The stark fear in the kid’s gaze made Vincent feel guilty, but not so guilty that he was going to let the bastard gawk at Lana.
“You okay, querida?” he asked over his shoulder, hearing her sit up behind him and begin to gather her weapons.
“Fine,” she mumbled, sounding embarrassed. “Don’t hurt the kid.”
“He’s not a kid. He’s a fucking vampire who helped a bunch of fucking humans capture me. Or try to.”
“Try to?” she repeated, and he was gratified to hear the snap back in her voice. “Seems like they succeeded.”
“You don’t believe that,” he said confidently. “You wouldn’t be here if you believed that.”
“Well, don’t hurt the kid anyway. They’ve hurt him enough.”
Vincent shot a glance over his shoulder at her. “How do you know?”
“The same way you do, tough guy. Look at the way they treat him, keeping him in this crappy prison, making him sweat all day in the sunshine. And you know they’re not feeding him properly, or it would never work.”
“He doesn’t have much power,” Vincent informed her, more than a little pissed that she was defending the vampire who could have gotten him killed.
“But you do,” she reminded him unnecessarily. “If they could do this to you, imagine what they’ve done to him.”
She had a point. It still pissed him off, but she had a point. He managed not to roll his eyes, but he wanted to.
“Fine,” he said, turning back to the other vampire. “Jerry, shake my hand.”
“Sir?”
“Shake my damn hand, boy. I want to know who made you.”
Moreno frowned, but he held out a trembling hand. Vincent grabbed it tightly, then looked up and caught the kid’s gaze. “Let’s take a trip down memory lane, Jerry.”
Jerry’s eyes went wide and Vincent fell into his memories. This was his talent. Every powerful vampire had one, just like every vampire made had some telepathic skill. But the truly powerful vampires were always distinguished by something more, a talent that was unique to them. And Vincent’s talent was the ability to delve into a person’s memories—whether human or vampire, it didn’t seem to matter. The very first time it happened, he’d thought he was the one being captured, that it was the other vampire with the power. But he’d quickly realized that he was in control, that he was literally reliving the vamp’s life with him, seeing details that even the vampire himself couldn’t have recalled if he’d been asked.
Vincent didn’t know where a vampire’s abilities came from. Magic, some vampires insisted. Science, others scoffed, the untapped reservoir of the human brain brought forth by the Vampire symbiote. Since the symbiote itself was pretty much a mystery, Vincent figured anything was possible. He tended to go with science though. He didn’t really have much belief in magic.
But wherever his talent came from, it had proved itself to be very useful. It had screwed with his head at first as he struggled to separate his own memories from those he tapped into. But he worked that out over time, utilizing some of those brain parts the science types insisted went untapped. He thought of it as building muscles he’d never had to use before, the same way one would exercise and develop muscles to deal with an injury—building new muscles to support the injured ones.
He’d also discovered a darker side to his talent, a useful but cruel application of his unique skill. It was something that he’d called upon more than once in his climb up the ladder of power to become Enrique’s lieutenant. Yes, he could gently guide a person into seeing things in their own memories that they’d forgotten. But the dark correlation of that was the ability to force a person to see things they’d rather not, to trap them in an endless loop of horror and loss until they went mad, sinking into catatonia, becoming little better than a vegetable, until they died of starvation or worse. Although the “worse,” in Vincent’s opinion, was being kept alive by someone who thought they were doing you a favor, while you lived a tormented existence inside your own mind.
But he had no such plans for young Jerry Moreno. Not yet anyway. Moreno’s fate would depend on what Vincent found.
Setting aside thoughts of Moreno’s guilt or innocence, Vincent settled into the young vampire’s head. He saw the most recent memories first. Saw the kid at the same gas station where Vincent and Lana had stopped on the way into town, wanting to be ready to take off the next night. Moreno had just happened to be walking out of the convenience store as Vincent stood there watching the numbers turn on the gas pump. Lana had been sitting in the SUV, which was why Moreno hadn’t noticed her.
Vincent frowned as he realized what he was seeing. Moreno hadn’t simply recognized Vincent as a powerful vampire, he’d actually recognized Vincent personally. How was it possible that Moreno knew Vincent, when Vincent didn’t know anything about Moreno?
The answer had to lie somewhere deeper in the young vampire’s past, and so that’s where Vincent went. He dug beyond the recent memories, skimming through the boring, if somewhat violent, routine of Moreno’s life as an enforcer for the cartel, speeding all the way back to the last memory Jerry Moreno had as a human, the final moments of his life before someone made him Vampire. And there, Vincent found what he’d begun to suspect, but hadn’t wanted to believe. Because the master vampire who’d ambushed Jerry Moreno on a dark street in Cancun, who’d bled him dry and turned him without so much as a conversation, was none other than Enrique himself.
Enrique was Lord of Mexico. He could make as many new vamps as he wanted. Vincent wasn’t even surprised that Enrique had killed Moreno solely for that purpose. Vincent wouldn’t have done it, but it wasn’t that uncommon, especially among the older vampires. But the outrage was what Enrique had done next, something Vincent had never heard of happening before. Alessio Camarillo had been there with Enrique when Moreno woke to his first night as a vampire. The very first words Enrique had spoken to his new child, words imbued with the power he had as Moreno’s Sire, had been an order for the young vampire to obey and protect Camarillo. He’d told him the Mexican drug lord was his master. And that was that. Camarillo had taken Moreno to his compound, and there he’d lived ever since. Treated like a dog, tortured when he did wrong, rewarded with a miniscule ration of blood when he did well. He was never given the blood he needed, never enough to permit him to think for himself, because that might lead him to question his existence.
And God-damned Enrique had known about it the whole time.
Vincent slipped slowly out of Jerry Moreno’s memories, step by step, exquisitely careful not to cause any injury or pain. The kid had suffered enough. He didn’t need Vincent mucking up his brain.
Vincent came back to himself between one eye blink and the next. Back to the stifling concrete hole that was Jerry Moreno’s prison. But not for long.
“Lana?” he said without turning.
“I’m here. What’s the plan?”