Laws of the Blood 1: The Hunt

by Susan Sizemore

  She was beneath him on the bed before she lifted her mouth from his throat. The bite mark throbbed. He shared the sensation with her. “You scared me to death,” he told her between sharp, short, teasing bites on her ear, her shoulder, on her breasts through the soft cotton of her blouse. He drew blood only once, and licked it off in long, slow swipes of his tongue across her lovely, long neck. He savored her taste like a cat licking cream. She panted beneath him, dug her nails into his back. Eventually, he let her pull off his shirt. He didn’t bother with any subtlety in ripping her clothes off her, though he was very careful not to mark her skin with his claws.

  “Don’t you ever put yourself in danger like that again,” he warned, and kissed her before she could manage an indignant answer. It was the only way to shut Siri up, really, to kiss her until she was crazy. His hands moved over her, rediscovering all her soft, sensitive places, drawing moans of pleasure from them both.

  She kissed back, mouth hot and eager against his. Her tongue stroked against his upper teeth, stimulated and teased at the protective sheath above his canines. He took her mouth as long as he could stand it, until there was no stopping the hard thrust of his primary fangs any longer.

  He knelt back on the bed, and Siri scrambled up. She wrapped her legs around his hip and thrust herself down hard on his erection with a sharp cry of need. She settled around him, hot and tight and deep. She shifted her weight, and he cried out in response. She thrust forward and threw back her head. He cupped her small, perfect breasts with his hands, savored the feel of them, savored the throbbing pleasure of being sheathed deep inside her. Shared need and pleasure shifted through them, mingled, taking, giving, and blending. Selim lowered his head, slowly, reveling in the building need for sweet blood.

  “Selim! Come on!”

  “Whiner!”

  “Now!”

  He laughed at her demand, then nearly screamed as she retaliated with a hard stroke of her hips. He cupped her ass and held her still. “Savor the moment, woman!”

  Her eyes glittered at him, full of half-angry need. There was humor there as well, understanding, trust. All the love in the world. “Screw patience!” she snarled. “Bite me.”

  “No, screw you!” he answered. He laughed again, happy for the first time in a very long time. And then he bit her.

  Chapter 26

  “WE NEED TO talk.”

  “We need to get out of bed.” The flat of Siri’s hand landed hard on his bare chest. “Ouch!” Selim turned on his side and snagged her around the waist. “Presumptuous wench.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Do I look like a wench to you?”

  She looked gorgeous and well-used, her naked skin covered in a half dozen already-healing bite marks. He touched one, circled the mark slowly with the tip of one finger. “I don’t know; I never met one.” He turned onto his back and brought her with him.

  Siri settled on his chest, held his face between her hands, and looked him in the eye. “We need to talk.”

  The night had passed in making love, they’d slept cradled together through the day, and now it was night again. He fluffed his fingers through the feathery strands of her short hair. “Am I supposed to apologize again?”

  “I’d like that, but later. You can make love to me later, too. Without teeth,” she added as his sharp concern radiated to her. “We can do it without biting each other.”

  “It’s not as much fun.”

  “Don’t pout, Selim. You started this.” She shook his head from side to side. “Just promise me it won’t happen again. That we won’t go for a year between nights like we just had. Promise me that you’ll explain the reasons you do things—and not try to hypnotize me into not thinking about them.”

  He rubbed his hands up and down her spine. “You noticed me doing that?”

  “Eventually. Stop making me forget that I’m going to become a vampire. Promise me.”

  It wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t as hard as the last year had been. Nothing could be as hard as that. Except losing her. He took a deep breath, and Siri shifted on top of him. He let out the breath and kissed her nose. “I promise.”

  She grinned. “Plus promise we can take swing dancing lessons.”

  Laughter exploded from him. Rather than give in and tell her he’d do anything she wanted, he filled her in on everything that had happened since she’d dropped him off in front of Valentine’s apartment building. She explained to him how Sebastian came to be in Andrew’s coffeehouse. He was relieved that she showed more interest in Geoff Sterling’s transformation into a Nighthawk than in Yevgeny’s being allowed to live. Her only comment on Yevgeny was, “Miriam will keep him out of trouble.” They left it at that. They had comforted each other through a bad bout of reaction to the whole hellish situation with last night’s lovemaking.

