Blood Born Read online

  The bulb in the streetlight exploded, sending sparks raining down on the man, and that end of the street plunged into darkness.

  Chloe bolted for front door, key in hand, her heartbeat suddenly hammering against the walls of her chest. Her hand shaking, she tried to jam the key into the lock while she looked over her shoulder, expecting to see the man looming out of the darkness as he tried to get to her before she could get inside—

  No one was there. Or rather, no one she could see. Swearing under her breath, she forced herself to look down at the lock, but it still took three more tries before the key slid into the lock. To hell with swearing under her breath. She said, “Dammit!” in a fierce voice, turned the lock, and slammed the door open. As soon as she was inside she slammed the door again, this time closing it, and engaged the deadbolt before she gave the door a kick for good measure.

  That was it. Okay, so this was the first time she’d gotten scared walking home at night, but once was enough. No matter how much her car sputtered and lurched, no matter how nice the weather was, no matter how short the walk was or how green she felt by saving the gas, she was driving to and from work from now on.

  Something was going on. The dreams, the voice, the weird disconnect at work, and now what felt like her first official panic attack. Tomorrow—actually, when she woke up later today—she was calling her friend and getting that psychologist’s phone number. Maybe she could move up the date of her annual checkup with her general practitioner, too, just in case. All was not right in Chloe’s world, and she’d do whatever she had to do in order to fix it.

  She wanted her peace of mind back.

  But maybe, just maybe—Blowing out a breath, she stood there a moment longer, trying to decide if her imagination had just run away with her, big time, or if her instincts had been on target and she’d been smart to listen to that little voice telling her to run like hell.

  Sorin was watching Chloe Fallon walk toward him relaxed and unconcerned when his cell phone rang. “Shit,” he muttered, annoyed with himself because he hadn’t turned off the phone, and with the caller for choosing that exact moment to make the call. No point in hoping she hadn’t heard the phone; she’d stopped immediately, her head turned as she looked for the source of the noise.

  Even from here he could hear the sudden thump of her heartbeat; she was already thoroughly spooked. For a split second the thrill of the hunt surged through him and he started to take her now, his fangs elongating as the hard, rapid beats of her heart pulled him like a lodestone.

  Only the knowledge that the call had to be urgent stayed him, though it had been an effort to hold himself back. He reached into his pocket for the phone instead of bringing down the pretty blonde. “Yeah,” he said by way of greeting, his gaze still locked on Chloe Fallon. A sudden perverse urge to tease her seized him. Should he stay hidden in the shadow of the big trees, or—

  “We have a warrior coming through soon,” Jonas said, his tone tired and excited all at once. “Melody’s the closest, but I can’t get in touch with her.”

  “Who’s the conduit?” Sorin asked, at the same time he was thinking, Hell, why not? Maybe if Chloe Fallon was on edge, she’d give him a better chase. Tease her a little, let her know he was out there … things had been a little too easy lately, and he was getting bored.

  He stepped out of the shadow of the tree and smiled at her, letting some of his power lash out. Overhead, the streetlight exploded and sparks rained down on him like fireworks, and the little rabbit ran for her house as fast as she could.

  “He’s a soldier in North Carolina.”

  Soldiers were reliable and efficient conduits, which stood to reason; they were often able to make contact with their Warriors and bring them over in half the time other conduits could figure out what was going on.

  North Carolina wasn’t far, but the sun rose early in the summer and he wasn’t as resistant to it as that bastard Luca. The queen wanted him to locate Luca, hunt down conduits, and keep tabs on his little red-haired witch, Nevada. How in hell he was supposed to do all that simultaneously he had no idea. His wayward child, Melody, was supposed to be taking up the slack, but Melody now and always did whatever she felt like doing. She was a top-tier hunter, but she had no discipline. Someday, he was afraid, that lack of discipline would be the end of her.

  On the other hand, it was better that he, rather than Melody, face the soldier. If the Warrior was close to coming through, the soldier would be on high alert, and trained humans could and did take down even skilled vampires.

  “Okay,” he finally said. “Where exactly is he?”

  “I’ll send his picture and address to your phone.” Jonas cleared his throat. “The queen called earlier. She wants to know if you have any leads on Luca.”

  There was both a wariness and a weariness in Jonas’s voice that told Sorin the man was close to the breaking point. Even vampires had their limits, and Jonas was pushing his. The queen had had him working nonstop for months now, since she’d discovered his special talent of locating conduits and that he could even tell how close the conduit was to bringing over one of the warriors.

  “So, you’re now a messenger as well as a locator?” he asked.

  “Apparently so.”

  “If she calls back tell her I have nothing new on Luca because I’m spending all my time trying to kill conduits, the way she wants, and keeping the little witch hard at work, also the way she wants. You might also tell her if she wants to replace me, feel free.”

  “I can’t tell her any of that,” Jonas said softly. “She really just wants you to find Luca.”

  “I’m not the one who lost him,” Sorin pointed out.

  “She said he’s potentially dangerous.”

  Regina was right about one thing: Luca Ambrus was a dangerous bastard, a pure fighting machine who with just a look could make ordinary vampires piss on themselves. No one knew exactly how old he was, or exactly how powerful, but there were plenty of tales about some unbelievable things he’d done. One of these days, Sorin figured he’d test himself against Luca, because he himself was too much of a fighter to live in peace with himself unless he knew whether or not he could defeat the blood born. He might die in the attempt but what the hell, battle was a good way to go.

  “Hector was his friend,” Sorin said. “She should’ve thought of that before she killed him.”

  The queen—she had begun insisting that they call her Regina, as she would leave her old identity behind and adopt a new one when their uprising succeeded in upending the structure of power in their favor—was as cold and ruthless as any vampire he’d ever known. She would destroy anyone and anything in her way, in her determined rise to power, so it was far safer to be on her side than against her.

  “Forget Luca, forget Regina,” Jonas said tightly. “There’s a conduit close to calling in his Warrior, and you have to take care of him ASAP. Do it yourself or send someone else, I don’t care.”

  There were a few vampire rebels, Sorin’s own soldiers, who could withstand daylight to some degree. He could send them out hunting Luca, because that’s when he’d be moving around. “Check all the area hotels and motels again; Luca has to be sleeping somewhere.” The first check hadn’t turned up anything, but that didn’t mean Luca hadn’t since found himself a nice, dark little room somewhere. He was cunning enough to have delayed doing so until he’d figured they had had enough time to run the initial check, thinking they wouldn’t bother to check again.

  “So, I guess you’re not going to forget Luca,” Jonas said, his voice tired. “Fine, fine, I’ll check again.”

  The unwelcome truth was, a lot of vampires were not exactly computer savvy. Computers were too new, and vampires had an innate dislike of them because the digital era had made life so much more difficult for all of them. Jonas was an exception to the rule; he’d taken to computers as if he’d been born in 1980 instead of 1780. Sorin had forced himself to learn something about computers, and of course they all used cell pho