We made our way to the main hall where the rest of my so-called team waited. As my eyes wandered over the assembled crowd, I found it hard to believe how large the group had grown. Cinder sat isolated in a chair near the corner of the room, his gray eyes never leaving the motley crew. Katie also sat somewhat apart from the group, her uncertain eyes regarding Ash. She'd been through a lot. Seen a lot. And she'd killed. I knew from experience how bitter a pill that was to swallow.
I also wondered how deep her emotions ran for Ash. Had his change from gentle Goth nerd to vampire changed her feelings? No telling. Trying to understand women was like—well, like trying to understand something that's super hard to understand. But maybe things would work out. I spotted Ash where he stood next to Nyte, taking in the motley crew. But I also caught his furtive attempts to look at Katie, worry on his face.
Man, I knew the feeling.
I still felt the weight of my mental scars after seeing Brad Nichols and others die as a result of the vampling curse. I had also killed people. Some people needed killing, but it didn't make me feel any better about it.
Most of this crowd had fought together. They knew each other. While they'd never be the perfect, happy-go-lucky bunch I'd seen in sitcoms, I still considered them family. A wonderful, bizarre, dysfunctional family. At least I knew what they were, rather than the lie of a perfect family my parents had smothered my childhood with. For all I knew, my mom had blurred out all the negative memories, leaving me with only positive ones.
It doesn't matter anymore.
My parents might as well have been dead.
Nyte was speaking with animated gestures to Shelton and Bella, probably begging for magic tricks. He'd already extracted a promise from Ryland to transform into a wolf, though I expected he'd hovered close to the lycan so he could gawk at Stacey's shapely form.
Meghan stood near the roaring fireplace, while Adam took up a position in the center of the room, his tablet ready with whatever information he'd gleaned. His face looked pale. I had to assume he was worried sick about his sister. Meghan's eyes locked with mine and held contact for the space of a couple of seconds. If she was trying to tell me something, I didn't get it.
"Oh, lamb," Stacey said, walking a circle around me, a purr in the back of her throat. "You look absolutely delicious." She glanced at Leia. "I really must have you style my hair sometime. You do a marvelous job."
"A Templar hair dresser?" Shelton said from his position on a leather sofa to the left of the table. "I don't get it."
Leia shrugged. "It started out as a cover for one of our operations many years ago. By the time we were done, I realized how much I enjoyed styling. So I continued."
"If you'd ever take off that cowboy hat, maybe she could gussie you up," Ryland said to Shelton with a wolfish grin.
Shelton grunted and pulled off the hat to reveal his close-shorn head. "For one thing, wolf man, this is a fedora, not a cowboy hat. As for hair—" He gave a disdainful look at Ryland's thick head of long, unruly hair. "I got a pair of hedge trimmers that might improve that mess."
Ignoring the verbal jousting, I set my arcphone on the table in the middle of the room. "Before we start talking about waxing body hair Brazilian style, maybe I should go over the plan." I spoke some magic words to pull up a holographic image of Maximus's crib. Unless the rogue vampire had changed things up, the map appeared accurate, including the location of the crypt where he'd kept my father deep beneath the old building. As I looked it over, apprehension settled over me. Never in my wildest dreams had I imagined setting foot back in the place where Elyssa had almost died. The place where I'd first manifested into demon form and annihilated a mob of vamplings. The place where Felicia had sicced those very vamplings on me and Elyssa. How ironic it was, going back into that place to save Felicia.
"Are you okay, Justin?" Bella said, concern etched in her face.
I shook my head. "Yeah. Sorry." I covered my worry with a smile. "Just some bad memories of this place." I glanced at Nyte, whose eyes were glued to Stacey's backside as she prowled about the room. I cleared my throat. "Anything you and Ash want to add before I go over the plan, Nyte?"
Ash looked away from Katie, a guilty expression on his face. "No?"
Nyte wiped the corner of his mouth and jerked from his ass-induced trance. "Uh, no. I wish we had more inside info."
I waved to Adam. "Want to show us what you found on Maximus?"
The gawky Arcane came to the table and set his tablet on it. Flicked a finger across the surface. The black-and-white image of a man with a monocle and an oiled mustache flickered into the air. "Meet Simon Barclay, aka The Master. This is the vampire turning noms for Maximus."
"What a horrid moustache," Stacey said, wrinkling her nose.
