Phantom Shadows

He would have to find a shovel.



“Here.”



Seth spun around.



As always, the figure that stepped from the shadows the house cast in the moonlight reminded him of a buff Jim Morrison. His dark, wavy hair lifted and fell with the breeze, tumbling past his shoulders. His chest was bare, hairless. Soft leather pants hung low on his hips.



Seth hadn’t heard his arrival and wondered if the noise the vampires had made as he had slaughtered them had drowned it out, or if he had simply been so distracted he had missed it.



The leather pants rustled slightly as the other strolled forward. Snow and ice crunched beneath his boots. One large hand clasped the handle of a shovel he held out to Seth.



Seth glanced down at the burden in his arms. He didn’t want to lay them on the ground even long enough to dig the grave. Yet he didn’t want to return them inside to the blood-spattered room in which both had died.



“Never mind,” his visitor said. “I’ll do it.”



Seth would have been unable to suppress his shock if he hadn’t been so numb.



“Did you know them?” the other asked as he stuck the shovel deep into the frozen earth and removed a hunk of soil.



“Not really. I knew they were gifted ones. I looked in on her over the years as I do to all of the gifted ones. But . . .”



“They didn’t know you.”



Seth nodded.



The sound of the metal blade stabbing the ground seemed obscenely loud.



Neither spoke as the grave took shape.



When it was long and deep enough, Seth lowered the bodies into it with care.



His companion abandoned the shovel and joined Seth in singing a prayer for mother and son in an ancient language none currently living had ever heard spoken.



When silence reigned once more, Seth picked up the shovel and started returning the soil to its home. “Could we maybe do this another time?” he asked without looking up at the other, who was taller than himself by a couple of inches.



“Do what?”



“Whatever it is you’re here to do. Or say. I really have no interest in your threats tonight. If you and the others did more than sit on your precious asses and observe, perhaps I wouldn’t be doing this right now.”



“I’ll issue no threats tonight, cousin.”



“Well, whoop-dee-fucking-doo. Are you going to tell me you’re here because you missed me?”



“No,” he said simply.



From the corner of his eye, Seth watched him pace away a few yards, pause, pace back. Cross his arms. Uncross them. Pace away again.



He seemed . . . off.



Unsettled.



Something.



“What’s with you tonight?”



“Nothing.”



Finished filling the grave, Seth set the shovel aside and turned to the house. He closed his eyes, pictured the kitchen. The gas pipe behind the stove sprang a leak. A small spark and it ignited. He would visit her family and plant the memory of an explosion, of mother and child being killed instantly, then given a lovely funeral.



No one would see the bodies. No eyebrows would be raised by the bites. No inquiries would be made. No sensational headlines would proclaim their deaths vampire kills. No one would know the truth. Only Seth and . . .



“Are you going to tell me why you’re here?”



Tense silence.



“Zach—”



“Your phone is broken.”



Seth frowned. “What?”



“Your phone is broken,” Zach repeated. Seth pulled his cell from a back pocket and gave it a look. No wonder things had been so quiet. The device had been shattered by a vampire strike.



Seth looked at Zach. Why would he care if Seth’s phone . . .



Alarm struck him. “What’s happened?” It must be bad for this one to risk the wrath of the others to interfere and bring it to Seth’s attention. “Who’s been trying to reach me?”



Zach’s jaw flexed as he clenched his teeth.



Seth knew what this would cost him and wondered if he would—



“Your people in North Carolina.”



“Which ones?”



“All of them.”



Seth swore and prepared to teleport to David’s place.



“Seth.”



“What?”



Zach met his gaze. “You’re battling a mythological beast there.”



Seth shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re—”



“Hydra,” Zach clarified. “You’re fighting the Lernaean Hydra.”



“The Greek mythological creature Hercules was sent to slay that had all the heads?”



Zach nodded shortly. “Cut off one head and it grows two more. Your immortal black sheep didn’t know what he was breeding when he undertook his uprising.”



“I assume you mean Sebastien.”



“You can’t defeat it. Every head poses a threat. To you. To us. The more heads, the greater the threat. They can’t know who you are. And they can’t know who we are. The others won’t stand for it. Already there have been rumblings.”



