Laws of the Blood 1: The Hunt

by Susan Sizemore

  “Why you haven’t made love to me for over a year?” Maybe she should wait for him to go on, but she asked, “Is it because you don’t want me to change into a bloodsucking fiend? Because—”

  “I’m a selfish bastard,” he cut in. “Who doesn’t want to live without you.”

  It was Siri’s turn to stare silently out the windshield for a while. “What we’re doing now isn’t living,” she managed after a while.

  “I knew you’d say that. Drop me off at my place,” he added, “Don’t ask to come in.”

  “Bastard.”

  “Yes.”

  “Fine.” The miles passed, but she heard not another word or thought from him. “This place has been turned into a senior’s residence, you know,” she pointed out when he got out of the car in front of his building. “Someone’s going to notice that you don’t look like you belong here sometime. You could move in with me.” It was an old discussion, one he didn’t bother to respond to. He just waved her away and went inside.

  Siri drove home too fast in the light, late-night traffic of Pasadena. She didn’t know if there had been any progress between them tonight. On any front. She concluded that she should get some rest, then maybe she could think. She wanted to sleep but dreaded once again retiring to an empty bed. Checking her voice mail helped put the moment off a few minutes more. There was only one message.

  “Girlfriend, I need a big, big, huge favor. You’re his godmother, an aunt, really. And the only one I can trust,” Cassie’s voice told her. “It’s about Sebastian’s birthday party. Yes, I said party. Don’t tell Tom this, but—”

  Cassie went on. And on. Siri listened. Then replayed the message. “I don’t believe this,” she said. She believed it, all right. She just didn’t want to think about it. Siri decided that going to bed, even alone, and getting some sleep was the only sensible way of dealing with vampire dramas, domestic and otherwise. “My next boyfriend will not have fangs,” she muttered as she settled her head on the pillows. “And neither will his relatives.”

  Chapter 17

  THE BACKGROUND MUSIC on the shop’s sound system was fashionably retro. Dire Straits’ Portobello Belle. From the early eighties, she thought, maybe the late seventies. Siri wasn’t quite sure which decade was currently being regurgitated as style. The stores in Pasadena’s Old Town were a nice mix of traditional and trendy, so maybe the owner of this high-end toy store wasn’t trying to prove a point. It was possible that she just liked Mark Knopfler’s insidiously insistent singing style. Siri did know that she found the music far more soothing than seeing the prices of the items she picked up.

  What did one get for a five-year-old who had everything, anyway? She wondered. Including fangs. Now, that wasn’t fair. Joking about Sebastian was one thing. She and Selim always did. But the truth was, Cassie and Tomas’s son showed no outward signs of being anything other than a normal, precocious, telepathic, overprotected, spoiled little rich boy. He didn’t exactly live in a normal environment, what with both of his parents being vampires, but they loved him and did the best they could to provide a stable, caring home life. At least Cassie did. Tom provided protection from the other vampires.

  Those few vampires who knew about Sebastian’s existence would be happy to see the child dead. There was a fear—irrational, Selim assured her—that someday Sebastian Avella would destroy vampire kind. Or become king of vampires. Or replace Istvan as the most feared Hunter of them all. There were several conflicting prophecies. Siri had no opinion on Sebastian’s future and no visions of it, either. She did know that Cassandra worked very hard on keeping Sebastian human. Sometimes Cassandra called on her to help.

  Right now, she didn’t want to. Siri had had only four hours of sleep and had plenty of other concerns to do with Hunting vampires. She was shopping when she was supposed to meet Joe at his office because Cassie’s long voice mail message had been the plea of a woman trying hard not to lose her mind and take her baby with her. Cassie was feeling the heat of growing Hunger. She wanted to keep Sebastian out of it, to distract him, protect him, keep him human. How could Siri turn away from the needs of a child? How could she deny her best friend, even though her best friend was now someone she hardly ever saw? Cassie was a different person now, something other. Okay, by Selim’s definition, Cassie was a member of a different species, but she was still Siri’s best friend.

