Blood Bound (25 page)

But Littleton was a new vampire, and new vampires do what their makers tell them to do.

So what would a vampire get from Littleton's actions?

Littleton had almost certainly killed Stefan and Ben, and nearly killed Warren—but I was pretty sure that the wolves were collateral damage. No one would have predicted that the werewolves would get involved at all.

So, what could Daniel's disgrace and Stefan's death gain a vampire? Stefan had been Marsilia's favorite. Was the sorcerer an indirect attack on Marsilia?

I drummed on the steering wheel. If the seethe had been a wolf pack, I'd have been able to interpret her actions better. Still…she sent Stefan out and pretended it was punishment. Pretended for whose benefit? If all of the seethe were her get, obedient to her will as Andre told me vampires had to be, she wouldn't have had to pretend at all. So maybe she was having trouble controlling her people.

Maybe someone sent Littleton here to destroy her, to take over the seethe. How did a vampire become the leader of a seethe? Could Littleton's maker be in the Tri-Cities? If he was, could he hide from the other vampires?

I needed more information. More information about Marsilia and her seethe. More information about how vampires worked. And I knew only one place I might get it.

I started the car again and headed for Stefan's menagerie.

There was a gleaming red Harley-Davidson motorcycle in the driveway that hadn't been there last night. I pulled in behind it and stopped my car. The poor old Rabbit looked out of place in such an upscale neighborhood.

I rang the doorbell and waited a long time. My mother had taught me to be polite and part of me felt guilty for disturbing them during a time when they were probably used to sleeping. Guilt didn't keep me from ringing the doorbell again.

It was Rachel who opened the door—and like me, she looked like she'd had a hard night. She wore a thin, bright yellow T-shirt that left a four inch gap between its hem and the top of her low-rise jeans. Her navel was pierced and the sapphire-colored stone in the ring twinkled when she moved. It drew my eye and I had to force myself to look at her face—which was sporting several blue bruises along her jaw that hadn't been there last night. Her upper arm bore a purple handprint where someone had grabbed her.

She didn't say anything, just let me look my fill as she did the same to me. Doubtless she saw the puffy skin and dark circles that showed my lack of sleep.

“I need more information,” I told her.

She nodded and backed away from the door so I could come inside. As soon as I was in the house I could hear someone crying: a man. He sounded young and hopeless.

“What happened here?” I asked following her into the kitchen, the source of the sobs.

Naomi was sitting at the butcher-block counter, looking ten years older than she had last night. She was wearing the same conservative clothes—and they looked the worse for wear. She looked up briefly as we walked in, but then turned her attention back to the mug of coffee she was sipping with deliberate calm.

Neither she, nor Rachel, paid any attention to the young man curled up in the corner of the room, next to the sink. I couldn't see his face because he had his back to all of us. He was rocking, the rhythm of the motion interrupted by the infrequent sobs that made his shoulders jerk forward. He was muttering something just under his breath, and even my ears couldn't catch exactly what he said.

“Coffee?” asked Rachel, ignoring my question.

“No.” The food I'd eaten was sitting like a lump in my stomach as it was. If I added coffee to it, I wasn't sure it would stay down.

She got down a mug for herself and poured some coffee out of an industrial-sized coffeemaker on the counter. It smelled good, French vanilla, I thought. The scent was soothing, better than the taste would have been. I pulled up a chair next to Naomi, the same one I'd used last night, and, glancing again at the man curled up in the corner I asked again, “What happened to you?”

Naomi looked at me and sneered. “Vampires. What happened to you?”

“Vampires,” I replied. Naomi's sneer sat oddly on her face, and seemed out of character—but I didn't know her enough to be sure.

Rachel tugged a chair around so she was opposite Naomi and me. “Don't take it out on her. She's Stefan's friend, remember. Not one of them.”

Naomi looked back at her cup and I realized that she wasn't calm at all, she was in that place beyond fear where nothing you do matters because the worst has already happened and there's nothing you can do about it. I recognized that look. It's an expression I see a lot around the werewolves.

It was Rachel who told me what had happened.

