by Clare Willis
“I can see you accepted Lazarus’s bargain. Did you ever see your wife again?”
He didn’t speak, but his wounded expression answered for him. He had been alone for over two hundred years and believed he would be alone forever.
“Oh, Jacob.” Closing the last bit of distance between them, she lifted her chin to look at him. “You did a good thing, really.”
He grabbed her arms in a clawlike grip, pushing her away. Anger brought color to his face, dark and glowing, and his eyes burned like embers. “Who are you to absolve me? You have no idea what I am. ”
She shrank away, suddenly frightened of the intensity in his gaze, of the power in his hands. Before she knew it he had lifted her off her feet and was kissing her. He held her as if she was as light as a feather, and pressed her body over him as if staunching a mortal wound. She could feel his ribs, his hip bones, his heart beating frantically. She felt his need, raw and desperate, and she answered it with a need of her own that was every bit as powerful. No one had ever kissed her like that before, with every molecule of his ageless body reaching out to her. She felt she could never fill his gaping need, but she wanted to try.
Then, as quickly as it had begun, it was over. He lifted her again and placed her gently but deliberately a foot away.
Chapter 12
“There’s no way to avoid it now,” Jacob clenched his hands behind his back, not trusting them. He wanted so badly to touch Sunni again, and he knew he must not. “He has found you and he will stop at nothing until he has you. We have to start your training now. ”
“My what?”
“You must develop your dhampir skills if you are to resist him.”
Sunni raised one hand. “Listen, I don’t mean to be offensive, but if he’s so bad, why don’t you and this Council of yours just kill him?”
“There is a proscription against killing other …” He found himself loath to say it out loud.
“Vampires?” Sunni, however, seemed to be increasingly comfortable with the word.
“Yes.”
She shook her head with a dry chuckle. “I don’t believe this.”
“I’m sure it is difficult to conceive.”
“What’s the training going to do for me?”
Jacob turned and looked into her wide green eyes. She had great strength, this one. He hoped it would be enough. “You will probably have to kill him at some point.”
She threw her hands in the air. “Oh, come on!”
Her lips quivered as exasperation melted into trepidation. She rubbed under her eyes with her knuckles. His heart lurched painfully in his chest. Without thinking, he reached out to her. Her tiny hand disappeared into his large one. Her bones felt as delicate as a bird’s wing. He didn’t want to let go.
“You know you have hidden powers. You have felt them since you were small. You felt them when that man attacked you in the bathroom.”
Sunni nodded.
“I can teach you how to harness your powers, how to use them at will. You will be able to protect yourself, and those you love, from any harm that might come to them. You would like that, wouldn’t you?”
She looked down. When she started speaking it came out slowly and thoughtfully. “It’s not that I want power for its own sake, or even to be able to kick ass with abandon, although that would be nice. What I want is to understand myself. Do you know what I mean?”
“I think so.”
“If you can give me that I’ll go with you and learn whatever lessons you want to teach me.”
“All right. “ Jacob rubbed his hands briskly. “Go home and get some rest, you look very tired. Come back at dusk. And wear warm clothes.”
After Jacob escorted Sunni to the door he picked up the phone and dialed Scipio’s cell number.
“Pronto.”Jacob heard soft classical music in the background. “Jacob?”
“Yes, it’s me.”
“Do you have any information on Lazarus? Has he made contact with your dhampir?”
Jacob squeezed his eyes shut, contemplated the lies he was going to have to tell, and then opened them again.
“No, not yet. Perhaps he’s here for some other reason.” He thought of telling Scipio about the other dhampir in San Francisco, the one the Council didn’t know about. It would take some of the pressure off Sunni, but it would cause complications that might make things even worse. No, he would save the information for a more compelling moment.
“I think we both know that Sunni Marquette is the most likely reason.”
