Hungers of the Heart Read online

  Drake felt momentarily sorry for the Killer, would bear the brunt of the Seigneur’s wrath. There was sure to be an ugly scene when they all returned to the house. Then Drake reminded himself who what he was feeling sorry for, and the feeling passed.

  ***

  BECAUSE ARMAND SEEMED to expect it, walked at his side as they hunted the streets. Louis the Guardian followed behind them. For the first fifteen minutes or so, no one spoke. But when Faith tried to drop back and let Armand take the lead by him­self. he put a hand on her elbow to stop her. It took all willpower not to jerk her arm out of his grip.

  Unfortunately, the Seigneur read her first reaction. eyes narrowed and his lips thinned.

  ‘You may have spent the night in Drake’s arms,” said quietly, “but you are still mine. Are we clear on that?”

  His tone was chilling, but she met his gaze any­way. “Unless lean get him to reveal Gabriel’s whereabouts. Right?” Her heart pattered as his expression darkened even more.

  I keep my promises,” he said through gritted teeth.

  As far as she knew, that was true. But the way he was looking at her, his expression so proprietary, suggested he might be tempted to break this one.

  Which didn’t matter, she reminded herself. Even if she thought Drake would tell her where Gabriel was, she wouldn’t ask him. She wouldn’t give up her last scrap of honor.

  Even if it was the only way to get Lily away from Armand?

  She realized the Seigneur was awaiting an answer. I know, Seigneur,” she said, and he nodded curtly.

  “I take it you met with no success last night?”

  She shook her head, hoping he couldn’t read the lie in her face. “I thought it might be too obvious if I started asking questions right away.”

  “Most practical of you.” The words were bland enough, but from long exposure Faith could still hear the strain in his voice. “I hope you did not find your duties distasteful.”

  She couldn’t help the bark of laughter that escaped her. “Are you asking me to rate his performance?” she asked, then instantly regretted it. Armand Du was not the kind of man a woman could get a~ with teasing, especially not when he was in high temper already.

  For a moment, the fire leapt into his eyes, and she wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d hit her for her impertinence. Then the fire drained, replaced with a rueful smile.

  “Touché,” he said. “I would be a liar if I said I not feel any trace of jealousy.”

  Her eyes widened. It wasn’t like the Seigneur admit any human frailties.

  “I’m only doing what you ordered me to do,” she said.

  “I did not order you to seduce him. It was merely Suggestion.”

  “A suggestion you’re regretting?”

  Another rueful smile. “As a matter of fact, yes find myself thinking that he doesn’t deserve you.”

  Faith swallowed a laugh of disbelief. The Seigneur, was hardly in a position to make such a declaration. She bit her tongue to keep from saying anything, hoped her expression was appropriately neutral. She felt his eyes on her but kept looking straight ahead.

  “Don’t forget, ma petite, for all his supp virtues, the man is a Killer. If you find yourself feeling sentimental toward him, remind yourself how many people have died to feed him over his long life.”

  This time, Faith couldn’t suppress her snort. “You’ve killed far more than he, Seigneur,” she said, knowing how stupid it was to talk back but unable to stop herself.

  “Only because I’m so much older,” he replied, his voice still surprisingly mild. “Perhaps I cannot per­suade you not to think of me as all things evil, but I ran remind you that Drake is not exactly all things good.”

  She had no good retort this time, so she didn’t an­swer at all. Nothing Armand said mattered anyway. Even if she were following his orders and trying in earnest to seduce Drake, that was an act of the body, not of the heart. It didn’t matter whether Drake was a saint or the devil himself.

  “Are you trying to tell me you’ve changed your mind about your offer?” she asked, praying that wasn’t what he meant, because if it was, there would he no escaping his bed.

  The Seigneur sighed. “No. No, I might not like pic­turing you in his bed. But I much prefer that to pictur­ing you in La Vieille’s dungeons, and if you have to go to his bed to avoid such a fate, then so be it.”

  She shivered at the reminder. She kept thinking I hat only freedom for herself and Lily was at stake. But while she had never met La Vieille personally, she knew enough about her to know just how dreadful the consequences of failure would be.

