Laws of the Blood 2: Partners

by Susan Sizemore

  And then the image burned like acid in his mind. A caustic voice burned his ears. The Witch’s disdainful face snarled in his memory. It hurt to think of her. He didn’t want to think of her. He hated her. Feared her. He wanted her dead. Always had. But . . .

  The Witch was powerful. Stronger than him. Her death would free all the power the Prophet needed. He should have thought of it before. Her power would strengthen the spells that hid them from the hunters.

  He couldn’t take the Witch. His voice could not snare her to follow him. But the Angel needed her.

  He had to do it. But he couldn’t do it alone. “What to do? What to do?”

  Not alone. The Disciple stopped pacing and cackled. He hadn’t laughed in so long the sound hurt his throat. Not alone. He was not alone. There were slaves. Many slaves. More slaves than the Witch could handle. They could take her. Silence her. Hurt her. Bring her to the Prophet.

  He laughed again. Yes. They’d do it tonight.

  Chapter 20

  SEX WITHOUT BLOOD was so cheap and tawdry.

  That wasn’t to say it wasn’t fun, but there was no emotional commitment other than swift, fantastic, physical gratification. Char was an emotional commitment sort of woman.

  Right now what she wanted to commit to was a hot shower as her breathing calmed and her heartbeat slowed to normal.

  She didn’t know when the cold rain had started. It was a wonder her skin didn’t sizzle as the rain hit it, but instead it only served to turn the sooty muck covering her to smelly mud.

  Char turned her face up to the slow, icy rain and said, “I’m filthy.” When Haven chuckled in her ear, she slapped him on the shoulder. “Not like that.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  It was her turn to chuckle. She wasn’t sure who was holding who up at the moment, but the wall behind her was wet and rough, and she had strained muscles as well as dirty hair and clothing. “This is so romantic I think I’m going to puke.”

  “That’ll add to the ambiance, won’t it?”

  “You’re not supposed to know words like ambiance,” she reminded him, and pushed against him.

  “Sorry.”

  “Say it again,” she surprised herself by saying. “It sounded sexy.”

  “Smart’s sexy, huh?”

  “For me it is.”

  “You’re weird—in a nice way.”

  He turned his head to look at her, and there was a smile in his bittersweet chocolate eyes. Ghiradelli had never tasted like him, she thought, and noticed a pinhead spot of blood at the end of a thin scratch on his cheek. She was tempted to kiss away the owwie and leave him to speculate what she meant by it. But she had him confused enough already, and tasting him would make a sleazy incident of hot, hard sex seem too much like an emotional encounter. So she fished a tissue out of her raincoat pocket and wiped his cheek.

  “Not a good time to be playing mother, Charlotte,” he said and kissed the tip of her nose.

  No. That was too cute. She couldn’t deal with him being adorable or acting as if she were cute and adorable. “Get off me, you weigh a ton.”

  She looked up and down the alley after he took a few steps away from her. She missed his warmth instantly. “I hope Santini was right about this area being abandoned by the cult people.”

  “If not, we just put on a show for them. But I’m betting Santini was right. There’s nobody around here but you and me, and I don’t think we can blame some kind of lust spell.”

  “That anyone cast on us,” she conceded. She put her hands behind her back. “Well, we didn’t solve anything. But that was nice—in a sick, perverted, disgusting way.”

  He ran a hand through his short hair. “About what happened—us.” Haven gestured vaguely toward the wall, and walked forward, herding her onto the sidewalk beyond the alley. When they were under the nearest streetlight he said, “I’ll kill you if I have to, Charlotte. If I think you’re dangerous to humans, I’ll kill you.”

  “Fair enough.” She answered quite calmly, despite the ache that gripped her heart in the oddest way. Fair enough, indeed. She shook water out of her hair. “I’m freezing. I need a shower, and I need to change clothes.” She checked her watch. “You, Santini, and I already know everything Della knows about the cult. I doubt the FBI woman will find out anything new.”

