Epilogue - Silas

EPILOGUE - SILAS

Igrinned and bared my fangs at the human lackey before me. Inhuman, lethal, cold as death itself. Seeing a vampire about to eat you, was enough to scare most men.

Not this guy.

I’d blame that on the long and storied history of vampires in New Orleans. Not that we frequented here, but don’t tell all the authors who wanted to interview us.

Fine. He might think he wasn’t scared of me. But he would be. One calculated punch to the nose to incapacitate him but not kill, coming up. I’d drag him into the field office for questioning. Then he’d know real fear. Unless of course he didn’t fess up. Then he’d know death on a much more intimate basis.

I clenched my hand prepared to knock him down, but he was ready, and his fist came straight for my face. I had to duck, narrowly avoiding his jab. Okay, not an ordinary human then. That was an interesting clue in the case.

The breeze from his punch mussed my hair as I slid beneath the blow. The bastard was fast, but I was faster. It’s bad enough that this traitor was involved in a plot to kill His Majesty the King but making me look anything less than absolutely fucking dapper was a crime against women I had yet to woo everywhere.

It would be so easy to simply tear his throat out, drink from him and know his thoughts, then kill him. But I was not my father. I snarled, and swung around in a circle, faster than the human eye should be able to track and moved to sweep his legs out from underneath him.

Bad guy lackey smirked and leapt into the air, clearing my attempt to knock him down by several inches. Ballocks. He was either a supernatural masking his true form or a human somehow altered and trained specifically to engage in combat with monsters like me. Either way, this fight just got much more fun.

I gave him the universal come at me hand gesture and then lunged, reaching for his throat. As quick as thought, he was gone, tearing up and out of the dirty, wet alley we fought in and toward the busy Bacchanalia known as Bourbon Street.

The door to the underground gambling den behind me still stood ajar. I debated going back to get Gabriel. Just when I’d decided not to, he peered out from the rickety doorframe at me, in his usual mentor knows best way.

Gabriel gestured at the empty alley that showed the signs of my struggle with Nameless Lackey. “Are you going to get the goon or what, Silvanus?”

He tilted his head at me lazily, like we had all the time in the world for a lesson in spycraft.

I flipped him off, and muttered, “He’s heading into public, come on.”

Gabriel snorted, and I could practically hear his oncoming eyeroll. Not today, sir. I turned and sped up the alley after my prey. “Try to keep up, old man.”

The fact that I was almost a thousand years younger than him was my constant companion on our missions together and gave me all the fodder I needed to poke at his impending retirement.

Gabriel called me something very ungentlemanly, and I snorted at his taunt. I harassed him for being as old as the First Vampire himself, and he regularly gave me an earful for being nothing but a playboy.

It wasn’t my fault V wouldn’t allow any vampire under the age of a hundred to join Vampire Intelligence. What else was I supposed to do in the last ninety-nine years besides amass my fortune then spend it on all the delicious women I loved to love?

I’d become particularly good at both endeavors. I’d be even better at protecting the Crown. Well, maybe not as good as I was at wooing women to my bed and making them come until they didn’t know their names or mine.

I wove in and out of the pedestrians weaving about from bar to bar. It was a skill to do in a way that was both quick and yet unnoticeable, but this was what we trained for at the Castle. I slid between and amongst the mortals, catching little snippets of their conversations as I passed. Nameless Lackey raced ahead of me, and tingle of the frenzy that came only when in pursuit of prey zipped through my arteries and veins.

Damn if I didn’t love the chase.

My father’s own prey-chasing frenzies led to some of his greatest, most daring feats. Not that it would matter if I too leapt from a moving train to the bottom of Reichenbach Falls, covertly assassinated King Alexander of Greece, or famously escaped from the Nazis at Dresden.

I would never be him. Never as good, as fast, as powerful. As needed.

No, my service to King Charles was another story altogether. In my training for the agency, I had thus far rolled in the mud with the Baskervilles’ household dog, smoked one of Churchill’s cigars, and somehow ended up naked in the Tower of London wearing only the Crown Jewels on my--ahem--crown jewels.

