image, he thought, as she led the way into the pitch-dark basement and yet another hidden room that he knew had once been the laboratory of vampire scientist Eric Marquand. But then something caught hold of his attention. A scent, and a sense, too. Death. There was death here.
He stood motionless, straining his eyes in the darkness. “My night vision isn’t as good as yours, Rhiannon, but I don’t like what I’m sensing down here.”
A light flared, but not from a match. The candles on a nearby stand came to life, the wicks smoldering and then bursting into flame one by one under the power of Rhiannon’s intense stare.
Not a vampiric skill, that little trick. That bit was hers alone. The daughter of a Pharaoh and a high priestess of Isis, “Rianikki” knew secrets and possessed powers none of them would ever equal—a fact she wasn’t likely to let anyone forget.
“Your first guinea pig awaits you,” she said softly, lifting the candelabra and moving toward a table in the center of the room.
The flickering yellow light fell upon a dead woman, her body still and pale and wet. He lowered his head, closing his eyes against the sight. “Shit, Rhiannon, what have you done?”
“Oh, please. I didn’t kill her. In fact, knowing your fondness for the weaker race, I asked Roland to find our first candidate.”
“Roland brought her here?” James’s reluctance lifted a little. Rhiannon’s mate wasn’t as ruthless or cruel as she was. He was, in fact, calm, logical and kind.
“Yes, and I’ve sent him out to bring more. As for this one…” She nodded at the corpse. “She’s thirty-three, married, a mother of two. Her car skidded off the road into an isolated lake a little over a day ago. Roland pulled her body out only hours ago, after I told him we needed a freshly dead mortal for your experiments.”
James stared at the woman. Her hair had dried in tangles, and there was mud caking on her still damp clothes. But her skin was blue. She was clearly dead and far beyond saving.
“Well?” Rhiannon asked. “Go on, do that voodoo that you do so well. We haven’t got all night.”
He dragged his eyes away from the dead mother. “Rhiannon, I can’t.”
“Oh, please. You can. You used to run along the beach picking up dead starfish and healing them before tossing them back into the waves. When you were three, you did this.”
“Newly dead. And starfish are not human beings. It’s not…it’s not the same.”
“How is it different?”
“What if she’s…you know…in heaven, or—”
“If she’s in heaven, J.W., then she will return to heaven again in short order. The human lifetime is little more than the flash of a firefly in length. You won’t be taking that from her, just rearranging her schedule a bit. Think of her husband, her children, if that helps ease your ridiculously overdeveloped sense of morality.”
“No, Rhiannon, that would be playing God.” He looked at the dead woman again, shaking his head.
“That’s what I said at first,” said a deep voice from behind them.
James turned, spotting Roland standing there in his traditional getup. He was the only vampire James had ever known who actually wore a black cape and a dark suit.
“I thought you’d gone for more bodies,” Rhiannon chided, but gently, lovingly.
“I prefer to see how this goes first.” He nodded. “And to say a proper hello to you, James.”
James moved toward the man, who was centuries older, but didn’t look a day over thirty and never would. “I’m sorry I didn’t greet you properly upstairs,” James said. “I was distracted.”
“I could see that.” The two embraced, Roland hugging hard and clapping James on the back. “It’s been too long, J.W.”
“It has. And I’m sorry.”
Roland released him. “No apologies. We each have our own path to walk. But I’m glad you’re here now. We need you, J.W. And as distasteful as this task seems, it is my belief that you have to do it. I’m convinced that your woman’s interpretation of that Sumerian prophecy is correct, even more so than I was before.”
“She’s not my woman.” James lowered his head, feeling his face heat and wondering why. “She hates me at the moment, and I don’t particularly blame her.”
Roland opened his mouth, closed it again. “That’s beside the point. The tablet she translated predicts that the world of men will find out about us—and that has happened. It predicts war breaking out—and that, too, is unfolding as we speak. And then it predicts