  “Keeps her out of our hair for a while.”

  “I’m glad you see it that way. I don’t like having someone from the government knowing anything about—our profession.”

  There was an Enforcer who lived in Washington, D.C. Her name was Olympias, and her only function was to make sure that no government agent or official ever found out about the strigoi in America. Olympias was a vampire lobbyist, so to speak, and she would be very annoyed if all her hard work was screwed up by a rookie Enforcer thousands of miles outside the Beltway.

  “I won’t have the FBI finding out about vampires, Jebel.”

  “You giving me orders, Charlotte?” he snapped back. “You think I like having any kind of cop involved in my life? She’s blackmailing us into looking for her little boy. When I have to kill her vampire baby, she’s not going to be happy. I don’t want Novak around any more than you do, sweetheart.”

  “Good. My car’s just down the street,” she added. “Want to come back to my place and take a shower?”

  “I want to go back to your place and use the bed.”

  “Fine.” What was she saying? They needed to be hunting Daniel and the demon! “But not until after we clean up.”

  “I see Jimmy left you a key.”

  Helene Bourbon stood up as Char crossed from the kitchen into the living room. Haven followed her in through the condo’s kitchen entrance. He held a small-caliber gun in his hand.

  Other than a brief, disdainful glance, Helene Bourbon ignored the mortal and the weapon centered on her. “Jimmy is a good man,” she said to Char. “He likes to make people comfortable. He and Geoff issued an open invite when they left town.”

  Char was surprised at her lack of jealous reaction to hearing about the companion who’d followed her into Jimmy’s life. She’d never met Geoff Sterling, but she hated him. Or had when he’d been Jimmy’s lover after her. She shouldn’t have, it was the strigoi way. Vampires took companions, who they made into vampires, and vampires could not remain lovers with the children they’d made. Incest taboo. Very big deal. She got to kill and eat people who violated it. Jimmy and Geoff had parted ways years ago. Jimmy was in Alaska now. Geoff had gone his own way. She was currently standing between a nervous nest leader and a vampire hunter with a gun. This was no time for a stroll down memory lane.

  Helene wore no makeup and obviously didn’t follow the current vampire fashion for tanning beds. She looked drawn and worried and not particularly mortal.

  Char gestured her back into the living room. It had the softer lighting commonly used in a strigoi home. Char expected Haven to start shooting if he got a good look at the woman. Or even if he didn’t. She knew well how Haven liked shooting things. That he stood warily back to find out what was going on said a lot about his overwhelming curiosity.

  Having Haven with her like this, knowing what they looked like, gave Char a wincing sense of having just been busted making out with a boyfriend from the wrong side of the tracks. Mentioning Jimmy only added to the feeling. Char dismissed this reaction by reminding herself that Helene Bourbon specialized in taming teenage vampires, and she was no teenager.

  “I’ll join you in a moment,” she told Helene. Char put her hand on Haven’s arm as Helene backed into the living room. Her touch was light, the gesture seemed somewhat reassuring, somewhat pleading, but the intention was to knock the weapon away should Jebel Haven do anything rash. She glanced at the gun and said, “Why didn’t I notice that earlier?” It wasn’t as if she hadn’t had her hands all over him.

  “You were paying more attention to a larger—”

  “Never mind.”

  “You’re blushing, Charlotte.” He slipped th
e gun into an inside pocket of his jacket and stroked her cheek. With Jebel Haven, the tender gesture and his hard expression meshed perfectly. Interesting man. “Who’s your friend?”

  “She’s not well,” Char told him, “so don’t do anything else to frighten her.”

  “She didn’t look frightened. Who is she?”

  “I’ve told you about her. She’s the woman who has me looking for Daniel.”

  “What’s she doing here?”

  “What’s Special Agent Novak doing in town? Same thing as Helene. Looking for Daniel. Maternal types worry about their kids.” She moved her hand up his arm to his shoulder, urging him toward the bedroom. “I need to speak with Helene. Get the shower started.” She looked him in the eye and put all her power of suggestion in her next words. “Please give me a few minutes with Helene.” She added a huge dose of sensual promise when she said, “I’ll join you soon.”