“I believe I should start training the dhampir, Scipio. If she needs to battle Lazarus she must be in full command of all her skills. Right now she has no idea what she is capable of. ”
He walked to the window and looked across the street into Sunni’s bedroom window. He was surprised to see her staring back at him. Her delicate, heart-shaped face bore an expression of worry and sadness. She lifted her hand to acknowledge him.
“No,” Scipio shouted. “You know that is forbidden, Jacob. Dhampirs cannot be trusted to use their powers wisely.”
“But this is an extreme situation, sir. We cannot leave her vulnerable.”
“We shall not. You are protecting her. And if that becomes impossible, you know what has to happen.”
“Yes, Scipio. I know my duty.” Jacob clicked his phone closed. He looked at Sunni for another moment and then turned away without acknowledging that he had been watching her.
Jacob unlocked the passenger door of his forty-year-old Karmann Ghia convertible and ushered Sunni inside. When he keyed the ignition the engine coughed as if it was suffering from tuberculosis. For a moment it seemed like it would catch, but then it shuddered and died.
“You’re all right, old girl.” He patted the dashboard and tried again, tapping the accelerator lightly. This time the engine started up.
Jacob had loved cars since they were invented. He felt that humans treated them too cavalierly, using them for just a few years before putting them on the junk pile, to be replaced with a new model. Jacob’s cars were always decades older than the year he was living in, a fact which got him a lot of attention from old car buffs. These eccentrics were one of the few types of humans that Jacob could abide. They were patient, studious, detail-oriented, and had respect for history, none of which could be said about most people, especially the new Americans.
Jacob was born an English citizen, but he considered himself a true American, by virtue of his participation in the Revolutionary War. The proto-American culture in which he’d grown up had had its faults, but it certainly wasn’t the lazy, self-referential, media obsessed, narcissistic society that had developed since. He glanced at Sunni, who sat with her arms clenched tight across her chest, her face turned away from him. Because of his long years of watching her, he sometimes thought he knew her. He knew her schedule, her habits, many of her likes and dislikes. But the woman sitting next to him now, he had no idea what she was thinking, no sense of who she really was. And yet she had insinuated herself into his thoughts, invaded him like a virus, so that now he was defying the Council in order to protect her.
Trapped in this small, airtight space with her, he found her scent most distracting. He rolled down the window a crack, but when the odor began to slip away he closed it again. He closed his eyes briefly and breathed it in. Her odor was akin to humans, as she shared half her biology with them, but it was different. He wondered if all dhampirs smelled like her: a spicy, intriguing, musky scent, light on the air but devilishly insinuating. All vampires had certain pheromones that were enticing to humans, but the biological system was so clever that each vampire smelled different to every human they encountered. It seemed they could calculate the human’s favorite scent and emulate it. Sunni must have begun to associate him with a unique scent, but she had never given him the impression that she was swayed by it.
As he drove the familiar streets, his eyes drifted down to her feet, clad in sneakers, not those high-heeled shoes she preferred. She must
have realized they would be impractical for the tasks she would have to undertake. She wasn’t wearing stockings, or socks as they called them these days. The inch of skin between her jeans and her shoes was blemish-free and smooth as cream—it was the vampire blood in her. She probably never got sick, never succumbed to the myriad ailments that plagued humans. He looked a little too long at the swanlike curve of her neck rising out of her jacket and felt an uncomfortable heat rise in him. His mouth filled with saliva, his fangs dropped slightly before he caught himself and retracted them.
This wouldn’t do. He stopped looking at her, turning his attention to the traffic even though it wasn’t necessary. The cars around him were moving at a snail’s pace, compared to his vampire reflexes.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“To the Golden Gate Bridge. That’s where we’ll begin your training.”
“What are we going to do on the bridge? ”
“It’s probably better if you don’t know beforehand,” he said.
Sunni hunkered down in her seat and was silent for the rest of the drive, which was unusual for her, he now realized.
