Laws of the Blood 1: The Hunt

by Susan Sizemore

  He held her for a few moments, taking and giving comfort, fighting the rush of need. A faint stain of Jager’s blood was on her dress when he stepped away. He turned toward the car. “Give me the keys. I’ll drive you home.”

  She looked at him strangely. “You can’t drive.”

  “I can drive. I just don’t like to.” He took her arm. She was shivering, still unsteady. He gently guided her into the passenger’s seat of her precious dark red Mercedes. She sank into the seat and put her head back as he started the engine.

  “Anything you want to tell me?” The question came out of him in a far too casual tone. He winced at the suspicious sound. He might as well have asked, so, who’s the blond?

  Siri didn’t move. Didn’t open her eyes. “No,” she answered, even though she had to feel the prick of his jealousy.

  “Fine.” He put the car in gear. “You can sleep while I drive.”

  They didn’t talk on the trip out of Los Angeles. Siri put her hand tentatively on his a few times as he shifted gears. He wasn’t sure if she was looking for reassurance or worried about his driving. He didn’t ask. She didn’t say anything until he pulled up in front of her house and got out to open the passenger-side door for her.

  “You could come in.”

  “With a body in the trunk?” He glanced at the rear of the Mercedes. “I don’t think so.”

  She followed his gaze and sighed. “You have to dispose of it, don’t you? Will you be safe? Do you know where to—?”

  “I’ve had practice,” he reminded her. He wished he could keep her out of this. He always had before. It was a shame that real life wasn’t like the movies. It would be very convenient if vampire remains simply turned to ash. Of course, if they did that, what would Enforcers have for dinner?

  He escorted Siri to her door, made sure it was locked behind her, then drove the Mercedes somewhere safe and secure. He made a call to Mike Tancredi on the way. Siri would have a brand new Mercedes delivered to her the next morning by one of Mike’s slaves.

  “She’s deep in denial.”

  “She’s holding onto her humanity,” Valentine said. “That’s good.”

  “Why?”

  Yevgeny’s sneer of disgust did not amuse her, but she let it go. She reached around where he sat, perched on the edge of her kitchen counter, and poured herself another cup of coffee. “It’s none of our business,” she told him. He held his mug out, and she tipped steaming espresso into it. He took a long sniff of the coffee’s aroma, then drank from the mug in silence, without even thinking that she was being a hypocrite.

  She asked, “What else?”

  Yevgeny put the mug down, then slid off the counter to stand next to her. He was a very big man, and she was a very small woman. His size hadn’t been what attracted her to him. She didn’t normally have any interest in big, hard-bodied palomino stallions. It wasn’t his looks that kept him fascinating. Companions came in all shapes and sizes and sexes. There had been a eunuch once . . . long ago. She hadn’t been able to get his manly bits to grow back, but she’d loved him anyway. His company had been rather restful, come to think of it. She didn’t want to think about long ago, but how did one help it?

  She concentrated on Yevgeny, loving him, feeling his love for her, strong still, despite all the anger and necessary frustration. What she loved in this beautiful man was the strength of his gift.

  “We used to call it the Curse,” she told him, answering questions that had been in his mind so long he’d stop thinking them consciously.

  “What? You mean the gift?”

  “Psychic ability, psi, telepathy, empathy, precognition, premonition, the sight,” Valentine said. “Whatever the sense is that most humans don’t have. Call it what you like. We saw it as a brand, a mark of sin. We believed that every human born with psychic ability was a child of the Goddess, just like us.” She touched his cheek. “You were born with our version of original sin. We believed that you deserved to suffer the same punishment as us. But that was a long time ago,” she added. “I don’t believe in that religion anymore.”

  He didn’t care. He didn’t want her excuses. He wanted what he wanted. His indifference hurt her. “It is your fault.” His tone wasn’t even accusing. It had become too rote for that.

  He was right. It was. So what? Get over it, Yevgeny. It was better not to humor him. She took her coffee and went to her desk.