  “Damn it,” she muttered and released her death grip on the stuffed tiger she found she was holding. What to get a kid for his birthday? She thought again. She put the stuffed animal back on the shelf. Maybe he’d like a real tiger. Maybe the young dhamphir and the dangerous hunting cat would hit it off, have a lot in common. Speaking of dangerous cats . . . she thought, and looked toward the door. Yevgeny stood there. Big, blond, unshaven. He didn’t look like he’d slept in weeks. He looked more like a hungry wolf, actually, than a tiger. Or like a hungry vampire. That was the energy he projected, even without the physical changes that came with the hunting mode.

  His broad shoulders blocked the doorway, his very presence blocked the morning light that poured in through the plate glass window. Siri looked around for another exit. She did not want to be here with him. “You don’t look so pretty in the daylight,” she told him, putting on a brave front as he stalked up to her.

  “That’s because I don’t belong in the daylight.”

  “And you need a shower,” she added as his big hand closed over her arm.

  “Let’s go,” he said and drew her toward the door.

  Siri looked frantically around the busy toy store, but went with him without protest. The man felt even more on the edge of violence than he looked. She didn’t dare put anyone but herself at risk by calling for help. She sighed and dug her sunglasses out of her purse as they stepped out onto the sidewalk.

  The morning was bright and hot, the desert sun fierce this close to noon, and she was more used to the cool California nights. She glanced at the sky, her gaze following Yevgeny’s. There were no clouds in the blueness overhead, but plenty of straight white jet exhaust plumes crossed the sky above barely visible tendrils of smog. He stood very still for a few moments, while people passed around them on the sidewalk.

  Despite having a death grip on her, Siri didn’t think he was aware of her. “You’re saying good-bye to the light, aren’t you?” she guessed.

  He brought his intense attention back to her. Looking into his wild, blue eyes, Siri wished she’d kept her mouth shut. “I won’t miss this,” he told her.

  “California?” she mocked sweetly. “You’re leaving town? Came to say farewell?” She tried to pull away. “I’m touched. Have a nice trip.”

  “Shut up.”

  There was a small park at the end of the block, with hibiscus bushes and shade trees and flowerbeds set in a brick walkway. A tiled fountain bubbled in the middle of this mini-plaza, and there were benches set under the trees. Siri was relieved when Yevgeny took her to the park. The people already there, a woman with a baby in a stroller, a couple romantically holding hands by the fountain, walked away from the park when Yevgeny pulled her down beside him on one of the benches. Siri was glad of the privacy. Also slightly reassured that they were, technically, in public. The more she was with this companion, the less she liked being with him.

  “You’re nuts, aren’t you?” she said when they had the peaceful area to themselves. She looked him over critically, with her psychic as well as her ordinary senses. “Flat-out crazy.”

  He nodded. “Yes. Quite mad. I admit it.” He released his hold on her, at least the physical one. She knew she couldn’t get up and walk away if she tried. “I am trying to get better.”

  “Define ‘better.” ’ she urged. Then, “You know, I thought you must have something to do with Jager, but now I see that’s impossible.”

  “I’m too old,” he agreed. “Too good to have belonged to a putz like Larry Jager.” He smiled, and there was something slightly sane in his expression for the moment. “I’d be offended
that you thought I was involved with Jager—if I hadn’t planted the suggestion in your head to begin with.”

  “Planted—”

  “My lady is a strig,” he went on over her stunned protest that anyone could control her thoughts. “If such a crude term can be used for what she is.” Love pulsed through him as he spoke of his vampire. Hate as well, and frustration that fed the madness, but the love was the strongest. “She’s special. Unique. You couldn’t begin to comprehend her. But she’s wrong about me. I hate it that she’s wrong. I hate having to defy her. I would do this differently if I could. I swear to you that I would.”

  Siri’s fear escalated as Yevgeny spoke. Noon sunlight or not, the plaza darkened around them. The hot air turned icy cold. The cold darkness belonged to Yevgeny. It was where he lived. She felt his struggle to get out, knew that it was the source of his madness. His pain was strong enough to cover the world. Siri almost felt sorry for him.

