Home was not a nest, with a household and companions and all the other trappings of strigoi society. She knew some Nighthawks lived perfectly normal lives, but she wasn’t up to it, not yet. Maybe never. She hadn’t been involved with anyone since Jimmy left, not in any emotional way. She was pretty certain she was a one-vampire woman who had ended up a lone hunter. But that was all right, because Enforcers needed to focus on the job rather than having personal entanglements. Char knew her destiny was to be more like the scary, psychopathic Istvan than Marguerite, Portland’s other Enforcer. Portland’s real Enforcer, actually. Char was allowed to hang around because she didn’t have anywhere else to go. Or she hadn’t until a few hours ago. Now she had somewhere to go and didn’t want to go there.
“On so many levels,” she murmured, noticed that she held the key to her apartment in her hand, and wondered why.
Char focused her attention and realized that she was staring at the dark, blank wood of a door and that she was home, at least in the physical sense. She shook her head, annoyed at being so out of it tonight. It was a good thing no one had attempted to assault her on her evening ramblings, or they would have ended up a tasty, wholesome snack before she’d been able to stop herself. Thinking of people as snack food showed how undone she was by Istvan’s appearance once more in her orderly, quiet life. Not that she’d actually gotten a look at his appearance, per se, not this time, but the dhamphir’s taking an interest in her was no more welcome this time than the other times she’d communicated with him. Been communicated at by him? Yes, that said it much better. The last time he’d talked to her, he’d told her he didn’t think she was up to acting as an Enforcer yet, and she’d readily agreed. Now it seemed he had changed his mind.
Of course, she had to go out into the world sometime and prove her mettle. She knew that, but she had enjoyed her two quiet years doing research and compiling data on subjects relating to the strigoi. It was useful, important work that she’d taken far beyond the strict parameters she’d begun with. Highly classified, as well. In fact, she strongly suspected only she and Istvan knew about it, that it was his idea. They would both be in big trouble with the Strigoi Council if they—whoever they were—ever found out about it. In fact, she suspected one of the reasons Istvan wanted the information was so that he could find the Council. But why he wanted to do that since he was their voice and hand, at least in North America, Char quite firmly refused to think about.
Besides, she didn’t like the idea of leaving town so close to the holidays. She had an invitation from Marguerite’s nest for Thanksgiving. She didn’t get invited out often. And then there was Hanukkah, Christmas, and Blessing of the Knives coming up. “Maybe I can put off killing Haven at least until after Blessing Day.”
With that thought in mind, Char unlocked the door and went into her dark apartment. Of course, she needed a better excuse than multicultural merrymaking if she was going to put off carrying out a direct order from the Strigoi Council.
Char had barely turned on the living room light and taken off her old blue raincoat when she realized someone was about to knock on the door. A tight knot formed in her stomach, and her hands balled nervously into fists. Natural shyness warred with predator instincts, and the result was that her diamond-sharp claws pierced bloody indentations in the tough skin of her palms. The knock sounded, low and fast and frantic.
“Coming,” Char called to the vampire in the hall. She snatched a tissue from the box on the coffee table and wiped her hands, then stuffed the Kleenex in her pants pocket before turning the handle. The tiny cuts were already healed, her claws safely retracted, but the scent of blood lingered on the air. Not such a bad thing, she told herself, in the home of a hunter. She was still blushing when she opened the door. A woman stood outside, a thin, pale wraith of a woman. At least that was the impression Char had at first sight. The woman was actually short, matronly, and comfortably plump, but Char could tell that the stranger’s spirit was worn thin with worry. “Yes?” she said to the other vampire.
The woman looked up and down the empty hallway, then pointedly at Char. “May I come in?”
The legend about vampires having to be invited into human homes was not true. However, no right-thinking vampire would enter another strigoi’s home uninvited. To do so was a gross insult, a breach of territorial rights that led to the sorts of dominance games Enforcers actively discouraged in this modern age. To enter an Enforcer’s home uninvited was tantamount to offering yourself as the Enforcer’s next meal. Sort of like being a self-delivering pizza.