Richard was hungry. He sat in the lobby of the Mandarin Oriental, watching the night crew go about their lazy nocturnal duties. He was debating which one of them he was going to kill. It would be either the pretty little receptionist buying clothes she couldn’t afford from Bloomingdales.com, or the doorman—a short, muscular immigrant man whose clothes were redolent of spices that reminded him of his travels in the tropics. Yes, he’d have the doorman. He was reading the Bible, so his blood would probably be clean. And if he was lucky, the man might put up a bit of a fight and make things interesting. He walked to the bell desk under the awning out front, where the doorman was leaning on his elbow, immersed in the Old Testament. He lifted his head at Richard’s approach.
“Need a taxi, sir?”
Richard opened his mouth to speak but was interrupted by the arrival of a black limousine at the curb. The doorman stepped toward the car. “Just one moment, sir.”
He opened the passenger door and Enzo stepped out. The yeoman’s expression turned to surprise when he saw his quarry standing at the bell desk.
Richard reached into his suit pocket and slipped on his deerskin gloves. Then he stepped forward with a smile.
“Good evening, Enzo. Lovely suit you have on.”
It wasn’t, it was made of garish fabric and cut far too tight across the chest and shoulders, but Enzo had never had much taste.
“Scipio would like to speak to you,” Enzo said.
“Of course he would. Is your stooge in there also?”
“You mean Patrick? Yes, he is.”
“Very good.” Richard handed the doorman a twenty-dollar bill. “It’s your lucky night,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” the man answered without comprehension.
Enzo held the door while Richard climbed into the limo. Scipio and Patrick were occupying the same positions they’d been in the last time they’d come for Richard.
“This is getting to be a habit, isn’t it, Scipio?” Richard reached out his gloved hand, but the Roman didn’t move. “Did you want to ask me again what I’m doing in San Francisco?”
“No. I’m here to tell you to leave. Go back to London tonight.”
Richard sighed. “We’ve been over this before, Scipio. I don’t recognize the Council’s jurisdiction over me.”
“We’re not asking. This is your last chance, Richard. “ Scipio gestured toward the two large men on the opposite seat.
“No, I believe it’s Patrick’s,” Richard said quietly.
Scipio snapped his fingers, and Enzo and Patrick moved forward at lightning speed. Richard reached into his pocket. His gloved hand emerged holding a length of silver chain, so thin and delicate a human child could have broken it. In a single smooth movement, born of years of practice, he coiled it around Patrick’s bare neck.
Patrick squealed like a dying pig as his flesh began to smoke. The young vampire reached for the chain, but when his fingers encountered it, they burned as well, releasing a sickly sweet, charredodor. Enzo backed away as Patrick’s legs scrabbled uselessly against the seats and floor.
“A little tighter and I’ll have his head off,” Richard said calmly. “We wouldn’t want that, would we?”
Patrick’s screams were reduced to coughs and wheezes as the chain seared deeper into his skin. Richard sighed with pleasure, not just at Patrick’s pain, but at the other vampires’ helplessness in the face of it.
“Stop it, Richard,” Scipio said. He reached out, but didn’t touch either of them. “Let the boy go.”
There was a sucking sound as Richard pulled the chain from Patrick’s neck, taking bits of flesh along with it. Patrick whimpered.
“Dio,” Enzo muttered, making the sign of the Cross.
Richard slipped the silver chain back into his pocket and opened the car door.
“You will regret this, Lazarus,” Enzo said as he held a handkerchief to Patrick’s wound.
Richard stepped out of the car and bowed to the men inside. “Patrick, here’s a lesson for you, since your bosses don’t seem to be teaching you anything. Regret is a dangerous emotion for us. We live far too long to be able to sustain it. Leave regret behind, along with your other human emotions, and you’ll make a much better vampire.”
He got out and gently closed the car door behind him.
