Blood Born Read online

  She could see them, hear them, but they couldn’t see her. She wondered if she could walk among them, brush against their spirits, but as soon as the idea occurred she thrust it away. That would be stupid. Vampires were at essence creatures of magic, and they might very well sense the touch of another kind of magic.

  One of the vampires in the room stuck a pin in a detailed map of D.C. “Chloe Fallon,” he said. “Her warrior is trying to contact her, but she’s still several weeks away from hearing the call. I don’t think there’s any hurry on her.”

  “Don’t tell me about the conduits I don’t need to worry about,” Sorin growled. “Tell me about the ones I need to kill now.”

  “She’s practically in our backyard,” another vampire said, sounding annoyed. “Why wait until the last minute?”

  Sorin gave the third vampire a narrow-eyed look. “Jonas will let us know when it’s time. More and more warriors are trying to come in, and some conduits respond faster than others. There are only so many of us who can travel in the daytime, so we take care of the most urgent first.”

  Conduit. What was a conduit? And what was this about warriors? Didn’t matter, Nevada thought as she listened to them talk. The vampires were systematically killing these humans they called conduits, and Sorin was leading them. The vampires were planning to seize power, but first they had to kill these conduits who somehow could contact these special warriors. It didn’t make sense to her, but she didn’t have to understand to know that innocent people had been killed and even more were slated to die. She herself was part of this grand plan; she had to break a spell that kept the vampires from breaching human sanctuary. Until now, however, she hadn’t realized there was another part to the scheme.

  The vampire who had stuck the pin in the map picked up a photo from his desk and handed it to Sorin. “This is Chloe Fallon.” He rubbed a hand over his face; he looked exhausted, which was weird, because Nevada hadn’t realized vampires could get tired. But this vampire wasn’t tall and muscular like Sorin; in fact, he looked like a geek, with a scraggly build and a mild face.

  Sorin looked down at the photograph. Nevada sent her spirit edging closer, so she could get a look, too, but she was careful not to get too close to Sorin. The woman in the photograph was a pretty blonde with a cheerful, infectious smile, but there was something fragile about her that Nevada couldn’t put her finger on, as if she was in danger of fading away. She wasn’t thin, wasn’t sickly looking, but—

  She was going to die.

  Nevada felt a chill run through her spirit body. This pretty young woman who was innocent of any wrongdoing was going to die because she was a conduit, because she was the means of bringing one of these badass warriors into being. The vampires must be scared shitless of the warriors, must realize they couldn’t win the war they were planning if enough of the warriors could make it to the fight.

  These people, these conduits, were helpless, Nevada thought. They didn’t know vampires existed, much less that the vamps were stalking them like animals and butchering them.

  But she could make a difference. She knew she could. Physically she was bound, but her mind was free. She could help defy the vampires, and they’d never know—

  With a deep intake of air and a heavy thump of her heart, Nevada found herself solidly and completely back in her room. Her knees wobbled and she sat down hard, completely missing her chair and sprawling on her ass. She sat there trying to gather her spinning senses, marshal her thoughts.

  She could do something. She had a real sense of who and where this Chloe Fallon was located. She was here in D.C., close enough that Nevada thought maybe she could reach her. If Chloe had been in Alaska, say, that was probably beyond Nevada’s skill right now. But every time she did this she got better, so if she managed to warn Chloe then probably the next time she could reach farther out, to other conduits.

  Could she communicate beyond these walls? Once she would have said no, but that was before she tapped into the power that had lain dormant within her. If she could listen in and observe what was happening a couple of floors below, why should there be a limit? She didn’t know that she could reach this Chloe Fallon and warn her, but she had to try.

  Quickly she scrambled to her feet and once more stood at the table, absently rubbing her aching butt as she leafed through the book before her. The spells weren’t in any order, weren’t broken down by section so she could just flip to, say, Warning from a Distance and find what she needed. Looking through the book took more time than she liked, because the wording was so obscure that sometimes she had to read a spell three or four times before she understood the purpose of it. Eventually, though, she found a spell that she thought might work. What did she have to lose? What did Chloe have to lose?

  Her life, that’s what, if this didn’t work.

  Nevada whispered the words on the page, words that would give her access to Chloe’s mind … if she was doing it correctly. She closed her eyes and pictured Chloe’s face as best she could, casting out an invisible net that she prayed would reach far enough. The net soared high and wide, sparkling and glittering like huge crystal butterfly wings. She had a connection with Chloe that made the spell possible, and that connection was Sorin. He was the one who had seized Nevada from her home years ago, and now he had set his sights on Chloe. They shared a common enemy.

  “Beware,” Nevada whispered. She was acutely aware of the passing time. The hour was late; Chloe might already be asleep, might think this contact was part of a dream, a dream to be dismissed or forgotten. She mustn’t forget. “Listen,” Nevada urged in a low chant. “Hear, and remember. Dear God, please remember. You must. Remember.”

  She was so intent on getting through to Chloe that she didn’t hear Sorin coming until the door opened. Nevada was severed from the spell so sharply and completely that she jumped and stumbled backward. “Dammit!” she yelped, her hand pressing over her heart in an instinctive motion, as if she could physically still the furious leap of fright. “You scared the crap out of me!” Dammit, for real. She hadn’t been able to send Chloe all the information she’d intended to.

  Sorin stopped just inside the door, his head tilted a little to one side as he gave her a bemused look. “You humans say the funniest things when you’re startled. What were you doing?”

  You humans. His phrasing told her just how far Sorin was from those long ago days when he, too, had been human. She wanted to ask him if he remembered what it was like to be human, but instead she took a deep breath and thanked her lucky stars that, outwardly at least, she’d been doing nothing more than standing over the old book of spells. “I was concentrating on my work, just like you want. I was trying out a spell.”

  He studied her sharply, as he always did, and she felt that gaze to the pit of her stomach. “Did it work?”

  “No,” she said sourly. “You interrupted.”

  “What kind of spell was it?”

  “As far as I can tell, it’s for locating a lost object.”

  His gaze got sharper. “That isn’t the spell we want you to do. Stop playing; we’re running out of time.”

  “It isn’t playing, it’s using the spells I can do to expand my power base—” She stopped, made an abrupt dismissive gesture. “I’m doing the best I can.” And he’d just let slip that she didn’t have much time left. If she couldn’t break the spell by whenever this deadline was, they’d have no further use for her.

  He gave her an inscrutable look, tilted his head toward her in a formal, old-fashioned dismissal, and left as abruptly as he had arrived.

  Usually he stayed longer, chatted with her, sometimes even teased her a little in a way that reminded her that he was hundreds of years old and she must seem like not much more than a toddler to him. After he was gone, Nevada felt oddly bereft. She pushed the feeling away and, bracing herself, went back to the book of spells and tried to resume where she’d left off.

  It was no good. Whatever spark she’d discovered, whatever link she’d estab