Page 75 of Lucien

It had never happened this way before. It had never come on this strong, intensely enough that Jamie lost all signs and sense of the present. Or if it had, it had happened in his sleep, when he’d already left the real, waking world.

But now, in his mother’s kitchen—was he still in his mother’s kitchen?—it was all he could see. All he could feel.

Luc. His vampire was fighting. Urgently. Violently. Jamie couldn’t see at first who he was battling. Had Roman finally snapped and tried to exact vengeance on his old friend?

But no. Luc twisted, grappling with his opponent, and Jamie could see it was someone he didn’t recognize. Light-brown hair. A stocky stature. Not as tall as Luc, but he looked…strong. Way too strong.

It was a vampire; that was certain. Jamie couldn’t see clearly enough to get a look at his eyes, but only another vampire could hold his own against Luc that way. No human would have him fighting so furiously. They’d be broken in mere moments.

And then Luc was on the ground, this strange vampire on top of him. Clawing and biting and tearing.

Jamie’s heart stopped in his chest.

The stranger was tearing clear through Luc’s throat.

Luc wasn’t getting up.

He was still trying—legs kicking at the dust, arms pushing up against the stranger’s chest—but he was weakening; it was clear.

Luc was still fighting. But he was losing.

Jamie was holding on to the passenger side door so hard his fingers were starting to hurt, his knuckles turning white from the effort.

He’d asked Jay to drive, unsure of his own steadiness after the force of that vision, something he was beginning to regret as Jay sped through another solidly red light.

“Where’d you pass your driver’s test? The autobahn?”

He tried calling Luc’s phone for the tenth time. Straight to voicemail again. And of course, this being Luc, his voicemail was just that bland robot voice reciting the different digits of his phone number. Jamie couldn’t even hear his vampire’s voice in his time of panic.

It was the exact opposite of reassuring.

He would have been tempted to scream in frustration if he weren’t almost certain the act would send Jay careening into the car next to them.

“I haven’t taken any test,” Jay informed him calmly as the car he’d almost T-boned honked at them. “But Danny’s been taking me to practice in the parking lots around Hyde Park.”

“How old are you again?”

Jay looked thoughtful. “Somewhere around two hundred and fifty, I think. It’s easy to start to lose track a little.”

That was such a trip to think about. The little vampire was a strange mix of naivete and unfathomable life experience. Jamie really wanted to sit down with the guy and pick his brain. Some other time, perhaps. One when Jamie wasn’t terrified for the life of his destined mate and lover.

And himself, given the way Jay was driving.

Jamie tried Luc for the eleventh time. “You’re that old and you don’t have a license?”

“You do realize that any identificationanyof us older vampires has is completely false, right? Luc may have a license from some black market contact, but that doesn’t make it valid or legal.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jamie muttered. “But where the fuckisLuc is the question.”

At that, Jay dug into his pocket and handed over his phone, Jamie’s soul leaving his body only a little as the car swerved wildly with the vampire’s switch to one hand on the wheel. “Try Danny.”

Of fucking course. Danny and Roman. If Jamie hadn’t been panicking so much, he might have thought of it himself.

He’d woken up from his vision in a fog-headed daze, his mom shaking him, and Jay and his sister standing by with open mouths. His sister had claimed he’d looked like something fromThe Exorcist, his eyes rolled back with only the whites showing, but Jamie hadn’t given them much of a chance for a debriefing.

He’d grabbed Jay, tugging him out of the house while shouting a hurried goodbye to his mother and sister, and shoved him into the driver’s seat of the car, directing him to the neighborhood pool where the corpse had been found. Luc had told him they’d be starting the search with the bodies.

But all that had so far proven to be pretty fucking fruitless, with no sign of Luc anywhere.

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