Chapter Three
“Hello, Miss Lyudmila.”
Hansen, Mila’s family’s black-suited butler, stood at the kitchen door—the one she’d hoped to sneak into. “Hello, Hansen.” She really shouldn’t have expected anything different. Very little happened in her parent’s palatial Lake Minnetonka home that Hansen wasn’t aware of. He was probably the only person in the household who’d noticed she hadn’t slept at home for over a day.
“Sorry I didn’t call.” She set her backpack on the floor, just inside the door. “My shift at work went longer than I expected. The sun came up, so I decided to sleep at the hospital until it set again.” Strictly speaking, she wasn’t lying. Ever since her diagnosis, she’d become way too adept at such conversational shades of gray. The tiny staples hidden in her hairline stung and throbbed—she couldn’t believe she’d fainted at work—but at least the wound had stopped bleeding.
“Your parents are just about to break their fast.”
Her aristocratic parents ran their household on strict vampire time, sleeping during the day and waking at sunset. No new-fangled VampScreen or UV-treated windows for them, thank you very much; they had no need to be out and about during the daylight hours. At sunset, they woke up, bathed, then dressed to meet the day. You could set a watch by them. Hansen likely did.
“Will you be dining with your parents this evening?”
“Yes.” She felt like a bloated tick after being transfused at the ER, but it was best for everyone that she join her parents and eat what Hansen served. She looked down at her shirt and pants. Her work clothes would annoy her mother, but at least she hadn’t bled all over them when she fell. She tugged at her sweater sleeve, making sure it hid the bandage and cotton ball at the crook of her elbow—which she really should have removed before coming home, damn it. She sighed as she walked to the formal dining room. There was no help for it now. If her parents smelled the blood and asked questions, she’d just tell them she had her period.
Though the glossy mahogany table could comfortably seat twenty, her parents sat adjacent to each other at one end. Hansen had set the table with the everyday Lenox, with pale green cloth napkins providing a shot of color. A lead crystal vase of chrysanthemums served as the centerpiece. The flowers’ coral heads were as large as the bread plates.
“Hello, Lyudmila.”
“Hello, Mother.” Leaning down, Mila kissed both taut cheeks, and quickly backed away. Her mother’s heavy floral scent made her feel woozy. “Are the chrysanthemums yours?” Her mother excelled as a hostess, and grew flowers year-round in a greenhouse on the property.
“Yes. Aren’t they beautiful?”
As she started talking about how she’d trained the flowers, Mila looked at her mother’s face, a surgically smooth canvas where no age line dared tread. No one looking at the chic vampire Lyudmila would ever guess she had a daughter Mila’s age—which was probably the point of all those nips and tucks. Mila had been a late-in-life baby, conceived at the outer boundaries of her mother’s fertile years—but five years after Mila had been born, there’d been one more pregnancy, one more birth.
Did her mother mourn Katarina? Did she even remember her?
Her father dropped his Wall Street Journal. “Hello, dear. How was the League meeting?”
It cracked her up how the Elders shortened the Genetic Purity League’s name to something so…philanthropic-sounding, as if by leaving off the first two words they could disavow all knowledge of why the organization had been formed in the first place. Its original mission, to preserve the pure bloodlines of the Ancients who’d survived the crash, might have been well-intentioned at one time, but damn it, they knew better now.
“It was fine.” She kissed her father’s cheek as she passed him.
Most younger members knew that the GPL’s mission was ignorant and ass-backwards—their species’ robustness lay not in genetic purity, but in genetic diversity—but the group continued to meet anyway. And why not? It was a way to socialize. The booze flowed free and freely, and people hooked up with abandon. Not her, not anymore; she’d quickly learned that having sex for entertainment’s sake wasn’t for her. These days, she attended the meetings as a personal challenge, as a way to force herself to interact with people her own age.
She plopped into her chair, ignoring her mother’s disapproving frown. Approaching Dominic Reese had been one of the most difficult things she’d ever done, but she’d made herself do it, and—she disguised a shiver of delight—he’d actually asked her out. She’d been so distracted by his low, rumbly voice, and by the silky, cinnamon-colored hair on his muscular forearms, that she’d had a hard time concentrating on the questions he’d asked about her job, her family, and her life.