  “I have go to work,” he told her, reluctant to go but unable to stay.

  “I know.” She rolled off him, and out of the bed. He watched with great pleasure as she stretched and rolled her shoulders. Having his full attention, she went on, “That’s what we have to talk about.” He sat up in bed, frowning, knowing what was coming. “You remember the cops who shot the store owner? Your excuse for starting a riot?” He nodded slowly. “I was watching the news while you slept through the afternoon.”

  That she hadn’t been in bed beside him all day both surprised and delighted him. He wasn’t supposed to be aware of the daylight world. Vampires were supposed to sleep like the dead while they wandered through their own interior world. He’d been too satiated and exhausted to even dream last day. All had been blessed darkness; even Valentine had stayed out of his head. Siri had been beside him when he woke; who cared what happened while he was unconscious?

  She did, from the worried feel of her. “What about the cops, Siri?”

  “One of them was involved in another shooting. He wasn’t even suspended after the first one! Imagine the reaction on the street to that. You want a riot, well you’re probably going to get one without having to do anything to help.”

  Selim filed away the information and ignored her bitter annoyance. And her concern that the city was about to go up in flames. Don Tomas would be happy to hear the news. He gave her a brusque nod and got out of bed. Her accusing gaze and silence as they showered, then dressed, was worse than any verbal argument. The disappointed hurt in her eyes was worst of all.

  Siri accepted Selim’s silence on the matter grudgingly. She wasn’t going to argue, couldn’t. She was too aware of how badly Tom’s nest needed to Hunt. The incident with Sebastian had resulted in Tomas forbidding Cassie to even talk to Siri, in commanding that Sebastian have no contact with the outside world, and the severe punishment of the two slaves that had let Sebastian go with her and Yevgeny. They were lucky not to be dead, she supposed, and Cassie had resorted to E-mail rather than the usual phone calls. Tomas wasn’t going to calm down and see reason until after he’d killed someone.

  “I just want to get this over with,” she finally acknowledged. She came into his arms after they finished dressing and moved into the living room. Pressing close to him, she said, “Just do what you have to.”

  Knowing that she was disappointed in him was a nagging ache in his soul. It made him want to apologize. He kissed her instead. “It’ll be over soon.” He stroked his fingers across her forehead. “Then we’ll go dancing.”

  She smiled with an effort. “For years and years? How much longer can we dance together, Selim?”

  She felt his reluctance to answer and was relieved when he did. “Another ten years, perhaps. If we’re very, very careful.”

  She held him tightly, fiercely possessive. “Twenty years together. Most mortal couples don’t have that long.” They kissed again, long enough and passionately enough to stir mingled blood, but neither made any move to take it any farther. Later. They shared the thought. Then he drew his head away, and she let him go. “Go to work.” She pointed toward the door. “I’ll be here when you get home. Redecorating,” sh
e added just before the door closed behind him.

  Siri hugged herself tightly after Selim was gone. She refused to think of Yevgeny and what too much time as a companion had done to him. She wasn’t like Yevgeny. Selim wasn’t like this crazy woman he’d told her about. What she did think of was her friend Cassie. Now, she was a great deal like Cassie. She saw no reason for letting thousands of years of custom and the strictly enforced Laws of the feared Strigoi Council get in the way of her having the same marital arrangement her friend Cassie managed to have with a vampire at least as conservative and traditional as her darling Selim.

  “Twenty years, my ass,” she said to the empty room. But she wasn’t going talk to Selim about their future just yet, not when she had ten more years to get him used to the idea of living happily ever after. Literally.

  Selim knew having Siri drive him on tonight’s dangerous errands was stupid, even for the pleasure of her company. He didn’t want to get into any more arguments over ethics, anyway. So he left her to mess with his stuff and traveled on foot. Check on Valentine and Sterling first, he decided, then join Tomas’s nest. He still had Mike’s and Alice’s Hunts to deal with, he recalled. Things had to get back to business as usual, and it had to start tonight.

