Twilight Fulfilled

“I prefer tea.”

“You drink coffee today.”

Roxy sipped her own, and the senator followed suit. Without further delay, Roxy said, “There’s a former mental hospital called St. Dymphna’s in Mount Bliss, Virginia, that’s been commandeered by the DPI. You know about the DPI, right?”

The senator blinked rapidly, lowered her eyes. “I’m afraid that’s—”

“Classified. I know that. Look, Ms. MacBride, I don’t need you to tell me anything. I already know. I’m just trying to determine how much you know.”

“I … know a lot.”

“Not as much as you think, I’ll bet, so I’ll start at the beginning, and that’s the DPI. Division of Paranormal Investigations. A black ops division of the CIA in charge of investigating vampires. It’s been committing the kinds of crimes against other living beings over the past couple of centuries that make Saddam Hussein look like Mother Theresa. Only difference being their victims were vampires. Not humans.”

The woman’s eyes widened as she searched Roxy’s.

“Yeah, I can see that’s something you didn’t know. Well, here’s the thing. Right now they’re rounding up all the human beings with the Belladonna Antigen and stashing them in St. Dymphna’s.”

The senator swallowed hard. “Humans with the antigen have been targeted by … vampires more than any other group of—”

“That’s bullshit. Propaganda. Who told you that?”

“It’s part of the research I was given by—”

“Research. Their research has been done by capturing perfectly innocent people who happen to be vampires and torturing them. Killing them. Experimenting on them.”

“Look, I don’t know who you are or why you think I’d believe—”

She’d started to get up, but Roxy gripped her wrist and jerked her back into her seat. “Humans with the Belladonna Antigen are the only ones capable of becoming vampires. Vampires sense them, and are compelled to watch over and protect them—even if it’s to their own detriment. They can’t help themselves. They’re incapable of harming the Chosen, which is what they call those people.”

Senator MacBride held Roxy’s eyes. “Are you sure about this?”

“I’m the oldest living person with the antigen,” Roxy told her. “I’m sure. Vampires have saved my life many times over the years, and I’ve seen them do the same for others. They’re my friends. Not evil. Not monsters. And no matter what the DPI tells you, those humans being rounded up and stuck in that asylum are not there for their own protection.”

“Then why …?”

“I don’t know. But whatever the reason, you can bet it isn’t good. You need to look into this.”

The senator nodded. “I will.”

“Don’t take too long.” Roxy pushed away from the table, dragged a twenty from her pocket and slapped it down. Then she headed for the restroom at the end of a long narrow hallway in the back. Glancing behind her to make sure she was unobserved, she ducked into the men’s room, rather than the women’s, and moved quickly into the second stall. Unseen. Perfect. She pulled large jeans and a pillow for padding out of the bag she’d stashed there earlier, switched her jacket for a bigger one, ditched the wig and glasses, donned a moustache and beard, pulled on a billed cap with a bulldog logo on the front, and headed out again. She walked right by the senator on her way out, and the woman didn’t even give her a second glance. She was on the phone, probably with her security guy.

Outside, Roxy saw what had to be the senator’s car pulling to a stop. Off to one side a man in a long dark coat stood watching. Not the senator’s bodyguard. Someone else.

Roxy had known this was dangerous. She was glad she’d taken the precautions she had. Because either Senator Marlene MacBride was being watched …

… or she was.

Near Bangor, Maine

Brigit stood high on the hilltop, overlooking the winding road below, and watched as Utana spoke with a tall male mortal. The man’s back was toward her, and she observed only that he was thin and wearing a brown “duck” type coat against the chill of the early morning. He drove a big SUV, dark green in color. It fit in here, just as his coat did. Perhaps he was a local. One of those bleeding heart, trusting types who took in strangers.

The idiot didn’t know what kind of power he was playing with. Or what kind of danger. Utana was a time bomb. A killing machine with a warped mind.

There’s so much more to him than that.

Now where had that thought come from?

Utana’s face was visible in the early-morning sun. She’d deliberately stayed far enough away that she hoped he wouldn’t sense her, but God knew she could still sense him. Not the killing machine part of him, but the man. The man who, she realized, had wept at the sight of all the carnage he’d caused. The man who’d kissed her as if she were the first shelter he’d seen on an endless trek across a burning desert. As if she were his first sip of water.

And she had to kill him.

God, what the hell was wrong with the world, anyway?

She sighed and dragged her attention back to the scene unfolding below. In spite of her mission, she found herself feeling ridiculously glad some Good Samaritan was taking pity on the once great king. Oh, she had no doubt the guy would regret it later, once he realized that Utana was completely off his rocker—a fact the stranger should have picked up on from the simple fact that Utana was wearing a filthy bedsheet like a toga.

Wait, something was happening. The local was opening the passenger side door of his SUV. Holding it as if he expected Utana to get in.

Hell, no, Brigit thought. There was no way he would trust a stranger, much less a mortal one.

Utana turned then, gazing in her direction as if he sensed her there. She sidestepped, ducking behind a bushy-boughed sentinel pine.

And then she heard him, speaking to her with his mind as clearly as if he were standing beside her, saying his words into her ear, his voice deep and resonant and sending chills up her spine.

I will not kill you yet, Brigit of the Vahmpeers. His thoughts were clear, their meaning overriding his broken English. When I have done the rest, I will ask the Anunaki to spare you. Perhaps they will agree.

A red haze of fury rose up in her, and she stepped out from behind the tree. You’ll let me live to see all those I love die before me? And you’re expecting my gratitude for that?

It is all I can do.

He lowered his head, bent low to get into the car.

Hey! Where the hell do you think you’re going? Don’t you know better than to trust strangers? Hey!

But he got into the car anyway, and the man closed the passenger door, then went around to the driver’s side and got in. The car moved away, and Brigit had no idea where it was taking her quarry.

She was cold, tired, hungry and pissed. She was frustrated as all hell and wishing for a way to shirk the duty that had fallen to her to carry out. And she had a long walk on her hands, back to Bangor where she’d left her car and her supplies.

But she needed to know where this idiot was taking Utana before she acted on any of those pressing matters. And so she set off on foot, calling on her superhuman—though not quite vampiric—levels of speed and endurance to pull it off.

She followed the SUV to a small no-tell motel on the outskirts of Bangor, grateful that they were at least heading in the same general direction as her car. The two men got out and opened a door a third of the way along the single-story motel. Room 6, she noted.

And then, as she stood there, an aroma turned her head around. There was a diner across the street. Her stomach growled like a pit bull at the smell of used French fry grease. God, she needed food. She didn’t know what was going on in that motel room, but she would have a clear view of it from the diner. She could watch just as easily from a table along the front wall, with a big fat plate of empty calories in front of her, right?

Right.

So she straightened away from the telephone pole she’d been leaning against and walked across the cracked blacktop to the greasy spoon.

She laughed, because that really was the name of the place. The Greasy Spoon.