Hansen entered the dining room with a click of hard-soled shoes against the parquet floor. Ice cubes clinked as he set a glass before her: cream soda, barely tinged with blood. “Thanks, Hansen.” Wyland had told her to increase her blood intake—and she would—but she wasn’t going to stop drinking her favorite breakfast beverage.
“Lyudmila, you’re a grown woman,” her mother said as Hansen went back to the kitchen. “Why do you insist on drinking soda pop for breakfast?”
If I’m a grown woman, why do you insist I live with you? The angry words went unsaid. Over the years, Mila had learned to choose her rebellions very, very carefully. She took a sip—a small, safe rebellion—and felt the bubbly chill effervesce on her tongue. “Because I like it.”
“And those unattractive work clothes.” Her mother picked up a goblet of dark red blood that glistened in the chandelier’s prismatic light. “Must you wear such drab colors?”
Mila eyed her mother’s black silk blouse, but didn’t say a word. Her clothes weren’t the problem; the work was. Her mother didn’t understand Mila’s need to do something useful with her education. To work outside the home, to earn a paycheck that didn’t have Daddy’s signature on it.
“Well, we’ll take care of the drab when we see the dressmaker about your gown,” her mother said. “The calligrapher needs the names and addresses of your League friends for the party invitations.”
“Huh?”
Her mother sighed. “Must you use such coarse language?”
Mila set the glass down on the tablecloth and mentally counted to three. “To which party are you referring, Mother?”
“I can’t believe you’ve forgotten.” Hansen entered the room again, pushing a rolling cart holding three plates covered by shiny silver domes. He served her mother first, then her, and then her father, before leaving again. “Lyudmila,” her exasperated mother continued, “it’s time for you to take your rightful place in our community. It’s been far too long since we offered hospitality to Valerian and Wyland.”
Wyland, here? The last thing she wanted to do was socialize with her doctor—the doctor her parents didn’t realize she was seeing. She looked down at her plate. The small steak, swimming in bloody au jus, suddenly looked nauseating instead of appetizing. “Why invite them to the party?”
“Are you daft? They’re our leaders. They represent us on the Underworld Council. They’re the most powerful vampires on the planet.” Her mother picked up a silver-plated knife and fork. “Lyudmila, social and political networks don’t just…happen. Like flowers, they require constant cultivation and care.”
“I saw Wyland at Sebastiani Labs a couple of weeks ago,” her father volunteered from behind his newspaper. “We exchanged a few words. He asked after your well-being, Mila.”
Her stomach bottomed out. Had Wyland told them—
“It’s high time Wyland took a mate.” Her mother sliced into her steak. “He’s a very attractive man, don’t you think? Barely three hundred years old, and his parents were purebloods.”
Attractive? Wyland? Surely her mother wasn’t suggesting—
“You’re nearly twenty-five, Lyudmila. It’s time you thought about the continuity of our family line.”
Apparently she was.
“Wyland is the perfect choice for you,” her mother bulldozed on. “The only choice, really.”
Mila picked up her fork and mutinously stabbed a strawberry. What if she didn’t want a bondmate? What if she wasn’t interested in having children? Ever? The very thought would put a stake in her mother’s heart. “I’m sure Wyland’s far too busy to socialize, Mother—especially with Valerian being in such poor health.”
“Lyudmila.” Her mother’s knife clanked against the china. “Wyland asked after your well-being. We must strike while the iron’s hot.” She picked up her goblet again, considering her with more than a hint of calculation in her eyes. “Do you ever see Wyland at the hospital?” A pause. “Maybe taking that job wasn’t such a horrible decision after all.”
If her parents knew how often she saw Wyland, and why, they’d shit a gold-plated brick. It was time to nip her mother’s delusions in the bud. “Mother, Wyland’s not interested in me, not that way. He’s simply being polite.” She gave a light laugh. “And he’s over three hundred years old. If he wanted a bondmate, don’t you think he’d already have one?”
