Around the same time Qhuinn was cleaning himself up at the main house, Blay came awake in the chair in that little underground office. The headache that served as his alarm clock was not from the port - it was from the fact that he'd skipped Last Meal. But man, he wished the booze had been behind the pounding in his skull. He could have used the out that he'd been a total, sloppy, lost-his-mind mess when he'd come down here.
Cursing, he withdrew his legs from the desktop and sat up. His body was stiff as a board, aches blooming in all kinds of places as he willed on the overhead light.
Crap. He was still naked.
But come on, like the modesty elves would have snuck in and clothed him in his sleep? Just so he wasn't reminded of what he'd done?
Putting his shorts on, he shoved his feet into his trainers and then reached for his shirt - before remembering what he'd used it for.
As he stared at the crumpled folds of cotton and felt the stiff places in the soft cloth, he realized that no amount of rationalization was going to change the fact that he'd cheated on Saxton. Physical contact with someone else was only one way of measuring infidelity - and yeah, that was the biggest divide. But what he'd done last night had been a violation of the relationship, even though the orgasm had been caused by his brain, not his hand.
Getting to his feet, he was half-dead as he went to the door and opened it a crack. If there was anyone around, he was going to duck back inside and wait for a clear shot into the corridor: He so completely did not want to get caught coming out of this empty office, half-clothed and looking like hell. The upside to living at the compound was that you were surrounded by people who cared about you; the downside was that everybody had eyes and ears, and no one's business was just their own.
When he didn't hear voices or footsteps, he exploded out into the hall and started walking briskly, like he'd been somewhere for a good reason and was heading to his room for an equally important purpose. He had a feeling he'd gotten away with it when he hit the tunnel. Sure, he didn't usually go shirtless, but a lot of the Brothers or males did when they were coming from the gym - nothing unusual.
And he really felt like he'd won the lottery when he stepped out from under the mansion's grand staircase and got another good dose of empty-bowling-alley. The only problem was that, going by the sounds of china being cleared in the dining room, it must be later than he'd thought. He'd obviously missed First Meal - bad news for his head, but at least he had some protein bars in his room.
His luck ran out as he took the stairs up to the second floor. Standing in front of the closed doors to Wrath's study, Qhuinn and John were dressed for fighting, their weapons strapped on, their bodies covered in black leather.
No way in hell was he looking at Qhuinn. Just having the guy in his peripheral vision was bad enough.
"What's going on?" Blay asked.
We've got a meeting now, John signed. Or at least, we're supposed to. Didn't you get the text?
Shit, he had no idea where his phone was. His room? Hopefully.
"I'll hit the shower and be right back."
You might not have to rush. The Brothers have been sequestered for the last half hour. I don't have any idea what's going on.
Next to the guy, Qhuinn was rocking back and forth in his shitkickers, his weight shifting like he was on a walk even as he went nowhere.
"Five minutes," Blay muttered. "That's all I need."
He hoped the Brotherhood would open those doors by then - the last thing he wanted was to get stuck passing time anywhere near Qhuinn.
Cursing as he went, Blay jogged down to his room. Usually he took his time getting ready, especially if Sax was in the mood, but this was going to be a wham-bam, thank you, ma -
As he opened his door, he froze.
What the...hell?
Duffels. On the bed. So many of them he couldn't see more than an inch and a half of the king-size duvet - and he knew whose they were. Matching Guccis, in white with the navy blue logo and the navy blue and red cloth strapping - because according to Saxton, the traditional brown-on-brown with the red and green was "too obvious."
Blay shut the door quietly. His first thought was, Holy shit, Saxton knew. Somehow, the guy knew what had happened in the training center.
The male in question came out of the bathroom with an armful of shampoo, conditioner, and product. He stopped dead.
"Hi," Blay said. "Taking a vacation?"
After a tense moment, Saxton calmly came over, put his load down in a travel bag, and turned back around. As always, his beautiful blond hair was swept off his forehead in thick waves. And he was dressed perfectly, in another tweed suit with matching waistcoat, a red cravat and red pocket square adding just the right accent of color.
"I think you know what I'm going to say." Saxton smiled sadly. "Because you're far from stupid - just as I am."
Blay went to sit down on the bed, but had to recalibrate because there was nowhere to put himself. He ended up on the chaise lounge, and, with a discreet lean to one side, he tucked the wadded shirt under the skirting. Out of sight. It was the least he could do.