Char grew queasy at this thought. She stepped back and said, “Please come in.”
Once the stranger was inside, Char took the woman’s coat, made room enough for her to sit on the living room couch, and said, “Can I get you anything? Coffee? And you are?” she added almost as an afterthought, trying to sound cool and in control as well as polite.
The woman dismissed Char’s courtesy with a slight smile. Then she turned a worried expression on Char and said. “My name is Helene Bourbon. I need your help.”
A ripple of emotion went through Char that was so strong she had to quickly sit down in the chair across the narrow coffee table from the couch. She sat on a pile of paper and books, of course, but she ignored that. Help? Someone actually needed her help? She was thrilled. Excited. Happy. Terrified. Definitely terrified. Puzzled. Why would anyone need her help? This was the opportunity to aid her community that she’d been hoping for and dreading with equal zeal.
“This is an eventful night,” she said and found that she was rubbing her forehead. She even tried the old nervous habit of pushing her glasses up on her nose and then remembered that she hadn’t had to wear glasses for years. Yes, she was shaken. First Istvan and now Helene Bourbon putting in appearances to shake her out of her quiet, circumscribed life. “I’ve heard of you, Ms. Bourbon,” Char said to her visitor. “Your nest is down the coast.”
“Near Yachats. And I’m too old to be comfortable with being called Ms. Of course, I was never anyone’s Mrs. And Lady Helene does sound a bit silly these days. Never mind.” The woman made a sweeping gesture, as though waving away her own facetious words. Char had noticed that Helene Bourbon had been looking anywhere but at her, but then the woman made an obvious effort to make eye contact with her. She said, “I’m nervous about being in your presence, Hunter.”
It shocked Char that a vampire would be afraid of her, but that was supposed to be one of the perks of the job. She knew who Bourbon was, some of the woman’s past as well as her present occupation and address. She wasn’t a lady in the heraldic sense of the word, and she wasn’t one of those Bourbons, but she never actually claimed to be. Char thought everyone was allowed at least a little vanity. So, rather than reveal that she had secret knowledge, Char asked, “What brings you to Portland?”
Any sign of nervousness disappeared in the woman across from her, and all her concern rushed back. “I’ve come about my missing nestling,” she told Char.
Chapter 2
NOVEMBER
TUCSON
“I’VE COME ABOUT my son,” the woman said.
She stood just inside the doorway, with Baker behind her.
Haven almost said, Lady, this isn’t a detective agency. Then he remembered that, technically, it was. It was Baker’s office. Baker was a retired cop, now a PI. It was also Baker’s desk, which would make any missing-person problem the woman had Baker’s business. But from the way Baker was looking at him, it wasn’t. Ah, hell.
The first thing Haven did was put down the gun he’d picked up when the door opened unexpectedly. The woman hadn’t seen the weapon he held just below the top of the desk, which was piled with books and papers. The second thing he did was save the file the way Baker had taught him and turn off the computer.
Then he waved Baker and the woman into Baker’s office. Baker was some mixture of Native American, black, and Irish and said he got his stubbornness from all three. He was big and brown and bald and ug
ly but about as soft in the heart as he was hard everywhere else. Haven had liked the man even in the days when they’d been playing hide-and-seek across the Southwest. Baker had been intent on returning Haven to prison, Haven had tried to kill Baker a few times, but they’d put their differences aside in the service of a higher purpose long ago.
It was because of the reproving look Baker gave him that Haven stood when the woman came toward the desk. Baker’d been trying to civilize him, but Haven preferred to ignore the niceties most of the time. Being polite to a distraught woman seemed like a halfway sensible idea, though if Baker hadn’t been there, Haven would have followed his first impulse and told her to get out.