“When Stefan didn't come back yesterday morning, Joey—that's short for Josephine—decided to leave while she could.” Rachel didn't drink her coffee, just turned her cup this way and that. “After you left, though, I heard her motorcycle in the driveway. Can't mistake the sound of Joey's hog.” She moved her hands away from the mug and wiped them on her thighs. “I was stupid. I know better—especially after Daniel. But it was Joey…”

“Joey has been here the longest,” Naomi said, when it became obvious Rachel was finished speaking. “She was bound to Stefan already.”

She saw my puzzlement because she explained, “That means she's almost one of them already. Everything except the actual changeover. The longer they stay bound before they die, the better the chance they'll rise again. Stefan is patient, his people almost always rise because he waits for years longer than most vampires.”

She was telling me all this so she wouldn't have to go on with the story.

“Daniel?”

She nodded. “He was bound, just barely. It doesn't happen to all of us—but Daniel was still too new for the changeover to be certain. It was a miracle he survived. Stefan was so angry.” She took a sip of coffee and grimaced. “I hate cold coffee.” She took another sip anyway. “Andre did it on purpose, you know. One of those stupid one-upmanship games. He was terribly jealous of Stefan because Marsilia favored him—and at the same time he loved Stefan like a brother. So when he was angry he attacked one of us instead. Vampires don't usually care too much about the sheep in their menageries. I don't think Andre realized just how angry Stefan would get.”

“What happened to Joey?” I asked.

“She's dead,” Naomi told her coffee cup.

“Permanently dead,” Rachel said. “I thought it was her on the motorcycle. She was wearing a helmet, and she doesn't let anyone, not even Stefan, touch the hog. When I finally realized the rider wasn't tall enough to be her, I tried to run back to the house.”

“She grabbed your arm?” I suggested. It wasn't a difficult guess, with the armband of bruises she wore.

Rachel nodded. “And covered my mouth so I couldn't scream.” About then, a car drove up—one of the seethe cars.”

Like the one Andre had driven last night. I worked on them from time to time in lieu of making a cash payment to the seethe. All the businesses in the greater Tri-Cities who weren't affiliated with more powerful groups paid protection money to the vampires. That's how I first met Stefan. He had helped me negotiate my payment from cash (which I couldn't afford) to work—mostly on his van, as it turned out, though I did the upkeep on the seethe's cars as well. They were Mercedes and BMWs, big, black sedans with dark, dark windows—just what you'd expect a bunch of vampires to drive.

“They popped open the trunk—and I thought they were going to shove me in, but it was worse than that. They already had Joey in there.” She jumped up abruptly and ran from the room. I heard her throwing up.

“They killed Joey, cut off her head so she wouldn't ever become one of them.” Naomi spoke evenly, but had to set down her coffee so she wouldn't spill it. “They told Rachel that we were to stay inside this house until they decided what to do with us. They didn't have to kill Joey to deliver that message. They could just have brought her back here—or one of them could have brought her over, the way Andre brought over Daniel.”

“Rachel said ‘she'. Was it Marsilia?” I asked.

Naomi shook her head. “It was the Teacher. Marsilia…Stefan was a favorite of hers. I don't think she'd have killed one of us.”

“The Teacher?” I asked.

“Her real name is Estelle—she reminds me of an evil Mary Poppins.”

I knew the one she meant.

“They all have names among themselves,” she explained. “Stefan was the Soldier, Andre is the Courtier. Stefan said it had to do with an old suspicion that if you spoke evil's name, you drew its attention. Stefan didn't believe in it, but some of the older vampires won't use real names when they talk of others.”

“So Estelle,” I said her name deliberately, “went against Marsilia's wishes?”

“No. Well, probably, but not against her orders.”

“I'm trying to understand how the seethe works,” I told her. “That's why I came here.”

Rachel came back in the room looking even more pale than she had before. “I thought you were looking for Stefan?”

I nodded. They wouldn't care about Samuel and Adam. “I think…
I think
that there is more going on than just a vampire turned sorcerer. I wonder, for instance—
who
turned the sorcerer into a vampire.”

“You think there's another vampire involved?” Naomi asked.

