“Tromluí doesn’t like being ignored. He’s a big baby that way.” She walked past Kathryn to the stallion’s stall and held out her hand. The horse immediately stuck his nose into her fingers and tongued up whatever had been there. “Carrot,” Peterson said, rubbing the animal’s nose with a fond smile. “He’s got a sweet tooth, this one.”

“Tromluí,” Kathryn repeated. “That’s his name?”

“It’s Irish,” Peterson told her, without looking away from the big horse. “Means Nightmare.”

“How appropriate.”

“Isn’t it? Yeah, this one’s Lord Donlon’s special sweetheart.”

“Does Donlon do any of his own training?”

“Quite a bit, though he leaves some of it to me, too. He’s mostly interested in the stallions, but he takes on the occasional mare. Likes to sweet talk ’em first, ’til they don’t even notice he’s climbing into the saddle.”

Peterson gave such a lusty chuckle that Kathryn knew she’d intended the double entendre.

“He breaks them himself?”

Peterson smiled, as if remembering something pleasant. “Breaks isn’t the right word for what he does. I swear these animals understand every word he says. He can take a horse like Tromluí here and have him literally following him around like a baby goat. It’s a sight to see. Not to mention the pretty picture the two of them make together. Two beautiful beasts moving as one. And that man does know how to sit a horse, let me tell you. MmmMmm.”

Kathryn grinned, then hid it quickly. She might agree that Lucas was yum-worthy, but it wouldn’t do to let him or anyone else know it.

“Does it bother you,” she asked Peterson curiously, “to call him Lord? I mean this is America, after all.”

Peterson shrugged. “The Queen of England comes over to visit, and everyone has to learn how to curtsey, right? They don’t call her Liz, or even Missus Whatever-the-fuck-her-last-name-is. It’s kind of like that for Lucas. He’s a ruler, I guess you’d say, in his own society. It’s only polite to grant him his title. Besides, he’s a good employer. He respects my opinion and lets me do what I love for a living. I don’t mind granting him a little respect in return.”

Kathryn nodded. Put that way, it made sense to her, too. Besides, deep down she knew she was only trying to poke holes in Lucas Donlon to avoid dealing with her attraction to him. She couldn’t afford to be attracted to anyone right now. She needed to be focused on one thing, and that was finding her brother Daniel.

“You ever notice any strangers around here, Judy? Maybe vampires you don’t see regularly?”

Peterson didn’t answer right away, but seemed to be giving it some thought. “Lord Donlon doesn’t get too many visitors out here. This is his escape. You know, from all the decisions he has to make everywhere else, all the people coming to him for favors and stuff. He goes away for a few weeks every now and then, and when he comes back, I can see how stressed he is. Then he comes out to play with my babies, and he gets happy and becomes himself again.”

Kathryn eyed the trainer in some surprise. That was a very thoughtful assessment of Donlon. Apparently, Peterson’s talents for understanding animals extended to vampires, as well. Or maybe it was just to stallions, no matter the species.

“Lord Donlon said you’d be riding later?” Peterson said, with a sideways glance. “You ever ride before, Agent Hunter?”

“Call me Kathryn,” she said, “and, yes, I’ve ridden, though lately not as much as I’d like to. I learned as a child and picked it up again in college. I had a friend whose parents owned a small farm not far from Charlottesville, where the UVA campus is. I used to go there sometimes, especially later when—” Kathryn stopped herself from running off at the mouth. She hadn’t talked about that part of her life for such a long time, it felt odd to do so now. And with a perfect stranger, too.

The truth she’d almost blurted out was that until her brother started college on his own, she’d spent every weekend home with him, and almost every weeknight, too, making certain he stayed on the straight and narrow path to college himself. Even back then, he’d had a rare talent for photography, and they’d both known it would be his career. But he’d also been a daredevil, challenging the world at every opportunity. He still was, which was why he’d walked off into the backcountry of the Badlands by himself for two weeks. It was rather ironic that when trouble finally caught up with him, it had been at something as ordinary as a private club. Of course, there was the vampire angle to give it a little edge. From their conversations, she knew that touch of danger had appealed to him.

“I’m sorry I was rambling,” she dissembled, cutting herself off. “The short answer is, yes, I ride. Not well enough for that monster,” she gestured at Tromluí. “But well enough.”

