“Well. . . . duh,” Char said and climbed slowly to her knees.
She levered herself up just in time to be hit in the face by the lights of an oncoming truck. The truck’s driver didn’t even spare her a glance as he sped on by. She must not have been out long, but it had been long enough to have eaten up more of the night than she could spare.
What on earth happened? More important for the moment, where had she left her car? Too close to dawn to go looking for it now. Too close to dawn to stand here and wonder what had gone wrong with the entire night. Should she head back to Jimmy’s crib on foot? Char looked at the sky and around the steep hills of the city, then across the square back the way she’d come. She was able to focus clearly on the memory of the route she’d taken. Her head was on fire and her brain had no interest in functioning beyond the essential of finding shelter for the day.
She knew how she’d gotten to Pioneer Square, but where was it she’d come from?
“Della’s.”
Oh, good, she remembered that much, though there were holes and blank spots about a lot of other things.
She began to walk and then to run. Her feet remembered the way back to the homeless shelter. She would spend the day there. On the way, she forced her exhausted mind to function. She had wimped out something awful tonight, and that could not be allowed to go on. Char reminded herself that she was a superhero. Despite her aching head and fear of the coming day, she had a purpose; she was here to save the night. She couldn’t let a little thing like being unconscious get in her way. Maybe she could get a little work done while she was asleep. Then, come the night, she’d get this whole mess straightened out.
“A monster’s come for the Angel! A Shadow Woman. She wore the night. And she wants the Angel. You have to protect him. You have to save him. Names have power, and she spoke his secret name!” The Disciple stood in front of the Angel’s bed, putting his body between his beloved and danger. He looked imploringly at the Prophet and the Demon. “You saved me from her.”
He had begun to doubt their power. He almost dropped to his knees before them to confess his sin, but groveling would have to wait. He was breathing hard from the long run back to the sanctuary. His chest hurt and his head still burned from the fire the Prophet and the Demon had sent through him. He needed to be sick, but he could not profane the sanctuary like that. Nor could he leave the Angel’s side until the wise ones acted on his warning. “You must save the Angel. Now.”
The Prophet and the Demon paid him no mind. They glared at each other as though danger to the Angel they all served did not exist. “The sun will be up in moments,” the Disciple said to the ones who dwelled inside the windowless sanctuary. “He’ll be even more vulnerable then.”
The Vessel came up to the Disciple and poked him hard in the chest. This sent the Disciple back a step.
“What are you talking about?” the Vessel asked.
The Disciple stumbled another step closer to the bed. To his utter surprise, the Angel reached out and took his hand. He whirled around. The Angel looked into his eyes—into the eyes of his most unworthy servant—and smiled. The Disciple’s heart filled with love, the burning in his brain evaporated into a sense of overwhelming peace. For an instant, he remembered his own secret name, and in that same instant, the Angel looked like a sleepy teenage boy. Then the Angel’s eyes closed, his hand dropped, the rest of his body went limp on the bed, and all the danger and fear rushed back to fill the Disciple’s heart.
“I won’t let anything happen to you,” he promised.
The Demon grabbed him from behind and spun the Disciple to face him. “What kind of monster? What did you see?”
“Calm down,” the Prophet said. “The protective spell worked. We’re safe. You felt it work, didn’t you?”
“Yes. The spell wall held. This time.”
“My magic is stronger than any you’ve encountered before.”
“Magic or no magic, no one is ever completely safe. Maybe they sent an Enforcer.” The Demon glanced past the Disciple at the Angel. “Useless brat. Sleeps and fucks and now someone is looking for their lost lamb. I told you I smelled a vampire.”
“She wasn’t like the Angel,” the Disciple insisted. No one was like the Angel. “She was . . .” And all he could think of was a lady in black. “Dressed in shadows.”