God, was this really happening?
"I don't want you to go," Blay heard himself say roughly.
"I believe that."
Blay looked across all those duffels. "Why now?"
He thought of the pair of them just the day before, under the sheets, having hard sex. They had been so close - although if he were brutally honest, maybe that had just been physically.
Take out the maybe.
"I've been fooling myself." Saxton shook his head. "I thought I could keep going with you like this - but I can't. It's killing me."
Blay closed his eyes. "I know I've been out a lot in the field - "
"That's not what I'm talking about."
As Qhuinn took up all the space between them, Blay wanted to scream. But what good would that do: it appeared that he and Saxton had gotten to the same difficult corner at the same sorrowful moment.
His lover looked over the luggage. "I've just finished that assignment for Wrath. It's a good time to make a break, move out and find another job - "
"Wait, so you're leaving the king as well?" Blay frowned. "However things stand between us, you need to keep working for him. That is bigger than our relationship."
Saxton's eyes dipped down. "I suspect that is far easier for you to say."
"Not true," Blay countered grimly. "God, I'm so...sorry."
"You've done nothing wrong - you need to know that I'm not angry at you, or bitter. You've always been honest, and I've always known that things were going to end like this. I just didn't know the timeline - I didn't know...until I reached the end. Which is now."
Oh, fuck.
Even though he knew Saxton was right, Blay felt a compulsive need to fight for them. "Listen, I've been really distracted for the last week, and I'm sorry. But things have a way of regulating, and you and I will get back to normal - "
"I'm in love with you."
Blay shut his mouth with a clap.
"So you see," Saxton continued hoarsely, "it's not that you have changed. It's that I have - and I'm afraid my silly emotions have put us at quite a distance from each other."
Blay surged to his feet and strode across the fine-napped carpet to the other male.
When he got to his destination, he was relieved to the point of tearing up that Saxton accepted his embrace. And as he held his first true lover against him, feeling that familiar difference in their heights and smelling that wonderful cologne, part of him wanted to debate this break up until they both gave in and kept trying.
But that wasn't fair.
Like Saxton, he'd had the vague notion that things were going to end at some point. And like his lover, he was also surprised it was now.
That didn't change the outcome, however.
Saxton stepped back. "I never meant to get emotionally involved."
"I'm so sorry, I'm...I'm so sorry...." Shit, that was all that was coming out of his mouth. "I would give anything to be different. I wish I could...be different."
"I know." Saxton reached up and brushed a hand down the side of his face. "I forgive you - and you need to forgive yourself."
Whatever, he wasn't sure he could do that - especially as, at this moment, and as fucking usual, an emotional attachment he didn't want and couldn't change was yet again robbing him of something he wanted.
Qhuinn was a fucking curse to him, the guy really was.
About fifteen miles south of the Brotherhood's mountaintop compound, Assail woke up on his circular bed in the grand master suite of his mansion on the Hudson. Above him, in the mirrored panels mounted on the ceiling, his naked body was gleaming in the soft glow of the lights installed around the base of the mattress. The octagonal room beyond was dark, the interior shutters still down, the fallen night hidden.
As he considered all the glass in the house, he knew so many vampires would have found these accommodations unacceptable. Most would have avoided the manse altogether.
Too much risk during daylight hours.
Assail, however, had never been bound by convention, and the dangers inherent in living in a building with so much access to light were something to be managed, not bound by.
Getting up, he went over to the desk, signed into his computer, and accessed the security system that monitored not just the house, but the grounds. Alerts had sounded several times during the earlier hours of the day, notifications not of an impending attack, but of some kind of activity that had been flagged by the security system's filtering program.
In truth, he lacked the energy to be overly concerned, an unwelcome sign that he needed to feed -
Assail frowned as he reviewed the report.
Well, wasn't this instructive.
And indeed, this was why he'd installed all his checks and balances.
On the images feed from the rear cameras, he watched as a figure dressed in snowfield camouflage traveled on cross-country skis through the forest, closing in on his house from the north. Whoever it was stayed hidden in and among the pines for the most part, and surveyed the property from various vantage points for approximately nineteen minutes...before traversing the westerly border of trees, crossing into the neighbor's property, and going down onto the ice. Two hundred yards later the man stopped, got out the binoculars again, and stared at Assail's home. Then he circled around the peninsula that jutted out into the river, reentered the forest, and disappeared.
