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aboveground, but when daylight reigned, he was forced belowground.
    Vampires could walk in the sun. Ninety-five percent of them. But the rare ones who had descended from an angelic race could not, only because their bloodline had not been rejuvenated with their ancestors’ blood for millennia.
    Antonio was going to change that, for him, and for his entire tribe Anakim. He wanted the daylight, and he would not stop at anything until he had it.
    Behind him he was flanked by Bruce Westing and Stellan the Pale. Bruce was Anakim’s Fallen hunter, and Stellan’s expertise had uncovered half a dozen angel halos over the past year. As well, Bruce had secured the eight paintings lined along the north wall in the dungeon, each of them depicting a different Fallen angel, complete with sigil.
    Yet Antonio had no names to match to those sigils.
    â€œYou’re sure it was a Sinistari with the Fallen?” he asked as he entered his underground office. The cave walls were hung with medieval tapestries depicting scaled dragons and knights with bloody spears. “I thought you said he was with a female?”
    Bruce shoved his hands in his front jeans pocket. He and Stellan stopped before Antonio’s marble-topped desk. “It was a woman,” Bruce said, “and I’m pretty sure she was Sinistari. She was strong, as strong as the angel.”
    â€œBut Sinistari are male,” Antonio said. Though, honestly, he hadn’t a proper description for the demon breed, only that they exclusively hunted the Fallen. “And why wouldn’t she have slain the angel?”
    â€œStill missing a key ingredient,” Stellan offered.
    â€œThe muse,” Bruce said.
    Antonio rocked backward in the richly padded office chair and put up his feet on the desktop. He eyed the painting Bruce had carried in from the dungeon weeks earlier. It featured an angel fashioned from blue glass with a sigil impressed upon its abdomen. The name to match the angel—Juphiel—had come courtesy of Zaqiel, a Fallen Bruce had encountered months earlier. Antonio had summoned Juphiel two weeks ago. It surprised him the Sinistari had only now shown on the scene. Though certainly, if the Sinistari were slacking, that would make his efforts all the easier.
    â€œYou’ve been following Juphiel, Bruce?”
    â€œYes. He hasn’t run into his muse yet. Doesn’t seem as if he’s looking for her, actually. Spends a lot of time in nightclubs, and during the day he wanders the Louvre.”
    Bruce was not Anakim blood, thus, his ability to walk in daylight. Antonio trusted and needed him to be his eyes during the day.
    â€œStay on him.”
    â€œI will. You know I never lose a mark.”
    Bruce did like to go after the Fallen. Even though the angels were much stronger than a vampire, Bruce was wily and took pride in his daring. He was also warded to the hilt against angels and their associated ilk. Thanks to a blood grimoire, Antonio had all he needed to protect himself and his closest allies from the Fallen and Sinistari.
    â€œYou keep an eye on the Sinistari,” he said, glancing at Stellan. “She’s the greatest deterrent to our final goal.”
    Stellan nodded and turned to leave, always aware of when he was no longer needed.
    Bruce wasn’t so quick on the draw. He turned to study the painting of Juphiel. It had been painted using a computer,or so Bruce had explained to Antonio. Eden Campbell was the artist—as well as a muse. She was living with a former Sinistari now. Antonio kept her on his radar, but he didn’t want to approach her with a demon standing close by, former or not.
    â€œWhy are you lingering?”
    Bruce shot him a gape. “Er, sorry, monsieur. It’s just the Fallen. I don’t know that he is the key to what we want to accomplish.”
    â€œAnd what is?”
    â€œWell, the muse.”
    â€œTell me more.”

Chapter 3
    P yx suspected the vampires