The Prophet ignored him to sneer at the Demon. “That useless lamb is the key to our immortality. Do you think it’s the Bourbon woman? No,” the Prophet answered his own question. “I wove that concealing spell correctly. She can’t know he’s missing. Shouldn’t even remember he exists. I’m good,” he declared, thumping himself on the chest. “The best.” He walked over to the bed and stroked the Angel’s hair. “I want what you have, and I don’t need your Laws to get it.”
“She’ll kill you when she finds you, sorcerer.” The Demon sneered at the Prophet and let the Disciple go.
The Disciple’s arms and shoulders bled where the Demon’s claws had cut into skin. He resented the loss. His blood belonged to the Angel.
“She—whoever she is—won’t be able to find me. Still . . .” The Prophet stroked his beard and sighed. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to close up shop here. You two,” he said to the Disciple and the Vessel. “Organize the slaves. We’re taking the Angel to a new sanctuary.”
Chapter 11
“WHAT’S WRONG WITH this town?”
“Besides all the water?” Santini asked.
“I can live with water.”
Haven took another sip of whiskey. He’d brought the bottle along from Tucson. Good stuff he’d been saving in one of the storage bins in the Jeep. This was the second bottle he’d opened tonight. Santini had finished off the first and tossed it out the window long before they’d gotten back to the hotel. Haven didn’t recall what he’d been saving this bottle for, but the smoky, potent kick on the back of his throat was welcome now.
He was glad of the drink, glad to be back at the hotel, glad to have someone to talk to. He usually didn’t care where he was or if he was with anyone. “Crazy town. Like there’s holes in it. I kept getting lost trying to get to the center of it.”
Santini scratched his beard. “Street layout’s stupid.”
No, that wasn’t it. “Yeah,” Haven said, reluctant to admit he’d encountered black holes in the world. It wasn’t like he could describe the sensation or even get his mind around it properly. He did know that there was missing—time—from his trip into and out of Seattle. Missing time. Blank spots. It reminded him of something. “Alien abductions.”
Santini was seated on a chair with his feet propped up on the room’s queen-size bed. His feet hit the floor. “What?”
“Never mind.” Haven didn’t feel like mentioning the werewolf right now, either. He put the whiskey glass down, half-finished. “Find out anything?”
“Some. Couple of street people have disappeared. Even the cops assume this serial killer got ‘em. Lot of scared folks. Some moved into the shelter I stayed at. People there think the woman who runs it is a witch. Della’s strange.” He took a drink. “Checked her out. Our kind of strange maybe.” He shrugged. “She’s got the look.”
Haven knew what his partner meant. You saw enough of the weird side and it changed everything about you. “Did you talk to her?”
Santini nodded. “Della warned me away from a new cult that’s recruiting on the street. Cult sucks ‘em in, then puts them to work.”
“Typical.”
“Yeah. But the recruiter’s a sicko.”
“The guy you were talking to when I picked you up?”
“That’s what I figured. I’m thinking maybe I should go with him after I let him talk for a while, see how much he meant it. So I played hard to get. But I didn’t like the feel of it. So when you showed up, I took the ride.”
“Did you connect the sicko and his cult to our Danny boy? Anybody heard of our client’s blond and blue-eyed darling?”
Santini shook his head. “I did
n’t exactly show a picture around. Another interesting thing. Girl showed up at the shelter tonight and got into an intense conversation with Della. Cute little chick. Big-eyed. Real dark red hair. Expensive clothes, looked smart, never seen the inside of shelter before. Got the feeling she was looking for someone.”
“Our Danny boy? Girlfriend?”
Santini shrugged. “She gave me a long look when I was on my way out.” He scratched his bearded jaw. “Didn’t think she followed me, but you thought there was somebody back in the shadows.” He shook his head. “Nah. Nobody there.”
