Kamaraju’s Lisa, Selim thought without surprise. “And?”
“Moira left with the woman. She shouldn’t have left the set, but she went. Without a word. She looked dazed. I thought the woman must have given her some bad news, but I don’t think the blond said a thing. They didn’t speak to each other. It was very eerie. We waited, but Moira didn’t come back. Tony sent someone out to look for Moira, and he didn’t come back. And we thought we heard screaming in the distance, but it was like we couldn’t move. Nobody wanted to, really. Then in a few minutes this crazed . . . creature. Some guy in a vampire mask, I guess. He came running in screaming for Moira. Then he ran out again. It was like—well, he looked at me and I got a headache. Just from his looking at me—into me.” She blinked. “I threw up after he left.”
“What did he look like?”
“Like a vampire—or a werewolf. Something with fangs and gigantic, glowing eyes. Great makeup and prosthetics.”
For once Selim blessed any and all involvement between his kind and the entertainment industry. His work with these people was already half done. They didn’t believe in the supernatural, but they were intimately involved with makeup artists. Within a few moments he’d have them recalling seeing someone that looked like a vampire somewhere on the studio lot, but not here, not only a few minutes before. It wouldn’t have anything to do with Moira’s disappearance.
He could feel the Hunt once more. Prey and hunters were on the other side of the studio’s walls, well away from people now. He had an image of Moira’s black hair flying behind her in the moonlight. She was running across an open, grassy area. Stumbling, gasping. Surrounded. The prey’s terror ripped through him. Instinct was to give chase, but not after the girl being hunted. Instinct was fought down in the face of duty, in the face of the Law. None could know of their existence, no human could remember what they’d really seen here tonight. He had to do damage control.
“He had dark hair,” the girl recalled of the vampire she’d seen. “And a great ass.” She smirked at the memory. “He was wearing tight jeans and a white shirt. No cape. Not a proper vampire costume without a cape.”
Geoff Sterling, Selim supposed. The girl’s description suited the young vampire well enough. Why the hell couldn’t it have been one of Kama’s nest that showed himself so openly to the humans? “Damn,” he grumbled, and then proceeded to ease deeper into the girl’s mind. Once inside, he switched her memories around a bit, told her a story she was happier believing, anyway. There were no vampires, real or fake, in the version she knew when he pulled out a moment later.
It took him a precious five minutes more to implant similar recollections in as many of the others inside the studio as he could reach, and that was most of the actors and crew on the set of the television series about angels.
It wouldn’t have taken quite so long if he hadn’t felt Moira Chasen’s final horror as Kamaraju’s nest surrounded her. If he hadn’t heard her pleas and prayers and screams. If he hadn’t felt the rape. The pain. The death.
He was crying when his job was done. He hadn’t shed tears in years. He didn’t like them, didn’t want them. But for the Law, he could have saved her. But for him, she wouldn’t be dead. That she was dead shouldn’t affect him. But it did.
Chapter 20
THE LAUGHTER WAS the ugliest of several ugly sounds that filled the night. Cruel, menacing. Worst of all, dispassionate.
The voice that shouted in response was far too passionate. “You’re dead! You’re fucking dead, you bastard!”
More laughter followed the shout, but it didn’t hide the meaty sounds of flesh impacting flesh or the grunts of pain. Selim smelled blood on the air, tasted it with a quick flick of his tongue. Not just mortal blood, but the special sweetness of his own kind settled on his taste buds. “Fuckers!” he muttered, and increased his speed uphill, across springy, sprinkler-moistened grass.
He found them at the bottom of the hill, on the edge of a playing field somewhere deep inside the large park. Kamaraju’s limo sat squarely in the center of a parking area next to the field. Two of Kama’s fosterlings had Sterling pinned against the hood of the car, beating the shit out of him. As Selim drew closer, Sterling let out a howl like a banshee. The pain that reverberated with the sound had nothing to do with the physical punishment he was taking. Everything to do with grief.
