chapter Three
“She's going to try to run.”
I looked at the beautiful woman standing beside me. I'd heard so much about Katrina Kylor; she was a legend in her own right. Yet here she was, standing in her kitchen in a simple caftan and eyes that sparkled. She was nothing like I'd expected, and yet she was much more than I'd been prepared for. I turned back to gaze at the kitchen door where the granddaughter had just disappeared and felt a reluctant smile tug at my mouth. I shrugged lightly and said, “I've taken care of that.”
She smiled and nodded once, and then, her eyes clouded with worry, she laid a hand on my arm. “She's been through a lot, so try to be patient with her.”
She'd phrased it like a request, but we both knew it was an order. I told her I would and asked the problem that was troubling me. “These attacks; what form have they taken? I was only told that she needed protection from attempts on her life but I'd like to know what I'm up against.”
I didn't tell her that the call had come when I was within inches of getting a vampire I'd been after for the last five years. My men and I had been close to his hiding place. We'd finally been gaining in on him in spite of the dance he'd led us on when I'd been recalled by the headquarters. Thinking about it made me want to gnash my teeth in frustrated fury. There were a thousand-and-one protectors who could have acted as bodyguard to the rich girl. Hell, it was a job for a rookie protector. Yet they'd called me to do it. Maybe I was being punished for something I knew nothing about.
I thought I'd hidden my thoughts well, but I obviously hadn't done a good job. She stepped back briefly and silently commanded me to look at her. Yes, telepathy runs strong among our kind, although we don't normally send telepathic messages to people we're not familiar with. So I turned to her in surprise. I couldn't read her thoughts, which was a first for me. Actually, a second. I'd also been unable to read the rich girl's thoughts. That was definitely weird.
“I can tell you're wondering why you were pulled from your current mission to protect my granddaughter. This is a very serious case and not just because she's my granddaughter.” She sighed and I caught a wealth of sadness in her sigh. “You know what? Come with me to my office where we can talk comfortably. This might take a while.”
She turned and walked out and I followed her, not a little curious. I wasn't sure what to think. On one hand she was Katrina Kylor, one of the greatest protector agents we'd ever had before she chose to retire when she had her baby. I studied the woman in protector school, so if she said it was a serious case, then it probably was. Then again, she was a grandmother who cared deeply for her granddaughter. I felt a pang at the thought. Having one person who cared for you no matter what was a thousand times better than having a large family who cared nothing for you. But I wasn't going to dwell on that.
I followed her into a nice looking room. It was lined with books and they each looked worn and old. There was an old fashioned desk in one corner of the room but she led me to the little sitting area in the other corner. She settled regally on the sofa and gestured to the armchair for me to sit. As I settled my bulk on the dainty chair, the phrase bull in a china shop came swiftly to mind. This might have been a comfortable place for her, but it was far from that for me. To my right was a shelf and crammed on that shelf was every kind of porcelain and china figurine you could possibly imagine. I sat stiffly, afraid that if I moved my hand even just an inch, the entire thing would come tumbling down. I focused on the woman and waited for her to speak.
“You do know how her parents died?” She waited for me to nod before she went on. “She escaped because she'd been reading inside the family vault. Trevor, that's my son, had it created so they could have a place to go to if danger struck. Unfortunately, this had taken them without warning, but Lu had made the vault her hiding place, so she escaped the murderers.” She was silent, lost in her own secret world for a few moments.
I felt a twinge of sympathy for how lost the granddaughter must have felt then. I could almost picture the lost little girl, coming out of the fantasy world she'd created inside that vault only to discover that her life had become a nightmare.
“How old was she?” I asked.
She came out of her reverie and answered, “She had just turned thirteen.”
Which meant she was sixteen now. Suddenly, what felt like disappointment began to rise inside me and I forced it down, impatiently. It couldn't have been disappointment anyway, that didn't make any sense. Why would I be disappointed that she was just sixteen? It was probably some left over sympathy. I decided to wait patiently for Katrina to go on.
“Well, she was brought here immediately, not just because I'm her only relative but also because I could protect her. And for the first two years, everything was fine. But when she turned fifteen, she came into some of her powers.” She saw my look of surprise and smiled slightly. “Yes, I know, pretty remarkable since most perereans don't start showing any traces of magic until they're eighteen at the earliest. But it has been known to happen, you should know that.” She looked at me with a knowing smile and I nodded.
Of course I knew that; I'd started manifesting (that's what my family had called it) at the age of ten. I had seen it as a curse until I'd turned fifteen and the Protectors had recruited me. My life had changed completely then. I focused on what we'd been discussing. “So her powers had somehow drawn the attacks,” I said.
She nodded. “Yes. It was like a beacon to them. As soon as the magic had become active, the attacks started. They'd begun in her dreams. She'd go to bed just fine, then have a nightmare where she was attacked and would wake up bleeding.” She shook her head at the thought of it. “I can't really give you full details about that because she kept a lot of them from me. Luanne is a very private and sensitive girl, so you'll have to get the details from her.”
Right, I thought in my mind. Like the little rich girl I'd seen just now would volunteer any information. I instinctively knew that getting anything from her would be like trying to pull out healthy teeth … from a lion.
“But the attacks recently became physical, right?” I asked.
“Yes, they did. The other day she was shot at with a silver bullet. Yesterday they tried to snatch her in broad daylight, in a crowded area downtown.”
“They want her alive and they're getting desperate,” I quickly surmised.
She looked at me with approval and I felt a few inches taller. “You're a smart one, I'm impressed.”
Something warm trickled down my chest and I quickly stifled it. I had gone this long without praise from anyone and I wasn't going to let one kind phrase turn me into a sissy.
“What about the dreams. Are they still recurring?”
She shook her head sadly. “My granddaughter is a wonderful girl and we have a great relationship, but she doesn't always confide in me. I want to believe the dreams have stopped since I no longer see any injuries on her, but I really don't know. It's something you'd have to find out from her.”
“But why are they so insistent on getting her?” I asked, perplexed.
She was silent for a long while and I was beginning to think she wouldn't answer my question, but then she did.
“She has something they want,” she said with a heavy voice.
“What?”
“She has the flamma petraus.”
I felt my eyebrows rise of their own accord. Okay, this was way beyond what I could possibly have imagined. I mean, the flaming stone! Did that even exist? It was reputed to be the power source of the Born vampires, a stone which consumed all who touched it. And the lovely Katrina wanted me to believe that her granddaughter had it? How on earth was that even possible?
I shook my head to clear the confusion, not that it helped. “I'm sorry ma'am, I don't get this. You're saying the stone is in her possession? How did she get it? How many days has she had it?” Because even one week was too long to keep that stone, if she really did have it.
Katrina lifted a hand in a universal sign and I knew she was asking me to hold it with the questions.
“The stone came to her on her thirteenth birthday. Her parents, being protectors, knew instantly what it was and that was why they had the vault made.”
“Are you telling me she's had that stone for over three years?” This was too much to take in. This was a stone that destroyed an entire race of born vampires in Southeast Asia because it had been brought into the community. It had disappeared and hadn't been heard of since then.
“The only explanation the elders have is that she's a Keeper.”
***
I sat in the guest room contemplating the conversation I'd just had with Katrina Kylor. If what she said was true, and I had no reason to doubt that it was, then her granddaughter was in grave danger. Academically and a half I pulled out all I knew about the Keepers from my memory.
There was only one Keeper in every generation and the last Keeper had been heard of five hundred years ago. As a matter of fact, that Keeper had been brutally murdered, which had led to the destruction of the vampires in Southeast Asia. I was beginning to understand why I'd been brought onto this case. It was time to pay the little Princess a visit.