Her father eyed her over the top of his newspaper. “Perhaps you can change his mind.”
The words hit like a depth charge. Apparently her parents weren’t above pimping out their only daughter for political and social gain.
As she tried to catch her breath, her mother chattered on about menus, guest lists, gowns, and seating plans, not at all concerned about Mila’s reaction. Not bothering to assess her daughter for damage.
What else was new?
A shriek of frustration threatened to leap from her throat, but she shoved it back, shoved it down—and that, she admitted with a sigh, was part of the problem. Given her past behavior, why wouldn’t her parents think she’d simply fall in line with their plans? They were so certain she’d obey that they hadn’t even bothered to thrall her to ensure her compliance.
Little Mila, meek and mild.
Not anymore. Damn it, she was nearly twenty-five years old, an adult vampire with full rights and autonomy. She had a good job, friends, her own money…it was high time she took control of her own life, stood on her own two feet. Either she needed protection, or she was old enough to take a bondmate, run her own household, and continue the family line.
Her mother couldn’t have it both ways.
She picked up her glass and took a slow sip. So, her parents thought they could offer their perfect, pristine daughter to the Vampire Second on a silver platter? Ha. What would they do if they discovered she wasn’t so perfect? Wasn’t so pristine? That a hot guy like Dominic Reese was interested in her, and that she was interested right back?
What then?
She lowered the glass with a hand that shook. She might have been perfectly healthy at birth, but she was far from healthy now. And little Katarina’s snuffed-out life was proof that, in her parents’ minds, imperfections were simply not acceptable.
Ignore it. Just ignore it. Don’t look at the screen.
“Easier said than done,” Tia muttered, scrawling her name on the bottom of the check. After posting some new content to ILQ, she’d caught up on email, returned a few phone calls, and had done some long-overdue filing. Now, truly desperate, she was paying bills—something, anything, to avoid clicking on the icon that mocked her from her laptop screen.
Ever since Bailey had given her access to the Archives, she’d hit the database as often as a crack addict hit their pipe. And was it any wonder? What marvelous things she’d read; what amazing facts she’d learned.
Sighing in defeat, she swung her chair toward the laptop sitting on the other side of her home office’s L-shaped desk. After clicking on the icon and logging on, she opened the files she’d started to build on Sigurd, Valerian, The Old Ways, the Genetic Purity League, and Wyland—who hadn’t called her as he’d promised.
She shook off the thought. She had plenty to keep her busy, other stories to work on, even if Commander Gideon Lupinsky hadn’t returned her phone calls yet. While she waited for the Archives’ login sequence to finish, she glanced out the window, where a floodlight illuminated her neglected back yard. If she didn’t mow her lawn soon, she’d need to scare up some goats… Ah, there. The main screen was finally up.
Bailey had warned her that the Archives were still a hot mess—a hodgepodge of scanned original manuscripts, documents, images, and electronic files, all crying out for organization and deeper indexing—but the biographies were solid, and rudimentary search capabilities were up and running. Though Tia hadn’t found any information on The Genetic Purity League or The Old Ways, she’d been amused to find her own small biographical entry, probably due to her parents, who were noted philanthropists. Bailey had formatted the biographical materials in a manner anyone familiar with Wikipedia could navigate.
She pulled up Wyland’s biography, clicked on one of the first links, and watched Valerian’s distinctive, slanted handwriting fill the screen. Against the cream-colored parchment, the ink was still surprisingly legible, and the scan was so pristine that she could see places where his incisive downstrokes had caused the nib of his pen to cut through the paper. She took notes as she read, tapping pertinent facts into the word processing document she’d created for Wyland.
Thanks to Valerian, Wyland had a well-documented life. Born to aristocratic vampire parents in England in 1702, he’d been studying medicine when he’d come to Valerian’s attention. His primary research interest? Blood, of course. Wyland had become Valerian’s apprentice soon afterward, continuing his medical research, studying law, and familiarizing himself with their culture’s history via their fledgling Archives. As Wyland had previously told her, Valerian had designated Wyland as his Second in the mid-1700s. He’d remained in England while Valerian traveled back and forth between Europe and the ascendant American colonies.