Selim was on Sterling’s attackers by the time the young vampire’s cry faded in the night. One he tossed over the top of the car. The crack of the fledgling’s spine breaking as he hit the concrete on the far side of the limo ensured that he wouldn’t be getting up for a while. Selim heard Kamaraju’s cry of protest, was aware of the nest leader rushing to his fallen fosterling, but paid the touching little drama no mind. Sterling was splayed out on top of the wide hood, his shirt ripped open. The exposed skin on his chest was shredded by long claw marks, his clothes were soaked in the bright blood welling up from the wounds. His face was bruised pulp. Selim reached for Sterling’s other assailant.
The second of Kama’s pups tried to run. Selim didn’t bother with the silver dagger, he just ripped the bitch’s heart out and tossed the body aside. The heart he pitched over his shoulder, to Sterling. If the boy didn’t know what to do with it, he didn’t have it in him to be an Enforcer. Selim paid no more attention to Sterling. He was totally focused on Kamaraju as he leapt over the top of the limo and stalked toward the kneeling nest leader.
Kamaraju rose angrily to his feet as Selim approached, and he backed away from the injured fledgling. “What’s the matter with you!” he demanded. Selim was blood-spattered, the hot liquid on his skin cooling already in the chilly night air. There was no blood on Kamaraju. He didn’t even look like a vampire at the moment. He was impeccably dressed in a dark suit and a tab-collared silk shirt. There was no blaze of hunger in him. But there was outrage, fury, and smug satisfaction. He swept an arm around the parking lot. “Are you crazy, Selim?” he demanded. “Leave my people alone.”
“You moved fast after the murder,” Selim said, looking the other vampire over disdainfully. “Didn’t want any blood on your hands?” He sniffed. “I can smell it on you, though.”
“Murder? What murder?” Kamaraju gave an elegant shrug. “There was a Hunt.” He backed a step as Selim continued to walk forward. Fear flashed through his controlled facade.
“You were letting them kill Sterling.”
Kamaraju held his hands up before him. “The strig? We were just playing with him. Teaching him a lesson for trying to interfere with a nest’s rightful Hunt.”
“A lesson?” The words were spoken with soft menace. Sterling’s almost mindless pain, the anguish of his loss, spread like fog across the night. The very real knowledge of it seeped into Selim’s being. It twisted in his guts, turned into a pool of molten lead in his conscience. “It looks like the lesson could kill him, to me,” he spoke to Kamaraju.
He was answered with a fulsome laugh. “Nonsense. It’ll be good for the strig. Teach him to respect his betters. I even thought I’d take the boy home on a leash. He’d make a good pet.” There was answering laughter—albeit with an undertone of deep nervousness—from the rest of Kamaraju’s household. Selim silenced them all with a deadly look as Kama added, “We don’t kill our own kind, Hunter.”
“No.” Selim smiled. “That’s my job.”
Kamaraju’s answering smile was equally nasty, yet also conciliatory. “You’re not threatening me, are you, Hunter?” He looked around, his pose all innocence. “What have I done to offend?”
Selim advanced smoothly, stopping within an inch of the nest leader before Kamaraju could retreat further. Selim put a hand on Kamaraju’s shoulder, staining the nest leader’s clothes with the blood of the vampire he had killed. Kamaraju wasn’t going anywhere except into a meat locker before too much more time passed. Selim didn’t know why he bothered to continue the conversation. “There was no need for Moira to die. No need at all.”
Kamaraju pretended not to be inti
midated by Selim’s proximity. “She was prey. Prey you designated.”
How had Kamaraju found out about that? Sterling must have talked to another strig about Selim’s offer for their hunt, and Kamaraju had found out from the strig grapevine. Or Kama had been good enough to pluck the information out of Sterling’s mind last night. Was it only last night? How didn’t matter now that the damage was done.
He tightened his grip on Kamaraju’s shoulder. He heard Sterling scrabbling to get to his feet behind him. “I changed my mind,” Selim told the nest leader.
Kamaraju contrived to look and feel innocently outraged. “Nobody told me.”
Selim shook him. “It wasn’t your Hunt!”
“What the hell difference does that make!” Kamaraju shouted back. “Your job is to name the victims. That’s all the Law requires of you! I only had to agree to Hunt someone you chose.”
“Don’t talk to me about the Law, you bastard! There was no reason for that girl to die!”
“What difference does it make to you? Prey is prey. Meat is meat.”
