Turkova’s cell phone rang. She glanced at the ID and scowled, but she answered before it rang a second time.
“Magda.” She listened, then said, “Yes.”
And that was it. Kathryn figured it was Donlon calling, maybe asking if they were on their way or something. Maybe he was anxious to get the interview over with and return to his vampire business, whatever that was. Actually, her data run on Donlon had listed considerable financial holdings, but everything was owned under his corporate identity of Donlon Inc. It was a private corporation, which meant he wasn’t required to make the details of his holdings and/or earnings public unless he wanted to. And he clearly didn’t want to. Usually, even private corporations made some things public—charitable stuff that was good for their public image, or information they intentionally let slip to influence a particular business transaction. And sometimes political donations were revealed, when it served their corporate interests. But Donlon didn’t seem to care about any of that. She hadn’t been able to find a single article on him or his corporation, not in the major journals, not even in the local newspaper.
Kathryn and Turkova were met halfway down the corridor by what she took to be another gatekeeper. Male, presumably a vampire, six-foot-three, blond and brown, big shoulders and arms, so probably two twenty-five or more in weight. He was good-looking in an all-American football captain sort of way and gave her an openly friendly smile before stopping them in front of a pair of big wooden doors with iron belting.
“I’ll take it from here, Magda,” he said, as if he was the one in charge. “Agent Hunter,” he said, turning his attention Kathryn. “My name is Nicholas. Lord Donlon is waiting, if you’re ready?”
Kathryn scowled inwardly at the use of the honorific for Donlon, but outwardly she only nodded briskly and said, “Yes, thank you.” Unfailingly polite and professional, that’s what the FBI expected of their agents.
Nicholas opened the door. Kathryn started to step forward, but stopped in surprise when he strode in ahead of her. It threw her off enough that she paused on the threshold until Magda made an impatient noise behind her.
Kathryn continued into the room, her gaze sweeping the space, cataloging everything she saw. It wasn’t quite what she’d expected, but then so far, nothing about this vampire’s lair had been. The room was big and airy, very masculine, but tasteful, with a grouping of dark leather furniture to one side, in front of an even darker row of wooden bookshelves that lined the entire length of one wall. There was a fireplace on the opposite wall, with a carved wooden mantle, and above that a beautiful oil painting depicting moonrise over what she assumed was the nearby Badlands, although it could just as easily have been MonumentValley in Arizona or another similar desert setting. She wasn’t that familiar with any of them. But the artist had caught the surreal look of those landscapes, and the rising moon gave it such an alien cast that if someone had told her it was another planet, she would have believed them.
On the side of the fireplace nearest the hallway door, the wall was unadorned except for a series of black and white photographic prints. Kathryn’s eye ranged over the photographs as closely as she could without being obvious about it, and there was no doubt. She had none of Daniel’s talent, but she had a terrific eye for detail, and she knew his work. They were from a series he’d done on Ireland some years ago.
Her gaze shifted to the vampire she’d come to see, Lucas Donlon, but the broad-shouldered Nicholas was still in the way. Impatient now, she started to walk around him just as he addressed Donlon, saying, “My lord,” and stepped aside, like a magician revealing his trick.
* * * *
Lucas sprawled behind his desk, consciously projecting an image of negligent ease, which was at complete odds with what he was feeling. The timing on this FBI investigation sucked overall, although he was glad to get it over with at last. With his incursion last night into Klemens’s territory, war had been declared. Up until now, the Midwestern vampire lord had limited himself to an occasional, if irritating, foray along the border in an attempt to seize assets he knew belonged to Lucas. His success had been limited, but with the assassination attempt on Raphael, and now Lucas’s response, the gloves would be off. And Klemens was a dirty fighter.
Vampire wars in general were fought differently than human wars. For one thing, there were no grand battles. There weren’t enough vampires on either side for that, and most of those were civilians, who everyone agreed should be left out of the bloodshed as long as they didn’t insert themselves into the confrontation. Or hang around with traitors like Heintz.
Instead, the war would consist of a series of skirmishes, short-lived and bloody. Every vampire lord had his warriors, some more than others, but no one had more than a few hundred. Because wars were fought with a limited number of combatants, there were lulls in the fighting. Like now. With Lucas’s successful strike last night, and especially since Klemens had suffered the loss of both property and vampires, it would be at least a few days before Klemens could pick a target and rally his forces for a counterattack. That didn’t mean Lucas could relax. His people were on alert all up and down the eastern border, and his warriors were staged in such a way that at least a few of them could reach any attack point fairly quickly. Their job was to hold the line until backup arrived.
