Blood Rites (28 page)

Though avoiding a fight ran completely against his nature, Dick was forced to agree. They were still discussing their next best move when, in spite of his anxiety, Dick fell asleep. Later, he dimly heard Stephen moving through the room, then felt the door open and close.

II

Seek. Find. Devour.

The hunt was always the same. The hunger it aroused never changed. It only seemed unique in that for the first time in many years, Stephen hunted a man out of vengeance and he did so alone. He pushed back the loneliness and the rage that followed. It did him no good to think of Helen now.

Recalling everything Halli had told him, Stephen spent the early evening visiting the more popular of Carrera’s haunts, finally tracking down his prey in a family-run bar and restaurant whose unmatched wood tables were united by weathered red-check tablecloths and drippy wax candles in wooden holders. The place had an air Stephen understood and appreciated—the decor probably hadn’t changed in a decade or more, and if the scents and the enjoyment he sensed in the diners around him were any indication, the place served excellent food. Though Stephen kept his back to Carrera dining with three other men on the opposite side of the room, he had already entered Carrera’s mind, eavesdropping on his thoughts.

If the hunt were a simple one, it could be over now. Yes, he could even go up to the table and claim his victim in front of the others. If he let loose any of the rage he’d so skillfully buried, no one could stop him, and when the killing was done, no one would remember his face. But, for the present, Stephen could do nothing. Carrera did not even know the boys had been kidnapped, let alone where they were. No, Stephen could not move this fast. Besides, there were messages to be delivered, a proper way to approach his prey.

Not directly. Not yet.

He looked down at the untouched drink on his table, then at the woman sitting across from him, a sultry dark-haired woman in a white linen who laughed too loud at a joke he told, seeking Carrera’s attention. Her ploy worked. Carrera looked across the room. Though he could only see Stephen’s back from where he sat, he knew the woman had found a new lover and that was enough. He had ended his discreet affair with her when she’d grown too demanding but the attraction still remained. And the jealousy.

The woman laughed again. Indeed, she could hardly help herself. Dominic motioned to Angelo Volpe to come close so he could whisper, “Call Toni for me. Tell her I’d like to stop over in an hour or two.”

Volpe headed in the direction of the lobby and the phone. Stephen, his purpose here almost complete, laid some money on the table and, with the woman’s arm linked through his, left through the same door. The woman excused herself in the lobby, and as Stephen waited for her to return from the ladies’ room he stopped beside Volpe long enough to pull one simple piece of information from the man’s mind. Storing it as perfectly as it had been received, he stood in the doorway to the restaurant and issued a simple command to his prey. Carrera met his eyes, and what should have been the long appraising glance of the old lover to the new one was destroyed by Carrera’s irrational surge of fear. Carrera blinked and looked away, wanting to laugh at his moment of insanity. He thought he’d sensed the man calling him by name. Hell! He couldn’t have had that much to drink. But things like that didn’t exist, only crazy people believed in them.

No one would ever accuse Dominic Carrera of being crazy. Never!

A flash of white drew his eyes back to the doorway where the woman stood talking to the man. He was young, good-looking in an effeminate sort of way. As their eyes met again, Carrera sensed something more, something no one less perceptive would notice—his vision shimmered and he saw dark holes for eyes and fangs in that broad mouth.

Tommy Payton looked up from his plate of spaghetti. “Something wrong, Domie?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Carrera responded, pulling his eyes away from the creature in the doorway.
Vampire
. Even the thought seemed to close up his throat and send his mind reeling into confusion and lunacy. No, the word would never pass his lips. Not in this company. Not ever.

With blind certainty, Carrera joined the ranks of so many of Stephen’s previous victims—the ones who knew the truth and carried the knowledge to their graves.

III

Toni Domaro tilted her head back against her sofa seat and inhaled deeply on her hand-rolled cigarette, the smell of aromatic Turkish tobacco hiding the spicier scent of the marijuana mixed with it. She always liked to smoke before Dominic came. The fog that descended on her seemed to allow her to put aside the world, to listen more attentively when Dominic talked to her, to be more responsive when he touched her.