  “I don’t wish to alarm you,” Armand continued, “but she has made clear that all of us will suffer if’ fail. Even young Lily.”

  Fear clutched at Faith’s heart. Armand slipped arm around her, pulling her close to him, and she v unnerved enough not to object.

  “I will do everything in my power to see that that doesn’t happen,” Armand said, his hand giving her shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “But if we fail, I’m not sure if anything I do can prevent it. So you see how vitally important it is—to all of us—that we succeed.” -

  The thought of Lily being subjected to La Vieille’ vengeance was more than Faith could bear. It was fate she wouldn’t wish on anyone, even Armand. She would not weep for him if he was killed, but she would not want to see him tortured.

  The Seigneur came to a sudden stop. One flew to his forehead, and he winced as if in pain, swaying dizzily.

  “Seigneur?” Faith asked, reaching for him before she thought better of it. “What’s wrong?”

  Armand’s hand dropped back to his side. His jaw set in a grim line, and unadulterated fury gleamed in his eyes.

  “Jacques just died,” he said, his voice a heavy growl.

  ***

  THE MOMENT DRAKE pushed open the front door and stepped inside, he knew something was dreadfully wrong. There was a faint, yet distinct, scent of blood in the air.

  At first, the others didn’t seem to notice as they piled in behind him, Charles still carrying the dead fledgling. Then they either noticed the scent, or no­ticed the look on Drake’s face.

  Charles let the fledgling’s body slide to the floor, then reached for his tranquilizer gun. A quick psy­chic check told Drake that other than themselves, only a single human and a single vampire were in the house. A least, those were the only ones alive.

  “Lily!” Charles cried in dismay, then leapt toward the stairs.

  This time, Drake was ready and reached out to grab the older vampire’s arm.

  “Slow down!” he barked, earning himself a growl. “Remember what happened the last time you went charging out like the Lone Ranger?”

  Charles’s eyes glittered dangerously. “You and that baby:’ he said with a jerk of his chin in Eric’s di­rection, “are of no possible use against a foe like Brigitte. Now let go of my arm before you lose that hand.”

  Drake held on. “We might not be of much use, but neither are you. So let’s all go up together, okay?” He let go of Charles’s arm and was relieved when the older vampire didn’t charge up the stairs. Instead, the three of them climbed the stairs together.

  No doubt Brigitte was long gone, Drake told him­self as he kept straining with his psychic senses. Nei­ther the vampire nor the mortal he’d sensed had moved since they’d entered the house. He wasn’t sure what that meant.

  The smell of blood grew stronger when they reach the head of the stairs. The scent teased Drake’s nostrils, and the hunger flared to life. His fangs descended most without warning, and his skin felt thin and stretched over his body.

  “Maybe we should wait until the Seigneur gets here,” Eric suggested in a voice not much louder than a whisper.

  There was a certain wisdom in the idea of waiting for reinforcements, but if Brigitte was in the house and wanted to kill them, she’d be sure to do it before the Seigneur showed up.

  Communicating with hand signals, Charles mo­tioned for Drake t
o open the first closed door they came to in the dark and suddenly ominous hail. The smell of blood was stronger still, but Drake did his best to ignore it.

  He sensed no sign of life behind the door—though of course he wouldn’t be able to sense Brigitte if she didn’t want him to. Making sure Eric was out of the line of fire, he shoved the door open.

  Charles stood in the hallway, his finger on the trig­ger of the gun, but there was no sign of movement. Drake reached in and flicked the light on.

  One of the Seigneur’s mortals lay sprawled on the floor, his throat torn open. Blood still trickled from the wound, but nowhere near as much as there should have been. Whatever vampire had attacked this mor­tal had drunk his or her fill.

  They continued down the hall. The next room was the source of the vampire presence Drake sensed.

  “Someone very young,” Charles said. “Certainly not Henri.”

  “Jezebel,” Drake guessed, then pushed the door open without ceremony.