  Yevgeny sulked in the kitchen for a while, but eventually he followed her. He perched on the edge of the desk. Yevgeny wasn’t much for chairs. Valentine kept typing while silence drew out between them. There was no comfort in their silences anymore. Mostly, the silence was a long-distance one these days. She should never have called on him for help. It had just been another excuse when she told herself she couldn’t do this without him.

  “How’s it coming?” he asked at last. “Your script?”

  “Good,” she answered, though she wasn’t certain that was true. She kept changing the story. “I think I’m finally on to something. You’ve been a big help.” She looked at him instead of the computer monitor. “No, you haven’t.” She put her hands flat on the wrist rest in front of the keyboard. “Tell me more.”

  Instead of complying, he got up and came to stand behind her. While waiting for him to say something, Valentine went back to work. After a while, she grew anxious. Not at his stubbornness, but because all writers are insecure, neurotic creatures.

  “What do you think?” she asked as Yevgeny read over her shoulder. She dreaded his answer, since he was the most honest critic she’d ever known. She both loved and hated that about him. He put his hands on her shoulders and leaned down a little. She scrolled the screen up a few times as he read, and she waited.

  “Istvan?” he finally said. “That’s going a little too far, isn’t it?”

  “He’s a good boy.”

  Yevgeny snorted. “He’s everyone’s worst nightmare.”

  “I’ve never approved of what was done to him.” She didn’t reward Yevgeny’s curiosity with an explanation. She did add, “He never liked me, of course. He never liked anyone.”

  “He still doesn’t. I can’t believe you’re using Istvan.”

  “I’ll probably change his name,” she said and shook her head in disgust. “I’ve already had enough trouble with the hero’s character not being a blue-eyed white guy. Of course, my dream casting’s Nic Cage for the villain.”

  “I think you’re missing the point, Valentine.”

  “And you’re stalling.” She tilted her head back and smiled at him. “Did you miss me that much?”

  He bent to kiss her forehead. “Of course.”

  A wave of affection flooded her, but she didn’t let it overwhelm her. “Nobody’s biting anybody tonight.” She’d felt a chase earlier, the first one in years. She was interested, excited, but she didn’t let it show. She didn’t suppose Yevgeny knew the details of what had happened. It didn’t matter. She’d draw it out of Selim’s mind in the morning.

  “Bitch.”

  How true. “Tell me something I want to know. You said you’d help me.”

  He withdrew from her, sat back on the corner of the desk. “You ordered me to help you.”

  “I asked nicely. You didn’t have to.”

  He laughed. “I had to. I had to see you,” he added grudgingly.

  “I didn’t answer your calls,” she mimicked. She swiveled the chair face him. “I didn’t let you come to me. It’s better, and you know it.”

  “I want to be with you.”

  She laughed softly and stroked his thigh. He tensed beneath her touch. “I know what you think you want.”

  “Need.” He gritted out the word. The pain he felt was in his mind and very real.

  “You’re just infected with all the psychic energy being put off by the others. It’ll pass,” she reassured him. “It did last time.”

  He gave a hollow laugh. “The last time, you took me on vacation. Somewhere boring in Utah.”

&n
bsp; “You said you liked the skiing.”

  “You said you enjoyed the film festival.”

  She shrugged. “We both lied. You should get away this time. No,” she agreed before he could say it. “It’s too late. You’ve caught the scent.”

  “So have you.”

  She looked at her computer. “I have my own coping mechanism.”

  “I need to Hunt.”

  Valentine shook her head. “It’s not going to happen. Do you hear me?” Her voice was hard as iron. She remembered an age of iron. And one of bronze before that. She put the authority of all her years in her words. “I forbid it.”

