The room itself was large and filled with Lucien’s papers and possessions, as well as a strong sense of the vampire lord’s powerful presence. Drinking in that essence, as if Lucien himself stood in the room, Raphael went directly to the glass doors on the opposite wall and stepped out onto the balcony. Walking right up to the blackened iron railing, he gripped the cold metal and opened his senses to the unique signature that was Lucien.

What he found didn’t surprise him. He’d suspected as much from the moment he’d crossed the border with its weakened defenses. But the expectation did nothing to lessen the concern that confirmation brought. He’d known Lucien wasn’t dead, but this might be worse.

He felt Duncan’s presence behind him. “Do you feel it?” he asked.

Duncan moved up next to him and shook his head slowly. “It’s odd, my lord. I feel a definite presence, but it’s . . . weakened somehow. I don’t know what it is.”

“No,” Raphael said. “I doubt you’d recognize it. I myself have experienced it only once before, hundreds of years and thousands of miles from here.”

“What is it?” Sophia’s voice came from the doorway behind them.

“Fading,” Raphael said.

“What does that mean?” she demanded. “I’ve never heard—”

Raphael spun around to face her. “Lucien is dying.”

* * * *

Sophia heard Raphael’s words and saw the absolute certainty in his black eyes. And she felt her heart squeeze nearly dry in her chest. Lucien couldn’t die. She wouldn’t allow it.

“You will find him, then,” she said, not asking but telling. “If you can feel him dying, you can—”

“No,” he said, pushing her back inside by the simple expedient of walking forward himself. “I’m afraid Lucien does not want to be found.”

“Of course, he wants to be found. My Sire would never accept death that easily. He loves life far too much.”

“I admit it’s unlike him,” Raphael agreed with an irritating calm. “Perhaps he’s overcome with guilt.”

He was moving around Lucien’s study, picking up objects and studying them before putting them back down in the precise position he’d found them. Sophia watched him roam about as if measuring the place for new furniture—his furniture—and suddenly regretted letting him in here at all. Maybe Darren had been right.

“Tell me, Sophia,” Raphael said, turning that emotionless gaze on her. “Why do you suppose Lucien sent for you?”

Sophia stared at him, not expecting the question, but keeping her own gaze every bit as flat as his. “I would assume he wanted me to find whoever had done this and avenge his people.” It sounded weak, even as she said it.

Raphael gave her a patronizing smile. “Why you? Why not Darren? He is Lucien’s lieutenant, after all, and he’s already here. He knows the city better than you, and probably the people, as well. For that matter, he’s far more likely to have contacts among my own vampires, something Lucien would have known to be useful. So why you?”

Sophia bristled with anger that he persisted in quizzing her, as if he knew some secret that she didn’t. Or maybe she was just angry at being forced to confront the truth. No longer. She drew herself up and met his gaze directly.

“I’m more powerful than Darren,” she said bluntly. “To my knowledge, I’m the strongest of Lucien’s children.”

Raphael shrugged. “Is that significant here?”

Sophia glared at Raphael with something close to hatred. Only a strong sense of self-preservation kept her from lashing out at him as she snarled, “Lucien intended me to be his successor. If he dies, I need to be here.”

That smug smile of his grew, but there was no humor in his voice when he pinned her with those silver-struck eyes and said, “Then I suggest you act. Lucien’s fading is already weakening his borders. Before long, you’ll have contenders from across the continent descending to fill the vacuum left by his absence. You are fortunate in your neighbors for now. I have no desire to expand my territory and Rajmund in the Northeast is still consolidating his power. He has no energy to spare for anyone else. But that won’t last forever. And as the vulnerability grows, the signs of it will spread.”

He glanced around the room, as if surveying the territory’s invisible boundaries. “Someone needs to reinforce Lucien’s defenses before it’s too late. For now, several of you can work together, if you can get along well enough. But eventually, one person will have to step into the breach. If it is not to be you, it will certainly be someone from outside, because Darren Yamanaka is not up to the task. He’ll fall to the first contender.”

Raphael signaled his security people and headed for the doors to the hallway.

“Wait,” Sophia demanded. She wanted answers from the big vampire lord, not lectures.

He stopped just inside the room, turning back to regard her with one eyebrow raised at her preemptory command.

“Could Lucien be a prisoner? Could someone be starving him, holding him captive?”

Raphael tilted his head to one side, as if considering her question. “It is possible,” he conceded. “Lucien was ever too trusting.”