Bending in closer to the screen, Assail replayed the approach, zooming in to identify facial features, if possible - and it was not. The head was covered with a knit mask, with cutouts only for the eyes, nose, and mouth. With the parka and ski pants on as well, the man was covered in his entirety.
Sitting back, Assail smiled to himself, his fangs tingling in territorial response.
There were but two parties who might be interested in his business, and going by the daylight that had reigned during this recon, it was clear the curiosity was not generated by the Brotherhood: Wrath would never use humans as anything other than a last-resort food source, and no vampire could withstand that amount of sunshine without turning into a torch.
Which left someone in the human world - and there was only a single man with the interest and the resources to try to track him and his whereabouts.
"Enter," he said, just before a knock sounded on his door.
As the pair of males came in, he didn't bother to look away from the computer screen. "How did you sleep?"
A familiar, deep voice answered, "Like the dead."
"How fortunate for you. Jet lag can be a bore, or so I've heard. We had a visitor this morning, by the way."
Assail leaned to one side so his two associates could review the footage.
It was odd to have housemates, but he was going to have to get used to their presence. When he had come to the New World, it had been a solo trip, and he had intended to keep things that way for numerous reasons. Success in his chosen field, however, had mandated that he pull in some backup - and the only people you could even partially trust were your family.
And the pair of them offered a unique benefit.
His two cousins were a rarity in the vampire species: a set of identical twins. When fully clothed, the only way anyone could tell them apart was by a single mole behind the earlobe; other than that, from their voices and their dark, suspicious eyes to their heavily muscled bodies, they were a mirror reflection of each other.
"I'm going out," Assail announced to them. "If our visitor comes again, be hospitable, will you?"
Ehric, the older one by a matter of minutes, glanced over, his face highlighted by the glow around the bed base. Such evil in that handsome combination of features - to the point that one nearly felt pity for the interloper. "'Twill be a pleasure, I assure you."
"Keep him alive."
"But of course."
"That is a finer line than you two have at times appreciated."
"Trust me."
"It's not you whom I am worried about." Assail looked at the other one. "Do you understand me?"
Ehric's twin remained silent, although the male did nod once.
That grudging reaction was precisely why Assail would have preferred to keep his new life simple. But it was impossible to be in more than one place at a time - and this violation of privacy was proof that he couldn't do everything by himself.
"You know how to locate me," he said, before dismissing them from his room.
Twenty minutes later, he left the house showered, dressed, and behind the wheel of his bulletproof Range Rover.
Downtown Caldwell at night was beautiful at a distance, especially as he came over the inbound bridge. It was not until he penetrated the grid system of streets that the city's sludge became evident: the alleyways with their filthy snowdrifts and their oozing Dumpsters and their discarded, half-frozen homeless humans told the true story of the municipality's underbelly.
His worksite, as it were.
When he got to the Benloise Art Gallery, he parked in the back, in one of two spaces that were parallel to the building behind the facility. As he stepped free of the SUV, the cold wind swept into his camel-hair coat and he had to hold the two halves together as he crossed the pavement, approaching an industrial-size door.
He didn't have to knock. Ricardo Benloise had plenty of people working for him, and not all of them were of the art-dealer-associate type: A human male the size of an amusement park opened the way and stood to the side.
"He expecting you?"
"No, he is not."
Disneyland nodded. "You wanna wait in the gallery?"
"That would be fine."
"You need a drink?"
"No, thank you."
As they walked through the office area and into the exhibition space, the deference Assail was now accorded was a new thing - earned through both the huge product orders he'd been putting in as well as the spilled blood of countless humans: Thanks to him, suicides among disenfranchised males age eighteen to twenty-nine with criminal drug records had struck an all-time high in the city, making even the national news.
Imagine that.
As newscasters and reporters tried to make sense of the tragedies, he merely continued growing his business by any means necessary. Human minds were awfully suggestible; it required hardly any effort at all to get middlemen drug dealers to train their own guns on their temples and pull those triggers. And in the same way nature abhorred a vacuum, so too did the demands of chemical supplementation.
Assail had the drugs. The addicts had the cash.
The economic system more than survived the forced reorganization.
"I'll head up," the man said at a hidden door. "And let him know you're here."
"Do take your time."
Left to his own devices, Assail strolled around the high-ceilinged, open space, linking his hands and putting them at the small of his back. From time to time, he paused to look at the "art" that was hung on the walls and partitions - and was reminded why humans should be eradicated, preferably by slow and painful means.