Gabriel had photographic evidence of every last one. He liked to show those shots to me whenever he felt I was a bit too mouthy. So, basically weekly.

My first real case for the storied but secret Vampire Intelligence Agency was turning out to be a doozy.

The frenetic energy of the hunt rose in my veins, bubbling through me. I moved faster, slipping through the crowd after my quarry. My senses took over as the primal instinct increased, the thrill of pursuit making me more beast than man. The humans around us bled into nothing more than gray streaks in my vision. I saw only my prey.

I closed in and could smell the tang of fear in the man’s sweat. So, he was human. Interesting. His eyes flicked to me, widened for an instant, then he pushed himself to move faster. He shoveled his way through the foot traffic and then veered straight into a crowded club booming with earsplitting music.

Splendid. This was to be the site of my first agency sanctioned showdown. Even single-handedly foiling the plot to kill the King wasn’t going to be good enough to impress Gabriel or V, because public battles weren’t dignified enough to satisfy VIA’s sense of propriety.

Gabriel was an old school spy, but a modern vampire. The tuxedo, the gadget-filled car, the horde of women that he fed from, bedded, and then erased their memories. He was suave and somehow charming, even though I knew he was a cold-blooded monster, just like me.

I was young to his anciently old, inexperienced to his sophistication, fumbling and awkward, skating through training by the skin of my pointy teeth, to his total and complete debonaire professionalism. Yet I was the one carrying around the name of Silvanus, the legacy of the greatest hero the VIA has ever known.

Today was going to be my day, or rather night, damn it. I tracked down this lead all the way to America, set up the meet at the underground poker game, and now I was the one just minutes away from snatching this bad guy off the streets and interrogating the living daylights out of him. I’d make him spill everything about everyone he’d ever met, and I’d save the King.

Then I’d be the hero for a change, instead of always being the disappointing son of a gun.

I sensed Gabriel behind me, but he was slower than I was in my blood-frenzied state. I’d capture the baddie while he just watched and have the confession sucked out of this runt by the time Gabriel caught up to us. My lips curled in triumph, my fangs pressing into my bottom lip.

I’d have the confession already if he hadn’t run. The fact that he’d run, even though he could fight, meant he had some intel that would be devastating if caught. He’d fled into the crowded French Quarter streets in order to slow me. But the blood and battle lust were already in me, and I wasn’t going to settle for anything other than the hot wash of this villain’s blood washed down with a nice beignet and a cafe au lait. I could practically taste the accolades already, feel it singing in my veins.

Right as the man came within arm’s reach again, the scent of something even more enticing than blood and victory hit me square in the empty place inside where my absent soul gaped. I tried to shake it off, but in the blur of humanity, one individual stood out in full color. I lost control and slammed full body into the throng of dancing tourists.

“Woohoo, mosh pit!” Humans squealed and screamed around me, crashing into each other and me to the beat of the music.

I allowed them to throw themselves at me and I scanned the room for the human who’d snagged my attention away from my prey. No, not any human, a woman.

What the hell? Sure, I loved the pursuit of a beautiful woman and a tryst between the sheets. But never had it interfered with the hunt or especially my training for the agency. This had to be a ploy by whomever that lackey was working for.

And of course, now I’d lost sight of the prey. I pushed my way out of the circle of crashing dancers, opening my senses to find the trail again. My attention went immediately to a group of women gathered around a single high-top table in the far corner of the room. Even from here I could smell the delicious scent of their blood, hear the intense beating of their hearts.

None of them was her. The one whose color filled my black and white world.

At least one of them was involved in this conspiracy to distract me from the escaped lackey though. The same colors swirled around them. I approached the table, intent on using a bit of mind allure to interrogate them so they’d tell me who this mysterious woman was that they were working for.

The party-girl closest held a cupcake aloft and pointed it at me. “Ew, creep. Take your stalker vibes somewhere else.”