But damn, the things Wyland hadn’t told her. According to these materials, he was quite the political mover and shaker, advising royalty and military alike. His research into blood, particularly transfusion, had resulted in some of ‘humanity’s’ earliest hematology advances.
As for his personal life... She pulled up an enlargement of the scanned photograph that she’d quickly glanced at the previous night. Lyceum Theatre - Opening Night - July 1896. Wearing a beautiful Victorian tailcoat, a crisp white shirt and tie, and smiling for the camera, a marginally younger-looking Wyland stood in front of the theatre with another man, and with his arm wrapped around the nipped-in waist of an absolutely stunning redhead. Actress? Mistress? Paramour? Whoever the woman was, Tia would bet her trust fund that she and Wyland had just rolled out of bed. She leaned toward the photo, and read the names written in faded ink along the picture’s border. “Who are you, Deirdre d’Amour?” she murmured to the lushly curved woman. She didn’t want to think about what the other woman had done to put that relaxed, sex-soaked smile on Wyland’s face.
The other man, Abraham Stoker, was similarly dressed, wearing a black Victorian tailcoat, and— “What?” Abraham Stoker? Bram Stoker? Wyland knew the man who’d written Dracula? “Awesome.”
Her phone rang. She considered letting it go to voice mail, but put it on speaker when she saw it was Bailey.
“Are you at your computer?” Bailey said. “I’m going to send you a link.”
She’d spent so much time on the phone with Bailey over the last couple of days that the other woman’s lack of phone etiquette didn’t faze her anymore. Obtaining access to the Archives had taken more time and effort than she’d anticipated. “Did you know Wyland knew Bram Stoker?” she asked. “The guy who wrote Dracula?”
“Whatever. Incoming.”
A soft chime announced the arrival of the link in her chat window. She recognized the base URL. Why was Bailey sending her a link to a comment at In Like Quinn? “The story about crappy handicapped access in public buildings?”
“Read it.”
She clicked on the comment. “‘Jacoby Woolf’s father should put him down like the damaged mongrel he is.’” A sick feeling washed over her. Like the previous comment, this one was marginally on-topic, but… “Someone’s using my website to make threats against the Council.”
“It seems that way,” Bailey said. “After the first comment about Coco was posted, I wrote a script to find and flag comments made about Council members and their families, but I never expected anyone to be stupid enough to actually mention a Council member by their full name. I’m trying to track it back, but, like the other comment, it’s anonymized pretty damn well.”
“Isn’t that hard to do?”
“Not nearly as hard as it used to be.”
Hmm. “‘Put him down?’ What kind of prehistoric throwback says something like that?”
“It’s classic Genetic Purity League.”
“And it’s batshit insane.”
Bailey didn’t disagree. “Does In Like Quinn have a moderation policy? Standards of behavior, terms of use and such?”
“Yes.” Freedom of speech didn’t mean freedom from consequences, and this person had crossed her line. With a couple of clicks, she put the comment into Moderation state, making its offensive text invisible to readers. “Done,” she said. “Feel free to moderate other messages if you feel it’s necessary.”
There was a long pause. “Okay.”
Bailey, with her hacker pedigree, was no doubt looking at the same admin screen she was, password be damned.
“Have you seen Wyland recently?” Bailey asked. “He’s not answering his phone.”
She almost laughed at Bailey’s grumpy tone. Tethered to gadgets 24/7, Bailey clearly couldn’t conceive of someone making a different choice. “We worked together at the Archives a couple of nights ago, but I haven’t heard from him since.” So much for his promise. “Valerian and I have a movie date in a couple of hours.” She and Valerian had enjoyed themselves so much watching Downton Abbey together the other night that he’d asked her to visit again, and to bring a movie from her vast collection. Tonight’s feature would be The Hunger, with Bowie, Sarandon, and Deneuve. “If I see Wyland, I can let him know you’d like to speak with him.”
