The Dark Edge Chronicles - Hardwire

Lilith, Revisited

The Lilith's head came up and her luminous purple gaze peered directly into Mordecai's intense blue eyes.

"Still, you gave me aide when it meant certain death for your people," he continued softly. "I am honor-bound to give you aide this one time, in return. Come inside, quickly. I have managed to elude the Brotherhood this last time, but if they tracked you, . . ."

Nodding her understanding, the heavily cloaked Lilith stepped into the room. But, as Mordecai was about to close the door, she held out her hand to catch it before it began to swing shut.

"Please forgive me and my presumption, but I am not the only one of my people that seeks refuge within your walls," she husked. As Mordecai frowned, she turned to gesture just outside the doorway. A heartbeat later four more heavily cloaked forms appeared, almost scuttling along the hallway with obvious fear. One by one, the Lilith pulled them into Mordecai's room. Only when the last was inside, did she let him close the door.

As the Lilith assembled the other four, at first Mordecai suspected that she had brought some of the vampiric guards that had protected the nest, as protection for herself. But, as he noted the small, rather diminutive forms and a strong, spiced musk scent coming from them, not unlike night lilies and jasmine, he knew they were no guards.

"Breeders?" he hissed tightly. "You brought breeders into a psionic's refuge? Are you mad?"

"Desperate," the Lilith tiredly replied, turning away from her four companions to face the big psionic once more. "This is all that's left of the nest that you found downtown. All the others are dead, or captured by the Brotherhood. I had no choice, as a Lilith. I had to bring them along with me. It's in my blood."

"Huh," Mordecai grunted, unimpressed. Breeders fetched a high price by psionic bounty hunters; they were the underpinnings of any nest, the creatures that allowed the vampires to maintain their numbers through reproduction. Each breeder could generate perhaps ten spawn over her reproductive life cycle, with each of those growing into adult vampires capable of killing hundreds, if not thousands of humans over the course of their long life spans. The urge to burn them down where they stood was almost overwhelming!

But Mordecai's honor held him in cold chains of reason. As long as the Lilith was with them, they were safe. She had protected him and now, by force of honor, he would protect them. Still, he shook his head in wonder, letting a low sigh whistle out between his teeth.

"I may regret this for the rest of my life, but, . . . . you'll find safety within these walls."

Again the Lilith sagged with relief, knowing that she and the breeders had stood on the brink of a very deep precipice by coming for help to the most powerful hardwire on the planet. They had been snatched back from the edge by the barest of margins.

Turning away from the vampires, Mordecai recharged his psionic cortex. As he did, he glanced over at the Lilith.

"Before I do anything else, I must know. How the hell did you find me? The entire Brotherhood is bending every resource into locating me and, for the most part, failing. Yet here you are, knocking on my damn hotel room door as if it was the most natural thing."

The Lilith leveled that purple eyed gaze at him once more.

"Vampires are night creatures," she replied, the words coming slowly as if she was confessing an old secret. "As such, we have enhanced capabilities with sight and scent. As a Lilith, especially. I use pheromones to control, manipulate and coerce whenever possible, to the benefit of my people. Because of that capability, I also can track particular scents across great distances."

"Like mine," Mordecai said with a frown. While he could control his psionic traces, he couldn't necessarily control his bio-chemical ones. That certainly explained how, in some of the reports he had read, vampires were able to detect psionics in deep stealth. And how this Lilith managed to find him.