“Stefan said that the sorcerer was a new-made vampire. It occurred to me that his maker might be pulling the monster's strings. But I don't really know enough about vampires to make an educated guess.”

“I do,” Naomi said slowly, straightening in her chair. Something shifted in her face and I saw yesterday's competent woman take control. “I can help you, but there's a price.”

“What price?” I asked.

I somehow doubted that she wanted me to sing for her; she didn't have Uncle Mike's sense of humor. And as the thought occurred to me, I finally figured out that once Uncle Mike claimed me as his guest, the fae couldn't do anything bad to me without challenging him—which was why the big woman had sighed in disappointment when Uncle Mike told them I was his guest, even as he condemned me to sing in front of the whole lot.

I was so lost in thought, I almost missed Naomi's answer to my question.

“You have connections to the werewolves. I want you to ask the Alpha to intercede for us. If Stefan is dead, then so are we. Marsilia will scatter us among the menageries of the other vampires who will imprison us until we die.”

“All the other vampires kill their…” I almost said food and I couldn't think of any more diplomatic way to put it so I just stopped speaking.

She shook her head. “Not on purpose, but most of them don't have Stefan's control. But we are Stefan's. That means that their mind tricks won't work as well on us—and those of us who are bound like Joey…When a bound one is made over by someone they're not bound to, odd things happen. I've heard people say that's why Stefan was never properly subservient to Marsilia, that he was bound by a different vampire. They won't want to keep us around long.”

“So if Stefan is permanently dead…”

She smiled bleakly at me. “We all are.”

“And you believe the werewolves could do something about this?”

She nodded. “Marsilia owes them blood price. This sorcerer is a vampire—which makes him Marsilia's business. When the two werewolves joined the hunt they became her responsibility. Since one was hurt and the other—” she shrugged expressively. “If your Alpha asks us as his price, she'll give us to him.”

“What about worries over your silence?” I asked.

“If we belong to the werewolves, our silence becomes their problem.”

“I'll speak to the werewolves,” I promised. “But I don't have much influence.” Especially if Adam and Samuel were dead, too. The thought made it hard to breathe, so I shoved it away. “Tell me about the vampires and how the seethe operates.”

Naomi gathered herself together visibly, and when she spoke she sounded like the professor she had apparently once been.

“I'll start from the general and then go to the specific, shall I? You understand that generalities do not account for variations—just because most vampires follow this pattern, doesn't mean that they all do.”

“All right,” I told her, wishing I had a notebook so I could take notes.

“A vampire likes to keep a food supply at hand, so they live with a small group of humans, usually anywhere from three to seven. Three are enough to provide food for a month before they die, seven is enough for six months—because if the vampires feed lightly on each, their prey lasts longer.”

“There aren't forty people disappearing from the Tri-Cities every month,” I protested. “And I know that Marsilia has more than ten vampires.”

Naomi smiled grimly. “They don't hunt in their own territory. Stefan found me in Chicago teaching at Northwestern. Rachel's from Seattle. I think the only one of us Stefan found in the Tri-Cities was Daniel, and he was hitchhiking down from Canada.”

For some reason, her speaking of Daniel made me glance over by the sink, but sometime while we'd been talking, the young man must have left. When I thought about it, I realized that I hadn't heard him for a while. It bothered me that I hadn't heard him leave.

“So the vampires have to continually replenish their menageries?”

“Most of them.” Naomi nodded. “Stefan, as you know, does things differently. There are fourteen of us who live here, and maybe a dozen more who visit occasionally. Stefan doesn't usually kill his prey.”

“Tommy,” said Rachel in a small voice.

Naomi waved her hand dismissively. “Tommy was ill anyway.” She looked at me. “When the fae came out, Stefan began to be concerned about the same things that caused the fae to reveal themselves. He told the seethe—and the ruling council of vampires—that they could no longer live as they were and expect to survive. He had already been maintaining a large menagerie because he didn't kill his people—he has a reputation for being softhearted. I'm told Marsilia thinks his concern for us is “cute.” She gave me an ironic look.

“He began to experiment. To look for ways the vampire could benefit the human race. He found me dying of leukemia and offered me a chance at life.”