tail. Security 101. It was standard because it worked.
I was riding shotgun in the last car, staring out the back window, trying to discern any pattern that might indicate we were being followed, and got the directions, address, and GPS coordinates when the drivers did. It came up on my digital video screen the moment they plugged it into the system, and instantly flashed onto a county map. The location of Shaddock’s chained scions was halfway up a mountain at the end of a nothing road. Literally nothing. The coordinates identified no access roads for miles, which meant it was both easier and harder to defend.
The security evaluation of the clan home was scheduled for later too, making this a twofer. Tension crawled up my shoulders on little spider feet. This was a dangerous proposition. The worst case scenario for protection detail was the unexpected.
The city fell away as we headed north on I-26 past the Pisgah National Forest and took 70 toward Hot Springs. The blackness of mountains rose up before us, secondary roads off to either side, careening up and down steep terrain. Mansion homesites and subdivisions dotted distant hillsides with security lights, bright in the dark. Mobile home and RV parks, barns, sheds, and abandoned houses replaced suburban life with rural as we traveled. No one followed us.
My directional sense said we were getting close when we slowed, and turned onto an unlit gravel road. A quarter mile in, trees had closed in on both sides and the shadows were dense. Even with my better-than-human night vision, one of the gifts of my Beast, I couldn’t see much out the tinted windows, not enough to pierce the darkness under the trees. We stopped, and I craned for a view. “Status?”
Derek said into his mike, “Barrier. Chain across the road. Two cameras at the gate, one static, one roving. Blood-servant guard. Another in a tree stand at four o’clock.” Derek’s low-light headgear units with infrared scopes had come in handy. Vamps showed on low-light as human, but showed cooler body temp on infrared, an easy way to ID the species. “Vamps on the ground in the trees at ten o’clock,” he said, “moving fast, maintaining a perimeter.” The direction of the vamps put them deeply into the wood, scrub, and steep hills, which meant Shaddock had a well-trained security detail, composed mostly of vamps instead of human blood-servants. Like a vamp army. “That make sense to you?” I asked.
“Not so much,” he said on the command channel. Which meant his spidey sense had been activated by so many unexpected blips. I tensed. We started forward again at a steady, slow crawl, and I watched the blood- servant lock the gate behind us. My Beast did not like to be caged in. She prowled within me, ears down flat, lips pulled back in a snarl, showing killing teeth.
The house at the end of the long drive was situated on a small bald knoll of solid granite. The house was tiny, a brick and stone dollhouse with arched windows, arched entry, four chimneys, peaked roofline with lots of sharp angles. Chen exited the limo and opened the heavy front door, punched a sequence into the security panel, squelching the squeal of the alarm.
Derek and Wrassler took over, going in for a fast reconnoiter. Derek held a compact, matte-black, semiautomatic selective-firing shoulder weapon—a submachine gun—in both hands, high on his chest. Wrassler stood at the door, not trying to hide his weapon, an ACR—Adaptive Combat Rifle—an adjustable, two-position gas-piston-driven system with an enhanced configuration, supported by a strap around his massive shoulders. He was wearing the night vision headgear and was watching out over the trees that circled the place. Boys and their toys. Out here in the boonies we didn’t have to worry about collateral damage.
I got out of the SUV and stood close to it, protected by the engine block, studying the trees at the edges of the property, the cool night air whispering. The moon was up, and the shadows under the trees were intensely dark. No hint of security lights anywhere up here; vamps’ night vision is way better than any human’s—it might be better than Beast’s. My shoulders ached and I realized I was holding them tightly. I forced them down into a neutral position; a relaxed posture wasn’t possible. Derek reappeared and waved us in. I went to the limo and opened the door. Grégoire followed Lincoln Shaddock and his blood-servant inside and I felt secure only when the door closed behind us with an airtight thump.
The inside of the Clan Home was far different from the outside, barely seeming to allow for the known laws of physics. Derek said, “On the entry floor we have an expanded foyer, library on left, guest suite on right, and a wet bar. Steps down. Checking the lower level now.”
