“Hmm.” Merrick considered this new information. The Revelation that he knew wasn’t trying to lure people in with offers of money—that appeared to be a new tactic. “If you hear of anything more, let me know. Information about the Revelation is worth money to us.”
“Right you are. Now, who is it you want me to find?” Savian all but beamed at him.
Merrick found himself wanting to be back at his villa, where he could accuse Tempest of turning the world against him. Or rather, turning itforhim, which was completely unacceptable. “The man is known to us only as Victor, although he might also be appearing as a mortal named Carlo Marcuzzi.” Merrick gave the entirely too-happy thief taker the information he had gleaned from his sources, and the few items Tempest had mentioned.
Savian looked at his watch. “So it’s been, what? Two days since you’ve lost track of Carlo?”
“That’s about right.”
“Hmm. I’ll have my bloodhounds get to work on the trail, but that’s a bit long, even for them.” Savian grinned when Merrick frowned, and added, “Bloodhounds are what I call my team of sprites.”
“You use sprites?” Merrick wondered if he’d made the right choice in calling in this particular thief taker. “The little balls of light?”
“That’s only one of their forms. Most of them look perfectly human, since that’s the preferred form. Attracts so much less attention than a sentient ball of light. I have four sprites around the world who I use to pick up markers on cold trails.” Savian pulled out his mobile phone again and tapped out a text message. “The nearest one is in Paris, but she can be in Italy shortly via the portal.”
“What do you do if the sprites are the ones finding the trail?” Merrick didn’t like the idea of paying a vast sum of money to a man who simply used others to do his own work.
“They just find the signs that I can’t see. Once they identify the marker the individual leaves, then I pick it up and follow the trail.” Savian looked up from his phone. “You don’t know what a marker is, do you?”
“Of course I do,” Merrick said, bristling slightly. “It’s my job to hunt people. Markers are a sign someone has passed by a location.”
“Well ...” Savian rubbed his chin. “Yes and no. In your job, that’s probably right. But for us, for thief takers, we use a different sort of trail. Every immortal has a certain marker unique to them. Dragons have dragon scales; you Dark Ones shed something we call sanguine, which is more or less an arcane-based blood residue. Trolls leave minute plant spores, and demons, of course, trail demon smoke everywhere.”
Merrick couldn’t help but glance down at himself. “I’ve never heard of sanguine, but I know that I do not leave any sort of a blood trail.”
“Ah, that’s where you’re wrong, although I’m not surprised you haven’t heard of sanguine. It’s just the name we thief takers give it, and it’s not something you can see unless you have a sprite pointing out just what to look for. Each Dark One’s trail is unique, hence the need for the sprites.”
“But Carlo might very well be human,” Merrick pointed out.
“Well, if he is this Victor dude, then luck is on our side.”
“How so?” Merrick asked, confused.
“If he’s been around vampires, or any other immortal being, then he’ll have traces of their markers on him. The fact that the marker is changed slightly by contact with him will clue Imelda the sprite into the fact that it’s not the immortal itself who left the marker.”
“So she finds the marker, identifies it to you, and then you follow the trail? Can you do that, considering that Victor left the house two days ago?”
“I’ll give it a shot. If there hasn’t been a lot of immortal traffic in the area, there should be some residue. Of course, the samples degrade over time, so the sooner we get to it, the better.”
Merrick wholeheartedly agreed with that sentiment and, after a few more instructions, sent the thief taker on his way. He found a hotel room, and slept away the daylight hours.
He dreamed, though, dreams filled with images of Tempest that both aroused and enraged him. He woke at one point with an erection, and a determination to cut her out of his life at the first opportunity.
A gnawing feeling reminded him that it had been a while since he last fed, but an odd sort of reluctance gripped him.
“Eat,” he told himself the following evening, scanning the crowd outside the hotel, looking for a likely subject. He prefered feeding from women, since men tended to be more aware of personal-space issues, but today, as he eyed the people outside an artisans’ market, no one seemed appealing.
Except Tempest.
“I don’t need her, no matter what she claims,” he said aloud, garnering him some odd looks from passersby. Fine. If he didn’t want a human, there were animals in the vicinity. He was sure to find some accommodating horse who wouldn’t mind donating a little blood.
He grimaced even as the thought rolled through his head. He’d never before been overly picky about his food source, and now here he was making an issue out of nothing.
“This is just yet another reason why I can’t have a Beloved,” he informed his hotel room when he returned to it. “It provides yet another way someone could use her against me. Well, I’ll have none of it. I simply won’t eat until I get over this uncomfortable phase.”
He wallowed in his righteous indignation for a bit, but distractions soon left him feeling hungry and grumpy.
“I can’t believe you were so close to Victor and let him get away,” Nico, one of his brother Horsemen, said some six hours later. It was almost midnight, and the four men had gathered together on a rare videoconference.
