J. Ward - Dark Lover

Sitting behind his desk now, he signed on to the society's secured Web site and made it clear that a change in leadership had occurred. He ordered all lessers to come to the academy at four P.M. that afternoon, knowing that some would have to travel, but none was farther away than an eight-hour car ride. Anyone who did not show up would be excised from the society and hunted down like a dog.

Gathering the lessers together in one place was rare. At this time their numbers hovered in the fifty to sixty range, depending on the number of kills the brotherhood got in on any given night and the number of new recruits that were brought into service. The society's members were all in and around New England. This concentration in the northeastern United States was dictated by the prevalence of vampires in the area. If that population moved, so would the society.

As had been the way throughout the generations of the war.

Mr. X was aware that getting the lessers to Caldwell for an audience was critical. Although he knew most of them, and some of them rather well, he needed for them to see him and hear him and measure him. Especially as he redirected their focus.

Calling the meeting in the daylight was also important, as it would ensure they weren't ambushed by the brotherhood. And he could easily pass it off to the academy's human employees as a seminar on martial-arts technique. They would hold the gathering in the large conference room in the basement and lock the doors so they wouldn't be intruded upon.

Before he signed off, he posted an account of his elimination of Darius, because he wanted the slayers to have it in writing. He detailed the kind of bomb he'd used, the way to manufacture one from scratch, and the method for hardwiring the detonator into a car's ignition system. It was so easy once the thing was set. All you needed to do was arm it, and then the next time the engine was started, anyone in the car was turned to ash.

For that split second of payoff, he'd tracked the warrior Darius for a year, watching him, learning the rhythms of his life. And then two days ago, Mr. X had broken into the Greene Brothers BMW dealership when the vampire had sent his 6-series in for service. The bomb had been set, and then last night Mr. X had walked by the car and activated the detonator with a radio transmitter without missing a step.

The long, concentrated effort to set up the elimination was not something he shared. He wanted his lessers to believe he was able to execute such a flawless move on a whim. Image and perception played important roles in the creation of a power base, and he wanted to start building his command credibility right away.

After signing off, he leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers. Ever since he'd joined the society, the focus had been on reducing the vampire population through civilian eliminations. This would remain his overall goal, of course, but his first decree would be a change in strategy. The key to winning the war was taking out the brotherhood. Without those six warriors, the civilians would be naked against the lessers , undefended.

The tactic was not a new one. It had been attempted in generations past and discarded numerous times when the brothers had proven either too aggressive or too elusive to be taken out. But with Darius's death, the society had momentum.

And they had to do something differently. As it stood now, the brotherhood was cutting down hundreds of lessers every year, requiring the ranks to be fed with new, inexperienced slayers. Recruits were trouble. They were hard to find, hard to induct into the society, and not as effective as seasoned members of the society.

This constant need to bring in new men led to a critical weakness for the society. Training centers like the Caldwell Martial Arts Academy served an important purpose in identifying and enlisting humans to join the ranks, but they were also points of exposure. Avoiding interference by the human police-and protecting against a siege by the brotherhood-required constant vigilance and frequent relocation. The moving around from place to place was disruptive, but how else could the society stay stocked and yet the centers of operation not be ambushed?

Mr. X shook his head. At some point he was going to need a second in command, though he wouldn't bring one on for a while.

Fortunately, nothing he was going to do was particularly complex. It was all basic military strategy. Marshal your forces. Coordinate them. Acquire information on the enemy. Advance in a logical, disciplined manner.

He was marshaling his forces this afternoon.

As for coordination, he was going to arrange them into squadrons. And he was going to insist the slayers start meeting with him regularly in small groups.

As for information? If they were going to take out the brotherhood, they needed to know where to find the brothers. This would be difficult, though not impossible. Those warriors were a cagey, suspicious lot who kept to themselves, but the civilian vampire population did have some contact with them. After all, the brothers had to feed, and it couldn't be off one another. They required female blood.

And females, even if most of them were sheltered like precious art, had brothers and fathers who could be persuaded to talk. With the proper incentive, the males would reveal where their womenfolk went and who they saw. And then the brotherhood would be revealed.

This was the key to his overall strategy: A coordinated program of capture and motivation, focused on civilian males and the rare female who was out and about, would eventually lead to the brothers. It had to. Either because the brothers became incensed that the civilians were being used so roughly and came out with all daggers flashing. Or because someone talked and their locations were divulged.

The best outcome would be to find out where the warriors spent their days. Taking them down while the sun was shining, when they were at their most vulnerable, was the course of action with the highest probability of success and the lowest likelihood of society fatalities.

All things considered, killing civilian vampires was only slightly more difficult than knocking out your average human. They bled if you cut them, and their hearts stopped beating if you shot them, and if you got them into the sunlight they burned up.

Killing a member of the brotherhood was a very different proposition. They were monstrously strong, highly trained, and they healed up fast, a subspecies all their own. You had one shot with a warrior. If you didn't make it mortal, you were not making it home.

Mr. X stood up from the desk, taking a moment to study his reflection in the office's window. Pale hair, pale skin, pale eyes. Before he'd joined the society he'd been a redhead. Now he couldn't remember what he'd looked like anymore.

But he was very clear about his future. And the society's.

He locked the door behind him and went down the tiled hall to the main arena, waiting by the entrance, nodding at the students as they came inside for their jujitsu lesson. This was his favorite class, a group of young men, ages eighteen to twenty-four, who showed a lot of promise. As the fleet of guys in white, belted jujitsu gis bowed their heads to him and addressed him as sensei, Mr. X measured each one, noticing the way their eyes moved, the way they carried their bodies, how their moods seemed.

With his students lined up and prepared to spar, he continued to look them over, always keeping an eye out for potential recruits to the society. He was searching for just the right combination of physical strength, mental acuity, and unchan-neled hatred.

When he'd been approached to join the Lessening Society in the 1950s, he'd been a seventeen-year-old greaser in a juvenile delinquent program. The year before he'd stabbed his father in the chest after the bastard had knocked him one too many times in the head with a beer bottle. He'd hoped to kill the man, but unfortunately his father had survived and lived long enough to go home and kill Mr. X's mother.