“Wait here, please,” I said to the vamps and their blood-servants. The foyer held a black baby grand piano, which I stepped around, double-checking behind Derek, verifying his assessment and making sure nothing had changed since he did a sweep. Most of the entry level was a large deck overlooking the bottom floor. All the living space was on the lower level, with the ceiling opening up three stories overhead, and the public area of the living space laid out to view. It was also carved into the rock heart of the mountain.
The rear wall of the house was windowed, revealing an extraordinary panorama of a cleft in the hills, all faintly lit with dim lights. They showed a narrow stream, a waterfall, tall trees, and tumbled rocks the size of small cars. The view opened up and down, and it was spectacular. Shaddock had made the mountains his own, bringing them inside without damaging the environment or habitats. Too freaking cool. Not that I showed it. Through the windows, a lone owl was poised in the top of a dead tree, searching for dinner. “Niiiice,” one the security guys said softly into his mike. I moved through the foyer and down the stairs, my boots silent on the stone, one of the twin Walthers pointed down at my side, held in both hands. I didn’t remember drawing it. Derek preceded me, a weapon in each hand. I followed slowly. Vamps like hidey holes and they move faster than a human can see, hence the search—always paired up.
The living room was on the lower level, and open to the upper foyer. Shaddock had decorated in shades of char-coal, taupe, forest green, black, cloud-gray, and moss, colors likely taken from the daylight view outside, with lots of natural stone, bronze, and wood that was obviously all very old. I remembered from his file that Lincoln owned an architectural salvage business, buying buildings that had fallen into ruin, tearing them down by hand, treating, and reselling the wood. Here, old barn boards had been worked into the design of his clan home, even the floors, which were an appealing mix of oak, hickory, pine, and stone tiles.
Moving human slow, two vamps walked into the room together, Shaddock’s heir and spare, Dacy Mooney and Constantine Pickersgill. The two were crafty and dangerous. Dacy had been a Southern belle when alive, and after being turned, had been a U.S. spy in World Wars One and Two, under different names and different covers. Pickersgill had been the power behind six U.S. presidents. Both had lived in the world of humans without giving themselves away, which meant they were smart, coercive, and very cool under fire. They were dressed in casual clothes, not expecting us. And they each acknowledged me with a nod when my eyes flicked over them.
Shaddock’s bedroom was to the right of the living area—his personal sleeping space, not his lair. None of us would ever see that. I took in the understated room. A king-sized bed with luxurious linens, the headboard crafted from found articles: two narrow columns, a peaked door frame from a church, a rusted iron gate, and a carving of a swan, its long neck reaching back to ruffle its feathers, wings outspread. Things that didn’t go together except here. The floor was bare, finished wood. Shaddock, whom I had pegged as a hillbilly, had the soul of an artist.
A black leather recliner and a bronze antique swan-shaped lamp were the only other furniture. There was a huge walk-in closet and marble bathroom big enough to hold a party in. Back in the living room, I took two seconds to scan it. The floor was covered with a taupe, handmade silk rug of a black swan rising from gray water in a rush of froth in the sitting area. The back wall was the finished stone of the mountain. The side walls were faced with shelving, and one antique banker’s desk. Computers and laptops were on several surfaces, making the living room a work space and Shaddock a very unusual vamp. Most of them had trouble adapting to a world filled with modern electronics. Four couches, half a dozen chairs, a fireplace big enough to roast an ox or two made up a seating area. Bronze statues of wild animals, birds, a fox. Even an eight-foot-long taxidermied mountain lion, which Beast found interesting and wanted to study.
On the other side of the living space was a barrackslike bedroom—if barracks had silk sheets and feather pillows; six bunks, made up in moss, celery, and serpentine green. It was the blood-servants’ sleeping quarters. Two utilitarian baths and a locker room, all neat and Spartan. Tucked away in the corners were small, elegant bedrooms, walls hung with tapestries and beds in silk. Windowless. Vamp guest rooms. I pushed aside tapestries to reveal rock walls. No way was sunlight getting in here. “Clear. Let ’em in,” I said into the mike.
Back in the main area, I looked up at the huge, three-story windows just as Grégoire reached the bottom of the stairs. He looked nonplussed, which must be a difficult emotion for a master vamp his age to
