his own VR program. Hadn’t he felt himself doing that as he whooshed to consciousness? But where had the compulsion come from? Some weird instinct to go on existing in some form, any form? He couldn’t grasp that bit. It had just happened.
Adam rubbed his forehead tiredly. He’d things to do. Important things, only he couldn’t quite work out what they were. He had to talk to Dale. And if he could talk to JK this way, surely it wasn’t impossible to contact his partner the same way.
He reached for the mouse again and found Dale’s computer quicker than a shot. In fact, he even found the security cameras. They weren’t switched on, but again that didn’t seem to matter.
From the security camera focused on the window, and from the webcam built into Dale’s laptop, he got a double view of his friend sitting on the sofa of the huge sitting room downstairs, one of his laptops on the low glass table in front of him. Petra would tell him off for scratching it. Except she wasn’t there.
Dale looked harassed, as if he wasn’t sleeping well. Difficulties with the new system, maybe. How far had he been able to take it in five months? So much Adam needed to know…
Adam connected into Dale’s open chat program, and from the lab typed, “Fancy a pint?”
Which had an unexpectedly dramatic effect. Dale dropped the mouse on the floor and leapt to his feet. At the same time, the curtains whooshed high into the air; Dale’s hair seemed literally to stand on end; and the laptop flew onto the floor as if an unseen hand had picked it up and hurled it.
Dale clutched his head in both hands. “Stop it, Adam!” he yelled. “Just fucking stop it!”
****
In Edinburgh’s dark Old Town, the vampire Blair leapt off the tenement roof, landed in the back court, and yanked the fledgling off his female victim before hurling him into the wall with enough force to have killed a human. As it was, he hoped it gave the stupid little shite a big headache.
Ignoring the third vampire who stood uncertainly in the shadows, Blair caught the terrified gaze of the victim and hooked her. Slowly, the fear faded from her eyes as her mind adjusted to the new memory he was installing there: a foiled attack and no harm done. Still holding her mesmerised gaze, Blair licked his forefinger and pressed it to the ugly wounds in her throat. But the clumsy fledgling had made a mess, and Blair, driving down his own hunger, had to use his tongue to repair the damage. As it was, the girl would be pretty weak for a couple of days, so he planted the possibility of flu in her head and sent her on her way.
By that time, the fledgling, Connor, was staggering to his feet, clutching his head.
“What the fuck was that for?” he raged.
Blair forced open Connor’s reluctant telepathic pathways. “If you don’t know that,” he told him coldly, “I might as well kill you now.”
Jason, the third vampire, emerged from the shadows, looking anxious as he always did.
“I’ve got to feed,” Connor whined. “Even you do that!”
“You were killing her, you moron. I’ve seen wild dogs with better table manners than you. You took too much, and you hurt her. How did you expect her to forget that?”
Connor laughed, an act of foolish bravado, because before he could even notice the movement, Blair’s hand was squeezing his throat. “You didn’t, did you?” Blair said softly. “You don’t care. Better start caring, then, because the next time I witness anything like that—and, I’m watching, Connor, never doubt that—I’ll kill you without a second thought. No pause, no discussion. Your imbecility endangers all of us, and I won’t allow it.”
Blair shook him like a rat and threw him from him once more. Connor’s defiance needed to be dealt with, but even so, Blair was aware his irritation was out of proportion. Because he almost hadn’t noticed. His mind had been too much on his own problems, on Sera, on the shadow he was sure he knew. Otherwise, he’d have noticed earlier that Connor was going too far and stepped in before he’d taken so much blood from the girl.
Connor’s slipup was not an unusual one in fledglings, but right now, with so many of the wretched creatures still skulking in Edinburgh since last year’s fiasco, they couldn’t afford to allow any to pass, and keeping track of them all