Blood Born Read online

  “Are you one of them?” Chloe asked. “Are you a … Warrior?”

  A shrill beeping intruded; before she could get an answer, Chloe was yanked from her dream and into reality. The alarm clock was beeping loudly and continuously, and she wasn’t at all surprised to find that her bedroom was freezing, which was probably what had prompted the dream about being on the ice floe. There was apparently something wrong with her thermostat, dammit all to hell.

  She slapped at the snooze button and pulled the covers up around her neck, curling into a ball and burying her nose in her pillow, searching for warmth. Chloe didn’t often wish for a man, but right now it would be nice to have someone to warm her feet on, someone to add the warmth of another body to her cold bed. She needed something solid in her life, when it seemed that nothing and no one was real.

  A face swam into her memory, a face that was chiseled and strong, with long dark hair falling around it and pale gleaming eyes that seemed to pierce the darkness. He’d been here last night. He’d fought off her attacker, and everything had been all right. A sense of peace began to fill her, and she smiled a little. For a moment his name eluded her, and then it popped into her head crisp and clear: Luca.

  CHAPTER

  EIGHT

  Sorin arrived back in D.C. just before dawn, and he began threading his way through town to his secret lair. He could have slept at the mansion in Potomac, but that would have required a level of trust in his fellow rebels that he simply didn’t have. From the time he’d been turned he’d always preferred having a secret place to spend the day. Sure, sometimes he’d dozed with a woman he’d just had sex with, but when he was tired and really needed to rest, like now, he wanted to be alone.

  He was later getting back than he’d wanted. First, locating the soldier conduit had taken longer than he’d expected, and during the drive back it had been raining like piss pouring out of a boot (had to love those human expressions) in North Carolina, which had slowed traffic on the interstate to a crawl. He had been able to see perfectly, but the poor humans had been feeling their way along in the dark and the rain.

  The mission hadn’t been an easy one, either. The soldier had been a fighter, a real fighter, not someone who just filled a uniform and performed office duties. He had also been frighteningly close to realizing and accepting what was happening to him. There hadn’t been any confusion, no doubts about the stability, or lack of it, of his sanity. The human had begun to realize he was the route through which an Immortal Warrior would come into the world. He hadn’t known why, or how, but when Sorin attacked the man had very quickly realized exactly what he was fighting … and why. He hadn’t given up, he’d fought hard until his last breath.

  How many other conduits were teetering on the edge? This was taking too long. They were cutting it too close. Eventually some of the Warriors would make it through, and things would immediately become exponentially more difficult. At what point would their numbers become too many for the vampires to handle? There was nothing he could do to hurry the process, though; Jonas was already pushing himself to exhaustion, trying to locate all the conduits as they became active, and evaluate how ready they were.

  Sorin had chosen the best hunters from the vampires who had joined the rebels, but they weren’t plentiful; counting himself, there were only ten. He’d sent Enoch after the Fallon woman only because she was local; all of the other hunters were scattered around the country. Enoch was a strong vampire, and though he’d spent the last hundred years or so being what amounted to a majordomo for the Council members, that hadn’t diluted his strength any; his patience, maybe, but not his strength.

  Frankly, the ten of them were stretched so thin he didn’t know how they’d be able to keep up. The Warriors undoubtedly knew what was going on and would step up the pace of contacting their conduits. Sorin mentally ran through the names of the vampires at his disposal; he already had the best of them hunting, but he needed reinforcements. The next group chosen obviously wouldn’t be as good, but they could take the less-urgent targets, the easy ones, such as the Fallon woman.

  He was tired, he hadn’t fed in two days, and dawn was coming. When his cell phone rang he seriously considered turning it off without answering it. He glanced at the Caller ID—Unknown—but he recognized the number: Regina. He bit off a curse as he flipped the phone open. “Yeah.”

  “Enoch hasn’t returned.”

  Sorin pinched the bridge of his nose. The girl should have been an easy kill, much easier than the soldier in North Carolina, which was why he’d sent Enoch. “He doesn’t answer his cell?”

  “He didn’t take it with him. It was found in his room.”

  That was both bad and good. If Enoch needed help, it was bad that he didn’t have his cell. If something had happened to him, it was good that he didn’t have his cell, because then no one would be able to find out who had called him, and who he had called. Carrying a cell was always a risk, but one that so far had been a small one.

  The risk factor might be going up, though. Enoch could have met with any number of accidents, a few of which could be fatal even to a vampire—say if he was hit by a train and decapitated—but Luca Ambrus was out there somewhere, angry and unaccounted for. Sorin had to assume that Enoch might now be a captive, though for the rebels’ sake he hoped the man was dead. Dead was better. Dead didn’t talk; dead didn’t give up names and locations.

  The good thing was, Enoch had no idea about the mansion or where it was located. His knowledge revolved completely around Council headquarters. If he told Regina’s identity, that was tough shit for her.

  Even if Enoch gave her up to Luca, the executioner might have trouble getting into Council headquarters. The security was superb, designed with an eye toward keeping out Luca himself, on the theory that if Luca couldn’t get in, no one could. How was that for irony?

  “What about the Fallon woman?” he finally asked.

  “She’s still alive,” Regina replied, her annoyance touched with a hint of fury.

  So Enoch hadn’t even completed his mission; whatever had happened to him, had happened before he got to her. Something else to worry about, then, another little detail that affected his strategy. “Has her status changed?”

  “According to Jonas she’s further along, but her status isn’t urgent. There’s still time.”

  Sorin drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. That was good news. Still, if some other conduit didn’t go hot and he was pulled away again, he’d go after her himself. After all, a conduit was a conduit; they all had to be eliminated, and this one was right under his nose.

  Sorin sometimes enjoyed his visits to the witch, but when he went to her room that day just after sunset, he was still feeling grim about losing Enoch. No sign of the vampire had turned up. Regina was both frightened and angry, which meant she was a bitch to deal with. Actually, she was always a bitch to deal with, but today she was worse.

  If Sorin wasn’t happy with the witch, the feeling was mutual. Sometimes she seemed glad to see him; this wasn’t one of those times. She was sitting on the floor, her hands flat on the open pages of one of the larger spell books. She could have called any of the vampires guarding her to lift the huge book to the table, but no, she was too stubborn; she’d rather sit on the floor than ask any of them for anything. When he opened the door without knocking—he deliberately never gave her even that much advance warning—she jerked her head around and glared at him.

  “Do you ever think that I might be in the middle of something delicate,” she snapped, “and when you barge in like that it destroys everything I’ve done? I was trying to get a spell started, but forget about that now. You want me to break your precious spell, but you won’t leave me alone long enough for me to concentrate on anything!”

  She was in a mood, all right. He liked that she was getting temperamental; she was a far cry now from the terrified girl she’d been when he’d first brought her here. She was gaining power and confidence along with, or because of, her