Darkness Rises(76)

Sean nodded. He had a lot of questions.
“I have a few questions myself,” Krysta said.
“I’ll answer them while we hunt,” Étienne promised.
He had been surprisingly amiable toward Sean, considering Sean had woken him yesterday by pressing a blade to his throat.
“She’s your sister. You’d die to protect her. I understand that,” Étienne had said.
Sean had doubted that until he had encountered Étienne’s sister Lisette. According to Cam, Lisette’s husband had been turned, but had hidden it from her until the insanity had kicked in. Then he had attacked her and transformed her against her will. Étienne and Richart had slain her husband and offered her their blood in an attempt to hide her condition from everyone else, not knowing that frequent exposure to the virus through bites would infect them as well. So for two hundred years, Lisette had been burdened with the knowledge that she had accidentally transformed her brothers.
And Étienne had never once held it against her, insisting he would have done nothing different had they known beforehand what it would cost him. Richart, too.
So Sean supposed they did have that in common. He would give his life to save Krysta. Étienne would give his life to save Lisette . . . and Krysta, which made it damned hard for Sean to continue resisting her involvement with the immortal.
“All right,” Cam said, drawing a set of keys from his back pocket and heading for the door. “We’re out. Call me if you need me.”
Étienne nodded.
Krysta waved with a smile.
The trip to the network took about forty-five minutes. Étienne lived way out in the boonies, distanced from towns and neighbors alike.
Sean studied the exterior of the building as Cam pulled into the parking lot occupied by more vehicles than Sean would’ve expected to see at this hour.
It was a little anticlimactic. Krysta had mentioned several times the power Chris Reordon, the leader of the East Coast division of the network, wielded. Sean would’ve thought the place would look a little more . . . remarkable.
Cam laughed as he shut off the engine and opened his door. “I know. Bland as hell, right?”
“Yeah.” Sean exited the car.
“That was deliberate. Chris wanted something that wouldn’t interest anyone who happened upon it because they took a wrong turn.”
Then he had succeeded. Surrounded by thick evergreens on all sides, it had been built far from strip malls, business districts, and residential neighborhoods. The one-story concrete structure looked aged and worn and reminded him of a storage facility for a package delivery service.
“Is this the front or the back?” he asked as he followed Cam to a plain wooden door.
“Back. There really isn’t much of a difference, though.”
The plain wooden door wasn’t so plain, Cam soon discovered. The inside was lined with steel and was as thick and heavy as the door of a bank vault. As Cam closed the door behind them, Sean found himself in a glass vestibule with a locked door and a view of a lobby.
Sean gave the glass an experimental rap with his knuckles. “I’m going to go out on a limb and guess this is bulletproof glass.”
“The glass in the previous network headquarters building was bulletproof. This stuff will stop a fucking missile.”#p#分页标题#e#
The lobby was a modern collection of grays that comprised a U-shaped arrangement of comfortable-looking chairs. Large Peace Lilies on side tables injected what otherwise would have been a somewhat cold room with warmth and color.
Half a dozen guards manned a granite-topped security desk opposite the locked door. A good twenty more stood sentry beside elevators behind the desk. Rather than wearing traditional security guard uniforms, they all bore the standard black hunting garb of a Second.
And they were very heavily armed.
Cam waited while one of the guards at the desk rose and approached the door. He then held up an ID card.
“Hey, Cam,” the guard said, withdrawing some kind of laser scanner from a pocket on his belt.
“John. How’s the evening been?”
“Nice and quiet.” He scanned the card through the glass, then tucked away the scanner. “Clear,” he said over his shoulder.
A buzz sounded.
Cam grabbed the door handle and opened the door.
“Who’s your friend? Chris said you’d be bringing a visitor, but didn’t go into detail.”
“This is Sean Linz. Sean, John Wendleck.”
They shook hands.
Sean followed Cam and John toward the elevators.
“Sean and his sister Krysta are vampire hunters,” Cam mentioned.
John tilted his head to one side. “Don’t we all pretty much qualify as vampire hunters?”
“Yes, but they’ve been doing it on their own with no knowledge of our existence for the past six years. And by doing it on their own, I mean actively seeking out vampires, luring them into traps, and killing them.”