Used paper plates tacked to cheap particleboard and covered with handwritten quotes from TV commercials? A self-portrait done in dentifrice? And equally offensive were the aggrandizing plaques mounted next to the messes declaring this nonsense to be the new wave of American Expressionism.
Such a commentary on the culture in so many ways.
"He's ready now."
Assail smiled to himself and turned around. "How accommodating."
As he entered through that sneaky door and ascended to the third level, Assail did not fault his supplier for being suspicious and wanting more information on his single largest customer. After all, in the shortest of time, the drug trade in the city had been rerouted, redefined, and captured by a complete unknown.
One could respect the man's position.
But the digging was going to end here.
At the top of the set of industrial stairs, two other big men stood in front of another door, sure and solid as load-bearing walls. As with the guard on the first floor, they opened things up fast, and nodded at him with respect.
On the far side, Benloise was sitting at the end of a long, narrow room that had windows down one side, and only three pieces of furniture: his raised desk, which was nothing but a thick slab of teak with a modernist lamp and an ashtray on it; his chair, of some modern derivation; and a second seat across from him for a single visitor.
The man himself was like his environment: neat, officious, and uncluttered in his thinking. In fact, he proved that however illicit the drug trade was, the management principles and interpersonal skill sets of a CEO went a long way if you wanted to make millions in it - and keep your money.
"Assail. How are you?" The diminutive gentleman rose and put out his hand. "This is an unexpected pleasure."
Assail went across, shook what was extended and did not wait for an invitation to sit down.
"What may I do for you?" Benloise said as he himself resettled on his chair.
Assail took a Cuban cigar from out of his inside pocket. Snipping the end off, he leaned forward and put the snubbed piece right on the desk.
As Benloise frowned like someone had defecated on his bed, Assail smiled just short of flashing his fangs. "It's what I may do for you."
"Oh."
"I have always been a private man, living a private life by choice." He put away his clipper and took out his gold lighter. Popping the flame, he leaned in and puffed to get the cigar into a sustainable burn. "But above and beyond that, I am a businessman engaging in a dangerous manner of trade. Accordingly, I take any trespass of my property or intrusion upon my anonymity as a direct act of aggression."
Benloise smiled smoothly and eased back in his throne-like chair. "I can respect that, of course, and yet I am confounded as to why you feel the need to point this out to me."
"You and I have entered into a mutually beneficial relationship, and it is very much my desire to continue this association." Assail puffed on the cigar, releasing a cloud of French-blue smoke. "Therefore, I want to pay you the respect you are due, and make clear before I take action that if I discover any person upon my premises whom I have not invited thereupon, I shall not only eradicate them, I shall find the source of inquiry" - he puffed again - "and do what I must to defend my privacy. Am I being clear enough?"
Benloise's brows dropped down low, his dark eyes growing shrewd.
"Am I?" Assail murmured.
There was, of course, only one answer. Assuming the human wanted to live much past the following weekend.
"You know, you remind me of your predecessor," Benloise said in his accented English. "Did you meet the Reverend?"
"We ran in some of the same circles, yes."
"He was killed rather violently. About a year ago now? His club was blown up."
"Accidents happen."
"Usually in the home, so I've heard."
"Something you might keep in mind."
As Assail met those eyes straight on, Benloise dropped his stare first. Clearing his throat, the Eastern seaboard's biggest drug importer and wholesaler swept his palm over his glossy desk, as if he were feeling the grains that ran through the teak.
"Our business," Benloise said, "has a delicate ecosystem that, for all its financial robustness, must be carefully maintained. Stability is rare and highly desirable for men like you and me."
"Agreed. And to that end, I plan to return at the conclusion of the evening with my interim payment, as scheduled. As I always have, I come to you in good faith, and give you no reason to doubt me or my intentions."
Benloise offered another smooth smile. "You make it sound as if I am behind," he moved his hand around, waving it dismissively through the air, "whatever has upset you."
Leaning in, Assail dipped his chin and glared. "I am not upset. Yet."
One of Benloise's hands surreptiously dipped out of sight. A split second later, Assail heard the door down at the other end of the room open.
Keeping his voice low, Assail said, "This was a courtesy to you. The next time I find anyone on my property, whether you sent them or not, I shall not be even half so polite."
With that, he got to his feet and ground the lit cigar out upon the desk.