Santini grew silent, put down his whiskey glass, and got a beer out of the room’s tiny fridge. Haven took this as a signal that the biker didn’t have anything more to say. Haven filed away the information about the girl. He deliberately did not drink any more whiskey or get a beer. He glanced at the clock. He’d been up all night again. He was tired, frustrated, sleepy, and didn’t want to go bed. He had visions of dreaming about the werewolf coming for him and had learned the hard way that nightmares could come true.
Santini opened his beer and turned back to Haven. “How was your hunting trip?”
“I found a body,” he told Santini. “Looked like the pictures in Special Agent Novak’s file on Danny boy. Dental impressions would show that it’s the same biter that’s chewed on the other bodies.”
Leave it to a mom to recognize her precious darling’s overbite even when the bite marks were in someone else’s skin. “Danny was always a biter,” she’d said, and had showed him a scar on her arm. “He gave me that when he was thirteen. We couldn’t get him to wear braces.” He was sixteen when he disappeared. Sixteen and already in college ’cause little Danny was some kind of flaky mathematical genius. And divorced mommy had gone off to a fancy job with the Bureau while daddy took a six-month job in Tokyo. Somewhere along the line, they lost track of their little boy, and that was nearly two years ago. All momma had left of junior were photos of his teeth. She said there were other things that led her to know from looking at the evidence that her baby was involved, but the teeth marks were the clincher. She seemed more than half nuts with her certainty, but Haven didn’t argue with crazy people who knew stuff—at least not when they worked for the Bureau and had an inch-thick file on him.
The overbite evidence in Danny boy’s case was accompanied by an impression that looked like fang punctures. Agent Novak assumed the fang marks were made by the fancy false teeth some dentists made for costumers and vampire wannabes, but she said it in a worried, uncertain tone.
Haven had agreed with Special Agent Novak’s hope that the vampire wasn’t real until the murder victim called out to him as she died miles away, until he’d been psychically led to the body, until he’d seen the monster where the body was dumped. Little Danny was in league with the devil, and it really pissed Haven off. He didn’t mind that the kid was a vampire. Killing vampires was what he did. But getting the FBI involved wasn’t good for business. Special Agent Novak wanted him to find her little darling and bring him home, not find Danny boy and drive a stake through his heart. Wasn’t that just too damn bad?
He’d do what he had to do. The world was going to get saved from vampires whether the world wanted it or not, and the FBI sure as hell wasn’t up to doing the job. He’d made the choice to be a hero. All he could do was keep fighting until they got him.
Haven yawned at the thought, and his mind skittered around remembering the monster in the clearing. Santini was looking at him strangely when he stopped yawning. “What?”
“You look like shit.”
Haven got up and stretched. “Feel like it too.” He looked at the bed, thought about having a cigarette, getting some coffee, doing anything but what he needed to do to be at his best.
“Get some rest.”
He glared at Santini for a moment, then nodded. He owed it to Santini to be on top of the situation when trouble came. There were things you had to do to stay sharp, to keep the reflexes fast and accurate. He’d given up a hell of a lot to be a hero. They all had, him and Santini and Baker. All that was being asked of him now was that he get some sleep.
So he got in bed instead of having a cigarette. He was asleep instantly, and he was right about the nightmares. In his dreams, a shadowy female figure began stalking him. But instead of growing fangs and trying to kill him, the shadow girl kept shouting questions he could never quite hear. At some point during the long day of restless sleep, while he was half awake and in the act of turning over, he thought she asked him if he wanted a date.
“Yeah. Sure,” he mumbled into the pillow. “See ya.”
Char wasn’t sure when she woke up on a mattress in Della’s basement whether she’d had a productive day or not. She did know she had a headache. She suspected she’d spent the day with rats and other vermin and also suspected Della’d just been being mean when she told Char that there was nowhere else in the building she could sleep. “It’s a wonder she didn’t offer me a coffin,” Char grumbled as she rolled off the mattress and got slowly to her feet. She stretched and went upstairs.
