One Must Hide

Hustle

The thinnest yellow crescent of moon glowed in the sky, like someone had taken a razor to the fabric of the night, and Dwayne travelled in the shadows it cast, moving silent and unseen from one building to the next.

He was making it difficult for himself. London made a stranger of every vampire who set foot there. But anonymity in a crowd wasn't to Dwayne's taste when covert operations were his speciality. He didn't like roof-crawling much - too obvious for any vampire who happened to be passing overhead - but he liked going underground even less, and London was too much of a labyrinth to even contemplate trying to move about at street level.

The city bothered him, he thought, crossing the gravel-strewn roof of a big office building. It was uncomfortably old, an ancient settlement, lives and events soaked into its very essence, its grimy buildings, its dirty air. York, too, was old, but not nearly so populous. The weight of seven million souls combined with the capital city's age made Dwayne feel small and transitory, and no vampire liked that, but it also gave London the rare distinction of being a truly neutral territory. No rank had tried to claim the city for more years than Dwayne had been around to care. The vampires who passed through stopped long enough to eat, to renew old alliances and rivalries - or to forge new ones - and then moved on again. But the constant tide of ranks and solos in and out of the city washed information up with it, and that was why Dwayne had made the journey south.

Dwayne paused, orienting himself. The wide expanse of Green Park began less than half a mile away. Time to quit the relative peace of the rooftops. He stepped off the roof of the office block and let himself drop fifteen storeys to land noiselessly on the ground.

He walked quietly out of the side street he'd landed in and paused again. Across the street, people were still hurrying towards Piccadilly Circus tube station, hunched against the chill of the night. Dwayne went the other way, then waited for a convoy of three black cabs to pass before crossing the road and turning right.

Vampires didn't care to stay in London for long, but a few places catered for the niche market, and the Valhalla Club was one of them. A discreet brass plaque drew no attention to itself, but this place, too, was old. Dwayne raised his hand to the plain, substantial door, and felt it yield to his touch.

"Good evening, sir."

Dwayne didn't turn to seek the origin of the polite greeting. He let the door slip shut behind him, and stood for a moment looking around at the marble-columned vestibule, the vaulted staircase, the expensive artworks. It reeked of the establishment; not his scene at all, but reliable sources told him that this was the place to come for information.

Finally, he turned to the soberly-dressed and immaculate concierge hovering attentively at his elbow. "You have a room?"

"Of course, sir. Would you like to come this way?"

No questions asked and none answered, Dwayne thought. Maybe the place wasn't so bad. The concierge didn't volunteer a charge, but the tastefully-printed tariff on the reception desk nearly made Dwayne shake his head as he wrote a name in the ledger. Another reason why vampires didn't visit London much.

"Thank you, Mr Hall. If you'd care to follow me."

The room to which the concierge led him was clean, comfortable, moderately spacious. It also boasted windows with heavy-duty steel shutters and a balcony door, similarly shuttered, with no balcony. The door opened into an enclosed courtyard, surrounded by the club building on all four sides. Dwayne almost caught himself smiling. Sometimes the English really knew how to do a thing properly.

One of the first things a vampire learned, if he had any intention at all of surviving long enough to make the turn worthwhile, was the importance of finding secure accommodation in a strange city. In his early years, Dwayne had once been caught out, and being stranded in the open when the sun came up wasn't funny. He'd spent a profoundly unpleasant day in a shallow pit he'd had to dig for himself with his own hands, pulling the dirt in after himself for protection from the rapidly rising sun. Since then, he'd always made it a priority to organise his lodgings in good time.

Places like this made it straightforward, he thought, as he followed the concierge up the impressive staircase, but they presented problems of their own. In the normal course of events, the Lost Boys weren't sociable. Their particular values and rules made them incompatible with most of their own kind, so they kept to themselves, fiercely guarding their own territory, and interacting with other ranks only when they had to. They were, however, quite recognisable. The ripples they'd caused a decade ago with their impetuous venture into Hollywood hadn't yet subsided, and - if the enduring popularity of the movie were any gauge - they weren't likely to any time soon. Their infamy made them a target, and while they could handle that sort of attention, it got in the way of business. Staying in a place that catered exclusively to vampires increased by a significant factor the chance that they would be recognised.