They had cut off Sebastien’s “head” and Montrose Keegan and the Vampire King had replaced him. They had cut off those two’s heads and . . . were still trying to find out who had taken their place. Was Zach saying Emrys wasn’t working alone? That whomever they fought now would conquer them?



“You’re forgetting one thing,” Seth said.



“What?”



“Hercules defeated Hydra . . . with Iolaus’s help.”



“I’m no Iolaus.”



Seth raised his eyebrows. “Did I say you were?” He bowed. “Thank you for the tip.”



Wondering what disaster he would face next, Seth teleported to the States.



Quiet fell in Seth’s absence, broken by the crackling flames that devoured the small house. The scent of disturbed earth wafted on the breeze.



Zach hadn’t told Seth why he had come, why he had alerted him to the fact that he was needed, because Zach really didn’t know. It had been a dumb-ass thing to do. He would gain nothing from it. And would lose much.



Sighing, he flexed his shoulders. A pair of nearly translucent wings burst from his back. Matching the tan color of his skin at their base, they gradually darkened to black at their tips. The fragile feathers fluttered a bit as wind ruffled them.



He lacked even the time to stretch them their full span before figures began to step from the shadows.



Matching him and Seth in height, they strode forward with purpose, surrounding him on all sides.



He smiled grimly.



Had they feared he wouldn’t return? That they wouldn’t have the chance to exact their punishment?



He tucked his wings away, hoping to protect them from what he knew would come.



“You were warned,” one stated.



“So I was.”



“You know what we must do.”



He decided now wasn’t the time to debate the word must.



Zach spread his arms wide and borrowed a phrase from Seth’s black sheep. “So be it.”



While Bastien counted every second that passed and silently castigated himself on what would be Cliff’s sofa, Richart lounged in a chair near the apartment’s door.



“Does Melanie know you love her?” he asked softly.



“No.” Bastien kept his face buried in his hands, his elbows planted on his knees. “What the hell do I know about love? The last two people I loved were my sister Cat and her husband Blaise. Cat’s been dead for two centuries, killed by Blaise, and—genius that I am—I believed him when he blamed someone else.”



“What’s your point?”



“My point is . . .” He shook his head. “It’s been so long . . . I don’t know how to love anymore.”



“Well, you must be doing something right, because Melanie lights up whenever you walk into the room. And we both know you make her heart pound.”



“I’ve brought nothing but chaos and pain into her life.”



“This isn’t your fault.”



Bastien laughed mirthlessly. “Yes, it is. Everything I touch turns to shit. Every life I enter goes to hell.” Knowing Cliff and Joe were likely being tortured by Emrys just made everything worse.



Sebastien, he heard Linda say in the OR, you can see her now.



Richart stopped him at the door. “You will have to fight your way through the guards if you burst through it the way I know you want to. Just let me exit first and walk with me at a brisk human pace. If Melanie is conscious, it will upset her to see you full of holes or being dragged away in titanium chains by Chris’s men. She doesn’t need that right now.”



Bastien wanted to tell Richart that in the time it had taken him to say all of that he could have just teleported them there, but knew the Frenchman had elected not to so Chris’s men would know where they were and there would be no confusion.



“Fine. Just open the damn door.”



The guards out in the hallway were the same ones Bastien had plowed through last night. All stiffened at his appearance and fingered their weapons, ready to shoot him at the slightest provocation. Had he been alone and had the circumstances not been so fucked up, Bastien may have been tempted to mess with them a little, sure that even a cough would set them off. But he wasn’t alone. Richart would be hit by stray bullets. And Melanie would not so much be upset as pissed when she saw the grisly results.



Linda must have warned the others she was summoning him because the room to which her voice led him was empty save for her and Melanie.



Melanie’s face was nearly as pale as the white sheet upon which she lay. Her eyelids were closed and remained so when they entered. She showed no response to their presence at all, even after Linda welcomed them.



Bastien couldn’t seem to speak, couldn’t bring himself to ask.



So Richart did it for him. “What’s her condition?”



“We transfused her with fresh blood, removed all of the infected blood we could, but . . . the virus worked swiftly. She was infected on a large enough scale for a long enough time that her immune system has been completely compromised. The damage is irreparable.”