Della was waiting for her in the kitchen when Char opened the basement door. The smell of garlic and frying onions scented the air. The room was full of busy people preparing the evening meal to a loud radio playing hip hop. Char accepted the towel and change of clothes the shelter’s director handed her and let Della show her where the communal bathroom was.
The bathroom was empty, for which Char was grateful, the thin stream of water that came out of the showerhead was tepid, for which she was not. Still, the very act of taking a shower helped her compose herself for the night. Helped her recall and assess just how she’d spent the day, as well.
She’d always been good at dream walking, at least under normal, controlled circumstances. Yeah, well, last night wasn’t exactly normal. And her memory of what she’d done during the day was sketchy. Char gave herself points for trying; exhausted, rattled, and disconcerted as she was, she had made the effort to send her consciousness out riding the thoughts of mortals while her body stayed behind and slept.
She turned her face up to the thin stream of water, closed her eyes, and let the day’s dreams rise to the surface.
Char met Della in the building’s empty waiting room a few minutes later. Her hair was still damp, and the chill air in the room made her shiver, but she did feel better for being clean. She was disturbed by what she remembered, but being disturbed was becoming standard operating procedure. Della gave her a mug of weak tea. Char was both pleased and wary about the former companion’s remembering her preferred choice of caffeine. Odd how she’d gotten into a habit of drinking coffee since leaving Seattle but found herself craving tea now that she was home. They sat down, facing each other, on a pair of cold plastic chairs.
“I found your car,” Della said.
“Is there a demon in Seattle?” Char asked her. “Because if there is and he has Daniel, I have no business being here.” Char caught a buzz from the jolt of genuine terror that went through Della, but she fought off her own predatory instincts to absorb strong emotion and kept her mind on business.
Della’s mug hit the floor and rolled away after scattering a few drops on the worn linoleum. “Demon?” Her pale eyes narrowed, studying Char intently. “There’s dark magic in town but . . . You mean there really are demons?”
There was a rumor that Krystalle and the other late strigoi of Seattle had made a pact with demons. Perhaps Della had heard that rumor. Char gave it no credence.
Char finished her tea, then put the cup down on a nearby table, with Della staring at her the whole time. While Della stared, Char slipped through Della’s weakened psychic shielding. Eating the mortal’s emotions was bad, but analyzing them was okay. What Char discerned was that the woman was resentful, compassionate, hurting, grieving, loving—but with a streak of viciousness. Della was a very confused and confusing woman, but Char was quickly convinced that Della hadn’t deliberately been trying to get her into trouble.
Della looked at her with complete lack of understanding. “Why?”
Char shrugged. “There’s a treaty. Probably goes back thousands of years.” More likely hundreds, to the time when there were maybe a dozen vampires left in the whole world and they needed to bury traditional enmities and territorial disputes simply to survive in the mortal world. Char saw no need to tell a mortal suppositions based on her research. One of the most important survival tools the strigoi had used over the millennia was not telling anybody much of anything—oh, and downright lying worked nicely, as well. While this helped hide the existence of vampires from mortals, it also hid vampires from each other. Char was not so sure this was a good thing, but who was she to argue with policy set by the Strigoi Council?
“The point is, if Daniel is somehow involved with a demon, I doubt there’s anything I can do about it.”
Della went from being confused to furious. “People have been killed. People are being used. There’s a missing child! Someone is using black magic to take over the city.”
“At least to hide their activities. I finally figured that out. After I was hit with a spell that needed to channel a demon’s psychic power to get it to work. I can’t fight a true demon.”
“You’re an Enforcer. What do you mean there’s nothing you can do?”
“Because the children of the lesser gods cut a deal with the Strigoi. The treaty was sealed with the Blood of the Goddess, making it a pact that cannot be broken.”
“What goddess?”
Oh, right, Krystalle must not have mentioned religion to her companion. “Never mind. You do know what a blood promise is, right?”
Della waved a hand. “Sort of. Something to do with contracts.”
Laws of the Blood 2: Partners Page 9