Fortunately, Dwayne's particular penchant for stealth didn't end with his ability to move around undetected.

He spent a few minutes shaving, then smoothed his hair back into a tail at the nape of his neck. He'd left his normal wardrobe with his bike in a motel north of London. He hated the blandness of the navy sports jacket and open-necked shirt he wore now, but they would help him blend in. Finally, and with a wince, he took off his earring. He wasn't that attached to it, and it really didn't go with his assumed persona - but having to get his ear pierced again every time he took the thing off was a real chore.

But for now, his name was Warner Hall, a semi-solo loosely associated with a minor Washington State rank called Dusk 13, generally well-travelled but in London for the first time. He was a low-level greater vampire of a decade or so, unremarkable among his kind, and of absolutely no interest to anyone.

That was the plan, anyway.

Dwayne went to the window, looking up at the sky. The orange radiance of city lights hid the stars from view. He let himself unfocus, inviting the future to reach back towards him.

Mud streaked the backs of his hands, but he didn't have the strength to wipe them clean. The faintest rays of daylight filtering in through the curtains imprisoned him there, hunched in the darkest corner. Sleep taunted and tempted him, but fear kept him awake. And the dragon's eyes almost glowed.

He fought to hold on to the vision, but it slipped his grasp, fleeing back to where it belonged. Not all of Dwayne's insights into the future were comforting. That one, with its threat of sunlight, downright unnerved him. And Robin, nearly always Robin, now; distracting the focus of his prescience like a magnet placed too close to a compass. Perhaps it was complacent of him, but Dwayne had grown accustomed to the advantages of his unusual talent, and the uncertainty of what he wasn't seeing troubled him more than the inevitability of what he had.

He rubbed his temples, easing the stabs of pain that sometimes flared up after he exercised his future sight. David didn't know that Robin's presence interfered with Dwayne's foresight. A vampire's weaknesses were his own to divulge, and Dwayne was used to compensating for them. Still, he felt blinder than ever as he left his room, letting the door close behind him without bothering to lock it.

Mentally asserting the persona he was going to assume, Dwayne walked softly down the stairs and crossed the lobby of the club. A short corridor, lined with busts and paintings that were probably all originals, led to the door marked, simply, Lounge.

Stepping through the door felt like walking into a wolves' den. The vampires within might be no more than cubs, all teeth and no force, but they were just as likely to be the savage and deadly alphas of the pack. Lacking a normal vampire's awareness of his own kind, Dwayne couldn't tell. Their emotions drifted to him like smoke: curls of amusement, tendrils of hunger, and then one of curiosity, two more of heightened alertness, in response to him. He suppressed the instinct to look around, walking unhurriedly to the bar, but he strained to feel the first hint of aggression that would herald an attack.

He looked at the extensive selection of single malts behind the bar, tempted for a moment by the nineteen-year-old Oban, then thought better of it. "Give me a Jack, straight," he announced instead, loudly, waving his hand towards the distinctive black-labelled bottle. The wisps of interest increased, some of them strengthening into irritation, and he felt the pressure of attention on his back. Still he ignored it, waiting for the diffidently silent barman to pour his drink, and only when he had the chunky crystal tumbler in his hand did he turn around to scan the room.

Dwayne couldn't tell the difference between a vampire and a human from any distance, but up close his eyes told him what his other sense couldn't. Five well-dressed gentleman were playing cards around a table in the far corner. A Japanese couple had drawn a palpable aura of privacy around themselves, both concealing their abilities far too assiduously to be anything less than formidable. A pale-faced youth stared moodily into his vodka beside a superbly self-composed female who would have been nearly as tall as Dwayne standing up. Three young bucks in City suits betrayed their own uncouthness, swilling brandy from outsized glasses and sucking expensive cigars. And a blonde woman, small and slight, sat thoughtfully alone with her wineglass, and Dwayne had to discipline himself against reacting, because he knew her.

She was a solo, a vampire with neither rank nor territory. Few vampires took the path by choice. Most solos were forced into it on account of refusing to accept the rules of their ranks. They moved from place to place, subsisting on whatever they could take from rank territories, constantly at risk of the local rank hunting them down and killing them. Without allies or home ground, they seldom lasted long without exceptional luck, cunning and ruthlessness.

Grace was exceptional.

