Sirens screamed as police arrived. She smelled fast-food grease from somewhere nearby. Across the street, four men emerged from a black van. They wore suits and long dark coats, and they strode very quickly toward the building she’d just exited. One glanced her way, but she quickly averted her eyes and kept on walking. The wind swept a playbill over her feet and on down the sidewalk, and air brakes whooshed in the distance. She kept going.
Guilt rose up to nip at her heels. She was a coward for running away. Surely she ought to seek out a police officer, and tell him what she had seen and heard.
But everything in her told her to do just the opposite. So that was what she did. Running away, saving herself while others died—that was she did best, after all.
And yet it didn’t work out quite that way for her this time. From behind her, Lucy heard a voice say, “Hold it right there, lady.” And somehow she knew he was addressing her.
Her feet obeyed. But her heart raced even faster. The fight-or-flight impulse was coming down with all its weight on the “flight” side of the coin. And every cell in her body was already in motion, pushing her, making it almost impossible to stand still.
“Are you Professor Lanfair?” the man asked. He was one of those men in black she’d spotted earlier. She could see his warped reflection in the back of a chrome mirror, affixed to the side of a hot little sports car she wished she could jump into and drive away.
“I’m afraid you’re going to have to come with me, ma’am.”
No, I don’t think I am.
Her brain argued, told her to just calm down, take a breath and cooperate. The guy was official in some way, right?
And then he started toward her. His footsteps on the wet sidewalk were like a starter’s pistol. And they had the same effect on her. She burst into motion like a racehorse when the gate flies open, but in three strides she felt an impact in the center of her back. The force sent her falling, as if she’d been slammed by a speeding truck. She was already colliding with the sidewalk by the time she actually heard the gunshot.
The pain of it came last, like a red-hot poker had been driven right through her spine and out through her sternum. Her bag went skidding along the sidewalk, into the alley, everything flying out of it in a hundred directions.
Shot. My God, I’ve been shot. I’ve been shot, I’ve been shot.
She lay there, facedown and shocked beyond thought, in a warm and spreading pool of her own blood. See? A voice in her head whispered. I told you not to run.
3
James took off the lab coat in the car and was wishing he had something besides the white scrubs and cross-trainers he was still wearing when his sister pulled the Thunderbird to a stop in a convenient spot she’d no doubt had some part in orchestrating. Her mind was far more powerful than his. He could read thoughts and impose his will on mortals, too, but she made him look like a rank amateur in both areas.
Feeding on human blood enhanced the vampiric powers they’d been born with. Or so she kept telling him. He hadn’t imbibed enough himself to know. Nor would he—ever.
Brigit stopped the car abruptly. “Here we are. And we’re late, just as I feared.” She looked at her watch again while she got out on the traffic side and hurried around to the busy Manhattan sidewalk. There was a lighted marquee above the entrance to Studio Three, but Brigit was moving too fast for James to spend any time reading it if he hoped to keep up with her.
She got to the door, where a man in a dark suit said, “I’m sorry, ma’am, the taping is already underway. You’ll have to wait for a break to go inside. May I see your tickets?”
Brigit smiled her sweetest smile and beamed her ice-blue eyes at the man. At first he reacted just as any male would, with pure sexual interest, but then it went further. His eyes began to glaze over. His smile died, and his entire face went lax. Expressionless. He opened the door and stepped aside to let them pass.
“Nice guy,” she said. “Strong, silent type.”
“Yeah.” James didn’t hide the disapproval in his tone. It was wrong to manipulate human minds