Wisps of the powerful spell swirled around her hand in sunshiny golds and yellows. The scent of dark chocolate wafted toward me. I didn’t even like sweets. Unless of course it was the sweet nectar of a lover’s blood. A coven of witches or perhaps succubae out looking for their own sex and blood temptations.

A second party-girl turned, also holding a cupcake with the same golden, sparkling wisps dripping from the treat. “Shush your face, he’s not a stalker, he’s too hot.”

The sweet spell swirled around her, wafting toward me. My fangs ached and my mouth watered, but not for any of these women. They were nothing more than mere humans. Good for a hot fling, or even a fun snack, but not dangerous, useful in this mission, or what the spell had me craving.

No, this was beyond any mere craving. My mouth went from watering to parched in the absence of the one thing that would fulfill this need. I snatched the cupcake from the starry-eyed woman nearest me and inhaled the delicious scent, pulling the bit of sunshine into my very soul. There had to be a clue in the magic that would lead me to the supernatural being attempting to thwart this mission.

The spell already had its hold on me, more exposure to it wouldn’t make a difference. Perhaps a taste would reveal information to guide me to its creator. Whoever had placed this distraction between me, and the lackey would be a much better hot lead.

I dipped my tongue into the decadent frosting, waiting for the sickly-sweet sugar to invade my tastebuds. Instead, the rich chocolate went straight to my head as if I was sucking on the most delicious of throats. I had to have more. In several bites, inhaled the cake, barely taking time to savor the flavors.

“Whoa,” the woman before me looked at her friends, all of them wide-eyed. “I was going to go all Karen on you for taking my expensive ass cupcake, but this is like food porn and actual porn at the same time. Wanna do that to me later? Or, like, right now?”

I grabbed her by the arm and pulled her to me and with my other hand snagged another cupcake from the next nearest woman. I shoved that one into my mouth too, not caring for manners or propriety. “Where did you get these? Who gave them to you?”

“Silvanus.” Gabriel sauntered across the room towards us, the dancers parting like a red sea of bodies doing his bidding. “You’ve got a bit of chocolate there.”

He pointed to my face and the front of my shirt, and the girl looking up at me like a scared but enamored chocolate-covered bunny caught in the trap of a seductive monster.

I released the slip of a thing and eyed both the crumbs I’d dribbled all over her, and the rest of the cupcakes on the table. There was no resisting. I grab another and another, one in each hand, shoved one into my mouth, still unsatisfied, then pointed at Gabriel. “Stand back. This is a powerful spell.”

Gabriel raised his phone and took a picture. “Is it? Looks like chocolate buttercream on a moist Victoria sponge with ganache drizzled over the top. I’m sure I saw that exact recipe on the finale of Bake-Off last week.”

“Do you not see the wisps of sunshine magic swirling around them? This is a trap, or a distraction to throw us off the scent.”

“All I see is you making a mess of both yourself and these lovely ladies.” He gave them a wink, and with it, a push into their minds that would make them forget they’d ever seen the two of us.” Excellent job, Silas. I’ll let HQ know we lost the trail.”

Bloody hell. I knew I was in trouble when he used my first name.

He was right. I’d lost the lackey. But there would be no convincing me that this wasn’t a break in the case. We were dealing with magically enhanced humans and a spell that had stopped me dead in my tracks. That was a hell of a lot more than we’d known before tonight.

The plot to assassinate the king on his upcoming visit to the United States was no mere human looking to become famous.

Fleming would probably be able to analyze the chocolate and the spell to come up with a preventative or antidote. I took one more cupcake from the table, leaving just one more in the box. Might as well take that one too. And the box.

“Look,” I held the box aloft showing Gabriel another clue as I sank my teeth into another cupcake. “A bold spellcaster to print their name on the container. We’ll track them down and interrogate them.”

The name of my new nemesis was now emblazoned on my mind. I was coming for the villain known as Winn-Dixie.

* * *

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