  Yevgeny shot to his feet. She rose from her chair. They stood toe to toe; a very large man loomed over a very small woman. A portrait had been painted of her once, on a palace wall. Someone in this century had found that portrait and dubbed it “La Parisienne.” She had lived in Paris, too, once. But she’d seen sunlight last on the Isle of Crete. Hers were a little people, lithe and supple and strong. She was not afraid of bulls. She had danced with them in her youth.

  She stared down her great, angry bull of a man now. She put her hand on his chest and pushed, just a little. Yevgeny sat with a hard thud.

  “I forbid it,” she repeated. “I love you.”

  His head came up sharply. The bright blue eyes beneath the golden arch of brows met hers. His mouth worked. “But—”

  “It’s not good being a vampire,” Valentine said. “Trust me on this.” She stepped back, put her hands on her hips. “Now, tell me something I can use.”

  “There’s a child.”

  She needed to sit down. She did. On the floor. Dizzy at the notion, shaken, she felt the truth of his words deep in her bones, in the marrow where blood was born. She looked up a long way to where Yevgeny smiled viciously down on her. The world faded in and out and in. Valentine blinked. “A child?” The question was no more than a faint, frightened rasp.

  “Siri knows about him,” Yevgeny told her. “She hides it well, but I got through her shields. A little. Her and Selim’s real worry was that Jager would somehow attack the child. She’s good,” he added. “But then, you know that. You wouldn’t have called on me if you could have gotten to her yourself. Why can’t you ride her, the way you do the other one?”

  Yevgeny’s jealousy was a strong, hot stink in her mind. She ignored it. Valentine stretched her legs out in front of her. “A child?” she repeated. “I’ll be damned.”

  “That’s the traditional view, yes.”

  She ignored his sarcasm as well. “Who? How? So that’s the secret he’s been keeping.” She’d been rummaging around in poor Selim’s head for weeks, hunting for material she could use, and here he’d been dodging her, faking her out all the time. How’d the ungrateful little bastard manage to keep something so momentous from her? When did he get to be so good?

  It had been a couple hundred years since they’d seen each other. Time flew. People changed. “Damn.”

  “I detect more admiration than complaint in your tone,” Yevgeny said. “About what?”

  Her mind was racing. She ignored his question. She almost forgot his presence as she got up and began to pace. She moved with growing restlessness from the office corner through the living room to the kitchen, from the kitchen out to the balcony, then back through the living room. Yevgeny stayed perched on the desk, arms crossed over his wide chest. He watched her as she circled the apartment, but her muttered words weren’t directed at him. “A child. There has to be something going on with the child.”

  “What’s so important about the child?” he asked her. “How did a vampire have a baby in the first place?”

  “Is it a boy or girl?” she asked. “Who’s the father? Was it on purpose or an accident? What happened to the mother? Where’s the kid being hidden? What’s Selim planning to do to the little darling?” She rubbed her chin. She paused in her wanderings and discovered she was back by her computer. “Boy,” Valentine said. “A little boy. A cute, adorable, big-eyed little boy.”

  “How do you know?”

  She sat down and flexed her fingers over the ergonomically designed keyboard. She closed her eyes. Ideas popped and flowed. She knew suddenly what she had to do, where all her searching and agonizing and false starts had to lead. Her restlessness was gone. She was sharp and alive once more. Possibilities were suddenly endless. She hadn’t felt this good in years.

  She laughed. She closed the file on the screen. She began a new file. The blank white screen was a beautiful landscape before her. She didn’t need Selim’s dreams anymore. She could take it from here.

  “This is going to be so good,” she murmured and began to work. She barely noticed when the door slammed behind Yevgeny, and she was having too much fun to care that it did.

  Chapter 12

  “YES, THANK YOU,” Selim said, though there was no one there. “I slept very well.” In fact, the recent pattern of dreams that featured reruns of his life alternating with possible futures had continued. The lights were programmed to come on at sunset, so the room wasn’t dark. It was big and messy, his clothes from the night before left scattered where he’d dropped them, a fresh layer over the clothes from the night before that. He stared upward, with his head resting on a pile of four pillows. Two of them were hers. She’d tell him he was a pillow hog if she were there. The ceiling, he thought, could use painting.