Under any other circumstances, Dwayne would have retreated rather than create an incident. He couldn't disguise himself from a vampire who knew him, much less one who knew him so well. He could make himself disappear before she noticed him, but that would mean quitting London and returning to the rank with nothing. Dwayne might be cautious, but he wasn't a coward.

Time for a change of plan.

He approached her table at a quick pace, so that by the time she ceased contemplating her drink he was already sitting opposite her and able to catch and hold her gaze. "You can't be on your own."

Grace only allowed surprise to widen her eyes for a fraction of a second. She sat back, scanning him with a gaze Dwayne knew took in everything: his clothes, his hair, his demeanour. "I am not."

Dwayne let himself relax half a notch. He leaned forward, resting his arm carelessly on the table. "But you are now."

"Perhaps," she conceded. "Perhaps that is the way I wish to remain."

He smiled. "I don't believe that."

"You presume to believe any such thing?"

Dwayne gulped a mouthful of whiskey. "I do."

"I see." Grace studied him as if she'd never before laid eyes on him. "And you would be.?"

"Warner Hall, at your service."

"My service?" she asked, with the faintest emphasis on the pronoun.

"If you presume to be interested in it," he said.

"That," she said, "remains to be seen." Grace hesitated a breath. "What brings you here, Mr Hall?"

"Oh," he said casually, "the same as we all look for in this town."

"Which might be as different for you and me as night is to day," she pointed out.

"I don't think so," he said, and indicated with the barest flick of his eyes the room around them. "More likely we're all here in the same pursuit."

"Scarcely a pursuit such as you should wish to trail," she suggested.

"You'd be surprised what I might like to pursue of my own accord."

"I might, perhaps. And I might then be interested in your service." Grace lifted her wineglass to her lips, laying bare the smooth expanse of her throat as she tilted back her head to drain the last drops.

Her display made Dwayne uneasy, but he pushed on. "Might you now?"

She smiled languidly, pushing the wineglass away. "The promise of knowledge should whet your appetite."

"And what knowledge would that be?" he asked.

"Enough to satisfy both of us." Grace barely raised an elegant eyebrow. "And put us closer to the quarry than our legion of rivals."

The precise phrasing was beginning to grate - especially as Dwayne knew very well that Grace wasn't even British - but then he suspected that his assumed brashness irritated her just as much. "You have yourself a deal."

Grace leaned forward, then, sliding her hand around Dwayne's neck, and placing her lips close to his ear. "An exhibit was taken from the British Museum last night. The thief is dead and James Magnus' rank has the item. They don't deign to play with a woman. Less still will they play with you, but that you'd be willing to risk all."

"I didn't have it in my mind to die in your service," Dwayne said pointedly.

She eased back into her chair, smiling. "Then don't lose."

"I'm also not seeing what's in it for me."

"Curious," Grace said. "I'm still not clear on what one of the Lost Boys is doing here, but I should imagine one of our compatriots here might know of a way to find out."

Dwayne nearly smiled. He drained his Jack Daniels. "I was going to buy you a drink," he remarked, and leaving the glass on the table, he pushed back his chair and left.

He stopped at the bar for a refill and to check his pockets. Then, before his better judgement could stop him, he approached the quintet of card-playing vampires.

"Room for one more?" he suggested.

Four of the five didn't even look at him. The fifth continued to deal, three cards to each player, then three more in the centre of the table: one face up, two face down. Then, casually, he looked up. The glance told Dwayne everything he needed to know. "Do you know the game?"

"No," Dwayne admitted, "but my money's good." He took a bloodstained fold of c-notes from his back pocket and tossed it onto the table.

The dealer moved his hand away from the bills, as if faintly disgusted. "Not good enough."

"Look, you guys," Dwayne said, "I'm not in town long, so I'm just looking to play a couple hands with you, pass a little time, exchange a little information."

A spike of irritation broke through the control of one of the other vampires, reassuring Dwayne that they were buying his dumb American act. The dealer offered him a cold smile. "Why didn't you say so? Pull up a chair."

Dwayne lifted one of the heavy chairs from another table with deliberately ostentatious ease, and noticed another of the Magnus rank relax his defences enough to show his contempt. He didn't need them to lower their guard very much. "Well," he said, when he'd taken his seat on the dealer's right, "are you all going to introduce yourselves?"