  He moved swiftly, making plans, though his thoughts kept drifting back to Siri. And to Valentine, and Miriam, and even Alice. Things they’d said, and the things they’d each done in the last several days affected him more than he wanted to think about. So he ended up thinking about them anyway. Women, he scoffed. Gentle, soft, impractical, idealistic, and they made him look damned bad. That was the galling part. He laughed at the thought and ran faster, eating up the miles from Pasadena into downtown L.A.

  Something struck Selim as odd about the area around the Farmer’s Market when he neared it. A darker darkness to the night, an empty quality, though there were cars and people on the streets. Not enough, he thought. There was a dullness, a distance to the mortal figures. Not enough lights in the buildings. Where were the produce trucks that should be lining the docks at this time of night? Shouldn’t the annoying roaring hum of their refrigerator units be filling the air? Shouldn’t there be a small army of workers swarming around the trucks that weren’t there? Or should they be? Selim wasn’t sure what day it was, and the run-down neighborhood wasn’t exactly his usual haunt. Maybe it was Sunday. Was the market closed on Sunday?

  He stopped at the foot of the stairs next to the steep slant of the Angel’s Flight railway track, shrugged, and looked around. He could tell that there were no cars in the parking garage on the other side of the funicular tracks. That was impossible, and there was a cold, evil feel to that impossibility. The corner streetlights were lit and so were the lights on the long, sharply angled stairs, but their light did little good against the thick darkness.

  “Not good,” he murmured. “Not good at all.” His softly spoken words were absorbed into the enveloping night; he could almost see it happen.

  Shadows. There were too many shadows. Forms waited in the shadows, and enough psychic energy swirled around the shadows to keep all but the most mind-blind mortals away. They’d been waiting for him, clouding his mind with their concentrated energy as well. Selim didn’t know if they’d released their hold or if he’d fought his way through it. Either way, the trap was sprung. He glanced at the sign post that arced overhead at the base of the narrow railway tracks. Angel’s Flight.

  The vision had angels in it. In the vision, he was involved in a terrible fight. In the movie version, the fight was with Istvan. After confronting Kamaraju over the death of Moira Chasen, he’d assumed that was what the vision of angels meant, since she played one in her television series. That hadn’t been it at all.

  “Kamaraju.” Selim turned around slowly as the shadows drew near in a tight, confining circle. “I should have expected this.”

  “You read the script, too, I see,” Kamaraju said, stepping out of his shadow. The others appeared one by one after him: Lisa and his remaining fledglings. Selim sensed all of Kama’s slaves nearby as well. Mike Tancredi came up beside Kamaraju. Mike’s people ranged around him: three young vampires and a trio of companions.

  Selim glanced sourly at Lisa, the woman who worked in an agent’s office. And Kama had investments in the film industry. Of course they’d gotten their hands on the script. Selim looked to Mike. “Leave now, and I won’t kill you.”

  “You won’t kill any of us,” Michael Tancredi answered. “We read the script.” He laughed and gestured his fledglings closer. The young vampires moved reluctantly, but they did as he commanded. “We learned a lot from the script, Selim. We learned that even these kids can take you.”

  Selim sent a glare at the young ones. Two of them stepped back. The one that held her ground trembled as she did so. “I don’t think so, Mike.”

  “We’ve all been scared of those big teeth of yours,” Kamaraju said. “But they’re just big teeth. We learned who you really are.”

  “You weren’t born in the time of the pharaohs,” Mike added. He sounded really offended by this.

  Selim shrugged. “I never said I was. I am the Enforcer of the City, though.”

  Lisa spoke up. She quoted the script as she went on:

  “I wasn’t born in a cage, but I grew up in one, Siri. There’s a palace within the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, within the seraglio. It was called the Cage. Where the Ottoman sultans sent their unwanted sons. I was unwanted there from sometime around 1725 until I met—her.”

