Kiss of the Night (Dark-Hunter 4)

Well.

Had he come home with her?

No. Cassandra calmed a degree as she clearly remembered him leaving her. Of her going back inside and rejoining her friends in the club.

She had gone to bed alone.

But she had awakened naked. Her body damp and sated...

"Cass, I'm starting to get worried."

Cassandra took a deep breath and shook everything off. It was a dream. It had to have been. Nothing else made sense. But then when dealing with such supernatural things as Daimons and Dark-Hunters things seldom made sense.

"I'm fine, but I'm not going to my morning class. I think we need to do some research and run an errand."

Kat looked even more worried than before. "You sure? It's not like you to miss class for anything."

"Yeah," she said, offering her a smile. "Just go grab the laptop and let's see what we can find out about Dark-Hunters."

Kat arched a brow at that. "Why?"

In all the years Cassandra had been chased by her mother's people, she had only confided the truth of her world to two bodyguards.

One who had died when Cassandra was only thirteen, in a fight that had almost killed her.

The other had been Kat, who had taken the truth a lot easier than the first bodyguard. Kat had merely looked at her, blinked, and said, "Cool. Can I kill them and not go to prison?"

Since then, Cassandra had never kept anything secret from Kat. Her friend and bodyguard knew as much about the Apollites and their customs as Cassandra did.

Which wasn't much. Apollites had a nasty habit of not letting anyone know they existed.

Still, it had been such a relief to find someone who didn't think she was insane or delusional. But then in the course of the last five years, Kat had seen enough Daimons and Apollites come after them to know the truth of it.

Over the last few months as Cassandra neared the end of her life, the Daimon attacks had backed off enough so that she had a small semblance of normality. But Cassandra wasn't foolish enough to think that she was safe. She would never be safe.

Not until the day she died.

"I think we met a Dark-Hunter last night."

Kat frowned. "When?"

"At the club."

"When?" she repeated.

Cassandra hesitated to tell her. Several details were still sketchy even to her, and until she remembered more of them, she didn't want to worry Kat.

"I saw him in the crowd."

"Then how do you know he was a Dark-Hunter? I thought you told me they were fables."

"I don't really know. He could have just been some weird guy with dark hair and fangs, but if I'm right and he's here in town, I want to know because he might be able to tell me whether or not I'm about to drop dead in eight months."

"Okay, points well taken. But you know, he could have also been one of the fake Goth vamps who hang at the Inferno." Kat went to her bedroom to retrieve the laptop and set it up on the kitchen table while Cassandra finished eating.

As soon as it was ready, Cassandra signed online and headed to Katoteros.com. It was an online community that she had found a little over a year ago where Apollites could talk to each other. On the public side, it looked like a Greek-history site, but there were password-protected areas.

There was nothing on the site about Dark-Hunters. So she and Kat spent some time trying to hack into the private areas, which proved to be even more impossible than breaking into the government's servers.

What was it about preternatural beings that they didn't want others to discover their whereabouts?

Okay, so she understood the need for secrecy. Still, it was a major pain in the ass for a woman who needed some answers.

The closest thing she could find for help was an "Ask the Oracle" link. Clicking it, Cassandra typed in a simple e-mail. "Are Dark-Hunters real?"

After that, she did a search for Dark-Hunters and came up with bubkes. It was as if they didn't exist anywhere.

Before she signed off, her e-mail came back from the Oracle with only two words for a response.

Are you?

"Maybe they are just legends," Kat said again.

"Maybe." But legends didn't kiss women the way Wulf had kissed her, nor did they find their way into her dreams.

Two hours later, Cassandra decided to utilize her last resort... her father.

Kat drove her to her father's high-rise office in downtown St. Paul. All things considered, the late-morning traffic was light and Kat only managed to give her one small heart attack with her dodge-car style of driving.

No matter the time of day or how bad the traffic congestion, Kat always drove as if the Daimons were after them.

Kat whisked the car into the parking garage, clipping the automatic gate on her way in before she whipped around a slow-moving Toyota and beat it into a good spot.

The driver flipped them off, then kept going.

"I swear, Kat, you drive like you're playing a video game."

"Yeah, yeah. Wanna see the ray gun I have under the hood to zap them if they don't get out of my way?"

Cassandra laughed, even though part of her wondered if maybe Kat really had something hidden there. Knowing her friend, it was possible.

As soon as they left the car in the parking lot and entered the building, they attracted a lot of attention. But they always did. It wasn't every day people saw two women who were both over six feet tall. Not to mention that Kat was so strikingly beautiful, Cassandra would have to cut the woman's head off to make her blend in anywhere not Hollywood.

Since a headless bodyguard was rather useless, Cassandra was forced to tolerate a woman who should be working for LA Models.

The company guards greeted them at the door with a nod and waved them inside.

Cassandra's father was the infamous Jefferson T. Peters of Peters, Briggs, and Smith Pharmaceuticals, one of the world's largest drug research and development companies.

Many of the people she passed as she walked through the building cast a jealous eye toward her. They knew she was her father's sole heir, and they all thought she had it made.

If they only knew...

"Good day, Miss Peters," his administrative assistant greeted her when she finally made it to the twenty-second floor. "Should I buzz your father?"

Cassandra smiled at the extremely attractive, skinny woman who was very sweet, but always made her feel like she should lose ten pounds and brush her hand selfconsciously through her hair to straighten it. Tina was one of those scrupulously well dressed people who never had a molecule out of place.

Dressed in an impeccable Ralph Lauren suit, Tina was the total antithesis to Cassandra, who was dressed in her college sweatshirt and jeans.