They did, rapidly and without offering Dwayne hands to shake: Laurence, Stefan, Glen and Alan. For his part, he introduced himself as Warner Hall. The dealer's name was Sebastian, and Dwayne sensed he was a lieutenant of the rank, probably James Magnus' second. "The game is bastard brag," Sebastian told him. "You might want to sit out the first few hands."

Dwayne accepted the offer readily, though it wasn't necessary. He'd come prepared. Still, he watched as his five rivals played their hand, picking up their variations on the classic game. It wasn't unlike three-card poker, but the idea wasn't so much to make the best hand as to avoid making the worst. Each player could switch one of his cards for one of the three community cards on the table: face up if he took the card that was showing, face down if he took one of the two others. After the first round, any player could knock on his turn, allowing each of the others one more switch before all players showed their hands. The player with the lowest hand lost a life - a worn brass token that, Dwayne guessed, was worth a predetermined amount.

"Top hand is three threes," Sebastian told Dwayne, after they'd played two or three hands. "A straight beats a flush."

"You sure about that?" Dwayne asked.

"Quite sure." Sebastian peeled ten bills off Dwayne's roll of hundreds - fastidiously handling the bloody ones only by their edges - and handed him ten brass tokens. "And winner takes all."

Dwayne swept up the cards Sebastian dealt him and glanced at them. A queen and a pair of twos. "Whatever you say, boss."

Staying in brag wasn't hard in the first few rounds. A pair was generally good enough to avoid losing a life. In the third hand, Dwayne took care to swap out a jack that would have given him a flush, leaving him with nothing at all and losing him his first life. "Plenty more where that came from," he announced, throwing a token into the ashtray in the centre of the table.

The vampire sitting opposite - Stefan - leaned forwards. "So where would that be?"

"Here and there," Dwayne replied. "And what about you folks, where do you call home?"

On Stefan's right, Laurence said, "Half of Berkshire."

Dwayne laid down a seven and picked up a nine for a pair. "Just the half, huh? That's not a lot of bang for your buck."

"A quarter of a million people serve us well enough," Laurence said stiffly.

Dwayne whistled. "You guys sure pack 'em in. Back in the States, we like our people a little more free range."

He'd provoked them all enough, now, that they were letting low-level annoyance seep from their defences; all of them except Sebastian. He continued to deal, hand after hand, letting no flicker of anything escape his composure. Dwayne observed him most closely and most discreetly of all as he let himself lose more lives. Sebastian had seen through his thin deception from the start.

So it was time to start playing the game.

Dwayne let his clairsentience unfold, invisible filaments of awareness spreading out like the mesh of a net, and the hints he'd sensed from each of his opponents sprang into sharp focus. Like light shattered by a prism, their feelings betrayed them, visible to him as razor-thin coronas of colour, flickering from one to another with the shifting of their emotions. Dwayne watched the ochre tinge of Stefan's aura deepen to orange when he picked up his cards; irritation turning to agitation with his bad hand. He watched the other vampire exchange a six from his hand for the visible nine in the community cards. He watched as the orange corona flared brighter, though Stefan's expression didn't change. Dwayne only had a pair of fives, but he knocked on the next round, and at the end of the hand Stefan was the one who lost a life.

Laurence was dealt the worst cards in the next hand, but rapidly improved his situation, and Dwayne shifted his focus to Alan, the most reserved of his opponents bar Sebastian, following the flow of his emotions as his cards changed, striking when the opportunity came.

They must have played twenty hands without Dwayne losing before the other vampires began to look at him more closely, their auras pulsing with unease. Conversation had ceased as each of the others concentrated harder on the game, on their own techniques of gauging how their opponents were doing. None were as effective as his. He targeted the weakest player in every hand, and four times out of five could cause him to lose. Only Sebastian remained impenetrable to him. Dwayne set him aside and focused on the others, tracking their emotional fluctuations like a hunter selecting his moment to move in for the kill.

Stefan was the first to collapse. Aggravated beyond his ability to focus, he threw in his last token with such force that it bounced onto the floor. He walked away from the table without a word. Nobody picked up his token.

"Why's he so sore?" Dwayne asked. He glanced at his cards. "It's only money." He knocked.

"Solo, are you?" Sebastian asked quietly, as Laurence surrendered one of his last tokens.

Dwayne smiled. "What do you think?"