They had been lovers for six months and, had he not been arrested, would have probably stayed that way for as long as she remembered her place and acted her part. Toni had learned these lessons early in life. She would not forget them now, not when her future depended on ignoring her pride.

It had been almost two weeks since Dominic had seen her. His arrest had shaken him, she knew, and he now played at being a family man with the same exquisite acting he used to play at being a churchgoer, a businessman, or an art collector like his father. Even so, he paid her rent and sent her weekly checks for the apartment’s upkeep so his interest had not entirely waned.

After Volpe had called, she’d changed into a copper-colored satin jumpsuit, one more provocative than usual. The shade complemented the red hair, golden complexion, and light brown eyes she’d inherited from her mother. The deep V-front filled with loosely woven lace revealed most of her breasts. Having long ago moved past modesty, she was proud of her figure and her looks and how she always managed to appear so much younger than her actual thirty years.

She put out her cigarette carefully, breaking off the glowing tip into the carved marble ashtray on the coffee table, letting the rest burn out. Best not to appear high, especially considering how Peter had died. At this point, Domie would never guess what she’d been doing but she hoped the drug would relax her enough that she could look vulnerable rather than manipulative when she swore to stand by him and asked about her future after he had gone.

She’d quit her job to be available for him, given up her tiny Lakewood flat for this Gold Coast apartment with the tight security Carrera required and rent payments she could never afford unaided. To add to her worries, the police were looking for her, wanting to talk to her about her brother and the murders out west.

Not that she wouldn’t mind talking but the truth would sound like a well-planned lie and then they were sure to start asking about Domie. Those were the questions she would never answer, she owed him too much for that.

As for Russ, she thought he’d put the past to rest until two weeks ago when she saw his picture on the front page of the paper.

Toni heard a knock on the door—not Domie’s polite double rap or Volpe’s obnoxious pound but an unfamiliar faint tap. Still, the guard had let the visitor up without checking with her so it must be someone she knew. She slipped the ashtray into an end-table drawer and opened her door.

The man standing in the hall looked like a gift you would send to a friend distraught over a broken love affair. An expensive gift, she mentally corrected as her eyes swept over the custom-tailored black suit and white silk shirt, the ruby ring on the hand resting against the doorframe. He carried a package wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine. She noted Dominic Carrera’s name on it and wondered if Domie had sent her something.

“You are Russell Lowell’s sister, yes?” the man asked. His oddly accented voice registered a curious blend of certainty and surprise as if he had just discovered this fact a moment ago.

“My name is Antonia Domaro,” she responded coldly. Thinking the guard downstairs had been a fool and let a policeman up, she began to slam the door.

He forced it open and came inside, shutting and locking it before turning to her. “You are Russell Lowell’s sister, yes?” he repeated and she sensed something odd in his tone, an urgency that went beyond the emotion a cop would put into his job.

Toni wondered if he was related to one of the victims. If so, he might be a little bit crazy, possibly dangerous. She went on the offensive, “Yeah, I’m his sister. Who the hell are you?”

“That isn’t important.”

Toni frowned and moved backward away from him, wondering if she could make it to the bedroom and get the gun she kept in her nightstand before he caught her. As suddenly as the idea occurred to her, it vanished taking most of her fear with it. She sat on the end of the sofa and stretched out her legs. “If I don’t push the point, you don’t have to lie, right? Well, I’m not lying either when I tell you that I haven’t seen or heard from Russ in two years. If you’re looking for him, I’m sorry but I can’t help you.”

“I see.” The man placed the box on the floor beside her coffee table and sat in one of the high-backed Italian side chairs Domie had purchased for her, the same chairs Dominic had in his own living room, she’d noted with private amusement when they were delivered. “Domaro. It is your married name, yes?”

“Married?” She snorted with disgust. “Domaro was my mother’s maiden name. Who the hell would want to admit a relationship to Mark Lowell?”

“Your brother.”