“No one rides Tromluí but Lord Donlon, anyway,” Peterson told her. “Isn’t that right, my beauty?” she added, scratching the big horse’s cheeks as if he were a fluffy kitten instead of nearly a ton of muscle and attitude.

Kathryn glanced at the digital readout on her watch. 5:47. “What time’s sunset around here?”

“This time of year, six or thereabouts. It’s getting later every day with spring coming on.”

“I should probably get up to the main house, then, huh?”

Peterson shrugged. “Lord Donlon said to expect you, so he’s likely to come looking down here. Takes ’em a while to wake up and get going anyway, just like you or me in the morning.”

“Okay. Is there something I can do in the meantime?”

“I got some stalls need cleaning out,” Peterson said. She laughed at Kathryn’s grimace of reaction. “Don’t worry, I’ll start you out easy. You know how to work a curry comb?”

“Now that I can handle.”

“Then I’ve got just the horse for you.”

* * * *

Lucas opened his eyes seconds after the sun dropped below the horizon. His daytime sleep had been anything but restful. He’d lain there through the hours of sunlight, plotting strategies for dealing with Klemens, identifying places where the vampire lord’s hold was weak, his people dissatisfied. The latter wasn’t hard to find. Klemens was a benevolent despot at best, and a heartless bastard at worst. He’d toppled the previous ruler of the Midwest through the time-honored tradition of challenge and a fight to the death. It was the way things were done in the world of Vampire, but it didn’t always make for a favorable outcome.

In Klemens’s case, the Midwestern territory had gone from a lord who held his power gently to Klemens, who ruled with an iron fist. Every vampire lord, Lucas included, had the right to tithe the vampires they ruled and protected. But, like Lucas, most exercised that right sparingly. Klemens, on the other hand, tithed every single vampire in his territory, regardless of their individual situation, and enforced it like some sort of medieval king. Lucas had taken in more than one vampire who had crossed the border just to get away from Klemens and his thuggish collection agents.

For decades now, Lucas had lived side by side with Klemens in a state of mutual distrust but no outright hostility. It was kind of like North and South Korea. There was the border, and they had both watched it closely, but until now neither had wanted to pay the price of outright war.

Something had changed with Klemens in the last year. Lucas wasn’t certain what precipitated that change, although he suspected it had something to do with Raphael and the way he was gathering the other vampire lords to his side. He’d already allied with Rajmund in the Northeast and even Sophia up in Canada. In the South, Jabril had died unexpectedly, and Raphael had stepped up to support the new lord, who was too weak to hold the territory on his own. Raphael claimed it was only for the sake of stability. Lucas doubted that, but didn’t care either way. He had no problem with Raphael’s long term goals. He was, in fact, a party to them. But even he didn’t know what had really happened with Jabril. There were rumors that Raphael’s mate Cynthia had been involved somehow, but he’d never managed to get beyond the rumors. Not even Raphael would discuss it with him. Since Lucas and Raphael were far closer than was usual among vampire lords, his Sire’s reluctance to even broach the subject gave credibility to the rumors of Cynthia’s involvement. Raphael had always been very protective of those he loved, especially the women.

So, it was possible that Klemens had seen Raphael gathering the reins of power into his own hands and decided to make a move before it was too late. And since he’d always coveted Lucas’s territory, it was the most natural target of his new expansionistic impulse.

Lucas leapt out of bed and went directly to the shower, thanking the gods of invention for modern plumbing as he did every evening. With the hot water pounding him into submission, he considered Kathryn Hunter. She was like a dog with a bone when it came to the search for her brother. And he supposed he couldn’t blame her. If he’d had a brother, he might have done the same. Hell, for all he knew, he had a whole tribe of brothers that he wasn’t aware of since his father had split when Lucas was still a baby. His parents had never married, and his mother had always refused to talk about it. Lucas suspected his father had been married to someone else, his mother no more than a summer night’s fling. When she’d ended up pregnant, the fling had become a burden, and his father had fled back to the safety of his wife and family. Lucas didn’t have any proof of his theory, though by now he had the resources to pay someone to dig it up if he’d wanted. For that matter, he could have hired Raphael’s mate Cynthia to track his ancestry as so many of the others were doing.

But the truth was he didn’t care all that much. That life, his human life, was long behind him and didn’t have a place in what he was now.

His phone rang as he was climbing from the shower. Drying his hair with one of the fluffy towels, he walked into the living area of his underground vault and snatched up his cell.