  He kicked off the covers. “Everything could use fixing up.” There was no one in the bed with him, but he stretched a hand out across the queen-size expanse just the same, searching for . . . what? He was talking to . . . who?

  Stupid question. His first thoughts were always of her. His first words always to her. Even when she wasn’t there.

  Where was she? What was she doing?

  “Who’s the blond?”

  He kept his thoughts to himself, and reached toward the bedside table to take the cordless phone from its cradle. A moment later, Selim put down the phone. There had been no irritating beeping signal telling him there was voice mail waiting when he picked it up. That was odd. It was irritating. It was damned irritating.

  “This is what you wanted,” he told himself. “No.”

  That he was feeling sorry for himself after his first meal in years and his first good day’s sleep in weeks irritated him. Last night had been a very good night. Of course, the evening would have been perfect if he’d gotten laid.

  “How crude,” he chided himself as he got up and set about preparing for the night’s work. Was that any way for the son of a sultan to think? Just because he’d had a harem once . . .

  Why not now?

  Perhaps he had become too American, too modern, he thought as he began to shave. Perhaps that was his problem with Siri. That he had allowed one partner to become too important to him. If he wanted to get laid, all he needed to do was take a second companion or a slave or even spend an evening with one of Alice Fraser’s possessions, one of the girls who gave blood.

  No. Definitely not. What would Siri think? He would not hurt her like that. What would everyone else in town think? And they were bound to find out about it. She had her pride. Her place. He would not do that to Siri.

  “And who is the blond?” he asked the angry man who looked back at him out of the bathroom mirror. Put it out of your mind, he ordered himself. He had work to do.

  He didn’t need Siri’s help with this. He’d do it the old-fashioned way. He turned on the television and channel surfed. Within a few minutes, a local news program caught and held his attention. He sat impatiently through a long, lurid report of another murder in Griffith Park. It was the sort of story the media loved to sink its teeth into and gnaw on, one with sound bites from experts on serial killers and cult rituals. There was much indignation and calls for the authorities to move quickly to bring peace and safety back to blah blah blah.

  It was the story about the convenience store robbery that interested him. The one where the police who arrived on the scene shot the store owner.
People in the neighborhood were angry, bitter. This wasn’t the first time the cops had hassled and harassed them. Now someone was dead. Tensions were running high. People were ready to take to the streets.

  “I can work with this.”

  Selim clicked off the television and went to have a look at the scene in person.

  “The new car’s dark blue. I miss the burgundy red one.”

  She’d found the new Mercedes in her garage that morning. Flowers, with a note from Selim, had arrived in the afternoon. The note said he hoped she liked the color. No apologies, certainly no explanations. No invitation or mention of seeing her soon, either. But he had kissed her last night, and the fire between them had been just as strong and deep as ever. She touched her bruised lips; the only marks on her from last night came from Selim. Son of a bitch.

  She wasn’t going to let herself go to his place. He made no effort to see her. Impasse. He saved your life last night, she reminded herself.

  He’s still a son of a bitch.

  You like him that way.

  What’s to like? He’s a killer.

  Two nights ago, that didn’t bother her. The truth was, she didn’t object to people being killed. There was nothing wrong with people being killed. Certainly nothing wrong with vampires being killed. There had been a dead body in the trunk of her car last night. She hadn’t objected to that at all. She would have been happy to help kill that particular vampire. Yeah, but Larry Jager deserved it.

  “It’s a beautiful new luxury car. Blue. Red. What’s the difference at night?” Cassie’s voice called Siri’s attention back to the conversation.

  “I can see them in the daylight. Besides,” Siri complained to Cassie, “you see just fine at night. I thought your eyes picked up a different spectrum or something.”

  “Or something,” Cassie answered. “It’s hard to explain.”

  “And you’re not going to.”