"I bid you a fond good evening," he said, before walking away.
d the same time Qhuinn was cleaning himself up at the main house, Blay came awake in the chair in that little underground office. The headache that served as his alarm clock was not from the port - it was from the fact that he'd skipped Last Meal. But man, he wished the booze had been behind the pounding in his skull. He could have used the out that he'd been a total, sloppy, lost-his-mind mess when he'd come down here.
Cursing, he withdrew his legs from the desktop and sat up. His body was stiff as a board, aches blooming in all kinds of places as he willed on the overhead light.
Crap. He was still naked.
But come on, like the modesty elves would have snuck in and clothed him in his sleep? Just so he wasn't reminded of what he'd done?
Putting his shorts on, he shoved his feet into his trainers and then reached for his shirt - before remembering what he'd used it for.
As he stared at the crumpled folds of cotton and felt the stiff places in the soft cloth, he realized that no amount of rationalization was going to change the fact that he'd cheated on Saxton. Physical contact with someone else was only one way of measuring infidelity - and yeah, that was the biggest divide. But what he'd done last night had been a violation of the relationship, even though the orgasm had been caused by his brain, not his hand.
Getting to his feet, he was half-dead as he went to the door and opened it a crack. If there was anyone around, he was going to duck back inside and wait for a clear shot into the corridor: He so completely did not want to get caught coming out of this empty office, half-clothed and looking like hell. The upside to living at the compound was that you were surrounded by people who cared about you; the downside was that everybody had eyes and ears, and no one's business was just their own.
When he didn't hear voices or footsteps, he exploded out into the hall and started walking briskly, like he'd been somewhere for a good reason and was heading to his room for an equally important purpose. He had a feeling he'd gotten away with it when he hit the tunnel. Sure, he didn't usually go shirtless, but a lot of the Brothers or males did when they were coming from the gym - nothing unusual.
And he really felt like he'd won the lottery when he stepped out from under the mansion's grand staircase and got another good dose of empty-bowling-alley. The only problem was that, going by the sounds of china being cleared in the dining room, it must be later than he'd thought. He'd obviously missed First Meal - bad news for his head, but at least he had some protein bars in his room.
His luck ran out as he took the stairs up to the second floor. Standing in front of the closed doors to Wrath's study, Qhuinn and John were dressed for fighting, their weapons strapped on, their bodies covered in black leather.
No way in hell was he looking at Qhuinn. Just having the guy in his peripheral vision was bad enough.
"What's going on?" Blay asked.
We've got a meeting now, John signed. Or at least, we're supposed to. Didn't you get the text?
Shit, he had no idea where his phone was. His room? Hopefully.
"I'll hit the shower and be right back."
You might not have to rush. The Brothers have been sequestered for the last half hour. I don't have any idea what's going on.
Next to the guy, Qhuinn was rocking back and forth in his shitkickers, his weight shifting like he was on a walk even as he went nowhere.
"Five minutes," Blay muttered. "That's all I need."
He hoped the Brotherhood would open those doors by then - the last thing he wanted was to get stuck passing time anywhere near Qhuinn.
Cursing as he went, Blay jogged down to his room. Usually he took his time getting ready, especially if Sax was in the mood, but this was going to be a wham-bam, thank you, ma -
As he opened his door, he froze.
What the...hell?
Duffels. On the bed. So many of them he couldn't see more than an inch and a half of the king-size duvet - and he knew whose they were. Matching Guccis, in white with the navy blue logo and the navy blue and red cloth strapping - because according to Saxton, the traditional brown-on-brown with the red and green was "too obvious."
Blay shut the door quietly. His first thought was, Holy shit, Saxton knew. Somehow, the guy knew what had happened in the training center.
The male in question came out of the bathroom with an armful of shampoo, conditioner, and product. He stopped dead.
"Hi," Blay said. "Taking a vacation?"
After a tense moment, Saxton calmly came over, put his load down in a travel bag, and turned back around. As always, his beautiful blond hair was swept off his forehead in thick waves. And he was dressed perfectly, in another tweed suit with matching waistcoat, a red cravat and red pocket square adding just the right accent of color.
"I think you know what I'm going to say." Saxton smiled sadly. "Because you're far from stupid - just as I am."
Blay went to sit down on the bed, but had to recalibrate because there was nowhere to put himself. He ended up on the chaise lounge, and, with a discreet lean to one side, he tucked the wadded shirt under the skirting. Out of sight. It was the least he could do.