From the corner of his eye, he noticed Stefan picking up the bloodstained c-notes of his stake. The young vampire touched his tongue to the first bill, then stiffened in alarm, and stepped rapidly around the table to Sebastian.

"...his own...like you wouldn't believe..."

"Parva leves capiunt animas," Sebastian said sharply.

He was good, Dwayne gave him that. Stefan flinched with the force of Sebastian's Latin reprimand, but no emotion escaped the Magnus vampire's tight control. That weapon would be useless to him.

The fight seemed to have gone out of his other rivals. Dwayne lost a life himself, and so did Sebastian, but the others kept losing. One by one he wore them down, gradually relaxing the firm grip he'd been maintaining on himself, and taking advantage of their growing unease.

Revealing his real strength was risky. David did it, and Paul had never been very good at keeping his abilities under wraps, but Dwayne usually preferred to keep his enemies guessing. It helped him to offset his weaknesses. This time, though, he wanted them to take him seriously. He wanted them feeling out of their depth. And he wanted to tempt them with a prize worth risking everything.

Sebastian's knock dismissed Alan from the game, and that left just the two of them. Dwayne glanced down at the stack of three tokens arranged neatly in front of his last remaining rival, mirroring the three he still held. The total pot would have been worth five thousand dollars if they'd been playing for cash, but they weren't playing for cash, and never had been. The Magnus rank had something valuable, and they weren't about to gamble it away for money.

"You're a long way from home," said Sebastian, as he cut and recut the cards, over and over.

"Word spreads," Dwayne replied. "We're not the only ones."

"The countryside is teeming with ranks," Sebastian admitted. "The sooner it's found, the sooner we can get back to normal."

"So long as your rank does the finding," Dwayne suggested.

Sebastian smiled briefly. "James wouldn't have it any other way."

"And the piece you took from the museum?"

"We took it. But not from the museum." Sebastian kept shuffling the cards. "James is a scholar. It wouldn't help you."

"You'd be surprised."

The Magnus vampire shrugged. "Perhaps. But you don't have anything we want that badly."

"That's where you're wrong," Dwayne said softly.

Sebastian looked at him, really looked, and Dwayne briefly envied him his ability to measure and gauge him with his vampiric senses. "Where's your territory?"

"West coast." Dwayne paused. "South of San Francisco."

He was very good. Comprehension dawned in Sebastian's eyes, but Dwayne still didn't see a change to the serene greenish hue of his aura. "You must want it very badly indeed."

"I wouldn't be here if we didn't."

Sebastian continued to regard him with interest. "I'll need your bond."

Dwayne smiled. "I'll need yours."

The Magnus vampire hesitated for a fraction of a second. Then, smoothly, he scored the palm of his right hand with the claws of his left. "If you win, you can have the book."

Dwayne did the same, and as they shook hands, bloody fingers to bloody fingers, he said, "If you win, you can have my life."

Sebastian smiled. "Audaces fortuna iuvat." He removed a handkerchief from his pocket and meticulously wiped the blood from his hand. Dwayne, no longer concerned with appearances, merely licked the smudge of crimson from his palm.

They each had three lives left. There was nowhere to hide in two-player brag; the game would be over within minutes. He steeled himself for it.

Sebastian dealt. Dwayne glanced at his hand. He exchanged for one of the face-down cards, hoping for a flush, but didn't get it. Sebastian calmly took the visible card and laid down a ten. Dwayne tried again, failed again. Sebastian knocked.

The other Magnus vampires watched intently as Dwayne conceded a token. They didn't jeer, or mock, or do anything that might have put him off; they just watched. That was almost worse.

Dwayne's second hand was better. A pair of eights. He swapped his third card, waited for Sebastian's play, then knocked. This time, Sebastian had nothing, but he didn't react.

On the third hand Dwayne picked up a nine for a straight. He'd won a lot of early hands with straights. He should have been safe with it. Except that Sebastian had three fives.

Dwayne didn't let his expression change as Sebastian dealt again. He didn't let himself look at the single brass disc that was all that stood between him and his death. Instead, he looked straight at his opponent, and noticed the betraying bead of sweat creeping slowly down the side of his face.