Selim heard Sterling’s silent cry of pain in his bones. It was only a little worse than his own. “This one had a name. A face. She was chosen!”
Kamaraju gave a scathing, grating laugh. “By a strig? Who cares? He hadn’t tasted her yet. She wasn’t chosen. She was meat.” Kamaraju licked his lips. “Damn good meat, too.”
He was going to rip off Kama’s face first, Selim decided. Then he was going to tear him limb from limb, pluck off every extremity slowly, like taking the wings off a fly. Then he was going to make him eat his own balls. Then he was going to kill him. Maybe in a month or two.
“You’ve had this coming for a long time.” Selim raised his arm, claws extended, ready to sweep them down across Kamaraju’s eyes. Kamaraju tried to break from Selim’s grip. Someone screamed a protest. Selim struck.
Or would have if a hand as strong as iron hadn’t closed over his extended wrist. “Not so fast, Hunter!” a breathless voice shouted in his ear.
Selim didn’t know where Mike Tancredi came from, but there he was, big as a bull, wide as a wall, his grip as tight as a vise. His bulk shut out the sight of the rest of the parking lot. For a moment, the only thing that filled Selim’s vision was the sight of a beige sports jacket, then his gaze shifted to Mike’s face. He looked scared, but stubbornly rebellious as well.
Selim kept his hold on Kamaraju as he looked calmly at the other nest leader. “I would suggest,” he said quietly, “that you take you take your hand off me.”
Mike swallowed hard but didn’t move. “Take you hand off Kama first.”
“No.”
“He hasn’t done anything wrong.”
“He’s a murderer.”
“Since when is that a crime?”
“Listen to Michael,” Kamaraju said. His tone was soft, insidiously reasonable. The Snake in the Garden’s voice. “I asked him to be here. A witness. I knew you wouldn’t like my Hunting without supervision, but you know it wasn’t unlawful.”
“He’s right,” Mike said. His grip was hard on Selim’s wrist. Selim made his muscles relax, but Mike didn’t let him go. He released his grip on Kamaraju and took a step back. Mike gave him a half-apologetic, thoroughly nervous grin, but he didn’t release Selim. “You’re tricky, Hunter. I’ll let you go when you’re really calm. We’re all empaths here, remember?” His tone was soothing, persuasive. The Snake as a Car Salesman. “Let’s talk this out like reasonable adults.”
“We aren’t reasonable adults,” Selim told them. “We’re vampires. Kamaraju’s a vicious killer,” he added. “He deserves to die.”
“Maybe he does,” Mike said, with a quick glance at Kamaraju. “By the human definitions of what we are, he’s a monster of the worst sort. Decadent, cruel, sadistic—just like we all are. But, Hunter,” Mike continued reasonably. “You don’t enforce human laws. No Law was broken tonight. None. Bent a little, maybe,” he hurried on. “I’ll agree that Kamaraju took more independent action than you like, but he didn’t break the Law. The prey was of your choosing. He didn’t reveal his people to the humans. The Hunt was in an area where the humans are looking for a mortal murderer, so any suspicion will bleed onto this human monster.”
It all sounded so logical. So true. “And you did what?” Selim asked. “Waited in the car with these excuses all ready for when I showed up?”
Mike nodded emphatically. “Yes. Precisely. Kama knew you’d give him trouble for simply doing what he needed to do. For taking care of his people the way he saw fit.”
“We need more autonomy,” Kamaraju said. “It’s time you saw that, Selim.”
Mike said, “I agree with Kama.”
“Nobody asked you.” A groan close behind him briefly caught Selim’s attention. He shifted his gaze to see Sterling kneeling on the concrete nearby. “You all right, Geoff?” He received another groan in answer.
When Sterling lifted his head, Selim saw that the young vampire’s bruised mouth was covered with blood not his own. He struggled to his feet, clutching his belly like he wanted to claw out the fire he’d swallowed. Good. He was getting the hang of what it took to be a Nighthawk. Good? What was good about being a Hunter? What good could possibly come out of this night? And why did he have a persistent, nagging, insane belief that strigoi needed or deserved a concept of “good”?