God, was this really happening?
"I don't want you to go," Blay heard himself say roughly.
"I believe that."
Blay looked across all those duffels. "Why now?"
He thought of the pair of them just the day before, under the sheets, having hard sex. They had been so close - although if he were brutally honest, maybe that had just been physically.
Take out the maybe.
"I've been fooling myself." Saxton shook his head. "I thought I could keep going with you like this - but I can't. It's killing me."
Blay closed his eyes. "I know I've been out a lot in the field - "
"That's not what I'm talking about."
As Qhuinn took up all the space between them, Blay wanted to scream. But what good would that do: it appeared that he and Saxton had gotten to the same difficult corner at the same sorrowful moment.
His lover looked over the luggage. "I've just finished that assignment for Wrath. It's a good time to make a break, move out and find another job - "
"Wait, so you're leaving the king as well?" Blay frowned. "However things stand between us, you need to keep working for him. That is bigger than our relationship."
Saxton's eyes dipped down. "I suspect that is far easier for you to say."
"Not true," Blay countered grimly. "God, I'm so...sorry."
"You've done nothing wrong - you need to know that I'm not angry at you, or bitter. You've always been honest, and I've always known that things were going to end like this. I just didn't know the timeline - I didn't know...until I reached the end. Which is now."
Oh, fuck.
Even though he knew Saxton was right, Blay felt a compulsive need to fight for them. "Listen, I've been really distracted for the last week, and I'm sorry. But things have a way of regulating, and you and I will get back to normal - "
"I'm in love with you."
Blay shut his mouth with a clap.
"So you see," Saxton continued hoarsely, "it's not that you have changed. It's that I have - and I'm afraid my silly emotions have put us at quite a distance from each other."
Blay surged to his feet and strode across the fine-napped carpet to the other male.
When he got to his destination, he was relieved to the point of tearing up that Saxton accepted his embrace. And as he held his first true lover against him, feeling that familiar difference in their heights and smelling that wonderful cologne, part of him wanted to debate this break up until they both gave in and kept trying.
But that wasn't fair.
Like Saxton, he'd had the vague notion that things were going to end at some point. And like his lover, he was also surprised it was now.
That didn't change the outcome, however.
Saxton stepped back. "I never meant to get emotionally involved."
"I'm so sorry, I'm...I'm so sorry...." Shit, that was all that was coming out of his mouth. "I would give anything to be different. I wish I could...be different."
"I know." Saxton reached up and brushed a hand down the side of his face. "I forgive you - and you need to forgive yourself."
Whatever, he wasn't sure he could do that - especially as, at this moment, and as fucking usual, an emotional attachment he didn't want and couldn't change was yet again robbing him of something he wanted.
Qhuinn was a fucking curse to him, the guy really was.
About fifteen miles south of the Brotherhood's mountaintop compound, Assail woke up on his circular bed in the grand master suite of his mansion on the Hudson. Above him, in the mirrored panels mounted on the ceiling, his naked body was gleaming in the soft glow of the lights installed around the base of the mattress. The octagonal room beyond was dark, the interior shutters still down, the fallen night hidden.
As he considered all the glass in the house, he knew so many vampires would have found these accommodations unacceptable. Most would have avoided the manse altogether.
Too much risk during daylight hours.
Assail, however, had never been bound by convention, and the dangers inherent in living in a building with so much access to light were something to be managed, not bound by.
Getting up, he went over to the desk, signed into his computer, and accessed the security system that monitored not just the house, but the grounds. Alerts had sounded several times during the earlier hours of the day, notifications not of an impending attack, but of some kind of activity that had been flagged by the security system's filtering program.
In truth, he lacked the energy to be overly concerned, an unwelcome sign that he needed to feed -
Assail frowned as he reviewed the report.
Well, wasn't this instructive.
And indeed, this was why he'd installed all his checks and balances.
On the images feed from the rear cameras, he watched as a figure dressed in snowfield camouflage traveled on cross-country skis through the forest, closing in on his house from the north. Whoever it was stayed hidden in and among the pines for the most part, and surveyed the property from various vantage points for approximately nineteen minutes...before traversing the westerly border of trees, crossing into the neighbor's property, and going down onto the ice. Two hundred yards later the man stopped, got out the binoculars again, and stared at Assail's home. Then he circled around the peninsula that jutted out into the river, reentered the forest, and disappeared.
