Dancing With The Dead

him she slept. It was time to begin his hunt.

The sun was on the verge of rising by the time he arrived back at Trevgard's mansion. He walked through the fast disappearing shadows, carefully avoiding the many police officers still around.

Monica was an unseen presence, full of pain and desperate hunger. Obviously, she hadn't yet found the item she would carry through eternity. Michael glanced at his left hand. In his case, it had been a ring.

Made for his father by his grandfather, carved from the soft rock that abounded on their farm. It was a reminder of the life he'd willingly forsaken; a reminder of the death he'd unwittingly caused.

It had been his father who'd discovered his body, and the discovery had caused a heart attack, leaving his mother to somehow scratch a living on land so poor even grass refused to grow. He'd returned once the blood- rage had left him, hoping to help in some way. But by then, years had passed, and the struggle to survive had all but killed her. His oldest brother, Patrick, had given up on the farm and left in search of work elsewhere, and his four sisters had found themselves husbands and homes of their own. He'd nursed his mother through her final days, and buried her next to his father. And had vowed, at the foot of her grave, never to take another innocent human life.

A vow he had kept to this day.

He stopped near the front porch and leaned against the wall, waiting. Monica would have to leave soon.

The sun was on the rise, and the house offered little in the way of protection. It had too many windows, allowed too much sun to stream in. As a newborn, she needed complete darkness during the day.

Resistance to sunlight came only with the onset of a century or so.

She didn't move until the last possible moment. She walked past quickly, right fist clutching a gold watch.

Her father's, by the look of it. Her blue eyes were wild, her mind half-mad with thirst. She didn't sense his nearby presence—caution was the last thing on her mind. So many of the newly turned died within the first couple of days simply because they weren't careful enough.

He followed her quick steps through the half-light of morning. If he were lucky, she would lead him straight to her master. Hiding in the middle of a city as big as Lyndhurst still held special problems for the likes of Monica and Jasper. Street people already occupied many of the abandoned factories and houses. The one thing more important to a vampire than a place to wait out the sun was security.

Day sleep represented a kind of death, particularly when young in vampire years. You had to be sure you were safe in the hours when you were totally helpless. Neither Jasper nor Monica had the choice of sleeping in motels, as he did. Because of his years and lifestyle, he could wake and protect himself if threatened. The other two could not.

The skies began to brighten. Monica broke into a run, her sudden desperation reaching back to him.

Only now that the sun's heat had started to itch her skin did she realize her danger.

She swung into a side street, and fled into the darkness of an old warehouse. Michael stopped, following the rest of her retreat with his senses.

As he'd expected, she fled down, not up, into the comforting darkness of the basement. Jasper waited for her there.

Michael clenched his fingers and tried to ignore the desperate urge to rush in and crush his enemy's neck.

Jasper wasn't alone. Michael's old foe had gained some cunning during the years since their last encounter. People were already working on the floors above, unaware that a monster lurked below. The zombies were silent sentinels near the basement door.

He had no doubt Jasper had rigged the warehouse to explode should he be attacked. He'd done it before, and killed over one hundred people in the process.

Michael turned and walked away. He'd come back tonight, when the people in the two floors above the basement had gone home, and burn this retreat to the ground.

He glanced skyward, trying to judge the time he had left before he had to make his own retreat. At least a few hours… whistling tunelessly, he shoved his hands into his pockets and headed back to the stockyards on the outskirts of town.

Chapter Eight

Nikki absently ran the silver cross up and down its chain and watched the people hurry past the foggy office windows. Everyone was bundled up against the bitter wind that raced the clouds across the evening sky. She felt no warmer, despite the heat in the office.

Just how did you stop a vampire?

Last night had proven how difficult that might be. From the little Michael had said, she knew Jasper had been dead long enough to develop and refine the gifts vampirism endowed.

They'd never see him, let alone get near enough to kill him. She crossed her arms and tried to ignore the ice creeping through her veins. Michael was right about one thing. Jasper and Monica were evil. They would kill, and keep on killing, until they were stopped. She just wished she wasn't the one who had to stop them.

She leaned forward and grabbed her coffee cup off the desk, wrapping her hands around it to keep them warm. She turned her thoughts to Michael. She'd heard it said that the eyes were the window to the soul, so what did his ebony gaze tell her? That he was a man well versed in controlling his surroundings.

That his secrets and knowledge were old. Centuries old.

She frowned and sipped her coffee. That was impossible, of course. And there was more than secrets to be seen in his eyes. There was also warmth, and a hint of passion that called to something deep inside her. She shivered lightly. Maybe it was just as well that he'd revealed a little too much last night.

The office opened. Jake stepped in, accompanied by a blast of wind that sent the loose papers on her desk scattering like confetti.

'It's cold outside,' he muttered sourly. He threw his coat in the general direction of his desk and stalked across the room to the coffee pot.

'So tell me something new,' she said, returning her gaze to the street. Michael was out there somewhere.

While it was obvious he could take care of himself, worry gnawed at her. Last night her dreams had sent her a warning—Jasper wove a trap around them all, with Michael's death the grand finale.

'I've sent Mary on a trip to visit her mother,' Jake said into the silence.

She almost choked on a mouthful of coffee. In the ten years she'd known him, he'd never been worried enough by a case to send his wife away.

His face was bleak. 'If Monica is still alive after having that stake shoved in her gut, well, she knows too much about us. She'll come after us, Nikki.'

Hunter and hunted, all one and the same. Just great, she thought, and took another sip of coffee.

'At least I'm lucky that way,' she said after a moment. 'I have no one but me to worry about.'

'You must have aunts and uncles out there, somewhere. Grandparents, even. All you have to do is find them, kiddo.'

Yeah, she thought sourly. She had them. But they didn't want to know her . She took another sip of coffee, then met Jake's curious gaze. 'Mom once told me her family refused to understand the nature of her gifts—they thought she was possessed by the devil. That's why she left when she was sixteen. And Dad's folks disowned him for marrying someone they thought no better than a gypsy.'

He shrugged. 'Times change. You can't be sure how they'd react to you now.'

She smiled bitterly. 'Yes, I can.'

She bent to gather the papers from the floor, only to have them scatter further as the door opened a second time. Michael stepped inside.

'Evening,' he greeted softly, his dark gaze enigmatic when it met hers.

Intuition delivered two warnings, and her pulse skipped a beat. The wall he'd raised last night would stay in