The flash of prescience came and went in less time than it took Dwayne to blink. He looked at his hand, saw the pair of tens, and knew he needed the third ten that lay hidden, one of the two cards that lay face down on the table. Sebastian exchanged a card, and Dwayne knew he had a flush. If he couldn't find the third ten, it was game over. In every sense.

Without hesitating, he chose the left-hand card.

One of the watching vampires bit off a curse. The statistical likelihood of that card turning up a ten was slim. By all laws of mathematics, Dwayne should be dead. Then, he never had been one for figures when his foresight had never once let him down.

"You're a hell of an opponent," Sebastian said, pitched for Dwayne's ears only. "In other circumstances I'd have bought you a beer."

"I'd prefer one of those single malts they have behind the bar," Dwayne replied.

The Magnus second smiled. "Good taste."

Without ceremony, he dealt the last hand of the game.

Dwayne glanced at his cards. The worst thing about brag was being dealt a hand you knew you'd never be able to better. He looked at the straight flush, nine-ten-jack of spades, and then at the face card on the table, a king. He had to exchange one of his cards. The trick would be making sure he could get it back.

He hesitated for a fraction of a second, then laid down the nine, face down, and picked up the right-hand card on the table. The two of diamonds. With a worthless hand, he knew he was vulnerable. He needed to be able to pick up the nine again when his turn came round.

Sebastian looked at the cards on the table: the visible king, the card Dwayne knew to be the nine of spades, and the one whose value neither of them knew. He looked at the card Dwayne had laid down. Dwayne thought he saw his rival's fingers twitch fractionally toward it. He was weary from the concentrated use of his talents, but he summoned up a final effort, the barest hint of suggestion, the tiniest nudge of encouragement towards the nine of spades.

Sebastian's hand moved towards the card Dwayne needed to win. Then it stopped. He looked hard at it, then at Dwayne, and Dwayne felt the Magnus second throw off the suggestion, even as he picked up the card on the left.

Dwayne didn't feel triumph so much as relief as he reclaimed the nine and knocked for the game. Sebastian, though, looked suddenly diminished, as if realisation of defeat had finally cracked his formidable armour. Slowly, he traded one card for another, but they both knew it was too late. "Well, Lost Boy?" he asked.

Dwayne turned over his straight flush without speaking.

The Magnus vampire smiled. "The stories aren't wrong, then." He flipped over his cards. He had a pair of aces.

"Gloria victis," Dwayne said softly.

Sebastian shook his head, and flicked his last token into the pile in the centre of the table. "Sum quod eris."

"You play well, Mr Hall."

Dwayne looked up at the speaker and recognised the pale youth he'd noticed and dismissed earlier; no longer surly, but coldly amused. He was, he guessed, two or three decades Dwayne's elder. "And you would be James."

James Magnus inclined his head fractionally in a mocking bow, stepping around the table to stand behind Sebastian. Sebastian, Dwayne noticed, looked distinctly ill at ease. "And you wouldn't be a Mr Hall."

"Maybe not." Casually, Dwayne eased back his chair. "You have something that now belongs to me."

"Oh, yes." Magnus reached inside his jacket and withdrew a book. It wasn't large, bound in faded leather that might once have been black. "You wanted this, didn't you?"

"That was the deal," Dwayne replied levelly.

"That was Sebastian's deal," Magnus corrected him politely, putting the book away, and placing his hands companionably on Sebastian's shoulders.

Dwayne regarded the rank leader intently. "You're constrained by his bond, too."

"Am I?" Magnus smiled, and looked down at his lieutenant. "Well, in that case."

Dwayne guessed what the vampire leader was going to do an instant before he did it, but with a sense of revulsion, he realised Sebastian had known the moment he'd lost the game. Belying his fragile appearance, Magnus seized his lieutenant by the throat, lifting him bodily from his place. A squeeze of one hand broke Sebastian's neck, but Magnus didn't stop at the punishment. From his sleeve he flipped a blade, a wooden training knife such as a martial artist might use in practice, and with a single deft motion, slid it between Sebastian's ribs.

The entire execution had been performed too fast for anyone to interfere. Sebastian let out a long, low groan, and Magnus let his dying second slump back into his chair as blood began to gout from the mortal wound in his chest.

"Am I meant to be impressed?" Dwayne asked mildly, though he felt sickened by Magnus' betrayal.

Magnus shrugged. "It was worth a try. Kill him."