  He wasn’t happy about it, but he said, “Fine.”

  Char moved quickly as he went toward the bedroom. She didn’t for a moment believe her whammy was going to last too long on Haven, if it had worked at all. The instant the bedroom door closed, she was in front of Helene Bourbon. She didn’t take the time to ask what the woman was doing in Seattle. “Daniel’s birth mother is with the FBI,” she informed Helene. “She’s in town looking for her son.” Char waited until she heard the sound of the shower going on. “You take responsibility for Daniel now, therefore you should deal with his mother.”

  The nest leader considered Char’s meaning for the length of a heartbeat. “I’ll see to her, Hunter.”

  Char hated the Enforcer’s choice she’d just made and that Helene so quickly agreed to murder a stranger. Helene understood her duty to protect the strigoi’s secrets. The mortal woman who only wanted to find her child would die in an unsuspicious way, and Char would let her conscience bedevil her after she had the city and the strigoi safe.

  “What about Daniel?” Helene asked. “Have you found him?”

  “His exact location, no, but I know what’s being planned for him. He has to be found very soon—or the official investigation will probably decide that a massive eruption of Mount Rainier is what caused all the destruction.”

  The release of enough magical energy had strong effects on the same parts of the physical world—fault lines and volcanoes, for example. The Northwest was a very active ecological area.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “A sorcerer and demon are planning a transformation. Old-fashioned, unstable, volatile, almost impossible to control, soul-stealing black magic.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “You wish.”

  “But—this is a mortal magician?”

  Char nodded. “With a demon sidekick.” She gestured vaguely toward the bathroom. “I have someone to deal with the demon.”

  Helene put her hand on her forehead. “Oh, my goddess. Thousands of people could be killed. Hundreds of thousands. We have to stop them.”

  Another vampire might have pointed out that since there were no strigoi living in Seattle what happened to the city wasn’t the vampire community’s problem. Helene Bourbon was good people, humanity in all its variations mattered to her. “You one of Jimmy’s kids?”

  The nest leader gave the slightest of wistful smiles. “We knew each other, long ago.”

  Jimmy made a point of picking good ones, though Char had heard that Geoff Sterling had been heavy into the silly blood-drinking Goth scene when Jimmy picked him up. Well, as long as it was all voluntary, good dirty fun, she supposed what adults did—

  Char fought off her tendency to think too much. She was the chief action hero in this crisis and had to act quickly. “Daniel’s mother went to have a talk with Della,” she told Helene. “I think you should meet her there.” She gave Helene her cell phone number and showed her to the front door. “Let me know how your meeting turns out.”

  Helene nodded and was gone. Char walked out of the living room. “You don’t look very clean,” she said, and moved past Haven, who’d been eavesdropping just out of sight. He followed her toward the bathroom. “That better be only cold water you’ve got running,” she told him.

  Chapter 21

  “TELL ME I’M mistaken.”

  Charlotte stood in front of the steamed-up mirror; he was looking at her naked reflection. He wanted to reach around her, cup her breasts, and watch her expression as he stroked them, but he settled on being satisfied with her having a reflection.

  She gave him a wary look over her shoulder as she finished brushing her hair. “Mistaken about what?”

  “Tell me you didn’t order a hit on someone.” The women had chosen their words very carefully and spoken low enough so that he could barely hear, but there was something in the air.

  She gazed at him with those big, innocent eyes of hers and said, “Do I look like someone with the authority to order other people around?”

  “Maybe you showed her your fangs.”

  She put down the brush and tossed her hair. “I’m not that kind of girl.”

  She tucked her hair behind her ears, then walked out of the bathroom. Silence drew out between them while they got dressed. He knew she was waiting for him to ask a question, but he put it off while he zipped up his jeans and put his shirt back on. He thought about himself, wondered why he had the hots for her. Some kind of spell she’d put on him? She didn’t deny knowing magic. Animal magnetism? He almost laughed at the thought. He was used to being the one who was the animal.

