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"Sire?" Louis said behind him "You called for me?"

"We need to break the security on Victor’s coet the rest for now"

"Yes, erness in Louis’s voice For all his skill at fighting, Louis was a geek at heart, a technical genius who’d neverto get into Victor’s co you can find on E, Louis"

"Yes, my lord"

Duncan continued to watch as E around before heading back the way she’d coht of her lovely eyes, such an unusual color, the exact shade of pansies in the spring He still rearden in that other lifetied so much since then It was more than a different tiht He rarely remembered those days anyht the the truth about her friend What she knew of it, anyway Part of what made Duncan so successful with humans was his va his kind Vampires were far more likely to lose any connection they’d once had to huain it But even as a human, Duncan had possessed an intuitive feel for other people’s emotions And sorown It had been tooevery emotion of the people--human or vaered in buildings or roo or traumatic, like fear, hate, or even love His abilities bordered on the psychic, but then many of the abilities bestowed by the Vampire transition did

Over tieneral noise, learned how to tap into feelings selectively And he’d definitely selected to tap into Ms Duquet this evening Her feelings had been very straightforward, and, as frequently was the case, knowledge of her ehts The tent hand in hand, after all People often lied with their hts were always truthful Coenerally judge a human as well as he could one of his own vampire children And since a vampire Sire knew his children as well as he knew hi

But if E the truth, then Victor’s activities went far beyond corruption, beyond even the abominations he’d kept imprisoned in his basement Which meant Duncan had to find out exactly what Victor’s cri down on Duncan’s head

Chapter Six

The next night, Duncan opened the door fro as soh the open stairwell and hit the first floor with a resounding boohtforward method of expeditious junk disposal Unfortunately, it was creating a rapidly growing pile of debris in the foyer Eventually, all that junk would have to be hauled out into the yard where it would sit until they had better security in place There’d be no ate

The rest of the teaht, and the house was much busier than it had been The newly arrived vampires had all knelt and sworn a blood oath to hiiance fro, which made the whole process much simpler Duncan was their master now; their hearts beat at his co up the remnants of Victor’s corruption All three levels of the old house were being searched thoroughly, which inliterally torn apart No one trusted Victor, but they weren’t entirely certain what they were looking for, either Listening or recording devices, certainly When those were found, they were removed and traced back to their control base, which thus far had proven to be a less roo cha, that he’d chosen to fashion a daytihest floor But then the basement would have been out of the question, since it had been filled with his half-sentient va devices they had found were located in bedrooave proof that those bedrooms had been used frequently, if only for an hour or two at a tinificantly, most of the men featured in those videos were faces Duncan and everyone else recognized fro news

He didn’t know yet if Victor had been actively blackh he’d know even that before they were finished--but, if not, he’d certainly been stockpiling blackainst future needs

Duncan walked down the hall to where Louis had set up his equip effort to unravel the various files from Victor’s computers What he’d found so far was just more evidence of Victor’s ra in a small apartment with tin foil over the s and newspapers piled up to the ceiling Instead, he’d been a powerful va in the DC area before the city had even had a name Duncan didn’t knohat Victor had done before they’d established the US Capital here Maybe haunted the battlefields of the revolution, preying on dying soldiers

Or ainst the old vahed They didn’t need hi out walls with the rest of them, but--

"My lord!"

Louis’s excited shout had Duncan crossing quickly to the desk where his security chief was bent over the keyboard of Victor’s an h the data Duncan stepped out of their way