  She had trouble breathing in the darkness but stubbornly struggled to find her voice. “Do what?”

  He took her face between his big hands. The touch was gentle, warm, alien. She wasn’t used to being touched so intimately by anyone but Selim. She hated it when the force of his will made her lift her gaze to look into his eyes.

  “You’re very good, Siri,” he told her. His voice was gentle, insistent, impossible not to listen to. “But you will obey my will.”

  I belong to Selim. She couldn’t speak the words aloud, but she knew he heard them because of his soft, mocking laugh.

  “Your devotion isn’t that strong,” he told her. “Not after what he’s been doing to you lately.” He laughed again, but there was sympathy in it this time. She felt him inside her head, learning things, reading her. “It’s like I’m reading your diary,” he said. “Isn’t it, little girl?” That was exactly how it felt. “The secrets you keep inside you aren’t any different than mine. Your beloved is putting you through the same things my lady’s done to me. They do it for our own good when they should let the choice be ours.”

  Yes, Siri heard herself think, though she fought off the spark of rebellion a moment later. Was the rebellion hers? Was it absorbed from Yevgeny? She prayed for help, for—

  “Selim’s sleeping. Do you know what’s happening while he sleeps? She’s riding him, walking with him while he dreams. Your beloved is with another woman right now. My woman, to be precise. She’s so good that he’ll never know she’s mindraping him, taking his life and turning it into her fiction.”

  What do you mean? The “real” story? The script?

  “Precisely. She’s with Selim for the sake of her art. She needs to get out and live, but she won’t listen to me when I tell her that’s what will help her storytelling. She won’t live. And she won’t let me have the life I need. But the story she’s stealing from you and Selim will change all that. It’ll change everything. She has a hunting instinct she doesn’t even recognize anymore. She’s hunting vampires with words. Naming names and times of death.” He laughed again, bitterly.

  Somewhere from a great distance yet only a few feet above in the tree over their heads, Siri heard the soft call of a dove. She used the sound as a beacon and tried to catch onto even more reality, but Yevgeny caught her consciousness too quickly, forced her to focus completely on him. “This is a taste of mindrape, darling,” he whispered. “But don’t worry, you won’t remember any of this. I promise you that Selim won’t suspect a thing. You haven’t suspected she’s been with him, now, have you?”

  No. No, she hadn’t. If I’d known someone was hurting him—

  “Such delicious anger! But what could you have done, a child companion like you? I couldn’t stop her. Couldn’t even bring myself to talk to her about it.”

  Siri felt sorry for Yevgeny, while at the same time hating his guts.

  “She doesn’t think I should be jealous of her being with Selim for some reason, just because he doesn’t know,” he went on. “She’s as mad as I’ve come to be. She couldn’t get to you, though. Couldn’t read your mind, waking or sleeping. But you had your part to play in this story of hers. She wanted to know you. For character development. So she sent me to find you.” His awful, sad, mad laugh tore through Siri’s mind again. But there was triumph in his personal darkness now, as well. “It was through you that I found out about the little boy.” He paused. She felt him savoring her shock and fear. “She put a vision of what’s going to happen to him in her story.”

  What? What’s going to happen to Sebastian? What future did she see?

  “It’s very sad.”

  The name Istvan floated up out of her own store of visions, past the barriers set on her by Yevgeny. Istvan wanted Sebastian. Cassie and Don Tomas would die trying to stop him. And Selim—There were angels in it.

  Siri didn’t see anymore.

  She couldn’t feel her tears. She couldn’t feel his thumbs wiping them off her face, but Siri knew that’s what was happening. The very sound of his gloating voice was obscene, but she couldn’t stop it. “And the magic is going to be real. She won’t need a special effects team, because it’s going to be real. Except it isn’t going to happen the way she envisions it. I hate to disappoint her, but she’s going to have to write a new ending.”

  Hope shot up through Siri’s pain. You’re going to help Sebastian?