Baker closed the door and leaned against it. The woman stopped in front of the desk and said, “My name is Brenda Novak, and I’m with the FBI.” By the time he had the Glock pointed openly at her, she’d sat in the chair across from the desk. She looked at him steadily—at him, not the gun. The worry hadn’t left her expression, but she wasn’t worried about him. “I know who you were,” she told him. “And I don’t give a shit. I know—something—about what you do now, and that’s why I need you to help me find my son.”
“What do you know?” Haven asked. “Who told you?” How many was he going to have to kill to keep his secrets quiet? He glared at Baker. “I doubt you told her anything,” he said to his partner.
“He didn’t,” Brenda Novak answered. “I found him.” She spared a quick glance over her shoulder at Baker. “Not an easy task.” She brought her attention back to Haven. “Easier than finding Danny, though. Searching for Danny has led me down some strange roads—and I’m an FBI profiler; I know strange intimately.”
He’d read about profiling. It was like a kind of officially sanctioned ESP. The government had these people who looked at pictures of crime scenes and predicted what killers would do next and how to catch them. Crazy people got profiled. Haven wasn’t crazy. He kept the gun aimed steadily on the woman and said nothing.
“I realize telling you about myself is dangerous,” Novak went on. She shrugged. She had the manner of someone with nothing to lose. Jebel Haven understood the look of a spirit at the end of its resources. He knew you had to get there before you could get beyond it, into the realm where he lived. Or you got to the end of the road and you gave up and died. He didn’t have any sympathy for the ones he’d known who’d given up. He didn’t have much sympathy for those who’d died trying, either.
Baker crossed the room. He put his big, meaty hands on the back of the woman’s chair. “Put the gun away, Jebel. We’re going to listen to what the woman has to say. It’s our kind of business,” he added when Haven flicked his gaze to his partner’s for a moment.
Haven wanted to think that if this was some sort of trap, Baker would have smelled it. He trusted Baker, and he hated trusting anyone. He didn’t like it, but he sat. He put the gun down, but not away. He left it on the desktop, with his hand close to it. “What are you talking about?” he said to the woman.
“About finding my son,” she said. “That’s the only thing that interests me.”
“You’re with the FBI, and you have a missing son. Kidnapped?”
She nodded.
“The Bureau takes care of its own. Your kid’s missing, your own people are looking for him.”
She made one of those sounds that was a little like a laugh but without any amusement in it. She was a good-looking woman, fortysomething, worried, but keeping it together. “The Bureau does not really deal with “X-Files” cases, Mr. Haven. We don’t even use the term profiler in the department, though that is the common—well, the polite—term for what I do. I work for a conservative government bureaucracy. We do indeed take care of our own, but no one wants bad publicity. The Bureau would hang me and my son out to dry if he was caught.”
“Caught?” Haven asked. “I thought you said he was kidnapped. Feds are responsible for kidnapping cases.”
“Only if the victim’s transported across state lines,” Baker put in.
“There are federal rules and regulations about what the Bureau is allowed to investigate,” Novak said. “I think my son has been kidnapped. I also think he is involved with a cult of murderers. If it were not for the fact that my son might have to face charges on several counts of murder, I would happily turn over my suppositions—I can’t call anything I have proof—to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. And some of the conclusions I’ve come to lead me to believe . . .” She sighed. “What I suppose—suspect—I don’t even want to say out loud.” She smiled grimly. “I do not believe in supernatural evil. I already know what the human race is capable of without any help from Satan. There are nut cults out there. They brainwash vulnerable young people. There are some people who use a delusional belief in unearthly evil to do any vicious thing they want. But my son . . . I don’t want to believe that my son . . .”
“Is a serial killer?” Baker asked. He put his big hands on the woman’s shoulders.
“I suspect he is involved with a serial killer.” Her words came out in a sharp, distinct rush, but she didn’t look like she quite believed what she said. Haven noticed that she didn’t try to shake off Baker’s comforting touch.
Haven had no interest in serial killers. “What do you mean by supernatural? What does that have to do with your son?”
