Release Me When the Sun Goes Down

by Lisa Olsen

  “You didn’t have to do that,” I said, once I could form complete words again.

  “I wanted to give you something in exchange for what I took.”

  I smiled weakly at that, biting my lip against the moan that threatened to escape as he withdrew his hand. My knees instantly buckled, and his expression turned to worry.

  “I didn’t take too much, did I?”

  “No, that’s not the reason why my legs are so shaky.”

  “Guess I done my job right then, yeah?” He beamed with smug male satisfaction.

  I’d let him take more than I’d originally intended, but he needed it more than I did. There was bagged blood stored back at the house or I could always hunt later if necessary. What surprised me was his control. When I’d first tasted Bishop’s blood, the only reason I’d stopped was because he’d forced me to. Some Sire I turned out to be. If Rob hadn’t stopped voluntarily, I might’ve let him drain me dry, too caught up in the sensations to say boo.

  “Give me a few minutes and we’ll see what I can do about returning the favor,” I smiled lazily, but Laveda’s phone chirped in my pocket and I was reminded that we didn’t have the leisure of rolling around in bed all night. There was a single text message from Marcus on the display.

  Mason’s awake.

  Chapter Six

  Rob gained a lot more confidence as the night wore on and with the influx of my blood and I could see a difference in the way he moved. Always stealthy and agile, he now moved with a preternatural grace that lent a poetry to his actions which I found particularly appealing. The doubts and insecurities that plagued him upon first rising were nowhere in sight as he guided me into the house, his every muscle coiled and ready for danger.

  The whole family was gathered inside – Marcus, Maggie, Gunnar, even Jenessa was still there – surrounding Mason, who reclined on the couch.

  “Sorry if I don’t get up, I’ve had a bitch of a day,” he quipped with a ghost of his old humor and I tried not to let my shock show too much on my face. His entire left side was riddled with ropey burn scars, the flesh mottled and scaly. It continued along his neck and up the side of his face where his close cropped beard was all but burned away, one eyelid drooping slightly. It would’ve been horrifically crippling to a human, and I struggled to understand how he could be up and around at all.

  The first thing that burst out of my mouth was, “You need more blood.”

  “Thanks, I’ve had my fill.” Mason looked to Jenessa with a thankful nod. “I just need some time to absorb it now and let it work its magic.”

  I couldn’t help but think my blood would help, or even better, Jakob’s, but it wouldn’t do him much good to suggest it with Jakob’s whereabouts unknown and my own reserves low from feeding Rob. “The next time you’re ready for more, let me know.” It was the least I could do since it was because of me we’d been attacked in the first place, and I tried to ignore Rob’s stiffening beside me at the offer.

  “I’ll live,” Mason shrugged. “What I really want to focus on is finding Hanna. Has there been any word?”

  We all turned to Marcus, who was the current hub of information and he gave a low shake of the head.

  “We need to find Jakob, he’s the only one who can take care of this,” I said, reaching for a pad of paper, fingers itching to make a list. It was the best way I knew how to wrangle some order out of the chaos of the situation. “Now we can assume by the state of the hotel room that they both sustained injuries when they had their smackdown, right?”

  “There wasn’t much sign of bloodshed at the scene, but I think that makes sense, yes,” Marcus agreed.

  “That means they’ll be needing blood to recharge. That means carnage, because neither one of them is all that picky about the sanctity of human life. If we find a pile of bodies, that’ll put us one step closer to finding them. Can we find out if there have been any recent murders that fit the bill? Especially multiple homicides?”

  Mason sat taller, the light of purpose coming into his eyes. “I’ll call Frost and see what he can find out, but we’re still limited…”

  “I know,” I nodded. It was a thread that kept coming up again and again. The Order might be its own entity, apart from the regular vampire government, but it was becoming apparent how much we’d come to rely on them for intel. “Jenessa, can you please try to reach Bishop and find out when we’re supposed to get those resources for the Order? I would’ve thought they’d be here by now.”

  “Of course,” she readily agreed. “I’m sure he’ll want to help.”

  “The last I heard he was waiting on Frost to secure us a new HQ before we got the replacement tech going,” Mason added with a groan.

  “You guys can use my offices for now if you need a place to set up. We’ll work out something more permanent later, but I don’t think we can afford to have you guys so out of the loop for much longer.”

  “That’s very generous of you,” Jenessa said, checking the time on her phone. “I’ll go try to reach him now before it gets too late there.”

  “Thanks. Really it should be Jakob offering his resources since he’s pretty much taken over my territory,” I added with a sour twist of the lips. “But we can take him to task for that once we find him.”

  “I’ll put the word out on the street that we’re looking for him, that might get us an answer sooner than later,” Rob offered. “There’s loads more vamps out there that’s seen an Ellri now, it might be the quickest route to tracking them both down.

  “I know, but that starts to get tricky because of their position. If either one of them wants to stay out of sight it’s easily done. They can compel anyone, or even without compulsion, we all have to do anything an Ellri says. The only way we might be able to break through that is to spot a pattern of kills.”