  “You’ve been bluffing all along, Hunter. You’ve earned your reputation by taking out only the young ones and the strigs no one cares about. Now you’re going to have to face some real vampires.” Kamaraju smiled. It was nasty, even without the fangs. “We’re going to take you home and play with you for a very long time.”

  “We’re going to own the Enforcer,” Mike went on as a gang of children began slowly circling around Selim. “Then we can do anything we want.”

  Selim nodded his understanding. He didn’t quite believe the stupidity of this situation, though he was well aware of the danger they presented. He kept his hands at his sides but let his claws fully extend. The young ones kept circling, with a row of companions behind them. It sickened Selim to watch Mike and Kama fall back, willing to let the ones they should be protecting face death. It was a good strategy, though. Kamaraju would probably call in his slaves as well. Selim would become exhausted having to fight them off, then the older vampires would move in. They couldn’t kill him. What they would then do to him would be worse.

  He focused on Mike. “You’d know this was crazy if it wasn’t for the bloodfever, Mike. We don’t need these dominance games. We have peace here, stability. You like the good life, Tancredi. You’d remember that if you weren’t Hunt mad. Go away now and I won’t have to kill all your kids.”

  “Go ahead and kill them,” Kamaraju said. “Mike and I can make more when we have you. Can’t we, Mike?”

  “But that,” said Alice Fraser, stepping out of her own shadow, “would be such a damn waste.” Rene and Angela came to flank her. Behind them were the rest of Alice’s household. She waved at Selim. “Hello, hon. Hi, Tom,” she added, looking past where Selim stood.

  Selim turned to see Don Tomas standing on the staircase, holding the hand of a tall, auburn-haired beauty. His four fledglings were there as well, glaring with stone-faced aggression at Kamaraju’s and Tancredi’s households.

  “Hello, Tomas,” Selim said to the hidalgo.

  “You’re late for our appointment,” Tomas replied.

  Selim waved at the crowd. His heart was racing with relief. He was glad somebody other than Siri had responded to his psychic cry for help. Though Siri had likely gotten on the phone and made a few calls to get everyone here. He kept his manner cool. “Got held up.”

  “You’re interfering with my Hunt,” Tomas said to Kamaraju.

  Mike turned to Alice. He pointed at Selim. “He’s a fraud. We have proof! Join us, and the city wil
l be ours.”

  “I don’t want the city,” Alice answered. “I’d take a piece of you, though, hon,” she added, fangs showing. She laughed, harpy and siren at once. Others joined in, but it sounded more like the howling of a maddened wolf pack than laughter.

  She had the fever as well. Heat rolled over them all, the dark, ever-present need to stalk and terrorize and strike had reached boiling point in every vampire in town. This was every vampire in town. There was no way out of this fight, was there? The nests going after each other was the last thing he wanted. Slaves and companions would die, weaker vampires would end up serving the stronger until they could challenge for dominance themselves. It was all allowed under the Law, but it was no way for civilized beings to act.

  Selim wasn’t sure who he blamed more, Valentine, Kamaraju, or himself.

  One of Alice’s people moved forward. Lisa lunged at him. One of Tomas’s fledglings jumped to defend Alice’s man. Everything was up for grabs after that.

  “Valentine,” Selim decided. But Kamaraju was here. He changed and leapt.

  Snarling, fighting forms swirled around him, mixing teeth and claws with martial arts training. Blood scent rose on the air. Through the loud crack of bones and meaty thud of blows, Selim singled out his target. Kamaraju saw death coming his way and turned to run.

  The spray of bullets that slammed into his chest as he spun away from Selim slowed Kamaraju down considerably. The sound of gunfire brought the riot to an instant halt. More bullets flew into the silence. Kamaraju fell to his knees, blood pouring onto the concrete. Selim raced toward him, but a dark figure in black leather reached Kamaraju first. Geoff Sterling put a bullet into the older vampire’s brain before he kicked him in the chest. Silence reigned as Kamaraju flopped over onto his back. Sterling tossed the gun aside. It was caught by a small woman, who swaggered forward, the AK-47 cradled with easy assurance in her hands.