The sun had just set, leaving the sky washed pink and gray like the inside of an oyster shell. Therewas no fog, but a hard, cold wind was blowing in from the ocean. Sunni stood on the fenced-off pedestrian area of the Golden Gate Bridge, gazing at the sunset across six lanes of traffic moving at fifty-five miles an hour. Although she’d dressed in long underwear, jeans, and a down jacket, she still felt cold.
“This is good,” Jacob said. He was dressed all in black: jeans, T-shirt, leather jacket, and knit cap. All of that dark fabric made his pale face all the more striking. His eyes flicked horizontally as he watched the cars, as if he was reading a book. “Your first task will be simple. Run across the bridge to the bike lane on the other side.”
Sunni put her hands on her hips and stared at him. “You have got to be kidding me.”
A car horn blared very close to them, making her jump.
“The cars move slowly on this bridge,” Jacob said. “Good for practice.”
“Practicing what? Being made into hamburger?”
Jacob took a step closer and put a hand on her arm. “Have you read stories of humans having incredible rushes of strength in times of great stress, like lifting a car to free a trapped child?”
“Yeah. I thought they were baloney. ”
“No, it’s not baloney. And your power operates under the same principle. You’ve never experienced it because you’ve never been in a life or death situation, so it’s never been activated. But it’s there, waiting, more power than you ever imagined.”
Sunni stared at the whizzing cars. Drivers talked on cell phones, picked their noses, played with radios, or held the wheel carefully. Whatever dangers they might be anticipating, a person jumping in front of their car probably wasn’t one of them.
“What will the drivers do? I’ll cause a pile-up. People will get killed.”
He shook his head. “If you do it right they won’t even see you.”
“And if I do it wrong?”
He pressed his lips tightly together.
“Jacob?”
“Don’t do it wrong.”
Sunni stood at the edge of the curb and grasped the metal chain that barred the traffic lanes. Pedestrians passed in couples and groups, laughing and talking, taking pictures of the city, jogging or race-walking. The few who were alone walked hunched in their coats, seeming lonely and bereft. No one looked at Jacob and Sunni.
“Climb over the chain,” Jacob said.
“I’m afraid.”
He nodded. “That’s as it should be.”
She put one trembling l
eg over the chain and then the other, and stood clinging to it, teetering on the small curb. This must be how people feel before they jump off this bridge, Sunni thought. Scared shitless.
That was her last thought before Jacob pushed her into the traffic. She turned her head left to stare into the headlights racing toward her like a volley of bullets. Terror struck her body like a bolt of lightning, electrifying every part of her.
Sunni felt a surge. It was as if she’d stamped on the gas pedal of a race car and felt the kick of acceleration like a wave rolling through her gut. Her eyes burned, and for a millisecond she went blind. But when her sight came back the sea of lights had separated. Each pair of headlights was isolated, its speed and relative distance from her as easy to calculate as on any city street. She paused, teetering on the white line in front of the first lane.
Now! She dashed to the next white line, feeling a rush of air on her back as a car passed within inches of her. She turned her attention to the next lane.
Now! She jumped into the road, but this car was coming faster than the first. She had to turn right and run with the car a little distance before she was far enough in front of it to head left again. As she turned she stared the driver straight in the face. He was a pudgy man, about fifty years old, with grimy eyeglasses and a day’s growth of beard. He looked straight at her, but his face registered nothing. In less than an eye blink he was past her and she was on the next line. One more lane of traffic to go.
Now!
When she reached the bicycle lane Jacob was waiting to greet her. She hadn’t thought him capable of smiling the way he was now. He picked her up and twirled her around in a circle until she was dizzy. Finally he set her down and cradled her face in his hands.
“I did it!” she cried.
He nodded as he wiped the tears from her eyes.
Chapter 13
When Richard invited Isabel to the Lalique, Tiffany, and Faberge exhibit at the Legion of Honor Museum she told him that she didn’t generally attend exhibits like that; they were too crowded and difficult to maneuver with her crutches.
