“No. The clerk on duty wanted identification, but I don’t have any. There was never a need for anything like that when I was living in the Darkhaven.”
Tegan fanned the yellowed pages of the book, seeing more than one reference to a family called Odolf. The name wasn’t familiar, but he was willing to bet it was Breed. And most of the entries were just repetitions of some kind of poem or verse. What would Marek want with an obscure chronicle like this one? There had to be a reason.
“Did you give the delivery station any information that might identify you at all?” he asked Elise.
“No. I, um…I traded for it. The clerk agreed to give the box to me in exchange for Camden’s iPod.”
Tegan glanced up at her, realizing just now that she’d made the trip back to her apartment without the aid of music to block her talent. No wonder she had seemed out of it when she came in. But not anymore. If she felt any lingering discomfort, she didn’t let it show. Elise leaned forward to inspect the book, focused wholly on the task at hand with the same interest as him, her mind totally engaged.
“Do you think the book might be important?” she asked him, her eyes scanning the page that lay open on the counter. “What could it mean to the Rogues?”
“I don’t know. But it sure as hell means something to the one leading them.”
“He’s not a stranger to you, is he.”
Tegan thought about denying it, but allowed a vague shake of his head. “No, he isn’t a stranger. I know him. His name is Marek. He’s Lucan’s elder brother.”
“A warrior?”
“At one time he was. Lucan and I both rode into many battles with Marek at our side. We trusted him with our lives and would have given our own for him.”
“And now?”
“Now Marek has proven himself to be a traitor and a murderer. He’s our enemy—not only the Order’s, but all of the Breed’s as well. They just don’t know it yet. With any luck, we’ll take him out before he has a chance to make whatever move it is he’s been planning.”
“What if the Order fails?”
Tegan turned a hard stare on her. “Pray we don’t.”
In the answering silence, he flipped through more of the journal pages. Marek wanted the book for some reason, so there had to be a clue of some sort secreted in the damn thing somewhere.
“Wait a second. Go back,” Elise said suddenly. “Is that a glyph?”
Tegan had noticed it at the same time. He turned to the small symbol scribbled onto one of the pages near the back of the slim volume. The pattern of interlocking geometric arches and flourishes might have appeared merely decorative to an untrained eye, but Elise was right. They were dermaglyphic symbols.
“Shit,” Tegan muttered, staring at what he knew to be the mark of a very old Breed line. It didn’t belong to anyone called Odolf, but to those of another Breed name. One that had lived—and died out completely—a long time ago.
So what reason could Marek have for digging up the ancient past?
Screams carried into the drawing room of an opulent Berkshires estate, the howls of anguish emanating down from a windowed attic room on the third floor of the manor house. The chamber boasted a wraparound wall of windows with unobstructed views of the wooded valley below.
No doubt the scenery was breathtaking, bathed in the day’s last searing rays of sunlight.
The vampire being held upstairs by Minion guards certainly sounded impressed. He’d been treated to a front row seat of the UV spectacle for the past twenty-seven minutes and counting. More screams poured down the central staircase, agony giving way to the weariness of sobs.
With a bored sigh, Marek rose from a fine Louis XVI wing chair and crossed the room to the double doors of his dimly lit private suite. Other than the attic interrogation room, the rest of the mansion’s windows were shaded for the day by sun-blocking electronic blinds.
Marek moved freely into the hall outside and summoned one of his Minion attendants who waited to serve him. At Marek’s nod, the human dashed up the staircase to instruct the others that their Master was on the way and to ensure the windows were covered for his arrival.
It took only a moment for the captive vampire’s bleating to dry up. Marek climbed the wide marble steps, up and around to the second floor, then up and around again, to the smaller flight of stairs that rose to the attic. As he progressed, fury kindled to life in him again.
This was only one of several frustratingly exhaustive interrogations of the vampire in his custody the past couple of weeks. Torture was amusing, but rarely effective.
There was little amusing about the day’s developments back in Boston. The Minion courier dispatched to obtain an important overnight delivery for him had instead turned up at the city morgue—a John Doe stabbing victim, according to Marek’s contact in the coroner’s office. As he was killed in broad daylight, that ruled out the Order or any other Breed intervention, but Marek still had his suspicions.