The surviving vampires of James Magnus' clan, still stunned by his casual murder of Sebastian, took an instant to react to the command.

Dwayne didn't.

He sprang vertically from his place as Stefan and Glen rushed him, flipped up and over them, landing behind them in fang. Before Stefan could turn, Dwayne reached around him to slice the blood vessels of his throat, then drove a knee into his back, shoving him into the path of Laurence's ill-considered charge.

He ducked a clawed swipe and answered it with an uppercut that shivered his arm right to the shoulder. Weeks of neutralising other vampires in York had sharpened the fighting skills he hadn't needed in years, but he was alone and outnumbered and in a confined space.

Dwayne vaulted over the table, overturning it in the process. One of the Magnus vampires, scrambling after him, got a kick in the face that would have split his skull if Dwayne had been wearing his motorcycle boots; it only tore his jaw half from his face. He laid about him, feeling bones shatter and blood spray from deep wounds as he made contact with fists and claws.

Someone grabbed him from behind. He wrenched himself free, laid hold of one of the heavy chairs, and turned fluidly to break it over his assailant's head. It shattered into jagged shards; he seized one in each hand, plunged the first through the chest of the vampire he'd just stunned, and spun round to face the one he could hear trying to sneak up behind him.

He looked into the face of the female he'd seen with James Magnus; screaming with rage, blazingly beautiful, but not fanged, nor clawed, nor golden-eyed. She wasn't a vampire. The realisation made him freeze as the laws by which he'd chosen to live warred with his need to defend himself. No women, no children. Too late, he saw the broken bottle in her hand.

And then the furious eyes that were neither vampire nor entirely human widened in mortal shock, and scarlet frothed from her mouth even as Dwayne saw the splintered chair leg erupt from her chest in a welter of blood. As she fell, he saw her killer wiping her hands fussily clean. Grace.

"NO!" Magnus' howl of anguish wasn't human; it wasn't even vampire. It was the scream of a wounded animal. He had been on the verge of making good his escape, one hand on the door handle. Now, as his consort rasped her last breaths on the floor and his rank lay dead or dying around him, James Magnus' control slipped at last.

Dwayne didn't have time to get out of the way. Magnus rushed him with incredible speed, and though Dwayne turned the force of the charge, even the glancing blow of Magnus' shoulder knocked him off his feet. He crashed to the treacherously splinter-strewn floor with Magnus, roaring incoherently and trying to smash his face with his fists, on top of him.

Dwayne only needed a couple of those massive blows to connect before he realised he couldn't take many. His right arm was trapped beneath Magnus' weight, his left limited in its range of movement. He lashed out awkwardly and his claws scored bloody lines across Magnus' pale face, but the rank leader seemed beyond caring. A wild blow connected with Dwayne's shoulder, and he heard as much as felt the collar-bone break. He could manage the pain, but he wouldn't survive long without the use of his left arm.

Fleetingly, the thought that he could die here, among enemies and for the sake of a prize whose worth was still a mystery, crossed Dwayne's mind. If he died, David would be forced to abandon his campaign and retreat to the relative safety of Santa Cruz, humiliated and diminished by Dwayne's loss. The Lost Boys were a unit; a whole far stronger than the sum of their parts, as strong as those parts might be. That strength in unity had given them the freedom to do what they wanted for almost fifteen years. If Dwayne let himself get killed, the Lost Boys would no longer be in a position to take risks. And that would mean forfeiting their most risky pursuit to date.

He caught Magnus' wrist in his weakened left hand and bent it sharply back, snapping the bones. Snarling, Magnus gouged at his face. Dwayne flung his head to one side and the slash went wide, missing his eyes but slicing his face to the bone. Desperately, he drew up a knee, ramming it into Magnus' gut, and at last the vampire leader's pin relaxed enough for Dwayne to free his right hand. He groped blindly for a weapon, and his fingers closed on a piece of broken chair.

The fragment wasn't large - no longer than his hand - but it was sharp. Dwayne thrust it into the left side of Magnus' chest. It hit a rib; he withdrew it, then stabbed again, angling to miss the bone, and felt Magnus go rigid as the shard of wood struck his heart. Grimly, he shoved it deeper still, until his hand sank to the knuckles in the bloody wound, and twisted.

