Devil's Gate (Elder Races #4.6)(11)

His ability to see all perspectives of a situation would be one of the things that made him such an outstanding attorney. She had to smile. It could make him an outstanding friend as well. Or enemy. It was one more thing that she liked so much about him. His quiet, incisive intelligence had its own kind of bite.

He was still speaking. He said, “And there’s also a big difference between me and Julian.”

“What difference is that?” she asked, growing fascinated despite her initial discomfort.

A thrill ran through her nerve endings as Duncan took one of her hands and played with her fingers. “Thousands of years,” he told her. “You see, I accept Carling’s rule over me. She made me, and I’m young enough to remember how I felt when I agreed to that. Yes, she has the Power to force me to her will, but in the last hundred and seventy years, she has almost never done so, and she never has without having a compelling reason for it. But Julian was turned at the height of the Roman Empire. He and Carling, and Rune too—the three of them are different from us.”

“Us?” she repeated in surprise. “As in you and me?”

“Yes, as in you and me,” he said.

She smiled at him, amused. “Do you realize I’m probably close to two hundred years older than you?”

He grinned. “I was thirty when I was turned, so if you’re over three hundred and fifty, then yes, you are. But the age difference between you and me is a drop in the bucket when you look at millennia. They are all so much older than we are. I think it makes them fundamentally different in some way. And Julian is very dominant. Carling has never changed anyone against their will, so he must have once, long, long ago, agreed to her dominance, but I think he has chafed under her Power for a very long time. Imagine what it must have been like for him when it looked like she was dying.”

She frowned. “I suppose, even if he cared for her, in some ways it must have felt like a relief.”

“That is how I see it,” Duncan said. “For many years they worked well in partnership with each other. They played off each other’s strengths very well. But she didn’t die when she was supposed to, and he wasn’t freed. Now he can’t stand the thought of being under her Power again. And if they ever saw each other in person, she could potentially force him to her will—he is her progeny, after all. I don’t think Julian ever hated Carling before. But I think maybe he has learned to hate her now.”

“The way you describe it, it sounds like they’re in the middle of some kind of duel.”

“That’s a good way to describe it,” Duncan said. “Only this duel may take centuries to play out.”

She shuddered and curled her fingers around his. “It disturbs me to think about you possibly getting caught in the middle of their—” What should she call it? Disagreement sounded far too simple. “Their clash of wills.”

“Oh well,” he said wryly. “’Every family has its ups and downs.’”

Seremela went into delighted shock. “Did you just quote Katherine Hepburn as Eleanor of Aquitaine from The Lion in Winter, or was that an accident?”

He smiled into her gaze. “What if I did?”

Under the full bore force of such close contact, her breathing grew restricted. “I loved that movie.”

“I did too. I’ve also had a lot of reason to quote it through recent years.” He pressed a kiss against the back of her hand. “Speaking of families, I think we’re getting ready to land. Once we get the SUV and our supplies, it should take us about an hour to get to Devil’s Gate. Then we can collect your niece and take her home.”

She chuckled. “You make it sound so easy.”

“After Carling and Julian? You bet, this is easy,” Duncan said.

Seremela shook her head at him and gave him a pitying grin. “You say that only because you haven’t met Vetta yet.”

Chapter Four

Death

By the time the plane had landed at the Reno-Tahoe Airport and they had disembarked, met with the travel agency Duncan had used to book the SUV, signed for the vehicle and then inspected the food, water and camping supplies to make sure they had everything they needed, most of the daylight had slipped away. Duncan drove and once they reached US-395 S, traffic opened up and they made good time.

Reno was like many cities in the desert where they seemed to leave the populated area all at once. As he picked up speed on the open highway, he asked Seremela, “Do you mind if I roll down the windows?”

“Not at all,” she said, although he noticed that she glanced at the western sky.

The sun hadn’t completely set but it was low enough on the horizon that at times it was obscured by the hills in the west. The colors of the summer desert evening were large splashes of deepening tan and gold sliced with elongated black shadows, and the departing day left fiery banners of rose, lavender and purple strewn across the sky.

Duncan touched the controls embedded in the driver’s seat door, and the windows lowered several inches. Nevada could reach triple digits in the heat of the day in June, but the heat cooled rapidly in the evening and the fresh air merely felt pleasantly warm.

After a moment, he said, “You know, some Vampyres are rigid about eschewing daylight hours. They will not step outside of shelter until the sun has completely set, and they are well under cover by sunrise every morning. It happens a lot with older Vampyres. Some of them turn agoraphobic and almost never leave their shelters. I’m not sure why. Perhaps as time goes by, they feel the odds stacking against them for having a fatal accident.”