A vision of Moira Chasen’s pale face filled his mind, though he realized the vision wasn’t his own. He couldn’t recall having ever seen the girl in person. Hadn’t even seen her on television. It didn’t matter. She deserved better than the death he was responsible for bringing to her.
“Fuck the Law,” he said to the nest leaders. He pulled his arm away from Mike’s grip. Bones broke in his wrist, but the clean sharp pain was worth the effort. “This is about justice.”
Kamaraju laughed, even as he turned to run. The injured fledgling grabbed Selim’s leg. Mike planted himself between the fleeing Kamaraju and Selim as Selim tried to shake off the young vampire’s grip. Lisa emerged out of the shadows to scream, “No!” Sterling stumbled to his feet with a roar of pain and rage. The limo driver started the car’s engine. Everything happened in an instant, though time stretched and slowed to Selim’s senses. He knocked Mike down. Sterling kicked the broken-backed vampire off of him. He was still kicking him when Selim dashed after Kamaraju.
All the interference gave Kamaraju enough time to make it to his limo. For the limo to pull away from the parking lot. Selim laughed wildly, knowing that Kamaraju could have gotten away faster on foot. The long car picked up speed as Selim headed back the way he’d come, back up the hill above the playing field. There was only one road out of here. The was a sharp turn the limo had to negotiate to reach the streets beyond the park. Selim intended to be waiting at that turn.
The night quieted around him. The smell of blood faded from his nostrils. The moon looked down and probably saw nothing for the light pollution and the air pollution and didn’t give a damn about what little it could make out. It was just a rock in the sky, anyway, not the all-seeing eye of the Goddess Reborn. Except—he felt as though she were watching him, that her cool, moon gaze was firmly centered on his back. He was half-tempted to glance over his shoulder or to whisper a prayer into the night. It was a strange feeling, but just another strange feeling in what had, so far, been the strangest night of his life.
There was a clump of bushes and some decorative-looking boulders at the spot where the roads met. Selim scrambled down a steep, gravelly slope to reach the bushes. He sat down on one of the jutting rocks and took a deep breath. He tried not to think but emptied his mind as he looked in the direction the limo had to come. He wanted to take Kama alive, that was the plan. To take him in a showy way, let everybody else in the limo live to spread the word. Then he’d take Kamaraju with him. He saw headlights approaching but decided he had time enough. He took his cell phone out of an inner jacket pocket.
“Selim? Where are you?” Siri’s shrill voice d
emanded in his ear a moment later. “Never mind. I’m on my way.” She sounded harassed, frantic. Accusing.
He wanted to ask what he’d done this time, but only had time to say, “Kamaraj—”
“This is important! Stay right where you are and don’t move a muscle.”
“I have to stop him. I want you to meet me at—”
“You’re at a crossroads with a hibiscus flower sticking in your ear. I’ve seen you. I have a movie producer in my backseat,” she went on. “You want to talk to him more than you do Kama.”
“That can wait.” Selim pushed away the flowering branch that was tickling his ear. He could hear the big car’s powerful engine, quiet though the limo was. Headlights approached from the main road as well. Siri on her way to pick him up. “Stop where you are,” he ordered his companion. “Wait until I say.” He put the phone back in his pocket, turned, and tensed for the leap onto the limo roof.
Siri’s voice in his head said, Rasmussen’s more important right now than killing Kama. There are only so many hours in the night. Only so much time to save the world.
“Shit!” Selim snarled the word and stepped back, hiding in the bushes while Kamaraju’s long car glided past and made the turn. “Damn! Hell! Son of a—!”
He was still swearing when Siri’s Mercedes pulled to a stop a few moments later. He slammed the passenger door shut when he got inside. He glared at her furiously. “Damn it, woman! I hate when you’re right. Kamaraju deserves to die!”
She gave a curt nod, unfazed by his fury. She patted him on the arm. Her touch was a calming balm. She let out her breath in a sad sigh. “I know what he did. We’ll get him.” She glanced toward the backseat. Selim turned his head and saw a large, smiling man seated next to Alice in the back.
Alice smoothed a hand across the man’s cheek. He arched, and practically purred at her touch. “Say hello to the nice man, Art.”
Laws of the Blood 1: The Hunt Page 19
