NINE

Is anything wrong, Magister?” Dixon asked, fawning expression in place as they moved down the corridor, assessing new prisoners.

“No.” His tone was brusque, his answer a lie.

Declan was having a shite day, and it wasn’t even noon.

Tests on the vampire’s ring had revealed nothing—which made Lothaire’s interrogation this afternoon even more critical.

Declan still hadn’t crushed his unnerving fascination with the Valkyrie; her cell was coming up fast.

And he’d found out that yet another magister’s prisoners were on the way to his facility, though Declan hadn’t even surveyed the ones brought in while he’d been away hunting.

Dixon had offered to bring him up to date on the recent arrivals. He’d accepted because she’d brought him the additional doses and because he’d assumed—rightly—that she wouldn’t dare broach the subject of them anytime soon.

Now as they passed cells newly filled with more creatures from “myth,” she relayed details of their capture and backgrounds.

One cell contained Cerunnos, sentient creatures possessing the head of a ram and the body of a serpent. Another held a number of revenants—zombies con-trolled by some unseen Sorceri master.

Even a winged Vrekener—a horned demonic version of an angel—had been captured.

Declan grudgingly admitted that this wasn’t a bad haul, though not nearly the caliber of his last one. Nor in the same league as my next will be. He’d been laying a trap for the most powerful immortal ever to live. A vampiric demon …

When they passed the cell of Uilleam MacRieve, the Lykae said, “You’re the magister?” His Scottish brogue was thick, his eyes blue with rage.

Declan merely stared at him. In less than half an hour, Dixon was scheduled to examine the were-wolf. She and her team would be doing the regular workup, but they’d also be testing a sonic weapon devised to immobilize a creature with his acute sense of hearing.

Turning strengths into weaknesses.

MacRieve bared his fangs. “When I get free from this place—”

Without a word, Declan continued on, ignoring him. If he had a quid for every time one of them said, “When I get free …”

I’d be even wealthier than I currently am.

All these immortals smugly thought they’d escape soon, assuming that humans could never contain them. Yet in the centuries of the Order’s history, none had escaped.

And no one would be breaking that perfect record under Declan’s watch. He’d installed so many security fail-safes that commanders and other magisters mocked him. They called this Installation Overkill.

What they considered costly excess, he deemed standard precautions.

The metal walls of the cells were solid steel, three feet thick. The forward glass wall was made of the same material used for space shuttle windshields. If reentry into the earth’s atmosphere couldn’t crack that glass, then an immortal with a torque sure as hell couldn’t.

But if one did breach the glass, then hydraulic bulkheads—barriers of six-foot-thick steel—would drop into place, sealing each of the three corridors. And once those bulkheads dropped, a self-destruct sequence would engage, overridden only by an officer.

Every contingency planned for, he mused, even as concerns about overcrowding weighed on him.

“You seem distracted,” Dixon said. “Is it because of your upcoming interrogation?”

“Lothaire will be just one among many vampires,” he replied coolly, belying his interest in this one. Though the Order knew more about their kind—their origins, weaknesses, any anomalous powers—than about any other species, aspects of Lothaire proved a mystery.

Certain vampires could harvest memories if they drank blood straight from the flesh. And if one killed as he fed, he could usurp a victim’s physical and mystical strengths. Over time, the older ones grew maddened from so many memories, their irises reddening.

Lothaire had that harvesting ability and was one of the oldest vampires alive, yet his eyes hadn’t turned fully red. Somehow he’d refrained from drinking as much as his brethren, shrewdly clinging to what little sanity he still possessed.

The Enemy of Old was an anomaly. Anomalies fascinated Declan.

Still the vampire had stolen enough memories to suffer bouts of instability and hallucinations. Declan had observed him slicing his black claws across his wrists to dine on his own blood as he conversed with himself. While at other times, his red eyes had seemed to burn with intelligence and cunning.

Declan wondered which side of Lothaire he’d encounter this afternoon.

In any event, he expected a worthy opponent. Natural born vampires like Lothaire were physically incapable of telling a lie, so they resorted to trickery and verbal misdirection; by all accounts, Lothaire was a master of deception.

No matter. I will best him. Just as I will best the Valkyrie in her interrogation tomorrow.

As they approached her cell, his skin pricked with awareness. For the most part Declan had ignored her—until earlier this morning when his curiosity had prevailed, and he’d pulled up her cell on the monitor.

She’d been braiding her hair into haphazard plaits that he somehow found pleasing to the eye—though one would think she’d grow more proficient at braiding after a thousand years. When a fight had broken out in a cell down the ward, she’d bitten her knuckle, then cried out dramatically, “Can’t we all just get along?”

Did she consider this some kind of game? Once Declan had finished with her tomorrow, she’d understand how dangerous her position was. …

For now, seeing the Valkyrie in her cage, imprisoned right along with the other unnatural beings would remind him that she might be fair of face, but beneath the surface she was still one of them. A detrus.

Her beauty just made her more dangerous.

He’d been taught by the Order that they were abominations walking among humans, filled with untold malice toward mankind … a perversion of the natural order, spreading their deathless numbers uncontrollably … a plague upon man that must be eradicated. …

Experience had taught him no differently.