that. All I can come up with is a relative of some sort. They wanted me before, but that was years ago. And as far as I know, they think I’m dead.”
“What about Boaz?” Charlie asked.
Lucien visibly jerked. “Who?”
“Boaz. Eve used to be with him.”
He starred at Eve, appalled. “It was Boaz?”
“What is it, Lucien?” Eve asked, eyebrows furrowed.
“You were with
Boaz
? Of anyone to ever walk the earth, you chose to be with him?”
Charlie leaned back, amused. “I take it you knew him.”
He shook his head in disbelief. The thought of Eve with Boaz turned his previous sick feeling into full-blown nauseating revulsion. When he tasted bile in the back of his throat, he stood up. “I’ll wait for you outside.”
“Lucien, wait!” Eve called after him.
He was already out the door and walking down the street, keeping to the shadows. He stopped beneath an awning a few buildings down in front of a parking lot. He’d only met Boaz once and that was enough. Even as a vampire, he could sense Boaz’s evil nature. Lucien’s naïve older brother, Aiden, hadn’t been as aware.
It was Boaz who had turned Aiden. Lucien had always wondered how Boaz had found Aiden, as his brother had no friends to speak of and rarely left his studies. In fact, most people thought their father only had one son: Lucien. Lucien always thought it wasn’t mere chance that Boaz had turned Aiden, but he could never prove it.
After Aiden turned Lucien into a vampire, Aiden immediately introduced him to Boaz, hoping Lucien would be as enamored with Boaz as he was. Lucien could see why Aiden was drawn to him. Boaz’s commanding presence was overwhelming, and Lucien could feel his mind cloud over as Boaz’s dark energy reached out to him, but Lucien resisted. That meeting had been so unsettling that it was the first and last time Lucien ever saw him.
It shocked him to think Eve could fall in love with someone like Boaz. There were so many things he didn’t know about her.
“Hey, Valium,” Charlie called after him. “I hate to interrupt whatever inner torment you’re putting yourself through, but we need to figure out how to help Eve.”
Lucien turned around. “What you said in there, about Boaz, could he really be the one after her?”
Charlie shrugged. “Eve says she killed him.”
“Did she actually see him die?”
“Why does everyone keep asking that?”
“Who else asked it?”
“Henry. He thinks there’s a chance Boaz could still be alive, but I don’t see how. Eve exploded a house with him in it.”
“Boaz was one of the first vampires, if not
the
first.”
“That makes him invincible?”
“Almost. He’s been around long enough that he’s learned to tap into dark, powerful magic. Vampire’s normally can’t do magic, but he figured out a way.”
“How do you know all this?” Charlie asked.
“I’ve been around a long time.”
Charlie nodded his head back toward the coffee house. “If Boaz is alive, do you think he’d come after Eve?”
“If he was with her at one point, then absolutely. He collects people, and he never lets them go. They either stay with him … or they die.”
“So we need to capture one of these blood suckers and make them talk.”
“I doubt they’re going to know anything. If it is Boaz, he’s extremely secretive, and he’d never call himself
The Dark Prince
. It’s too flamboyant.” Lucien walked back to the coffee house, thinking hard.
Charlie moved with him. “What if we set up a trap? You take Eve, and I’ll have a team hide out in her house. We’ll activate the chip they left behind, and when they come back, thinking its Eve, we’ll get them.”
“It will never work.”
“Why not?”
“They will smell you a mile away," Lucien said. "And they’ll hear everyone inside. It’s got to be Eve, and she’s got to be alone—or at least someone without a beating heart.”
“I’m not using Eve as bait.”
“I’m not saying you should. But if
C. J. Cherryh
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