.Chapter One .

Albuquerque, New Mexico

July 20th, 2009

Tess sat in the mansion's den with her notes and printouts scattered across the low table in front of her. The filtered sunlight shone across the room in pale rays. She"d been trying to narrow down information on the new vamp for months and still come up with almost nothing useful. He was a soldier, with several nice tattoos. She"d thought she might be able to track those but came up empty.

He wasn't their primary concern. Not yet anyway. But when she had time, she continued to try because wouldn't it be nice to be ahead of the bad guys at least once?

They hadn"t had any recent leads on their current hunt either, which was good news since all their clues had come in the way of buildings full of dead bodies. Yeah, no news was definitely good news on that front. "Father Time" as they"d been calling him was laying low for now but surely, he"d pop up again to try and make more vampire companions. Each of his kill sites had included at least one attempt to convert a victim into a vampire which had mostly failed.

Except for Joseph, who they"d managed to rescue and bring back to the agency for recovery. Was that even the right word? Joseph wouldn"t ever recover since he"d been killed. True he didn"t stay dead, but there didn"t seem to be any way to turn him back into a human. But at least he was becoming more functional. He"d been helping to take care of the agency home for the last few weeks. It might be a different future than the young guy had been picturing, but slowly he was adapting to his new lifestyle.

It was kind of nice having another computer savvy individual around. The kid could even almost hold his own playing Call of Duty.

And then Zeven and Harley moved in as well. And now they had a little one on the way. Harley wasn"t due just yet, but she was big and growing fast.

It was a little strange. Before she"d moved into the huge Victorian home, it had only been Quinn and Deven. The Division Eight agency worked out of the same place they lived. Since it was often a twenty-four seven kind of job, the set up just made sense. But the house had become much more than just a place to sleep. It had become her home. And now with the others moving in... She'd thought it would bother her, that she"d feel like she was losing her place in the small team. Instead, she"d felt like they were all a growing family.

She refocused on the scattered papers. This was her job in the agency. She did the intel gathering and pieced together the story so that the guys could go in and stop the bad guys. But there weren"t enough pieces on either case to put together a plan of action. Which meant she was the one failing the team. They were all dead in the water until she could catch a break and find a lead.

"Father Time" hadn"t struck in over eight months. Maybe he was satisfied with his new family and didn"t feel the need to create more new vampire children. Or maybe he was just getting better at hiding his crime scenes.

If... the soldier was a child of "Father Time"...

The tingle shooting down her spine confirmed her suspicion. She didn"t have time to get her phone out and prep it. The vision slammed through her mind like it had been shot from a bow. And like an arrow wound the flashing images ripped a groan from her.

"Los Angeles." He"s back. Home from Afghanistan. He's still human.

She leaned over the low table and scribbled out every impression she had. The intensity was too much. Head throbbing. She kept her eyes pinched tightly closed as much as possible. On and on... The airport. the cab. Phone calls to family. They were at a bar. He and his mates were drinking. They"d survived and made it back. Toasting each other. Toasting their families. Toasting those they"d lost.

Then the swirling montage changed. Flashing lights and gunfire. A wild one-sided gunfight broken up by overwhelming darkness. And so much blood. And dead bodies.

Only one of the men was still standing. James Bishop.

Now she had a name.

The vision grew fuzzy and faded, but when she forced her eyes open the room was damn blurry, too. Her sluggish, weak body sagged to one side against the sofa arm. She was pretty sure she had written down all the important details. Still, she reviewed them over and over so she would remember even if she did pass out, which was starting to look inevitable.

But just as her view of the room narrowed down to a single spot of the lace covered table, she heard footsteps.

Quinn knelt in front of her and shifted her weight upright once more. After a couple pats to her cheeks, she was able to focus on his face.

"Theresa, are you okay? What happened?"

"I"m okay." She tried to force the words out but wasn"t sure if he heard them or not.

"Rest for a moment. I"ll be right back. He propped her against the back of the sofa. Before she could do more than blink a couple times, Quinn returned. "Here, sip on this slowly." He held up a glass to her lips.

She let him tip the glass enough to trickle apple juice into her mouth. The cool sweet liquid was very refreshing. After a few swallows she was able to hold her head up. He added something to the glass and held it up once more. The spiked drink tasted more like whiskey than juice. After a few more sips her vision cleared and she was able to hold the glass.

"Feeling better?"

"Yeah." She was feeling better. The stress from the visions might have been increasing but the headache and dizzy spell passed quickly.

"Was it another vision?" He sat close enough that she could smell his slightly spicy scent. The smell was subtle but focusing on it helped her head clear.

She nodded even though the answer was obvious.

He frowned at her, and she was pretty sure he was thinking the same thing as she was. "The visions have become more painful, haven"t they?"

"Yeah, but it's not too bad."

"The juice should help." He glanced around the room, his gaze pausing on her cellular phone sitting on the table. "Did your new program not help enough?"

Other than the pounding headache she was mostly back to normal already. "I didn"t have time to use it. Wasn"t even trying to see a vision, not yet anyhow. This one kind of sucker punched me."

He picked up the notepad that she"d been dumping the vision onto. He silently studied her almost illegible scribbles for a long while. She didn"t remember turning the pages but he flipped through three different sheets so she must have.