Bending in closer to the screen, Assail replayed the approach, zooming in to identify facial features, if possible - and it was not. The head was covered with a knit mask, with cutouts only for the eyes, nose, and mouth. With the parka and ski pants on as well, the man was covered in his entirety.
Sitting back, Assail smiled to himself, his fangs tingling in territorial response.
There were but two parties who might be interested in his business, and going by the daylight that had reigned during this recon, it was clear the curiosity was not generated by the Brotherhood: Wrath would never use humans as anything other than a last-resort food source, and no vampire could withstand that amount of sunshine without turning into a torch.
Which left someone in the human world - and there was only a single man with the interest and the resources to try to track him and his whereabouts.
"Enter," he said, just before a knock sounded on his door.
As the pair of males came in, he didn't bother to look away from the computer screen. "How did you sleep?"
A familiar, deep voice answered, "Like the dead."
"How fortunate for you. Jet lag can be a bore, or so I've heard. We had a visitor this morning, by the way."
Assail leaned to one side so his two associates could review the footage.
It was odd to have housemates, but he was going to have to get used to their presence. When he had come to the New World, it had been a solo trip, and he had intended to keep things that way for numerous reasons. Success in his chosen field, however, had mandated that he pull in some backup - and the only people you could even partially trust were your family.
And the pair of them offered a unique benefit.
His two cousins were a rarity in the vampire species: a set of identical twins. When fully clothed, the only way anyone could tell them apart was by a single mole behind the earlobe; other than that, from their voices and their dark, suspicious eyes to their heavily muscled bodies, they were a mirror reflection of each other.
"I'm going out," Assail announced to them. "If our visitor comes again, be hospitable, will you?"
Ehric, the older one by a matter of minutes, glanced over, his face highlighted by the glow around the bed base. Such evil in that handsome combination of features - to the point that one nearly felt pity for the interloper. "'Twill be a pleasure, I assure you."
"Keep him alive."
"But of course."
"That is a finer line than you two have at times appreciated."
"Trust me."
"It's not you whom I am worried about." Assail looked at the other one. "Do you understand me?"
Ehric's twin remained silent, although the male did nod once.
That grudging reaction was precisely why Assail would have preferred to keep his new life simple. But it was impossible to be in more than one place at a time - and this violation of privacy was proof that he couldn't do everything by himself.
"You know how to locate me," he said, before dismissing them from his room.
Twenty minutes later, he left the house showered, dressed, and behind the wheel of his bulletproof Range Rover.
Downtown Caldwell at night was beautiful at a distance, especially as he came over the inbound bridge. It was not until he penetrated the grid system of streets that the city's sludge became evident: the alleyways with their filthy snowdrifts and their oozing Dumpsters and their discarded, half-frozen homeless humans told the true story of the municipality's underbelly.
His worksite, as it were.
When he got to the Benloise Art Gallery, he parked in the back, in one of two spaces that were parallel to the building behind the facility. As he stepped free of the SUV, the cold wind swept into his camel-hair coat and he had to hold the two halves together as he crossed the pavement, approaching an industrial-size door.
He didn't have to knock. Ricardo Benloise had plenty of people working for him, and not all of them were of the art-dealer-associate type: A human male the size of an amusement park opened the way and stood to the side.
"He expecting you?"
"No, he is not."
Disneyland nodded. "You wanna wait in the gallery?"
"That would be fine."
"You need a drink?"
"No, thank you."
As they walked through the office area and into the exhibition space, the deference Assail was now accorded was a new thing - earned through both the huge product orders he'd been putting in as well as the spilled blood of countless humans: Thanks to him, suicides among disenfranchised males age eighteen to twenty-nine with criminal drug records had struck an all-time high in the city, making even the national news.
Imagine that.
As newscasters and reporters tried to make sense of the tragedies, he merely continued growing his business by any means necessary. Human minds were awfully suggestible; it required hardly any effort at all to get middlemen drug dealers to train their own guns on their temples and pull those triggers. And in the same way nature abhorred a vacuum, so too did the demands of chemical supplementation.
Assail had the drugs. The addicts had the cash.
The economic system more than survived the forced reorganization.
"I'll head up," the man said at a hidden door. "And let him know you're here."
"Do take your time."
Left to his own devices, Assail strolled around the high-ceilinged, open space, linking his hands and putting them at the small of his back. From time to time, he paused to look at the "art" that was hung on the walls and partitions - and was reminded why humans should be eradicated, preferably by slow and painful means.