  I felt a tinge of loss for Bishop in that moment. This was exactly the kind of task he excelled at. Not only the hunt itself, but the analysis of the data. No one could crunch the numbers and spot a pattern like he could.

  “What we will do if Jakob is dead?” Gunnar asked timidly, giving voice to the thought I’d been trying to keep locked away in the dimmest corner of my mind.

  “Then we’ll have to rally and think of something. For all we know, Lodinn will abandon his revenge if he bests Jakob.” Maybe, but I couldn’t quite trust myself to believe that. He seemed far too sadistic to end his game so easily after five hundred years of play. “But there’s no sense in borrowing trouble. In the meantime, I don’t think anyone should leave the house alone. Everybody pick a buddy and stick to them like glue. That means you too, Rob. Take Gunnar with you if you’re going out to spread the word.”

  Rob’s jaw settled into a mutinous thrust. “I’m not leaving you here unprotected.”

  “I’m not unprotected while I’m in here, that’s the whole point. Besides, there are still plenty of security guys surrounding the place.”

  “Maybe we should make this place the Order HQ for a while?” Mason suggested. “That way there will always be extra muscle around.”

  As much sense as that argument made, I had to shake my head. “No, we can’t put all our eggs in one basket. If Lodinn does find a way around the spell and gets to me we need to have someone with the strength and power left to fight.” Besides, I wasn’t ready to give up my privacy yet. If the Order was still under fire that’d be different; of course I’d offer them Sanctuary, but as things stood, I needed a place to call my own.

  “If he gets to you, won’t be nothing left fighting for,” Rob murmured and I shot him a quick smile.

  “To be honest, I don’t think he’s going to come at me in a direct attack where strength of numbers will be an issue, he’s too sneaky for that. Besides, if it came down to it and he gave the order, you’ll all have to stand aside and let him do what he pleased. The Ellri can take what they want, that’s the law.” I could tell by the grinding of his teeth that Rob wouldn’t submit to that law, regardless of the personal consequences. Neither
would Mason when it came to Hanna’s safety, but we all kept silent about it as I changed the subject.

  “Marcus, did you find out any more about Oliver Bassett? Has his death been discovered yet?”

  “Yes, they took care of the body and put him in a car crash. The car was rigged to burn which obscured most of the evidence. His wife’s been notified, that’s all I know so far.”

  “Thank you.” That meant she and her son were having a very difficult night. Maybe it wasn’t important in the scale of everything going down around us, but it was important to me. I couldn’t let one man’s death by my hand become nothing more than a passing memory. I decided I needed to go and see them for myself. See what kind of family I’d torn apart. But before I could go out, I needed to replenish my stores, which meant a trip to the kitchen for some bagged blood.

  “Alright, we’ve got some things to focus on now. Maggie, come and find me when Jenessa’s done talking to Bishop, okay? I’ll be in the kitchen.” Rob followed a couple of minutes later as I was pulling down a mug, the bag of blood on the counter. As soon as he saw what I was doing, his mouth turned down into a scowl.

  “I did take too much, didn’t I?”

  “It’s fine. I need something to eat is all.”

  He grabbed me by the shoulders, turning me away from the counter and toward the kitchen table. “You take it easy and rest, I’ll see to this.” I let him steer me all the way to a chair without protesting, even though I was more than capable of heating up a mug of blood myself. I propped my head up to watch him, but before he got the mug halfway to the microwave, the scent of the blood got to him and Rob stole a sip. I was about to offer to share when he spat it out into the sink with a grimace.

  “Hey, that stuff’s not that easy to come by,” I muttered, rising to take it out of his hands.

  Rob rolled his tongue around in his mouth, as though he’d tasted something rotten. “How can you drink this shit?”

  “It’s better than starving.”

  “Not by much.” He turned on the sink and cupped his hand full of water, rinsing his mouth out thoroughly.

  “You go sit, I’ll take care of this. It’s actually much better warmed.” I nuked it for a good minute and a half, adding a dash of cinnamon that helped mask the plasticky taste and gloppy consistency. “Do you want to try it now?” I offered, blowing across the top.

  “No, you need it more than me.”

  “You might change your mind later and I’d rather you snack on this stuff than Maggie. We’ve got plenty more in the fridge if you start feeling peckish, so don’t let it go too long, okay?”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. Soon as you’ve settled in, I’ll take Gunnar out to start making the rounds, see if anyone’s spotted Jakob or Lodinn hereabouts, yeah?”

  “That sounds fine, only don’t stay out all night. I want to go out later and the dawn will be here sooner than you think.” Especially for him.

  “Go out where?”

  “I want to go see Mrs. Bassett and her son, see what their situation is and if I can help.”

  “Don’t you think you have other things to worry about right now?”

  “That family has everything to worry about now because of me. I need to do this. I need to make sure they’re taken care of.” Not that I planned on intruding on their grief. I just needed to know more than the scant information Marcus had come up with so far. I needed more than an address on a piece of paper, and a search on Google Earth wouldn’t show me enough about their current situation.

  Rob let out a long breath. “Anja, you can’t take care of everyone, it’s not your fault.”

  “I’m pretty sure you’d have to say it’s my fault, I killed him.”

