Page 3

H e was just a shadow, seated in a corner of the tavern, as far away from the fire as he could get. Even my eyesight might have mistaken him for the darkness cast by an overhanging beam, except for the occasional glimpse of a liquid eye. And for the skin ruffling sensation creeping its way up my spine.

I almost turned to go, but I needed the money. And this one was paying well—better than well. Besides, I’d worked for vampires before. They were, after all, the ones most concerned with revenants, the monsters created when a vampiric change went wrong.

That’s what a lot of them viewed me as: a mistake. To them, a dhampir, the physical result of the union between a vampire and a human, was just another misbegotten monster. So why not send a monster after a monster? It made an ironic sort of sense, and vampires loved irony. I loved money, and they paid well and then left me alone, despite vampire law requiring them to kill me. Because who knew when they might need me again?

And vampires did not love laws.

Especially ones as powerful as this one.

The skin ruffling sensation became worse as I threaded my way through the tables, although it was hard to concentrate on my possible employer. The crowd this evening was large and boisterous, but not for the usual reasons. Instead of drunken laughter, off-key singing and outrageous flirting with the barmaids, they were angry.

No, make that furious, I thought, as a fight broke out, causing me to have to sidestep.

A couple of English sailors were thrown at the fireplace, scattering sparks across the scarred, wooden floor when they landed. Another barely escaped a knife to his eye, only to immediately turn around and plunge a dagger into his attacker’s thigh. Then they and the group of Spaniards they’d been quarreling with tumbled out of the door, taking their fight into the muddy street beyond.

The bar was frequented by Spanish sailors, possibly because the taverna was owned by one of their countrymen, and news had just come in of a “cowardly, sneak attack” by the English pirate Drake on the blessed Armada as it took refuge in the port of Cadiz, where thirty-five Spanish ships had been sunk or captured.

Or so the Spanish viewed it. The English felt that the great privateer, Sir Francis Drake, was helping to protect their island from invasion by the filthy papist who ruled Spain, and the huge fleet he’d put together to depose their blessed Queen Elizabeth. So, it depended on your point of view.

My point of view was that I wished they’d bleed on something besides my new boots, and pushed an unconscious combatant aside before sliding onto a stool across from the shadow.

“Nice place you picked,” I said, noticing the heavy gold ring he wore, with some kind of family crest.

Expensive.

Good; I mentally upped my fee.

“Convenient,” he murmured, and slid me a glass of wine.

I slid it back. “Not thirsty.”

A lip, the only thing I could see under the hood that he hadn’t bothered to pull back, quirked. “It isn’t drugged.”

“Wouldn’t work if it was. Dhampir,” I reminded him.

“Then why not drink with me?”

“Had the wine here before.” Or what passed for it. But sailors weren’t picky. I was, and I didn’t drink bad wine if I had a choice.

“It is . . . somewhat pungent,” the vampire agreed, why I didn’t know. Some of them liked to chat before getting down to business. Too bad he’d picked a bar in the midst of a brawl.

“You have a job?” I said abruptly.

An eyebrow quirked over a golden eye. His power was up; I didn’t know why, but I didn’t like it. He was either calling it because he expected to have to use it, or because he was emotional, and neither spelled anything good for me.

And then I knew it didn’t, when a sailor staggered over from the fight and would have hit our table, but instead splayed against nothing at all. I had a split second to see the blood smear on thin air from his split lip, to see his slack, heavily bristled face smash against nothing, to see his bleary brown eye widen in surprise as he stared at us as if through a glass window. But there was no window, just a shield that I hadn’t even felt the vampire raise.

Which trapped me inside as much as it kept the sailor out!

I surged to my feet, but didn’t go anywhere, although that was due less to the shield than to the elegant, long fingered hand suddenly gripping my wrist. I hadn’t seen the vamp move, which was impossible! I was able to kill his kind because I saw everything.

But not tonight.

I just want to talk—

“Get out of my head!” I snapped, because that sentence had been silent. Yet I had heard it as easily as if he had spoken aloud. I didn’t like this one. He was too sneaky; too powerful. I jerked back—

And went nowhere. It was as if I’d been imprisoned by a statue made out of iron. Only I could bend iron in a pinch, but the creature’s deceptively slender hand held me easily.