So, if Lucas had to deal with the FBI, this was as good a time as he would get for the foreseeable future. But this whole thing was a waste of time. He didn’t know anything about a missing person, and neither did any of his vampires. He’d questioned them specifically about this matter so that none of them could weasel out and lie to him. A vampire couldn’t lie to his Sire or his sworn master, and Lucas didn’t permit anyone to reside within his territory unless they were at least sworn to him. Most of the vampires living on the ranch itself were his own children, and that included everyone who worked closely with him in the main house.
But then, this was South Dakota. There weren’t that many vampires in the entire state. There weren’t even that many humans. Fewer than a million people lived in South Dakota, which was one of the lowest population densities in the country. The majority of South Dakota’s vampires lived or worked right here on Lucas’s ranch. There was a small cluster in Sioux Falls, but they weren’t suspected in the FBI’s missing person case because this Agent Hunter seemed certain her man had gone missing while hanging around in the Badlands, which, by the way, was a good eighty miles from Lucas’s ranch.
Lucas had his main headquarters here because he loved the area. When most people thought of South Dakota, they thought of the crags of Mount Rushmore with its famous presidents, and they figured the whole state looked like that. But his ranch was beautiful and green—during most of the year, anyway. His estate was over a hundred and fifty acres of rolling grasslands and mature trees, with two separate creeks running through it. It wasn’t as green as his native Ireland, of course, but in the centuries he’d been alive, he’d never been anyplace that was. He loved his ranch, though. He loved raising horses, loved riding them through his land and knowing it was his land. He had other houses throughout his territory, some in much bigger cities. But he always came back here. This was home.
And now the FBI was invading his home. He didn’t trust the police; he never had. He’d grown up on the mean streets of Dublin when they were truly mean, and the Garda had never been his friend. That was another thing about South Dakota. They left a man alone. As long as he didn’t do anything to draw their attention his way, the authorities didn’t bother him. He wished he could simply tell this FBI woman to go away, but he couldn’t do that. Regardless of his personal preferences, he was responsible for thousands of vampires throughout his territory, which spanned several states. Anything he did could redound on them in unpleasant ways. So, he would see Agent Hunter, and he’d tell her what he’d already said on the phone. He didn’t know where her brother was. Speaking of which, he found it very suspect that Agent Hunter had never bothered to mention that the man she was looking for was her brother. Did she really think he didn’t have the wherewithal to find out details like that? She had surely done a data search on him. Did she think that he wouldn’t do the same on her?
Granted, his contacts within the FBI weren’t what they’d once been. For years, the vampire community’s best and most secret asset within the Bureau had been Phoebe Micheletti, a former FBI tech and later forensic consultant. Phoebe’s loyalty had been unquestioned because she was a vampire herself. But recent events in Washington, D.C. had shown that perhaps someone should have questioned her more closely. The situation had ended with Phoebe and her longtime mate both dead and the loss of an inside track at the FBI.
But there were still some vampires employed by the Bureau, especially in the technical areas where they could work at night. They might not have the contacts that Phoebe had once enjoyed, but they were still good enough to know that Kathryn Hunter wasn’t here under official FBI auspices. As for discovering that the missing man was her brother, that took his computer guy all of seven minutes to find on the Internet. Thirty minutes more, and Lucas knew all sorts of things about Hunter.
He picked up his cell phone and rang Magda.
“Magda,” she answered immediately. Normally, she used his title to answer when he called, but since she was currently escorting the FBI agent to his office door, she wisely didn’t want to give away that he was the one calling.
“Reach out again to our people in the FBI,” he told her. “See if they’ve got anything more on Kathryn Hunter. Personal stuff. But make sure they’re discreet, Maggie. I don’t want to set anything into motion until I know more.”
“Yes,” she said, the one word clipped and short.
Lucas disconnected, smiling. Magda absolutely hated it when he called her Maggie. Which was why he did it, of course. He heard footsteps a few seconds later, Maggie’s heels and a nearly silent tread that he assumed belonged to Agent Hunter. Nick had been waiting in the hallway for them, and he spoke as soon as the two women were close enough.
