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have liked to have made the little Midwestern wine-sipper
his minion. Then had a taste of Northern Ireland.
    The crossbow slayer, he would simply have killed.
    An Ethiopian, beautiful with skin like smooth caramel, entered the room
from a side door, and Henri instinctively backed away, deeper into the shadows.
    Taniesha Telahun was an African night fighter.
    Deadly.
    And she normally did not travel with the Shadows.
    There had to be more to this parlor party than met the eye…
    Andre DuPre pulled a hardwood dining chair
close to Angie, and began explaining they were going to do a genealogy search
on her.
    Something to do with a cross her grandmother had given her.
    What is that damned DuPre up to with her? Henri thought
hotly, his fangs dropping as his emotions roiled and instincts ruled.
    Fear and hatred for slayers flared from his lips in a heavy hiss.
    Angie was sipping a nice Merlot. Henri smiled, the fangs receded. She
was enjoyably experiencing the taste of life he had given her.
    He let his eyes travel along the leggings, desiring a thrilling moment
or two with her himself.
    A fang-laden frown erupted again. DuPre was
discussing taking her away. Tonight.
    To England.
    Why?
    The master slayer informed the group they would be traveling by train
from London, their destination a small village to the north.
    A small village to the north …
    A cross her grandmother had given her …
    Henri flashed away from the window, a silhouette parting the beads of
rain as he raced to the park where Angie had been attacked.
    Stripping a slender, short branch from a sycamore sapling, he entered
the mausoleum.
    The body of Angie’s assailant was still on the floor. No one had
discovered it yet.
    They might never discover it.
    Stepping over the bloating corpse, Henri began poking around in the
dust and debris.
    A bit of sheen in the dirt next to a wall. He scooped the
chain and cross from its tiny grave on to the stick
and held it up to a moonbeam streaming in through the window.
    If it was possible for a vampyre to be
shocked, Henri was.
    Well, this is definitely an OMG , he thought.
    He gazed, immobile, for several moments, at the gold sunburst soldered
to two, tiny, intersecting silver beams centered with four baguette diamonds.
    There was only one cross like this in the world.
    Careful not to touch it, he slid the bit of jewelry into his trench
coat pocket. And grabbed the red eye to England.
    Liora Anjanette Carter was quite possibly far more than just your
everyday, radial-reading mystic. A lot more.
    •
    As soon as he reached the English burrow, DuPre had targeted to hunt down Angie’s ancestors, Henri took the cross to a jewelry
store to have it repaired and cleaned for her—while he planned a way to get her
the hell out of England and away from a past, that if proven to be hers, could
shellshock her.
    “You have perhaps seen a short Frenchman roaming the streets,
Monsieur?” he asked the jeweler casually as he held out the cross, dangling
from its stick.
    “Ah, the historian,” the man returned, as he tossed a questioning
glance at the sycamore branch, then at Henri.
    “Silver causes an allergic reaction,” Henri said in response to his
look.
    “Unusual piece,” the jeweler commented as he fixed the clasp. He shined
the sunburst, then dropped the jewelry into a velvet
pouch. “No charge for the bag. Oh, and your Frenchman has leased a Tudor home
in the country.”
    Henri took up residence in the barn.
    Pacing the hay-strewn floor restlessly, he waited until the rain-rich,
low-hanging clouds darkened an oncoming dusk to semi-night, then glided as a
raven through the faux darkness to follow Angie as she left the house. Andre
was sending her to the town library.
    A brief stop at a small dress shop, then happily on to
the library rising into the cistern skies of an English evening—totally
oblivious to the horror about to rise on her horizon like a bad sun.
    Henri lighted on the tiled roof. The library was impressive for