  He sighed. “I’d like to. I really would. I hate the thought of a child having to die, but I’m afraid it can’t be helped. I read her secret book, you see. I know there’s another way. It told me what I have to do to be born. There’s a spell, one that needs the blood of a dhamphir. I don’t think Istvan would voluntarily give anyone a transfusion, do you? Or his heart? Better to receive than to give is his creed.” Siri almost laughed at this lame joke, except that her soul completely froze a moment later as Yevgeny said, “I’m going to have to use young Sebastian in the ritual, and you’re going to help me.”

  “What do you mean there isn’t any more of this?” The little office reverberated with her angry words. Siri waved the paper in her hand at Joseph.

  He’d just returned from throwing up in the faculty’s shared bathroom. His office was on the third floor of a quiet older building on the UCLA campus, surrounded by blooming jacaranda trees. The bare hardwood floor sagged a little. The walls of the small office were decorated with framed posters from Casablanca and Duck Soup. There was a framed photo of Joe with Jerry Bruckheimer on the wall as well. Siri knew the picture had been taken at some seminar both Joseph and the producer spoke at, but it looked impressive.

  “How does it end? Where’s the rest of it?”

  “I told you the fax machine broke down! What to you want me to do?” he shouted back. “I’ve left a voice mail with my contact at Arc Light. All I can do is wait for her to get back to me.”

  “How long will that be?”

  “I don’t know!” He thought for a moment. “Wait—I could call Lisa. The casting director at Arc Light would have—”

  “Not Lisa!” A red light was going off in Siri’s senses as she remembered the hostility between Kamaraju and Selim the night before. Siri shook her head. “No. Don’t bring it to her attention.” Joe had received a one-page outline that didn’t go into much detail, and a partial of the script of If Truth Be Told that gave far too much. The truth, indeed. Damning truth. They were screwed. “How many people have seen this?” she asked. “How many are going to?”

  “How would I know?”

  “You’re in the business!”

  “I’m not a player. I’m a teacher.”

  Joe’s frantic worry hit hard against Siri’s bruised psychic senses. For a moment the office disappeared, the crisis disappeared. For a moment she was somehow in the dark at midday with the sound of a dove cooing over her head. Her stomach knotted in terror that had nothing to do with this moment; then she was back in real time, with Joseph holding her by the shoulders and looking at her strangely.

  “Vision?” he asked.

  Siri blinked. “I g
uess.” The nausea faded. “I don’t usually want to throw up from visions, though.” She sat on the edge of Joe’s desk and fanned herself with the paper. She shivered.

  “You don’t have time for visions right now,” Joseph complained. “You have to do something.”

  “Me?” She felt her temper escalating again. At least it helped focus her on the vampire community’s very real problem. “Me?” she asked again. “What about you? You’re the one who’s involved with the film industry. Did one of your students write this script?”

  “How? Read my mind?”

  “You or I could do it.”

  Joe laughed. He pointed angrily at the paper she clutched. Paper she wasn’t going to let out of her hands. “Not in that much detail. Real detail. Would I have told anybody any of that shit? Besides, it’s not my name that’s mentioned in that scene.”

  Siri took another look at the wrinkled pages. She didn’t want to look at the words. Only a faint hope that it wasn’t as bad as she remembered let her get into the experience a second time. False hope, as it, unsurprisingly, turned out.

  SIRI:

  You called me here! You were waiting for me!

  SELIM:

  No, you weren’t bait. What the hell are you doing here? Never mind.

  (Siri reaches out, but Selim is not there.)

  Angle

  Jager moves along Sunset. People in crowd react to the sight of fangs and claws as he moves between streetlights and shadows. He is intent on hunting Siri.

  JAGER:

  Where are you, owl bait?

  Angle

  Selim steps from shadows behind Jager.

  SELIM (Sardonic whisper):

  Owl bait?

  Selim taps Jager on shoulder with hilt of silver dagger.

  SELIM:

  Yo, Hannibal Lechter. Your turn to run, little boy.