Used paper plates tacked to cheap particleboard and covered with handwritten quotes from TV commercials? A self-portrait done in dentifrice? And equally offensive were the aggrandizing plaques mounted next to the messes declaring this nonsense to be the new wave of American Expressionism.
Such a commentary on the culture in so many ways.
"He's ready now."
Assail smiled to himself and turned around. "How accommodating."
As he entered through that sneaky door and ascended to the third level, Assail did not fault his supplier for being suspicious and wanting more information on his single largest customer. After all, in the shortest of time, the drug trade in the city had been rerouted, redefined, and captured by a complete unknown.
One could respect the man's position.
But the digging was going to end here.
At the top of the set of industrial stairs, two other big men stood in front of another door, sure and solid as load-bearing walls. As with the guard on the first floor, they opened things up fast, and nodded at him with respect.
On the far side, Benloise was sitting at the end of a long, narrow room that had windows down one side, and only three pieces of furniture: his raised desk, which was nothing but a thick slab of teak with a modernist lamp and an ashtray on it; his chair, of some modern derivation; and a second seat across from him for a single visitor.
The man himself was like his environment: neat, officious, and uncluttered in his thinking. In fact, he proved that however illicit the drug trade was, the management principles and interpersonal skill sets of a CEO went a long way if you wanted to make millions in it - and keep your money.
"Assail. How are you?" The diminutive gentleman rose and put out his hand. "This is an unexpected pleasure."
Assail went across, shook what was extended and did not wait for an invitation to sit down.
"What may I do for you?" Benloise said as he himself resettled on his chair.
Assail took a Cuban cigar from out of his inside pocket. Snipping the end off, he leaned forward and put the snubbed piece right on the desk.
As Benloise frowned like someone had defecated on his bed, Assail smiled just short of flashing his fangs. "It's what I may do for you."
"Oh."
"I have always been a private man, living a private life by choice." He put away his clipper and took out his gold lighter. Popping the flame, he leaned in and puffed to get the cigar into a sustainable burn. "But above and beyond that, I am a businessman engaging in a dangerous manner of trade. Accordingly, I take any trespass of my property or intrusion upon my anonymity as a direct act of aggression."
Benloise smiled smoothly and eased back in his throne-like chair. "I can respect that, of course, and yet I am confounded as to why you feel the need to point this out to me."
"You and I have entered into a mutually beneficial relationship, and it is very much my desire to continue this association." Assail puffed on the cigar, releasing a cloud of French-blue smoke. "Therefore, I want to pay you the respect you are due, and make clear before I take action that if I discover any person upon my premises whom I have not invited thereupon, I shall not only eradicate them, I shall find the source of inquiry" - he puffed again - "and do what I must to defend my privacy. Am I being clear enough?"
Benloise's brows dropped down low, his dark eyes growing shrewd.
"Am I?" Assail murmured.
There was, of course, only one answer. Assuming the human wanted to live much past the following weekend.
"You know, you remind me of your predecessor," Benloise said in his accented English. "Did you meet the Reverend?"
"We ran in some of the same circles, yes."
"He was killed rather violently. About a year ago now? His club was blown up."
"Accidents happen."
"Usually in the home, so I've heard."
"Something you might keep in mind."
As Assail met those eyes straight on, Benloise dropped his stare first. Clearing his throat, the Eastern seaboard's biggest drug importer and wholesaler swept his palm over his glossy desk, as if he were feeling the grains that ran through the teak.
"Our business," Benloise said, "has a delicate ecosystem that, for all its financial robustness, must be carefully maintained. Stability is rare and highly desirable for men like you and me."
"Agreed. And to that end, I plan to return at the conclusion of the evening with my interim payment, as scheduled. As I always have, I come to you in good faith, and give you no reason to doubt me or my intentions."
Benloise offered another smooth smile. "You make it sound as if I am behind," he moved his hand around, waving it dismissively through the air, "whatever has upset you."
Leaning in, Assail dipped his chin and glared. "I am not upset. Yet."
One of Benloise's hands surreptiously dipped out of sight. A split second later, Assail heard the door down at the other end of the room open.
Keeping his voice low, Assail said, "This was a courtesy to you. The next time I find anyone on my property, whether you sent them or not, I shall not be even half so polite."
With that, he got to his feet and ground the lit cigar out upon the desk.
"I bid you a fond good evening," he said, before walking away.