gasp. Soft, pain-filled. Adam ran as fast as he could toward the sound.
He found her in the street, tears streaming down her face, blood pooled beneath her body. The nanny. Not Cammie, not his Cammie.
“Karen!” He reached her, dropping to his knees beside her and touching her cold flesh. He could hear the faint rasp of her breathing. He could feel death around them, waiting. So hungry.
Her eyes met his. Full of pain. Fear. “A-Adam…” She choked on her blood, barely able to get the words out.
“It’s all right.” But it wasn’t. Wouldn’t be, not for her. The wounds in her chest were too deep. The blood loss too severe. He squeezed her hand tightly. “You’re safe now.” Fear knifed through him, filling his veins, his every thought. Where was Cammie?
“T-took…her.”
His heart stopped, then began a frantic rhythm, thudding in his chest. “Cammie? Someone took Cammie?”
She tried to nod. Her head moved just a fraction and a groan burst from her lips. Her lashes began to flutter closed.
Death crept closer.
“No! Karen, dammit, no! Talk to me!” She couldn’t go, not yet. “Who took Cammie?”
“C-cl-aws, t-teeth…like…” Blood gurgled past her lips, “a-animals.”
Karen wasn’t like him. She didn’t know about the supernatural beings that roamed the earth.
Or, rather, she hadn’t known, until they attacked her.
Claws and teeth. Had it been shifters? Vampires? Demons?
“L-laughed.” She was shaking now. “B-bit me and l-laughed.”
The full moon shone brightly down on them. He could see the marks on her arms, her legs. Her neck. Very gently, he turned her head to the side.
He knew that bite.
Vampire.
“Did they say anything?” he demanded as the fear turned to rage. “Anything?”
“Th-that…she’d…g-gif–t…N-Nas-sor…”
Her gaze drifted from his. Her eyes looked up at the moon. At the heavens. “F-forgi…” Her words ended in a final gasp for breath.
Her eyes were open when she met death.
“No!”
Maya dropped Adam’s hand. Dammit, she’d hadn’t wanted to see that woman’s last moments.
They were too much like her own.
Only the bastard who’d attacked her had managed to get a few drops of his blood into her mouth. She’d tried to spit them out, but, well, since she was now one of the undead, that hadn’t exactly worked for her.
“I’ve been telling you the truth.” Adam’s voice was calm.
She gave a jerky nod. She hadn’t really thought the guy was lying, not about the girl anyway, but she’d needed to test their link.
“Did you see enough?” He gritted.
“Yeah.” Enough to know they were going to have one hell of a fight on their hands. Nassor. Sonofabitch. She’d hoped Adam had been wrong about him.
There weren’t many things in this world that scared her, but Nassor was at the top of her list.
She’d been aware of him from the moment she’d woken as a vampire. It had started as a vague stirring in the back of her mind. A need to go somewhere, to search.
To find him.
In vampire land, the hierarchy was simple. The Born vampires, those rare bastards who’d been born with a thirst for blood and a curse of immortality, were the rulers. The strongest. The Born or the Blood because the power of vampirism was literally in their blood. Physically, psychically, they were the alphas. No one fucked with them—not L10s, not shifters. No one.
You didn’t mess with a Born unless you wanted to die. Slowly. Very, very painfully.
The Born were the ones who’d spread the disease of vampirism. Because, yeah, she thought of it as a disease. Made her feel less like a horror movie freak. They’d bitten, exchanged blood, and infected thousands.
But the thing about the Born, whenever they created a new vampire, a Taken, well, that vamp was tied to the Born Master. And so was that Taken’s next changed human, and the next and the next….
New vampires discovered that in addition to the perk of living forever, they had a not-so-nice voice whispering in their heads. The Master’s voice. They could feel the Master. Feel him calling when he wanted them.
So far, Maya had been able to ignore that call.
She had a feeling that was about to change. “You know about me, don’t you?” she asked Adam. “You know Nassor created the bastard who changed me.” Tyrus. He’d been the one to attack her in that alley. He’d been old, according to the gossip she’d heard. Two centuries. And one of Nassor’s favored assassins.
“Yes.” That deep emerald stare of his never wavered. “I know you can take me to him.”
“Not that simple, Slick.” Oh, if only. “Nassor’s been in the ground for the last couple of years.”
A faint line appeared between his brows. “What?”
“He’s in the ground. Healing.” Or so the whispers said. “The guy was injured, pretty damn bad from all accounts, a little less than five years ago.” If the rumors were true, he’d gotten a stake through the heart and his head had been partially severed by a hunter.
He’d lived through the attack and killed the hunter. And the hunter’s family.
Nassor scared her. A lot.
“His injuries were so severe,” and well-deserved in her book, “that human blood wouldn’t heal him. He had to seek the darkness.” Total darkness. Deep in the earth. “His body’s been regenerating since the attack.” So the tales went.
“Are you certain? Absolutely certain?”
“Yeah.” Because the moment the ground had sealed over him, that damn call in her head had dulled to the faintest of drones and she’d been able to stop fighting the near constant need to head east.
To go to him.
Not that she was planning to ever just priss over and join his psychotic little army. Sure, she felt the call, but Maya had promised herself that if she ever gave in to the summons, she’d go to kill Nassor, not to pay homage to him like some mindless sycophant.
“You can find him, though, can’t you? You can track him. Find his resting place.”
“Yeah.”
He