And how do you know about your son’s involvement, and what does that have to do with us, and how did you find out about us? He had a lot of questions for this woman, though he didn’t want to ask them. He didn’t get involved with people; he had other things to do. Baker took on PI work sometimes. That was okay, it helped keep him in contact with other cops without anybody asking funny questions, and it helped pay the bills. Baker didn’t like it when Haven and Santini committed armed robbery in the name of the cause.
Haven already regretted showing even a slight interest in the woman’s problem by the time she answered.
“Do you believe in vampires, Mr. Haven? I think you do,” she went on before he could issue the standard scoffing denial: No one believes in vampires. She was the one who gave the scoffing laugh. “I’m not sure if anyone ever really did, except maybe the folklorists who listened to the lies Balkan peasants told them for the price of a few beers. I don’t think you’re a gullible person, but I do know that you killed a group of teenagers who were involved with a blood-drinking cult last year. They thought they were vampires.”
The little shits deserved what happened to them, even if they hadn’t been the type of vampires he was used to dealing with.
“Those teenagers murdered at least two babies that I know of,” Novak went on. “I don’t mind what you did to them.”
Not to mention all the dogs the nut cult butchered to drink the animals’ blood and eat their hearts. He’d followed the trail of animal mutilations looking for his usual prey and come across the wacko kids instead. Would have been a waste of valuable time if he hadn’t taken down the little murdering bastards.
“The case was kept quiet. The local police were happy to avoid a media circus,” Novak said. “Your version of rough justice gave the appearance of being a tragic accident. Looked like those kids got drunk and their car stalled on the train tracks. The cops didn’t look any deeper than they had to, but I did.”
He supposed the woman had proof, and she was going to use that proof to blackmail him into helping her find her son. He didn’t mind that sort of coercion, it was better than Baker looking at him sincerely and talking about helping people.
A silence stretched out for a couple of minutes, then Novak said, “Something happened to you about five years ago, Haven, that changed you from a worthless piece of repeat offender shit. Officially, you died.” She glanced up at Baker. “Something turned you from an honest cop into this scumbag’s partner. The pair of you and some of your friends have been playing vigilante against satanists and other cult crazies ever since.”
Haven and Baker exchanged a look, but neither of them tried to deny what Nova
k said.
“What I know about you comes from my own research,” she went on. “You were always too small-time to be a blip on the Bureau’s radar, Mr. Haven.”
“Thank goodness for that,” Baker said.
Haven didn’t like the humor he saw in his partner’s eyes, but he ignored it. “That’s me,” he told Novak. “Small-time. I hunt crazies,” he admitted. “For my own reasons. You want me to hunt your crazy kid, is that it? Bring sonny home to mama before the cops track him down and put him away. And you’re doing this for love rather than the fact you’re scared of losing your career.” Bright spots of color appeared on the woman’s cheeks as Haven went on. “Glass ceiling at the Bureau’s hard enough to break without a complication like having a serial-killing kid in your personnel file.”
“Enough, Jeb.” Baker squeezed the woman’s shoulders. “You stung him,” Baker said to Novak. “So he stung back.”
He could tell that she was more angry than offended. Haven didn’t care, just as long as he got a reaction. He already knew she was going to make him work for her, and he would take whatever price he could get in turn.
Novak opened her purse. Jebel Haven stilled the instinct to pick up the pistol. He was not surprised at what she took out and slid across the desk to him. “There are several copies of most of the information on that,” Novak told him as he picked up the zip disk.
“Information about me.”
She nodded to his statement.
“But this is the only copy that also has everything I need to know about finding your son.”
She nodded again.
Short of killing the FBI profiler here and now and risking her information about him being passed on to unfriendly eyes, there wasn’t much Jebel Haven could do.
He rubbed his jaw. He needed a shave. He turned on the computer and popped in the zip disk. “What’s the kid’s name?”
Laws of the Blood 2: Partners Page 2
