life as well as my own.” Jade was shaking her head. “You know nothing yet, Tara. You know nothing at all. You haven’t the experience—”
“Then you’d better give me a quick lesson.”
“I’m coming with you—”
“You can’t. God knows where Rick is, or what happened with Roland, and I’m still certain that Jacques is in terrible danger. And now ... now that we’ve come to this, I’m not afraid.” It was the most preposterous lie she had ever told in her life, but she could see no other way to get her cousin back.
“Look, supposedly I’m genetically primed to do this, to go after these people. So if you want to help me, tell me quickly what I need to know. Jacques—I drew a picture upstairs. It turned out to be a man Ann had been dating, as well as the man who claimed to be from the Paris police, as well as someone Brent seemed to know from somewhere else. If you can—”
She had thought that her grandfather looked half-dead before. Now, he was the color of pure ash.
“Andre-son!” he breathed.
“Andreson ... who is Andreson?” she asked.
“A true monster. He was head of the medical experiments when I was in the prison camp during the war. He ran the place. Naturally, of course, I knew later. He was constantly glutted, there was a chance for such rich carnage during the war! No crueller commandant ever existed, no one, not even among a field of monsters, was so heinous. But at the end ... his cruelty brought about his death. Or so I had thought.”
“The war ... Jacques, how does Brent know about this man, then?” Her grandfather looked at her.
“Brent Malone was Andreson’s favorite experiment, and there was nothing he enjoyed more than trying to solve the riddle of his survival, and what he had become.” She felt ill. Brent had lied to her. It was impossible. If he wasn’t a—vampire, one among them, how could he have lived back during the war?
“What do you mean? Tell me quickly. Brent couldn’t have been in the war. He’d be old now, really old now. He said that he wasn’t a vampire, he told me twice that he wasn’t a vampire—”
“He’s not,” Jacques said.
“Then—”
“He’s a werewolf.”
“Oh, God!”
* * *
Ann DeVant lay on the sofa, eyes open but unfocused. Louisa stared down at the woman, hating her.
She longed to strike right then and there. Slide her teeth deep into the woman’s throat—so white against that spill of dark hair—tear into her, rip her to shreds, draining every last drop of blood from her body.
She forced herself to move away from the girl.
Gerard had said that she must live, and it was true— she was the bait to get the other, and now, Tara DeVant would have to come, of course. She was certain that Gerard would have killed the wolf by now.
And Lucian was busy seeking the body of the wolf...
It had all been so well planned. The only torture was now ... waiting. And hating the girl, of course.
She stood over her again. Jealousy was eating at her, consuming her. Actually, when the time came, she wanted to kill the girl in front of Gerard. Wanted to see that she meant nothing to him, that she could be drained, used up ... and discarded like refuse.
She felt his arrival. Sweeping black shadows that she knew long before they touched her.
“Did you kill him?”“Yes,” he said, but there was a hesitation.
Louisa said angrily, “Did you kill him?”
“Yes, of course, I struck him with a silver bullet.”
“And you saw his body?”
“No, I did not.”
“Then—”
“He’s dead! Don’t you understand? I hit him with a silver bullet”
“I understand,” she said, “that he was the one to ruin things when you should have been there to welcome me from the coffin. That he wormed his way into a job with Professor Dubois, and was watching, waiting, all along.
He was the one who summoned Lucian, and the one determined again to find Jacques DeVant and seek out what information he had ... and he is the one who has created so much trouble all along. And you did not see his body!“
“It does not matter, I tell you. I struck him with a silver bullet” She studied him for a moment. “I thought you would have been more determined on being certain that he was dead. After what you tell me that he did to you ...”
“It was ten years before my injuries even began to heal,” Gerard said bitterly. “He tore me to shreds. He came back for the prisoners. When they were freed, they stabbed and shot me, hung me up like a slaughtered steer. DeVant knew that I should have been decapitated, and he would have seen to the deed himself, but that’s when the fires began, and he was forced to run. To take that traitor, Weiss, and get the hell out. Weiss! I never found that sniveling little coward, either. He was never prosecuted—prisoners defended him! He went to America and lived in peace and plenty and died at the age of ninety-nine. Yes, I loathe and despise Brent Malone! I should have finished him off when he was brought in, but he was the only one to withstand the onslaught of the wolves. There were many more then. They attacked both the Allies and Axis soldiers, heedless of their uniforms. They left a field of devastation worse than that of any bomb or slaughter. But he was alive. And I knew he’d be one of them. And I wanted to know what caused it—what made him stronger, what made him weaker. What caused him the most pain ... he is dead! I know that I hit him. And ...” His voice trailed away. He saw Ann prone upon the couch. He walked over to her. Louisa was certain that he stared down at the girl with the greatest affection.
Louisa sat on the couch, running her fingers along the bare length of Ann’s arm as she looked up at Gerard.
“Let me kill her ... now. Watch me kill her ... now. We can share her, but I must confess. I tasted her blood when I shape-shifted to you, luring her to the balcony. Delicious. And I’m still so hungry. But if you wish ...”
He drew her to her feet. “Not now!” he said. “This is our chance to take them, one by one. Tara DeVant will come. She will have to come alone ... the others will be too far behind. You left the note—as I told you.”
“Of course. So there is no reason to keep her alive.”
“There is every reason. She may have real talent. An instinct deeper even than that in the old man. She’s young—”
“She hasn’t the least idea of her own powers. She doesn’t know what to do.”
“She may know if her cousin is dead, and then she may not come.”
“I think that she is coming already,” Louisa said, licking her lips, looking at Ann.
“We have all manner of creatures from which you may take greater nourishment—or entertain yourself.
Leave her be. For now.”
Louisa returned to the fire.
“Fine. But when Tara arrives, I will deal with her. You will wait for Lucian’s arrival—and he will arrive.”
“What if she is not so easy as you seem to think?”
“My love, we have a little army ready to greet her when she arrives. She will be half-dead when they finish. I will merely deliver the final blows.”
* * *
Jacques had spoken quickly, almost tonelessly, trying to explain how he had come to know Brent Malone. How Brent Malone, under the care of Doctor Weiss, had survived, how he had returned to the camp to rip it apart before anymore prisoners could be executed, and how he and Weiss had, in turn, taken care of him.
Taught him the ways of the Alliance.
She had listened for several minutes, listened as if hearing an impossible fairy tale. Then she had glanced at her watch and said, “None of this matters. They’re going to kill Ann.”
“I know that Lucian will be here. Any minute.”
“Then when he arrives, you must send him after me. You know now exactly where to send him. But I must get there first.”
The argument had already been won, she knew. Katia had been useless—she had taken a seat in an overstuffed chair where she sat and moaned and rocked to and fro, almost as if she were catatonic. But Jade had acquired everything her grandfather had said she needed, and she was ready. Her faith would always be her greatest protection, Jacques told her. Her faith, and her gold cross. Unless she had buckets of holy water, she could only burn and scald them with it, but not bring them down completely.
She was armed with a stake that Jacques had owned since his father had given it to him when he was a boy, and a newer weapon for backup. She was also armed with his army sword, sharpened to perfection, as apparently he had kept it, always. She had understood that heads must be removed, or that corpses must be burned beyond recognition.
Afraid, she set out, driving as far as she could.
Then she set off through the woods.
And it was her dream again ...
Darkness, incredible darkness. Shadows broken only by the light of the moon, and that disappearing far too often, as if the clouds were conspirators along with the vampires.