"It should help. Which makes a little headache worth it."

He frowned at her. "Although I am glad to have the information... It will surely help. But I don"t want you to ever put yourself in danger."

The look in his eyes was all serious but she had to wonder how much of it was forced. Of course, she knew Quinn cared about them. He made that obvious all the time. But he was also dedicated to the job. What they did was important. When they couldn"t stop their targets, people died. She"d seen that aftermath more than once.

* * *

Quinn tried to decipher the crammed page full of notes. He"d seen her process before, so he wasn"t surprised by the random expression of the visions. She scribbled everything she could and sometimes the parts that didn"t seem important turned out to be the most valuable.

"Theresa, this was quite a detailed vision, wasn"t it."

"Yeah."

Along one side of the page was the name, James Bishop. He"d never heard the name before. Sorting through the other details he was able to piece together some of the story. It was all far more specific than the other visions she"d been trying to force. "Did you get any idea of when this event might happen?"

"I think it already happened."

Another glance at the second page. "In Los Angeles?"

"Yes, a bar relatively near LAX. Probably one known to be favorable to military personnel."

"He"s a Navy Seal?"

She nodded, then frowned and pressed her fingers to her left temple.

"Just sit still with your eyes closed."

"I"m okay."

There wasn"t much point in arguing with her. She obviously wasn"t but she was a strong girl and soon enough would be. "Let me review what I can from your notes. You can add anything I miss."

"Sure."

"A seal team returned from active duty and were ambushed in a small pub. Lt. Bishop was the only one to be reborn as a vampire. Could you tell how many other casualties there were?"

"More than a couple."

An unclear number of victims. But likely enough that it would be trackable using other forms of technology. He wouldn"t need to ask her to push herself in order to locate the scene. "Could you tell me about when this happened?"

"It was dark. Probably... no, I"m sure the vision was very recent. It was… fresh. There's no way it would have been from last night. Must have happened very early this morning."

He tried to imagine the timeline. Transitions often took hours to complete. And the sun had only been up for about a couple hours. Had there really been enough time for the murders and the resurrection?

"Ah..." She buckled over, holding onto her knees. "There's more. It's still happening. Paper. Pen. Now."

He flipped to a fresh page and pushed the pen into her hand and braced the notepad on his knee beside her.

Her hand raced over the paper, scribbling tiny words and scrawling images. Layered one on top of the other. The page quickly filled up. The words told a story of pain, agony and suffering. Not of the flesh but of a soul being destroyed. The despair of his death. The panic as he escaped. And the hunger… It was blinding and desperate.

"He's on the run. Staying in the shadows. Looking for… prey. Two in an alley. Forced through a door." Theresa whimpered.

The pen was still scratching over the paper. And the shapes that formed... the damning image of black butterflies racing through the shadowed streets of the city. Why did it have to be butterflies?

The pen finally stilled, and then fell to the floor. Theresa sagged back onto the sofa with a groan. "That"s it. He was turned. I hope I never have to witness that again."

"Did he feed?"

"Yeah, he killed two men." Her body didn"t move, but she held out one hand until he clasped it. That grip that he expected to be weak was tight and fierce. "Tell me about the butterflies."

He froze. An icy knife sliding into his cold chest. He wasn"t ready to talk about his past. But that was what she was asking. It had been too much to hope that he could avoid sharing the details. This case had been leaking hints that it was tied to him all along. Hiding any of it might endanger his team. Revealing his shameful youth might be unavoidable.

And even that wasn"t the worst of it. He"d have to talk about his siblings. Was he ready to do that? If he didn"t tell his team... his family about those other two, it might put them in greater danger. Then again, if they were involved it would almost certainly end badly for someone.

"Quinn?"

That one word told him that she already knew some of his secrets. He wanted to laugh. Had he really believed he could hide the truth from the girl just because she was young? It had been a foolish hope.

Her fingers squeezed over his. A comfort and encouragement.

"The demon that turned me into a vampire... she turned two of my friends at the same time. The three of us began a new life together with our mistress. She was fond of butterflies, claiming that their transformation was just like ours." He took a slow breath to keep focused on the present. Once he began thinking about the past it was far too easy to spend days remembering those lost times. "We were young and made many mistakes. Eventually we had to leave France. My brother and sister both came with me to America. Together we decided to build the kinds of lives that would let us be happy."

"Could it be one of them?"

He"d been considering that exact question for a while now. Ever since Joseph had mentioned seeing butterflies when he"d been attacked. But he hated to think that the attacks were connected to either of them. "Considering the number of successful transitions, I believe we have to consider it a real possibility. I"ve been looking into it. I have not been able to locate Georgie, but Bella resides near Los Angeles. Her proximity to this attack is concerning. I will take the boys to investigate the scene of the attack."

"Okay. Should I go with you?"

His first instinct was to say no. Theresa hadn't had any true field experience yet, but this probably wasn't the right time for her to start. "I"ll consider it."

While you're considering it, how about I get more information about your brother and see if I can help locate him? Hopefully finding him will help us eliminate him as a suspect."

But what if it didn't clear him, but only confirmed that one of his dearest family members had become a murderer?