“Please do,” Bailey said. “Talk to you soon.”
“’Bye.”
What was Wyland’s deal? For a man so hung up on etiquette, he sure was rude. She picked up the pen, tapping it against the top of her desk. She wasn’t due at Valerian’s for a couple of hours yet, but he’d issued an open invitation, telling her to come over any time.
She logged out of ILQ, saved her research files, logged out of the Archives, and powered down. As she stalked upstairs to take a shower, she spared another thought to her overlong grass. Maybe she’d have to call in those goats after all, because right now, instead of mowing, she was going to give the Vampire Second a giant piece of her mind.
Sitting on the edge of the mattress in Valerian’s bedroom, Wyland studied his patient, lying in bed with his upper body propped up by pillows. Val had passed a comfortable day’s sleep. He was alert, his color was good, and his lungs were clearer tonight than they’d been yesterday. The antibiotics were finally starting to work.
“Why do you insist on doing this? We both know what the problem is. I’m old.” Valerian pushed away the stethoscope and buttoned his flannel pajama top. “Write that on my tombstone, Wyland. ‘He was old.’”
“Tombstone? I thought you wanted a Viking funeral.” Over the last twenty years, the funeral plans Valerian had considered included entombment in an unmarked Scottish cairn, floating away in a flaming pyre on the Ganges, classic Egyptian mummification, and having his ashes compressed into a diamond.
“Gene Roddenberry’s cremains were launched into space,” Valerian mused. “Now there’s a mighty fine send-off.”
Wyland put the stethoscope in the black bag sitting at his feet, trying to hide his exhaustion. Sebastiani Labs had an aerospace division. A similar celebration could definitely be arranged when the time came.
Whenever the time came, it would be too soon.
With a contented sigh, Valerian relaxed against the pillows, pushing aside the nasal cannula. They’d exchanged some harsh words about the oxygen tank standing next to the mahogany four-poster, an argument Wyland had won. But what good was winning the argument if Val wouldn’t use the thing?
“Sometimes I think Sigurd had the right idea.”
Wyland stilled, waiting for him to say more, but Val moved on to another topic. These days, having a conversation with Valerian was like skipping rocks, with Val jumping from subject to subject until he sank back into sleep, or into private reverie. And now he’d stopped speaking, lost in thought, looking into the middle distance with unfocused eyes. What did Val see? What did he remember?
He’d probably never know. “Would you like to feed?” Without waiting for an answer, Wyland walked to the other side of the bed, climbed onto the mattress, and lay down, cradling Valerian’s frail body in a gentle embrace.
“Have you finished emptying out the catacombs yet?” Valerian suddenly asked.
“Not yet.” During the last few days, he’d barely had time to breathe, much less empty the last dank alcove at the far end of the catacombs tunneled under the house. He’d spent hours at a Sebastiani Labs manufacturing facility, overseeing the final testing of a bagged blood formulation Sebastiani Labs had developed. And then there’d been Lukas’s request. Little Coco Fontaine, not yet born but already causing trouble—not that he could blame Lukas and Scarlett for asking him to confirm their daughter’s precise status. After many eye-blurring hours of research, he’d discovered nothing in their Council charter that would prohibit the mixed-species offspring of two sitting Council members from representing either species—or both species simultaneously, for that matter.
And he hadn’t had time to call Tia Quinn, but perhaps that was for the best.
“Maybe Thane can help with the catacombs.” Valerian settled more comfortably into Wyland’s arms. “Sigurd’s trunk is back there.”
Sigurd’s trunk? In the catacombs? His pulse kicked as he surreptitiously checked Val’s.
“Stop that.”
Or perhaps not so surreptitiously.
“Wyland, I’m not going to die today.”
“Not if I have anything to say about it.” And no matter how much he wanted Valerian to reveal more information about Sigurd—a trunk in the catacombs?—Val needed to feed. He extended his right wrist to his First.
“You honor me,” Val murmured.