“Keeping my father’s name wasn’t Russ’s idea. The guy he works for likes it. You know, a good British name for one of his . . . employees.”

“Appearances are important, yes?”

Toni nodded and the stranger looked down and smiled as if what she told him reinforced something he’d known all along. The gesture made him seem shy and uneasy and she found herself warming to him.

“I’ve brought a gift for your lover,” the man said, pointing to Dominic’s name on the cover.

Toni didn’t see any reason to deny the relationship. “How did you know?” she asked.

“I have my sources.”

“Yeah. Somebody’s damn big mouth.” She opened the drawer and pulled out the ashtray, but when she began to reach for what remained of her cigarette, he caught her wrist and pulled it back.

“Not yet,” he said.

He did not hold her tightly but his flesh against her flesh sent a spark through her. She pulled away, slammed the drawer shut, and sat on the sofa across from him eyeing him warily. Though she detested strangers, particularly those who refused to give a name, she was equally afraid of what she might do if she let her guard down. She was about to demand that he leave when he began to speak in a low flowing voice that relaxed her far better than her Turkish blend ever could.

“Do not worry. I have no intention of harming you,” he said. “I only came to deliver the package, but since you are Lowell’s sister, please tell me about him.”

“What’s there to tell. He was a bastard when he was a kid. He’s more than a bastard now.”

The man responded with a fleeting, tight-lipped smile. “What about his family.”

“I’m it. Mama died three years ago.”

“And his father?”

Toni frowned and stared at the floor. Even after so many years she did not like to talk about Mark Lowell and what he’d done to all of them. She was saved the necessity of replying by the sound of voices in the hall, the familiar knock on the door. “It’s Dominic,” she whispered.

The man pressed two long fingers against his lips, a signal for silence, and though his dark eyes were focused on her, Toni had the odd feeling his mind was concentrating on something else. Two more knocks.

“He has a key.” No sooner had she said this than they heard the jingle of a key chain, the click of the lock.

Faster than she could follow, the lights went out and she found herself pulled backward into the bedroom, his hand over her mouth. The front door opened. Dominic called her name once, and when she did not reply, he walked through the outer rooms. At the moment she was certain they would be discovered, Dominic swore and left.

Toni took a deep breath, suddenly realizing then that she had been holding hers the entire time Carrera was in the apartment not because of any fear but rather because the man was touching her. She’d become painfully aware of his body, weak and a little giddy from the strength of a desire she thought she’d long ago outgrown. The man loosened his grip but she did not move until he backed away, returning to the living room where he switched on a single reading light and fell into the chair, one leg draped over a carved fruitwood arm. She glanced in the direction of her nightstand and thought of the gun. Hell, Dominic was gone. She’d never get him back tonight so she might as well make the best of what was here.

“Tell me about Russ Lowell,” he said when she’d joined him in the living room.

“Look, are you a cop or what?”

Though his voice still remained rigidly polite, she sensed the urgency behind his words as he replied, “I am not with the police. I’m related to . . . a victim. Russ has her now. The police believe that he keeps a woman for weeks. Anything you can tell me might give me a clue on how to find her.”

“You hit me good with that one. I couldn’t sleep nights if I threw you out now. Look, this is turning into a hell of a strange evening. Let me relax a little and I’ll tell you what I can. OK?”

Once again she saw that quick private smile as he nodded his head. “I’ve never been one to stand between a woman and her vices,” he commented.

“Well, you sure as hell were before,” she retorted as she pulled out the ashtray.

“Then your lover would have smelled the smoke, yes?”

“How the hell did you know he was coming? Well, I guess I don’t care.” She took two deep drags, then watched the ash burn out before starting. “I’m almost as beautiful as my mother, I think. She was Joseph Domaro’s oldest daughter. She ran away when she was seventeen and came home pregnant and married to Mark Lowell. Their marriage was not a happy one.” She giggled at the understatement, surprised at how hard the light marijuana blend was hitting her. “Russ and my arrival didn’t do anything to improve it because for as long as I can remember, Mark Lowell beat my mother.