Allie acknowledged absently, her mind on when she’d heard the name of Stella’s sire. It must have been when she’d first told her the story, of course. She made herself remember the room they’d been sitting in, and tried to imagine she was back there with Stella telling her what had happened to her. After a moment, she frowned and muttered, “I remember his name started with an A like mine and it was strange. I’d never heard it before. It sounded like amazon, but wasn’t amazon. It was Ackermon, or Addabon or—”
“Abaddon,” Lucian growled.
Allie’s eyes popped open. “That’s it!”
“Dear God,” Mortimer said quietly, and then glanced to Lucian. “Basha and Marcus are in San Francisco following up on a report of a possible sighting of him there.”
“Call them back to Toronto,” Lucian said grimly. “Basha needs to be here.”
Nodding, Mortimer started to rise, but Lucian waved him back to his seat. “After we finish here.” Turning to Allie then, he asked, “Stella lived in British Columbia when she was attacked?”
“Yes.” Allie nodded firmly. “Vancouver.”
“When she arrived on your doorstep the night she died, did she specify who had found her? Did she mentioned seeing Abaddon himself there in Calgary?”
Allie shook her head. “She just said, ‘They’ve found me.’”
“So Abaddon himself could still be in Vancouver,” Mortimer said slowly. “He might just be sending crews out, first after Stella and the boy, and now after Allie and the boy.”
Lucian shook his head firmly. “He will want the boy too much. He would not wait behind in Vancouver and depend on clumsy new turns to find him.”
“But why would Abaddon want Liam so badly?” Tricia asked with confusion.
“He wants to create another Leonius,” Lucian said with grim certainty. “He spent his entire life playing puppet master first to Leonius and then to his son. With them gone . . .” Lucian’s mouth firmed out. “This would be a perfect opportunity for him. The chance to get his hands on another child to corrupt and twist into a third Leonius.”
“But both Leonius and his son were no-fangers,” Sam pointed out. “That’s why they were crazy. Liam is an immortal. He won’t be insane like Leo and his father and likely to do the things they were willing and even eager to do under Abaddon’s tutelage.”
“What is a no-fanger?” Allie asked with confusion, but might as well have saved her breath. No one answered her; instead, Lucian responded to Sam’s comment.
“You do not think that if Abaddon got his hands on Liam young enough he could twist the boy’s mind?” Lucian asked dryly. “From what we have heard, Stella was a perfectly normal young woman, yet look at how she changed after her encounter with him.”
“Yes, but that was like a temporary madness from the turn,” Sam argued. “And Liam is already immortal.”
“It was not being turned that drove Stella to do the things she did,” Magnus said quietly. “It was the manner of the turn. The way their captors waited until the need for blood forced her and her husband awake and then tossed in bloodied victims to be rent apart.”
“Yes, but Liam is already an immortal,” she repeated. “He could not do that to him.”
“Not as part of a turn,” Magnus agreed. “But he could just lock him up without blood for days or weeks, wait until he is in desperate need and mad with blood lust, and then throw in victims who have been cut up so they reek of it.” He paused briefly and then shrugged. “Combine that with a few other tricks and treats and you would either have another Leonius, or the boy would end up dead and Abaddon would look for another victim to try to turn into his next Leonius.”
Lucian grunted in agreement and then turned back to Allie. “Did any of the rogues you have spotted the last four years fit Stella’s description of Abaddon?”
Allie scowled at him briefly, still wanting to know what a no-fanger was, and just what they were talking about; but knowing she wasn’t going to get any answers just now, she finally shook her head. “Stella said he looked like an accountant, unremarkable. Not one of the vampires I’ve seen has looked like an accountant. They’ve been shabby-looking, with grungy clothes, and either bald, or with hair overlong or just plain long. Even so, they’ve all been gorgeous, not unremarkable.”
“Gorgeous?” Sam asked with surprise, and then glanced around as she commented, “I would think he’d concentrate more on size