Forcing myself to concentrate, I scanned the area and picked up two nightwalkers, but only one was approaching us. This was not what I had expected. There were only two in the entire region. The palace was not far from the city. The whole area should have been teeming with nightwalkers. Two vampires was all the Coven had thought to send? Bastards. Every last one of them.
The nightwalker slowly sauntered across the tarmac from the nearby hangar, her heels clacking loudly on the hard surface. A wealth of black hair spilled over her left shoulder and down her back while a secretive smile played across her mouth. As she approached, her eyes never left Danaus. I couldn’t decide what had caught her attention: his dark attractive looks or any of the rumors that had leaked from Venice.
“Who sent you?” I demanded before she could draw enough of a breath to speak. I was already on edge about being in Crete, and we still needed to come up with a plan to defeat the naturi. We were running out of time. Our flight out of Venice had been delayed, and it was now nearly 4:00 A.M. Dawn was drawing close.
“The Coven,” she said, her lips twisting in a frown as she looked me over. My clothes were rumpled and wrinkled, appearing as if I had wadded them up in a tight ball before bothering to put them on. I looked like a lost vagabond next to her neat cream-colored slacks and pale blue blouse.
“My name is Penelope. Macaire requested that I meet you and aid you against the naturi.”
“Where are the others?” I barely resisted the urge to run my hands over my dress in a senseless attempt to smooth out some of the wrinkles.
“Hugo waits at a distance, watching to make sure we are safe,” she replied.
“And that’s all?”
“Yes.”
I had a few choice words to say about Macaire and the rest of the Coven. This was ridiculous. There was no way Danaus, a pair of nightwalkers, and I could defeat all of the naturi lurking on this island. With odds like these, the naturi were going to have little trouble breaking the seal, and I was going to get staked in the process. However, before I could vent my growing irritation, Danaus spoke up.
“We need to get moving.” His deep voice pushed aside my anger. He was right. We were easy targets standing out in the middle of the landing strip.
Without any further discussion, Penelope led the way out of the airport and to a taxi she had waiting. At one time or another all three of us looked over our respective shoulders. It hung unspoken in the air. The naturi were out there and they were watching us. I wasn’t sure why they hadn’t attacked yet, and a part of me didn’t want to know the answer.
Penelope took us to a small square house she was renting. The exterior was painted white and the roof was flat. It looked like there might be some kind of awning covering part of the roof, offering tenants a place to rest at the end of the day and look out over the city. Even after all the centuries, Venetian influence was still visible in most of the buildings. For a time, Crete had been controlled by the Venetians, who left behind their form of art and architecture as a pervading influence. The cities such as Heraklion and Chania still glowed with the beauty of that dying city.
The interior of the house was the typical Cretan structure, with windows along only the front wall, while the other walls were covered in colorfully woven cloths and painted plates. A rounded archway led from the main living room into the kitchen and dining room, while the bedrooms were at the back of the house, off the kitchen. A window air-conditioning unit filled one of the few windows, growling softly as it put out a steady stream of cold air. The evening air had cooled to the low seventies, but the house retained most of the balmy afternoon heat.
It was a considerably larger house than the one I’d grown up in, and obviously more modern, but there were too many similarities in the design and the use of color. My hands trembled and a knot seemed to be permanently lodged in my throat.
Dropping my bag of clothes on the floor, I once again tried to push the little reminders that I was in Crete out of my mind and focus on why I had come to the island now. “How long have you been here?” I asked, trying to sound polite despite my raw nerves and growing frustration.
“I arrived on the island a few hours after sunset,” Penelope replied. She was watching me warily from the opposite side of the room. She stood underneath the tall archway, her arms folded over her chest. “I have been living in Athens for almost a century and I come to Crete during the summer season for the tourists.”
“Does this Hugo belong to you or did Macaire send him too?” I walked over to sofa that faced a corner fireplace made of small stones placed in an interesting mosaic. I leaned against the back of the sofa so I could face the nightwalker, crossing my left ankle over my right.
“Macaire sent him,” Penelope replied. “Is it true that you stopped the naturi at Stonehenge?” She made no attempt to hide her skepticism when she fired back at me before I could continue to interrogate her.
I smiled at her and rubbed the knuckles of my right hand on the front of my dress as if shining my nails. Holding my hand out in front of me, my fingers instantly became engulfed in blue fire. “I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve.” As I had expected, Penelope took one step backward, but she quickly stopped herself and returned to the spot she’d been standing, determined not to be bullied.
“You’re going to need it,” Danaus remarked.
“How many?” I asked him, instantly extinguishing the fire. My fun was over. We needed to get back down to business. We needed to figure out exactly what we were up against and how to defeat them.
Danaus’s power brushed past me as it moved out of the house and across the island. His eyes remained opened as he searched Crete, but his focus was not on anyone in the room. “A couple dozen. Less than England,” he said.
I was surprised. They had staged an enormous attack on the Themis Compound, throwing more naturi at us than I thought had lived on the entire earth. Had we seriously depleted their numbers to the point that they could no longer risk such a significant assault, no matter the importance of the event? One could only hope.
“Where are they?”
Danaus’s gaze focused as he leveled his blue eyes on me. “I don’t know this island.”
“Would a map help?” Penelope inquired in a voice so sweet it grated on my nerves.
“Yes,” I snapped before Danaus could answer. “Find one.”
After throwing a nasty look at me, Penelope stomped out of the room, disappearing into the kitchen as she headed toward the back of the house. A snort from Danaus caused me to look back over at him.
“What put you in such a mood?” he asked.
“I just want to get this done and get the hell out of here,” I snarled, no longer even trying to control my temper.
To my surprise, his expression softened. It annoyed me. I didn’t want to see sympathy or pity from the hunter. I wanted him angry or annoyed or any of the other moods I had grown accustomed to seeing on his face. A moment later I felt a faint touch in my brain, like a hand feeling blindly about in the darkness.
Maybe it’s time you faced your past. The sound of Danaus’s thoughts echoed in my mind. He was getting too good at speaking to me telepathically. Just over twenty-four hours had passed since he had last pushed his powers into me, but our connection grew stronger each time he did it.
To hell with my past. This isn’t the time to go all Freudian on me. We find the naturi and stop them. That’s it, I mentally flung back at him.
Danaus didn’t reply, but I could feel him laughing at me, some silent chuckle rumbling through his mind and slipping into mine.
But the feeling ceased at the sound of the front doorknob turning. A knife seemed to magically appear in Danaus’s hand as he twisted around to face whoever was entering the house. I stood, my knees slightly bent, ready for anything. We both scanned the house at the same time to find the other nightwalker. However, neither of us relaxed when he stepped into the room with hands up and palms out and open.