He and Valerian, the two most powerful vampires in the world, had exchanged blood for centuries, but the words still moved him.
“And I worry about you,” Val added.
“What? Why?”
“It’s been months since you’ve taken my vein. Who feeds you?”
“Thane. Or I drink bagged blood.” Drinking from the vein was the ultimate act of trust, bestowing healing, strength, and the ability to discern one’s emotional state to the drinker. Each pleasurable tug and pull created a connection, an echo in the blood, which could not be broken except by death. Deirdre been dead for years, but sometimes he swore he still felt her, throbbing in his head.
He’d learned the hard way that vulnerability was the price one paid for intimacy and pleasure.
“Bah,” Valerian scoffed. “Bagged blood contains all the nutrients you need, but where’s the warmth? Where’s the connection?” Valerian suckled at his wrist, preparing his cephalic vein for his bite. “And when was the last time you enjoyed a woman? Don’t think I haven’t noticed how you act around young Tia.”
“Young is right,” he said grimly.
“Wyland, she’s fully of age.” Another swirl of Valerian’s tongue. “I’m surprised at your historical relativism. Less than two hundred years ago, it was quite common for a young woman half her age to be married and have a half-dozen children.”
“Less than two hundred years ago, she wouldn’t have had much choice in the matter.” Such behavior persisted even into this time, with powerful men inflicting their attentions on beautiful young women who didn’t think they could refuse. He said as much to Valerian.
“Wyland, you’re not creeping on Tia.”
He blinked. “Creeping?”
“Sexually pursuing her in a stalker-like, inappropriate manner. You know, creeping.”
How easily current era slang slipped from Valerian’s lips. It always had. “You watch too much reality television, Val.”
“It’s a fine source of cultural information,” Valerian said against his wrist. “As far as I can tell, you’re not pursuing her at all, sexually or otherwise—which is a damn shame.”
“She’s barely out of the schoolroom.”
“She’s thirty years old, Wyland. She’s a homeowner, a businesswoman, and serves on the board of her parents’ charitable foundation.” Valerian paused. “I think she’s interested in you, too.”
“No, she’s not.” He could still feel her soft, pouty lips against his cheek, but that was his problem, not hers.
“You’re wrong. If you don’t believe me, ask Lukas.”
“I will not ask Lukas,” he said testily. The last thing he needed was an incubus playing matchmaker. “I don’t know that she’s interested in me as much as she’s…curious. She is a journalist, after all—a journalist who just got carte blanche access to our Archives. Against my recommendation, I might add.”
“I tell you, she’s interested in you. Sexually.”
His fangs tingled at Valerian’s frank words. “That doesn’t mean I have to do anything about it.”
“Why ever not?” Valerian asked, exasperated. “You want her. She wants you. She’s of age—she’s older than Deirdre was when you first met her—and you’re a vampire in his prime.” Valerian pointed a long, bony finger at him. “Don’t scowl at me. It’s long past time I said this aloud. Deirdre was a glorious creature who used her sexuality like a bludgeon. You fell in love with her, and—” Val gave a pragmatic shrug “—she didn’t reciprocate. It happens.”
He kept his face expressionless, lifting his mental drawbridge with exquisite subtlety. Over the years, he’d succeeded in keeping his suspicions about Deirdre’s deception from Valerian.
“Damn, boy, you haven’t had a relationship in over a century. Times have changed. There’s nothing stopping you from hooking up with Tia.”
A chuckle escaped at Val’s language. Hook up, have sexual congress with, fornicate, copulate, have coitus with, roger, tup, play hide the salami, fuck, make love with… However it was said, in whatever era, he wanted her. Sexually. In this, Valerian could read him like an open book.
“You’re too alone, Wyland. I worry about you.” With that, Val drove his fangs into Wyland’s wrist. The sting quickly subsided, and as Val suckled with a familiar pull and tug, Wyland relaxed back against the pillows, relaxed into the silence. It was very poor form to hold a one-sided conversation with someone who couldn’t respond.
And this was one conversation he didn’t want to continue.