  “Only because you gave your last drop of blood to save me. Actually it’s my fault if you’re looking for someone to take the blame.”

  “If we want to look at it that way it’s Lodinn’s fault, but it doesn’t change the fact that I’m the one who couldn’t stop feeding in time.” No matter how good my control got, when push came to shove, the thirst for blood proved stronger than I was.

  “It’s your nature, you can’t beat yourself up about what you are.”

  The same old song and dance I always heard from the vampire community. I’d come to expect it from a vampire hundreds of years old like Bishop, but it saddened me to hear it from Rob already. Then again, he’d seen and done things at Jakob’s request for far longer than I’d been alive. “I hope I never accept killing as part of my nature.”

  Rob remained silent as I sipped at my mug, waiting until it reached the right temperature to drink it more quickly.

  “What would you even say to them?” he said finally. And maybe he had a point. I couldn’t go barging over there in the middle of the night. Even if his widow was up, what would I do? Knock on the door and offer my condolences?

  “Fine, I won’t go there tonight, but I want to at least go to the funeral to pay my respects.” In the meantime, even if I couldn’t dig deeper into their financial situation at present, maybe I could talk to Maggie or Felix about setting up a trust for the family. It was a cinch they weren’t independently wealthy, and even if the guy had life insurance, it wouldn’t last them for very long. My conscience mollified, I drained the rest of the cup and set it in the sink as Mason stuck his face into the kitchen.

  His scars seemed less pink and inflamed already, if that was possible, and he moved easily enough, but his overall appearance was still jarring. “Hey, Frost said there have been some reports of fresh bodies in town that meet the bill.”

  “Really? Where?”

  “Over in SoMa.”

  “That’s perfect, those are your old stomping grounds, right?” I assumed he still had his loft apartment in the neighborhood.

  “Yep, that’s my turf, but there aren’t many vamps around there for us to question. Our best bet is to piggyback onto the local uniforms investigating the scene.”

  “Great, how do we do that?”

  “Usually it’s a matter of logging into their database, but all that shit’s gone now.”

  There had to be a way to re-establish that link. “How did you set it up before when you first gained access?”

  “We snuck a relay into their server room. If Trick was still alive, he might be able to hack into it again, but right now we can’t access it with our existing hardware.”

  “So that means we have to go in and set up a new relay, or whatever, is that right? How hard would that be to do?”

  “Not all that hard, I guess. I’ve never done it before myself, but I understand the concept. Only, it’s a little harder for me to dance in and out of there looking like roadkill.”

  He was sort of memorable in his current state. “What if we went instead? Do you think you could give me a crash course on what needs doing?” I wasn’t a complete slouch at techie stuff. It sounded like all I needed to do was figure out the right place to plug something in and the hardware would do the rest.

  His brows rose as he considered it. “I could even do you one better. I can fit you with a cam and an earpiece and guide you through it.”

  “Shiny, how soon can you have everything put together?” With any luck, we could focus our search for Jakob and Lodinn before the end of the night.

  “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.” Rob hesitated and Mason fixed him with a wry twist of the lips.

  “Why?” he asked. “Because the last time the three of us went out together you wound up dead?”

  “There is that, yeah,” Rob allowed. “But I was thinking more along the lines of doing this the old fashioned way.”

  “Meaning?” I prompted.

  “Seems a bit risky strolling into the middle of them coppers. Why not find the bloke in charge of the investigation and bend his ear for a tick? Shouldn’t be hard to get what you need, compel him to forget about the conversation and Bob’s your uncle.”

  “That’s true, but this way we’ll have access to their systems, that spans a l
ot more information than one guy can provide. But hey, we don’t have to take care of it for now. I can work with Frost on it later if you want to hit up the detective in charge and pick his brains.”

  They both looked to me for the final decision, and I had to admit, Mason’s way seemed like the most comprehensive of the two. “Why not try a bit of both? We can go down to the station and plug in your deelybob and then find the guy on the case and see what he knows. It’s probably a good idea to steer him away from anything that screams vampire while we’re at it. That way we can kill a couple of birds with one stone.”

  “How’s about Gunnar and me give it a whirl then?” Rob suggested. “No sense in you risking your own neck.”

  “I’ll be in the middle of the police station, how much safer can I get? The quicker we get the Order back in the loop, the better, and I’d actually like to talk to the detective myself. I’ll go nuts if I spend all my time rattling around the house here, waiting for Lodinn to strike again.”

  “Fine, but I’m not leaving your side.”

  “I wouldn’t expect it any other way.” I smiled just for him, holding his gaze for long moments until Mason cleared his throat.

  “Oooohkay… I guess I’ll get suited up then. We’ll need to stop at my place to put together the hardware we’ll need. Or should I go do that while you two make cow eyes at each other?”

  Frak… I was supposed to be watching that. My eyes shot to his, catching hold of his will in an instant. “There were no cow eyes here. Rob is only interested in my safety as a friend and vice versa.”

  “No cows,” Mason mumbled, nodding slowly and I let him go. “I’ll go get changed then,” he said, rubbing his hands together.

  “We’d better watch it if we don’t want to end up in trouble,” I whispered once he’d gone.