Hunted (Belle Morte Book 3)

Chapter One

"Damn right you're not," Renie said.

Roux strode into the dining hall ahead of her friends, and took a seat halfway down the long trestle table. In happier days this was where the donors used to sit and eat together, served delicious meals by human staff flitting in and out of the small kitchen at the back of the mansion. Like the donors, the staff were gone now. Even some of the guards hadn't stuck around. Belle Morte was a ghost of its former self, and it made Roux's heart ache to think of what it had once been.

She believed the mansion could recover. She believed that vampires could come back from this and restore their place in the world, but at the same time she knew there was a significant chance that they couldn't. The tide of public favour could have turned against them so thoroughly that they would simply drown under the weight of fear and hatred.

Renie and Edmond sat down beside her, their hands tightly clasped. Roux smiled at them. Ever since Belle Morte had been reclaimed, the pair had been practically inseparable. When Renie was still human, a large part of their relationship had taken place in secret, thanks to the law that dictated vampires could not have relationships with humans. Now that neither of them were bound by those laws, they could be as free and open as they wanted with each other – and neither of them were shy about public displays of affection. Sometimes, when Roux caught them kissing in one of Belle Morte's many corridors, she'd tease them and tell them to get a room, but the truth was that she loved seeing them so happy.

Footsteps clomped on the parquet floor, and Roux knew it was Jason without even turning around. No vampire would walk that loudly, and if any guards were joining the meeting, they probably wouldn't sound in such a hurry.

Jason threw himself into the chair on Roux's other side. His hair was mussed in a style in that looked casual and effortless, but that he would have worked hard to create. Jason loved hair, and he loved finding new, fun things to do with it.

"Fashionably early, are we?" he said, and his voice echoed around the huge room. He winced.

The dining hall wasn't a library; no one was expected to talk in whispers, but Roux and Jason were used to this room being full of people, full of voices laughing and joking with each other. Without that the room seemed too big and too empty, a stark reminder that many of those voices had been silenced forever.

Roux shrugged. "Didn't have much else to do."

A flash of nervousness crossed Jason's face. "Do you think Ysanne will kick us out?"

Roux shot a look at Edmond, but his expression was vampire-blank, giving nothing away. She decided to interpret that as he didn't know what Ysanne was planning. Edmond loved Renie more than anything else in this world, and he knew how much her friends meant to her. There was no way he'd sit there and say nothing if he knew that Ysanne had plans to make Roux and Jason leave the mansion.

"I'm sure she's got more important things to worry about us," she told Jason, but inside she wasn't sure.

The survival of the vampire race was more important that whether or not Roux and Jason stayed at Belle Morte, but they couldn't stay there indefinitely and everyone knew it.

And it wasn't as if neither of them wanted to go home – they'd both contacted their families to explain that they were safe and well – but Roux just didn't feel she could leave yet. Jemima and Etienne were dead, but the mess that they had created was far from over.

Some of their newly turned vampires had escaped the final fight and disappeared into Winchester. Roux had no idea where they were now, what was going to happen to them, or how their disappearance would affect everyone in Belle Morte. Hopefully that was something Ysanne would bring up when she got here.

More vampires started to trickle in, but none of them spoke, and the silence grew even more oppressive.

Jason sat up a little straighter when Gideon came in, but the blond vampire had his eyes fixed on the floor. When the loyal friends of Belle Morte had taken back the House from the people who'd stolen it, Roux was sure she'd glimpsed some serious sparks between Jason and Gideon. Since Jason had been nursing a serious crush on Gideon ever since he first laid eyes on him, the possibility of something actually developing between them had delighted Roux. But, although he was confident in every other walk of life, Jason hadn't yet plucked up the courage to approach Gideon, and the vampire seemed to have retreated into his own world over the last few days.

The vampires all took their seats and, mingled with them, Roux spotted the familiar faces of Belle Morte and Fiaigh guards. Seamus, Head of Security at Fiaigh, took up position near the top of the table. He had stayed in the mansion ever since it had been reclaimed, and it didn't seem as if he had any plans to return to his own House just yet.

Roux was glad; Belle Morte needed strong, competent people in charge, now more than ever, and Fiaigh was the one House that had never fallen to their enemies. It didn't need Seamus like Belle Morte did, not right now anyway.

Ludovic took his place next to Edmond, and Roux was surprised to see a flicker of real nervousness in his eyes. She didn't know Ludovic all that well, but she'd seen him fight and he was a force of nature when he wanted to be. The uncertainty she could see on his face now...it made him look more vulnerable, more fragile than she was used to.

Edmond leaned over and murmured something to his friend, but Roux couldn't hear what it was. Ludovic gave a tiny nod, but the look in his eyes didn't change.

Maybe she'd been wrong, Roux thought. She'd assumed that if the donor system collapsed and the vampires were evicted from their Houses, they could cope with going back into the shadows, but maybe they couldn't. Maybe Ludovic couldn't.

Roux looked around the room again and tried to picture how the mansion would look if no one lived here. She hadn't died and become a vampire like Renie, but her whole life had still changed in this place and Belle Morte would always mean something to her.

But it meant so much more to the vampires.

It was their home. It was where they had all lived for the last decade, the place where they had once been safe.

What would happen if they were kicked out?

Where would they go?

What would happen to the mansion?

Roux wasn't sure exactly who could kick the vampires out of their home, but if the donor system had crashed and burned, and if anti-vampire sentiment continued to rise then they wouldn't be able to leave Belle Morte. Eventually they'd starve to death.

She tried to drag her thoughts away from worst-case scenarios. It wasn't doing her any good to think like that. Yes, people were scared and when people were scared they lashed out, but that kind of mob mentality didn't rule everyone. There had to be people who knew that not all vampires could be tarred with the same brush, and if things got really bad, Roux hoped these were the same people who would fight for vampire rights. She'd fight alongside them if that's what it took.

Ysanne swept into the room, her high heels clicking crisply across the floor. Looking at her you'd never know that, for however brief a time, she had lost her House and had seen some of her own people turn traitor. Her hair was a pale sheet down her back, not a single strand out of place, and her white sheath dress clung to every line and contour of her body. She looked beautiful and regal, a queen once again. But Roux had glimpsed the real person behind the icy mask, and she honestly found it hard to be intimidated by Ysanne now.

Under one arm Ysanne carried a small sheaf of papers, and she placed them at the head of the table. Her chair was already pulled out, waiting for her to sit down, but instead she placed both hands on the table and surveyed the room.

Roux realised she was holding her breath. Whatever Ysanne had to say wouldn't affect Roux directly, but it would affect her friends and, as far as she was concerned, that was just as important.

Under the table she crossed her fingers and hoped and hoped and hoped that Ysanne had good news.