  “You like talking to me,” she said. “That’s the attraction.”

  “Stop reading my mind.”

  “It’s your body language.”

  Haven finished buttoning his shirt and faced her. “All right.” It surprised him that he had to pause and take a shaky breath before he spoke. Maybe he really didn’t want to know. “What are you?”

  He watched her pick up a slender silver dagger and slip it into an arm sheath. “A Virgo?”

  “I’m not laughing, Charlotte.”

  “Char. Please call me Char.”

  She took out a black leather jacket from a suitcase and put it on over a black turtleneck and black jeans. Her dark red hair was pulled back from her face. The overall effect did not make her look tougher or more dangerous than the young woman in the loose blue raincoat he’d been spending time with, but she did look sexier.

  “Why Char?”

  “Because it suits what I do, who I am.”

  He gestured toward her. “Which is?”

  “An Enforcer of the Law. A kind of cop. I don’t think I should tell you more than that.”

  “But you’re going to, right?”

  “Jebel! I can’t!”

  He smiled at the exasperated whine in her voice. “Chaaar,” he whined back. Then the humor left him. He looked around this bedroom that had belonged to her old lover and remembered her conversation with the other woman. “This is a safe house, isn’t it? And you ordered a hit, didn’t you? Who are you?”

  He should reach for a weapon, but he didn’t want to. The world was bigger, deeper, darker than he’d ever suspected. He was used to being an executioner, but he was new at discerning shades of gray in the evil he fought. Ambiguity sucked.

  Char sat down on the bed to put on her shoes. She looked up at him as she answered. “Up until now, I’ve been an archivist, a researcher, a supernatural librarian. I’ve hidden in books and behind a computer—I’m really good at hacking, by the way. I keep track of things and provide information. These are useful and necessary tasks for a loosely organized bunch like the Enforcers. But there are so few Enforcers that no one of us has the right to hide and refuse to do the job we’re reborn for.”

  “Reborn?”

  “You heard me. I think you know what I mean.”

  “I think I want you to tell me.”

  “You’ve seen me in my working outfit.” She drew her lips back in a snarl, but didn’t sprout any new teeth. “I’m not a werewol
f. I’m a Nighthawk.”

  “You can fly?”

  She gave an exasperated sigh. “No, but I can run pretty darn fast.”

  “An Enforcer of the Law. What law? Whose law?”

  She stood. “You don’t want to go there, Jebel. Not if you want to live until morning.”

  “Why, Charlotte McCairn, I do believe you’re threatening me.”

  He thought about drawing the gun in his jacket but figured shooting her would just annoy her. She was physically tougher than he was, wasn’t she? He actually found that kind of attractive. Mentally, though, he figured he had the edge.

  “Jebel Haven,” she said as she rubbed a spot on the middle of her forehead. She shook her head. “I can’t do this; I just can’t.” She got up from the bed. He stood back and let her pace the width of the room a few times. She finally stopped in front of him. “My people are different,” she said. “Human groups fear other groups that are different than they are. My people are more vulnerable to this innate prejudice than any other ethnic group. My job is to protect my people. I believe in trying to do it without harming . . . any other ethnic group. I’m as much of a good guy as I can be—and still protect my people. I don’t want Agent Novak to die. I really don’t. But she can’t find Daniel and take him home. He belongs to my people now.”

  “He’s a vampire.”

  “Yeah. How about that?”

  “You said you’re a vampire hunter.”

  “I am.”

  He couldn’t take it any further. He should. He looked at her. He remembered making love to her. A vivid image of the half-rotting, almost mindless monsters he fought out in the desert flashed through his mind. One of them wore Charlotte’s face. The vampire that attacked him in the alley had talked to him. She’d talked about smart urban ones. Her people? He couldn’t ask.

  “What have you done to me?” he asked her.