Success! the real Master’s voice thundered.
Standing, his loose robes fluttering around him in the night wind, Sorin closed the phone without another thought.
He melded Awareness with the Master. Success?
Lately, they had been exercising a higher level of Awareness, a deeper connection that had grown lax during more peaceful times. Thus, Sorin could almost feel the cold of a bare room, one of the Underground holding areas where the Master was presently standing.
Jessica Reese’s killer, the Master said. Even after my most recent miscalculations, we’ve found our troublemaker!
Jarred to action, Sorin headed out of the entrance tunnel, accessing a secret door, one of many leading farther underground.
Who…what…how…? There were a legion of questions streaming through him at once.
One of our Servants assigned to tail the Limpet suspects hit paydirt. They caught our murderer coming out of a second victim’s apartment tonight, fresh from a new kill.
Master, this is good, very good….
Hold on—the new body was found by human witnesses before our Servants could get to it and destroy any evidence that might lead to more publicity.
No.
Yes, but that’s beyond our control now. But we can control what happens from here on out.
Questions continued to baffle Sorin. Who, why, when—?
Specifics are not my concern, Sorin, not right now. Spies have our killer in custody. And I have something in mind….
What?
A plan that’s going to strike a blow to Limpet, and he’s never going to know where it came from. It’s going to keep us safely on the sidelines, but it’s also going to flush our enemy out. We can disable and expose them, and the best part is—we don’t have to do any of the dirty work. I’ve thought of every angle.
At the very idea, Sorin halted in his tracks in front of the last rock door that led to the Underground itself. Vision breaking, he was unable to take another step.
What do you have planned, Master?
He felt his father smile. I’m going to make an offer that any true vampire would never turn down.
Membership in the Underground.
Yes, but that membership wouldn’t last for long. I won’t keep a common street murderer around.
Sorin agreed with that much, yet what of the rest?
As far as I know from initial spy contact, the Master thought, our killer has a Lee Tomlinson fetish. Our spies were able to finesse that our buddy wants to be like Lee, and Lee, of course, wanted to be one of us. With what I have in mind, we’ll make sure these murders won’t shed any more light on vampire activity, and we’ll indirectly disable Limpet. Two birds with one stone. We’ll level a preemptive strike that won’t be traced back to us once the deed is done. Afterward, if Limpet really is our enemy, I guarantee he’ll expose himself—
And we’ll be waiting.
With merely a touch, Sorin coolly unlocked the door in the granite wall and entered the emporium. Instead of the usual lazy activity, the place was exploding with aggression. Near the waterfall lagoon, Groupies were practicing the change, going in and out of their vampiric forms, challenging each other in hand-to-hand combat with blades. Their speed would blur the eye of a human, but to Sorin, the battles unwrapped with clarified grace. Under a screen, a close-knit band of Elites was studying a movie, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, imitating high-flying aerial fight moves and taking them one step further by attaching themselves to the walls, using the planes as platforms to fight. None had altered into their most dangerous forms yet, though Sorin knew that would be in the coming.
Master, Sorin asked, seeing only the gray walls where his father waited, where are you? I can come to represent you—
I’m going to take care of this one.
His protective instincts stirred. The Master had been shapeshifting into solid mass more and more lately, ever since the threat to the Underground had reawakened him.
Suddenly, via the Awareness, Sorin heard a door open. The Master did not look to see who had entered the room. Instead he kept staring at the gray wall. His fury had been stoked by the presence of this killer—Sorin could feel this keenly.
Shortcuts, the Master thought. This idiot thought it’d be possible to take a shortcut to stardom, just like Lee Tomlinson ended up doing.
Sorin said what he knew his father wanted to hear. Stardom is earned.
Stars are born, the Master corrected, paying homage to his darling Elites.
In the background, a Servant private investigator greeted the Master in a deep, affable tone. “Look who we have for interrogation.”
The head vampire smiled again, and Sorin knew the wheels of their fate were about to be set into motion. The day help them, this was it, the beginning of the end for either Limpet or the Underground.
Nobody is going to take it away from us again, the Master assured Sorin just before turning around to greet the murderer.