  Jez was tied to a chair, almost mummified by the quantity of rope around her, with a gag cutting into the edges of her mouth and a blindfold over her eyes. Drake quickly crossed to her, ripping off the blind­fold and gag. The ropes that bound her were going to take considerably longer to get rid of.

  “What happened?” he asked as he knelt by the chair and started prying at one of the knots.

  “I have to look for Lily,” Charles said impatiently, then was gone before Drake could object. Not that he felt inclined to at the moment. Whatever Brigitte’s game, he sincerely doubted it included the death of the Guardians. At least, not yet.

  “I don’t know what happened,” Jez said. Drake fi­nally managed to tear through the first knot and started working on the next. “I was sitting in the den minding my own business. Then the next thing I knew, I was tied to this chair and the only other pres­ence in the house was a single mortal?’ Another knot released, and Drake began to unravel the bindings.

  “You didn’t see or hear anything?”

  “No:’ Jez responded.

  “Sounds familiar,” Eric said, and Drake had to agree. But powerful as Brigitte was, she couldn’t be in two places at once. She and Henri could have split up, but Drake seriously doubted Henri had the kind of power necessary to cast that strong a glamour on his own.

  Downstairs, the front door opened and then closed with an earth-shattering slam. The Seigneur had re­turned.

  “Charles!” he bellowed, no doubt puzzled to find Jacques’s body abandoned on the floor.

  Jezebel was finally able to work her way out of the ropes. Drake and Eric helped her step away without getting tangled up. The Seigneur shouted again. Charles responded, but the sound was muffled by dis­tance.

  Drake stepped out into the hallway just in time to almost collide with the Seigneur. The air temperature dropped sharply as the Seigneur’s eyes blazed.

  It must have suddenly dawned on him that some­thing more than Jacques’s death was wrong, for he came to an abrupt halt and his jaw dropped open.

  “My mortals…”

  “Lily!” Drake hadn’t even seen Faith climb the stairs until he heard her cry of distress.

  Luckily, at that moment Charles emerged from Lily’s room, leading the frightened-looking girl by the hand. She pulled away from Charles and ran to­ward her sister. When Faith met her halfway and Lily threw her arms around her neck, Drake noticed the rope burns on the poor child’s wrists.

  Armand must have noticed at the same moment, for the temperature in the room dropped still more.

  “What has happened?” he asked, and you’d never know from the tone of his voice that he was practi­cally livid with rage.

  Charles approached warily, not eager to be the bearer of bad tidings. Drake couldn’t blame him.

  “The mortals are all dead,” Charles reported. “And all drained.”

  “What?” Armand cried. “There were four of them. Brigitte and Henri couldn’t have drained them all!”

  Charles raised his hands in a helpless gesture. “I know, Seigneur. But they are drained, just the same.”

  The Seigneur glared at his lieutenant. “So you’re telling me that Brigitte and Henri managed to en­trance your entire search party, kill Jacques, and drain my mortals dry. All at the same time.”

  Charles stared at the floor in front of his feet. “I don’t know what to tell you, Seigneur. Except that Brigitte and Henri can’t be in this alone.”

  The Seigneur whirled on Drake. “Do you still claim Brigitte has your master captive?”

  With the scent of blood making his nerves vibrate, it was all Drake could do not to lunge at the Seigneur’s throat. There was no chance in hell he could get the fangs to retract.

  “Yes, I still claim that,” he snarled. “And even if I were lying, three vampires couldn’t drain four people.”

  The Seigneur’s fangs had descended as well, and he took a menacing step forward. “Don’t bare your fangs at me.”

  Drake struggled against his visceral urge to attack. Dammit, he had to feed soon, or he’d never keep con­trol of himself.

  “I can’t help the fangs,” he admitted, fighting back his temper. “I haven’t fed recently, and the smell of blood..”

  The Seigneur didn’t look in the least bit appeased. “Yes, the scent is tempting, isn’t it?” He tongued one of his fangs, then licked his lips. “It’s making me quite hungry, in fact.”

  Both Drake’s fists clenched at his sides, and some­thing twisted in his gut at a premonition of where the Seigneur was going with this.

