Darak tasted the evil that hung in the air and ached to smash it.
Pluto’s balls, some idiot went and got himself a spell book.
Wasn’t that just dandy?
Who the hell in this backwater has that kind of power? For a pinprick on the map, Fairview was just full of surprises. Vampires standing for public office. Entire prison dimensions. And his personal favorite—invisible evil that set stuff on fire.
Come for the election, stay for the magic of mass destruction.
Darak heaved himself to his feet, stiff from crouching on the peak of the cathedral roof like an oversized gargoyle. He dusted away the snow that had collected on his sleeves and scanned the horizon while he took a slug from his flask.
The dark leathers he wore kept out the wind, but the cold seeped through seams and zippers. One of the old Undead, he could ignore it. What bothered him more was the smoke—not the comfortable scent of a hearth fire, but the reek of a burning building. The acrid stink had drawn him to the highest point he could find, and now he could see the source—a glowing maw of flame to the southwest, unnaturally fierce and bright.
Who or what had caused it? Only one way to find out. Go to the source.
Darak balanced on the roof’s ridgeline, walking toe to heel along its length. Pride made him careful. Vampires could fly, but at close to seven feet and three-fifty, Darak was not exactly aerodynamic. Control was important, unless he wanted to drop like an anvil.
When he reached the roofline, he jumped, a streak of shadow against the black sky. The air rushed to meet him, snow stinging his cheeks. He landed lightly enough, boots skating on the frosty sidewalk. Pulling himself upright, he began walking toward the fire.
Darak and his blood-sworn kin were Undead, but they bowed to no queen or king. It had taken them two millennia to gain enough strength for true freedom, and they’d done it by force of arms. The honest way.
Darak didn’t like magic or the people who used it. Weapons were far more reliable. Nevertheless, it took a cartload of power to start a blaze like that.
Power was interesting.
He stopped walking when he came to one of the telephone poles that dotted the street. An election poster jostled for space with ads for lost cats and ska-goth fusion bands. Darak read the poster with a sense of bitter amusement. Elect Michael de Winter
Equality and fairness for all citizens of Fairview!
Choose a candidate with centuries of experience!
It’s time for an interspecies perspective.
The vampire candidate. Like many, Darak’s crew had come to watch the election.
Michael de Winter was backed by the vampire queen, Omara. Her goal was equal rights for the nonhumans—but a lot of vampires were nostalgic for the good old days of crowns and scepters. After all, vampires survived by feeding on the weak. A desire for dominance was natural.
Bottom line: Did the queen want to reign over more than vampires? Half the humans were ready to riot, so apparently they believed the worst. Meanwhile, Omara’s vampire enemies waited and watched for an excuse to topple her throne.
Who said politics wasn’t a blood sport? Among vampires, politics often ended in war—and that meant innocents would die.
Not okay.
That’s when Darak and his brethren voted with cold steel.
He turned away from the poster and began walking toward the fire once more. Yes, it had taken true power to set that blaze.
Maybe Darak could use the fool with the spell book. If election fever turned bad, they might need an extra weapon in reserve.
Or maybe he’d just tear off the fool’s head.
That sort of thing was his specialty.
Tuesday, December 28, 11:40 p.m.
101.5 FM
“Good evening and welcome back to CSUP. For those just joining us, tonight’s program is all about the special bond between lover and beloved, hunter and prey. Where do the two intersect, and what does the battle of the sexes have to do with the battle between species?
“It brings us, my dark faithful, to the topic of slayers. These days, it seems as if any cheerleader with a stake can get into the game, but I’m not talking about the wannabes or even those oh-so-scary mercenaries who accept a bounty on our lives. I’m talking about the crazies, the ones who kill from a sense of devotion.
“There are human tribes from Eastern Europe called the Hunters. They don’t kill for sport or for money. It’s a family tradition handed down from parent to child since the dawn of written history. To them, killing us is the purest act of love for their own kind.
“They’re the ones I worry about when I turn out the light.”
Tuesday, December 28, 11:45 p.m.
Lore’s condo
When she heard Lore leave the condo, Talia curled up on her side, cradling her cuffed wrist in her free hand. Relief drained the last strength from her limbs. He hadn’t hurt her, but she wasn’t convinced he wouldn’t. No one handcuffed a woman—a stranger—without the possibility of harm. That last look he’d given her was the pure, remorseless gaze of a predator.
But at least he was gone for the moment. She’d needed an interval of privacy to gather her wits. Too much had happened since she’d . . . had she really been shopping a few hours ago?
Now that she was alone, her emotions began to unfold from the clenched ball of pain lodged in her gut. Fear. Guilt. Loss. Loneliness.
Talia pressed her face into the coverlet, her feelings too crowded to cry just yet. She’d lost her mother, then her fiance, and then the rest of her family. It was like a recurring nightmare where pieces of her flesh were torn away, leaving nothing recognizable. After Talia had lost her humanity, she’d thought there was nothing left to take—but the horror had come back again. She’d still had something to lose. Still more pain to endure. One more time.
Perhaps the last time. Michelle was all she had left. Now there was no one. Pink tears began to stain the pillowcase. Grief was finally finding release.
Michelle had been the one to anchor Talia, to patiently remind her that not everything was obliterated because she’d been Turned. She’d helped Talia pick the threads of her true self from the tangled, damaged mess she’d become. If it hadn’t been for her cousin, Talia would never have gone back to teaching.
And she was only one of the many, many people who had loved Michelle. Tonight, a light had gone out of the world. And it was my fault. Talia sobbed in earnest. There was no way to bring her cousin back. Not even an ancient vampire could save someone after their body had been so badly broken.
Talia’s tears slowed, the last thought pushing her from sadness to fear. It should have been me who died. A vampire would have known the difference between a human and one of their own. That meant the murder was either a huge mistake or a warning.
Who wants me dead?
Talia’s stomach cramped as cold terror washed through her. There was her sire, who had reason to hate