Adam smiled, though it didn't look like his heart was in it. "Barclay isn't ancient by vampire standards, having been around only since the fourteenth or fifteenth century, but from all the information I was able to find about him, he's anti-establishment."
"He doesn't like the Red Syndicate?" Ryland asked.
Adam shook his head. "Back before vampires modernized to the Syndicate, they ruled with an elder council. Barclay thought vampirism was a gift they should spread to the masses. The elders disagreed. Said it was reserved only for a chosen few."
"Populist versus the elitists," Shelton said. "How quaint."
"Barclay formed his own cult and tried to create a vampire army. At the time, he wasn't old enough and, instead, wiped out an entire village in Northern Ireland with the vampling plague." Adam changed the image to that of old drawings, showing zombie-like vampires in the act of killing screaming victims. "Sound familiar?"
"Obviously, he's old enough to turn noms into vampires now," Bella said. "But why did he wait centuries before trying this again?"
"Apparently, the elders ordered Barclay executed. I couldn't find any historical records about the results, but I think it's safe to say they failed. Barclay went underground for centuries. When he came back, he must have started by turning Maximus, using him as a proxy instead of coming out of the shadows himself."
"Because the Syndicate would kill Barclay," Elyssa said.
Adam shrugged. "Far as I know, a number of the elders from those days are still around. I'm sure they haven't forgotten." He switched to the black-and-white image of a group of vampires posing with fanged grins before what looked like an old Ford Model T. Using his finger, he circled a familiar face on the far left. "Say hello to Herbert Lipschitz, aka Maximus, shown here shortly after his transformation to vampire."
A few chuckles went up around the room.
"Are you serious?" Stacey said, raising an eyebrow. "His bloody name is Herbert?"
"I kid you not," Adam said, zooming in to show Maximus's face.
"No wonder he changed it," Ryland said with a grin.
Adam moved the focus to another familiar face, at least to me. "As you can see, Barclay is in this picture as well. According to the writing on the back, this photo was taken a couple of days after he turned this group of men into vampires."
"So we know for sure Barclay is Maximus's sire," Bella said, leaning in to examine the hovering image.
"I couldn't find much more about Maximus's history, but he was supposedly abandoned by his immigrant parents when they arrived in America. A rich Jewish couple, the Lipschitzes, found him abandoned at a warehouse by the docks and raised him as their own. Sometime after this picture was taken, his adoptive parents were found murdered in an alley, supposedly mugged, and Maximus took over the family fortune."
"Did he kill them?" Katie asked.
The Arcane shrugged. "From the old newspaper articles I dug up, plenty of people suspected as much, but nothing was ever proved." He glanced back at me. "Anyway, that's all I got."
Shelton raised his hand. "One thing I gotta know."
Adam raised an eyebrow. "What's that?"
"How in the hell do you say Lipschitz with a straight face?"
After the chuckles died down, I spoke. "The plan is simple. Elyssa, Nyte, Ash, and I will go in Maximus's front door and act like we're there for the orientation." I held up a tiny glass ball. "Along the way, we'll drop these flashers Shelton gave me. Once we identify Felicia's sire using the magic ring from Meghan, I'll shout out the magic word to activate the flashers. That should stun or knock out most of the vamps. We'll grab Barclay and Maximus and head out."
"Whoa," Shelton said. "Do you know how much sunlight I concentrated into those flashers? A lot. Last time I checked, your pals there are vampires, so you'd better plan on toting them outta there, too."
"I don't think the flashers will work on Ash and Nyte," I said, and told them about the serum Maximus had made from my blood. By the time I finished, those who hadn't heard about the stuff looked shocked.
"The bloody fool can inject people now?" Stacey said. "And make super vampires?"
I nodded. "We have to stop him before he turns more people."
Shelton didn't look convinced. "Alright, so you set off the flashers, scoop up our good buddy, Herbert, and then what? You make a break for it?"
I nodded. "The flashers should knock out most of the vamps. Then it'll be up to the rest of you to clear out the vamps outside."
"Don't this just feel like déjà vu all over again?" Shelton commented dryly. "After the can of whoop-ass the Templars opened on Maximus down in Colombia, do you really think you'll just be able to march in there with your fancy blonde hairdo and fake fangs, and manage to drag Lipschitz out of there?"
"He has a point," Ryland said. "A snatch and run ain't a half-bad idea, but I'd be willing to bet Max has a few more tricks up his sleeves."