Sophia expelled a long breath, part relief that Lucien might yet live, and part agony that her Sire could be starving, tortured by his captors.

“Will you be returning with us?” Raphael asked.

Sophia stared blindly for a moment, her mind struggling to take in his question on top of everything else she’d just had dumped on her. She blinked and swallowed hard, then nodded once.

“Yes,” she said. “The key to finding Lucien lies in solving these crimes.”

Raphael signaled to someone. “One of my vehicles will wait, so that you may confer with your fellow house members before you leave.”

Sophia sank into the chair behind Lucien’s desk as Raphael strode from the room, her head sinking into her hands. She didn’t want this. Not the mysterious deaths of Giselle and the others, not Lucien’s cryptic letter or his sudden disappearance, and sure as hell not the almost certain battle with Darren over control of Lucien’s territory. She gasped out loud as the thought made itself known. There would be no battle for control, because Lucien was not dead, and he wasn’t going to be. She didn’t for one minute believe he was trying to kill himself over some ridiculous sense of guilt. The idea was laughable. Lucien had clearly been saddened by the deaths of Giselle and her young men. His letter was proof of that. But the greatest portion of his sadness was probably reserved for himself, that he had to suffer their loss and deal with the consequences.

No, she would find whoever was doing this, and she would find Lucien, too. He might need her help for a few months, maybe even a year, while he regained his strength. But then things would return to normal.

At the same time, she was forced to admit that Raphael had a point. If her Sire was to have a territory to come back to, something would have to be done right now to secure it. Somehow she and Darren—

“He’s gone.”

Darren’s unwelcome voice announced his presence, as if he’d known she was thinking about him.

“He wasn’t here very long,” he said, frowning as he noticed she was sitting behind Lucien’s desk . . . on Lucien’s chair. “What’d he do here?”

“Nothing you and I haven’t tried already, but he did it with greater success,” she admitted. “I suppose that’s not much of a surprise, given who he is.”

Darren came around the desk, choosing to perch on its edge next to her, rather than take any of the chairs in the supplicant position in front of it. “What does that mean, greater success? Did he find Lucien?”

“No, unfortunately.” She proceeded to tell Darren pretty much word for word what Raphael had explained to her.

“Fuck that,” he exploded, standing up and pacing over to a book shelf and back again. “Lucien would never do anything to hurt himself. I know him.”

“I agree,” Sophia said, relieved to hear someone else say it out loud. “But what Raphael said about the territorial borders is true. I felt it when we came over here tonight. At first, I thought it was just because Raphael was in the vehicle right behind me, but it was more than that. And if we don’t want a bunch of vultures moving in, you and I need to figure out a way to hold things together until Lucien gets back. Either that, or fight them off one by one.”

Darren stopped pacing and stared at her. She could see him sizing her up, trying to decide if their earlier spur-of-the-moment contest truly reflected their relative power, or if he could take her in a straight up fight. She knew he would never have challenged Lucien. Even if their Sire came out of this greatly weakened, Darren would never go against him.

But the possibility that Lucien might die . . . that changed everything. Darren was loyal to Lucien, but he was also Vampire. And vampires were, at their core, territorial and aggressive. And if Lucien died, there was absolutely no reason to honor his preference for Sophia as successor.

Sophia stood, favoring her fellow vampire with a cool look. “I won’t fight you over this, Darren.” His eyes blazed with triumph and Sophia chuckled. “Not now,” she added deliberately. “I believe Lucien is coming back. But if he doesn’t—” She let her own power swell, let it spill into her eyes until their glow drowned out the dim lighting.

“If he doesn’t,” she repeated softly, meeting Darren’s gaze directly. “I will fight you to the death before I let you have this territory.”

Chapter Twenty

The SUVs rolled through the now deserted night, the streets quiet, but for the occasional vehicle sharing the road with them. In the distance, Raphael could hear a far away foghorn bellowing its desolate warning over and over again.

His mind was quiet, too, mulling over the night’s events, but without any particular urgency. Lucien’s situation was intriguing, but it no longer seemed relevant to his own hunt. There remained a simmering fury against the Canadian lord, lurking just below the surface of his thoughts. But that was for later—after he’d tracked down the killers Lucien had left on his doorstep, after their blood had fed his soldiers and their bones been reduced to ash and ground into dirt. Lucien could wait until then. He wasn’t going anywhere.