A Night with a Vampire by Cynthia Cooke Page A

a young woman stepped out. She locked the door behind her then crossed the empty lot to her red car. “She should be the last one,” Cayman said. “They worked late tonight.”
    Xana felt that odd tingling on the back of her neck again. She swung around, certain there must be someone behind her, but again saw no one.
    She was just jumpy. Jumpy and tired.
    â€œGreat, now would you mind telling me what’s going on?” she asked.
    â€œVampires. Lots of them.”
    â€œSince when do vampires play corporate business? You’ve got to be wrong about this.” God, she hoped he was wrong about this.
    â€œIf I’m wrong, then why is your vampire sense doing the tango up and down your spine?”
    He was right. She didn’t like the uneasiness twisting through her. Usually they waited until nightfall, hunting vamps in the shadier districts of San Francisco, where the fog crawls across the ocean and winds through the streets. The city was a haven for alternative lifestyles and underground clubs where patrons often offered up the sweet drink willingly. In these haunts, vampires blended in, melded, thrived.
    Warehouses in the middle of the mountains were not their normal stomping grounds, but one thing Xana knew about her brother was that Cayman was seldom wrong. His facts were always straight. He took time to make sure they were on the right trail, that their raids were organized and plotted down to the slightest detail.
    Xana, on the other hand, was not a thinker, but a doer. A woman of action. And that’s what she wanted to do right now—act. Not sit around here watching the shadows deepen into sharp points on the side of an ugly grey box. But still, something didn’t feel right about this.
    As the red compact disappeared up the road, Cayman turned to her. “Okay, let’s go.”
    â€œFinally,” she said on a deep breath. They hurried down the hillside and into the parking lot then ran toward the building’s entrance.
    Cayman pulled a key out of his pocket and unlocked the glass front door. “Getting a copy of the key off the woman who just left last night was easy. Getting the codes to the alarm system wasn’t. But I got ’em.”
    An anxious twinge pinched Xana’s side. “You’ve done a lot of planning for this one,” she said, wondering why he hadn’t clued her into the job earlier.
    â€œAlways do.” He opened the door and stepped inside then stopped and punched the alarm code into a small box on the wall by the door.
    Xana pulled out her gun specifically equipped with wooden-core silver bullets then followed her brother into the heart of the building, down one gloomy corridor after another where the only sound was the low hum of the air conditioner reverberating around them. “Sure is quiet,” she whispered.
    â€œJust wait until dark. That’s when the party starts.” They passed through the main warehouse, weaving through wooden crates stacked ten and twenty feet high. “This place fronts as an import/export business—junk art, vases, statues, but the real work goes on in a lab dug into the side of the mountain.”
    Xana paused outside a locked door and waited for Cayman to open it. This was way beyond the vamp-staking they usually did. Cayman continued through the doorway, down a long corridor, to a door set into the far wall. Once opened, he stepped out onto a metal landing. Xana followed, then stopped. Her breath catching in her throat choked her. “My God.”
    The entire floor below them was lined up with row upon row of stainless steel cylinders.
    â€œHigh-tech coffins,” Cayman explained.
    Xana turned to him. “Are you kidding me?”
    Cayman’s gaze hardened. “Does it look like it? According to my sources, someone is building an empire of vampires. We’re here to stop them.” Cayman descended the stairs, taking them two at a time.
    What sources ?