Magnus fell bonelessly aside, clutching at his chest. Dwayne rolled to his feet. His left arm hung limp and almost useless, his broken collar-bone stabbed with every movement, and blood still flowed from the deep gashes in the side of his face, but he stood over his vanquished enemy long enough to see the last light go out of his eyes. Then, slowly and painfully, he bent down to reach inside James Magnus' jacket pocket.

It was such a small thing, just a book, but old, very old. Dwayne held it with the fingertips of his left hand for a moment, studying the blank cover, and then opened it to the first page.

What he read there made everything make sense.

He closed the book and tucked it away. Then, at last, he looked around at the carnage he had wrought.

Bodies littered the opulent lounge. Sebastian still slumped in his chair, where Magnus had left him to die. Stefan lay with his throat in a crimson wreck. A long piece of wood still protruded from Laurence's chest. Dwayne didn't remember killing the others, yet they all lay in twisted heaps; an entire rank obliterated within minutes.

The three City types had disappeared, probably realising they were out of their league. The barman had long since made himself scarce; Dwayne doubted it was the first time vampires had fought and killed each other at the Valhalla Club. The Japanese couple hadn't moved from their corner table. Dwayne turned to look at them, wondering if they would try to take advantage of his weakened state. After a long moment, the female shook her head minutely with a small smile.
That just left Grace.

She stepped towards him, neatly avoiding the bodies, still swinging a broken chair leg in one hand. "You handled that rather well, I must say."

Dwayne probed at his collar-bone with the opposite hand. It was healing rapidly, but he'd used up a lot of his reserves. "And you were so helpful."

Grace shrugged. "You seemed to be doing fine by yourself. Except for the female, at least. Got no stomach for killing women, have you?"

He didn't bother to answer. Grace knew about the Lost Boys' code. Instead, Dwayne reached down to turn over the corpse of James Magnus' woman. In death, as in life, something still shone about her. "She wasn't a vampire."

Grace leaned over to study the dead, beautiful face, and sniffed. "Close enough."

Dwayne frowned. What she implied didn't seem right.

"Anyway," Grace went on, "now we have the book. Let's see it."

"I have the book," Dwayne corrected her quietly.

The solo stared at him. "You wouldn't."

"You would," Dwayne told her. "And you'd have shed no tears if Magnus had killed me."

"This bitch would have had you if I hadn't intervened," Grace protested.

"And you'd never have beaten James Magnus if she had," Dwayne countered. "Grace. Please don't think I didn't know you were trying to use me."

She narrowed her eyes. "What do you want with the bounty, anyway, with your bleeding hearts?"

Dwayne shrugged, one-shouldered, and regretted it. "Maybe we don't."

Grace glared up at him. She seemed about to say something else, and then, as if she'd forgotten she even had it, she dropped her gaze to the jagged length of wood in her hand, still slick with the blood of James Magnus' consort. Quick as a cat, she levelled it at Dwayne's chest.

Dwayne looked down at the weapon, inches from his heart. Then he shook his head. "You're good, Grace." Gently, he pushed the chair leg aside. "But even at your best, and my worst, you're not that good."

He walked away, towards the bar. That nineteen-year-old Oban was calling to him. Dwayne took a glass from under the bar and poured himself a very non-standard measure. He took a long sip, rotating his shoulder gingerly. He'd need to wait for the bone to knit before he could hunt and replenish himself.

When he turned back to the room, Grace had gone.

He knew she would have killed him in a heartbeat if she'd thought she could have done so with impunity. She had no loyalty to anyone but herself. Dwayne wondered if he should have killed her. Sometimes he was too much of a soft touch for his own good.

Yet part of him pitied her. Solos had it hard all round, and Grace must be desperate to be bidding for such an ambitious prize as the book Dwayne had taken off Magnus' rank, much less the still enigmatic quarry that had brought so many ranks to London. Dwayne had his suspicions about that. But it made him appreciate his rank, his brothers and his territory, and the many privileges of being one of the Lost Boys. They all went their own way from time to time, but never for too long.

He'd hunt and clear out of London. He'd had enough of the capital. He'd need to go to ground for a couple of days to shake off any pursuit that might try to follow him back north. That would give him a chance to start studying the book he'd never thought he'd have a chance to read.

Dwayne sipped the excellent single malt, and waited for his shoulder to heal.