  “In fact,” the Seigneur continued, “I think Charles and Louis and I should go for a hunt. It wouldn’t do for us to let our hunger cloud our judgment.”

  “If you hunt in our city, Gabriel will see you dead before this is all over.”

  The Seigneur laughed’. “He’s either a prisoner or he isn’t. Make up your mind which.”

  “We’ve had this discussion before. He’s a prisoner now,” Drake said, “but I don’t expect him to remain one forever?’

  “Let’s test the theory, shall we? I shall lead my vampires on a hunt. If your master objects to us hunt­ing his city, then let him come stop us. If he’s not in a position to do so, then his threat carries no weight.”

  Drake wished like hell there was something he could do to stop them. “You’re signing your own death warrant,” he warned, but wasn’t under the illu­sion that the warning would matter.

  The Seigneur shouldered him aside, Charles and Louis trailing behind him. Eric hurried to block their

  path. Drake groaned. The fool was going to get him­self killed.

  The Seigneur bared his fangs, but Drake stepped between them and stared into Eric’s eyes.

  “Stand down:’ he ordered. “There’s nothing we can do to stop them.”

  Eric’s lips pulled back to reveal his fangs, and his eyes narrowed. Once again the temperature in the room dropped. Eric wasn’t anywhere near powerful enough to have that effect, which meant the Seigneur was once again getting pissed off. And if he was pissed off enough to ignore protocol and hunt with­out Gabriel’s permission, he was pissed off enough to kill Eric.

  “I don’t give a shit,” Eric growled. “I’m not letting them hunt our city without a fight.”

  The beast within Drake stretched and flexed its muscles. He tried to hold his temper in check, but with his hunger, the smell of blood, and the younger vampire’s blatant challenge pounding at his self-control, he just couldn’t do it.

  His first punch connected with Eric’s jaw and sent the youngster flying. Jez gave a little cry of distress and took a step toward him, but one look from Drake was enough to back her off.

  Moronically, instead of giving up, Eric sprang from the floor and charged Drake, an incoherent bat­tle cry rising from his throat.

  Something snapped within him, and Drake sud­denly felt like he was watching his own actions from a distance as he met Eric’s charge and jammed a into his stomach. The fledgling doubled o
ver in but Drake hit him again anyway.

  Distantly, he was aware of his anger and of paradoxical concern for Eric’s safety. He still felt blood pounding in his brain, the quickening of his breath, the stirring of his hunger. But be was mo strongly aware of the overpowering sense of déjà v as he grabbed Eric by the shirt and hauled him onto his feet.

  The fledgling’s eyes were filled with pain, his scent tinged with fear as he realized how thoroughly helpless he was. Drake slammed him into the wall, and Eric cried out.

  Johnnie Drake was at work again, delivering a beating that would leave his victim bedridden and in pain for days on end, if he were mortal. The anger disappeared from his consciousness, replaced by something cold and numb. Johnnie didn’t feel any­thing when he delivered a beating. He beat whomever his master told him to, whether that master was his fa­ther or, later, Padraig. He didn’t ask why. He didn’t ask whether the victim deserved it. He just did his job, neither liking nor disliking the experience.

  A backhanded slap sent Eric to the floor again. Absently, Drake noticed that the Seigneur, Charles, and Louis were halfway down the stairs. Jez and Harry were both reaching out to him, begging him to stop, though neither was stupid enough to actually touch him.

  Eric lay on the floor, in too much pain to make even the slightest effort to protect himself. Johnnie casually pulled back his leg to deliver a kick, but then his eyes fastened on Faith, standing in the hallway and watching. Lily’s head was buried against her sis­ter’s shoulder, and Faith held her there as if to block her view. Faith’s face was white with shock, her eyes wide and betrayed.

  And suddenly, Drake came to himself once more. His momentum was too great for him to stop the kick, but he managed to take most of the force out of it.

  Eric lay still, and Drake sucked in deep, frantic breaths of air as he struggled to lay Johnnie to rest once more. The lingering scent of blood didn’t help matters. But dammit, Johnnie Drake didn’t exist. He was a character Drake had once played, never a part of the real him. And he wouldn’t play that part ever again.