Keeper of the Dawn

“It’s the best, I swear it.”

“Whatever,” Mark said, then sighed and slipped an arm around Alessande. “Come on, honey, we’re going to have to wait.”

“But it will be worth it!” Digger called after them as they walked away.

“What do we do now?” Alessande asked Mark as soon as they were out of sight.

“You been practicing your shape-shifting?”

“I feel pretty confident,” she said.

“Want to do a bat?” he asked. “I would suggest a wolf, but that’s far too obvious for the streets of L.A.”

She grinned. “Yeah, I can do a bat. What then?”

“Police work. We perch somewhere—and we wait. And we see where he leads us.”

They rounded a corner into an alley. Mark went first, willing the change in his mind. He turned to smoke and then flapped his way up to a terrace in perfect bat form.

Alessande followed. She was good, he had to admit; she looked like the real deal.

He waited for her to feel comfortable with the change. They he flew down toward the street, looking for Digger.

They were not disappointed.

Digger was leaning against the building again, another joint in his hands. Mark rested on a rooftop, Alessande followed, and they settled down to wait together.

Waiting. It was one of the most tedious parts of his job.

He found himself thinking about the night he and Brodie had waited to burst into the Hildegard tomb. He was still troubled by the daydream or vision or whatever it was that he’d had that night. Alessande had been featured in it, though he’d yet to meet her at that time.

And now...

Now he knew her, and the vision was even more disturbing.

He told himself that he didn’t need to be so worried. Not at this time anyway. There was no blood wedding on the horizon. They were bats, perched on a building, watching. And waiting.

At last they saw someone approaching Digger. Mark strained to see—not easy when he was in bat form.

It was a man, a tall man. He was wearing a trench coat despite the fact that the night was warm and there wasn’t even a hint of rain in the air.

The man stopped in front of Digger, who managed to shrug his way out of his smoke-induced haze, straighten and begin talking to the man with a great deal of enthusiasm.

The man was angry. He smacked Digger against the wall and, as Mark watched, pulled a knife from an inner pocket of his trench coat and raised it.

Mark flew down in a fury, moving as quickly as he could. He realized Alessande was at his side, moving swiftly in perfect unison.

Mark crashed purposefully into the attacker’s arm. The knife missed Digger, striking the stucco facade of the building instead.

Digger twisted away and screamed, then turned and ran.

As the tall man raised his knife again, Mark took human form and grasped the man’s arm, wrestling him to the ground. The knife went flying. Alessande, also in human form, went for the weapon.

The man was no match for Mark’s strength, but as they struggled he managed to pop a pill into his mouth. As he swallowed, Mark was able at last to get a good look at his face.

It was Jimmy—the Hildegard butler.

“Jimmy!” he gasped.

Jimmy only stared back at him, not saying a word, as his lips started to draw back and he began to gag.

Mark realized that he hadn’t swallowed something hallucinogenic.

He’d taken poison.

“No!” Mark roared, trying to wedge his fingers into Jimmy’s mouth to keep him from choking.

Too late. Foam spewed from between Jimmy’s lips.

Jimmy died before him, choking and writhing in pain.

Then...nothing.

Mark pulled out his phone to call Brodie, and, as he punched in the number, he looked around and saw that Digger was gone.

And so was Alessande.

Chapter 9

For someone who was so stoned, Digger could move.

Luckily Alessande could outrun almost anyone, including other Elven, simply because she loved to run and did it often.

But he had a head start.

Even so, she had no trouble chasing him down and overtaking him in the alley where she and Mark had transformed, and she certainly had no trouble tackling him to the ground. As she straddled him, he raised his arms over his face screaming, “Don’t hurt me! Please, don’t hurt me!”

“I’m not going to hurt you, Digger.”

He screamed again, like a baby, or a cat with its tail caught in a door.

“Digger! I am not going to hurt you!”

He began to whimper.

“Listen to me. Get it through your head that I’m not going to hurt you—but you are going to answer some questions.”

“What? What do you want to know?” he asked.

“Those pills you sold us the other night. Where did you get them? That man—”

“What, are you stupid?”

“All right, maybe I am going to hurt you.”

“No, no, I’m sorry, I’m sorry—stop! You saw the man. The man who attacked me. That was the man who was giving me the pills to sell. Where the hell did you come from anyway? Oh, man, I’m so messed up.”

“Digger, I need to know about the man.”

“What’s to know? He came down to the streets and found me—said he had the best stuff, stuff no one else had. He said I could walk away a rich man just by being selective, by finding couples to sell the stuff to. I mean, people didn’t come back for more, not until you two, but no one wanted their money back, either. He’s the one who knew about the stuff, honest. I was just trying to make a buck. I’m a salesman, that’s all.”

“Who is he, Digger?”

He opened his mouth to answer, and then his eyes suddenly went huge.

Alessande tried to turn around—to see what Digger had seen.

But even as she realized there was someone, something, behind her, she felt the air move, felt something heavy slam against her skull. For a moment she fought the dizziness that seized her. But the dust motes before her eyes began to dance, and, when she keeled over, she was dimly aware of Digger’s scream as it faded away.

* * *

“Alessande!”

As Mark stood and shouted her name, Brodie came running down the street toward him.

“What the hell’s going on?” Brodie asked. He looked at Jimmy, lying facedown on the sidewalk. “Who’s that, and what happened to him?”

“It’s Jimmy—the Hildegard butler. He took something before I could stop him. Cyanide, maybe. Call an