Bound by the Vampire Queen (8 page)

Chapter 4

BASED on what Keldwyn had said about the dryad’s possible condition when freed, they’d told Ingram that, when they located her, they would be going straight from her tree to the nearest possible Fae portal. However, any hopes that might happen the first night, or even the second, came to naught.

On the third night, after they sent their usual mental greeting to Kane upon his rising, and set out at dark to resume their search, Lyssa had only one comment.

“When we finally find this dryad, I never want to see the underbelly of Atlanta again.” Jacob grunted. He was driving tonight, at the wheel of Lyssa’s Mercedes. They’d repeatedly gone through all the photos and information that John and Elijah had gathered, but it had narrowed things down little. “Still a needle in a haystack,” he said, glancing at the handheld screen his lady was scrolling through.

“Ye of little faith,” she said. “While you were getting dressed, I was thinking. Keldwyn did give us some clues. A twenty-year-old tree, downtown, but not in a park. Surrounded by asphalt or concrete.”

“Which narrows it down to a few thousand trees. A lot of businesses have trees in their landscaping.”

“Only this tree wouldn’t fit the landscaping, not necessarily. She was trapped there, so wherever she froze, for lack of better word, it should stand out.

And the lore says dryads favored certain types of trees. Oaks, hawthorne, rowan. But this is also a female dryad.” She studied the satellite photo in her hand, but her mind wasn’t on it. “Son of a bitch.”

“My lady?”

She smiled, a bit grimly. “I think Keldwyn gave us another, quite significant clue. Have you ever known him to volunteer a story, like he did about the cradle?”

“You mean when he was being an ass, telling us in a not-so-roundabout way that we don’t belong together?”

“That was the distraction. Males think with their cocks far too often.” She teased his knee with her long fingernails. “I looked up the story. The tree was a will ow.”

Capturing her hand, he kissed it. “I defer to your estrogen-driven logic, my lady. And please tell me that narrows things down so we won’t be forced to endure Atlanta traffic one more night. Otherwise, tomorrow night we’re having Ingram drive and we'll put John in a sleeping bag in the limo. We'll cal it camping in style.”

She consulted the handheld again. “There are about seven businesses and four medians we’ve not yet visited that might have trees that fit the description. I also have about thirty other possibilities, but those eleven are my first choices.”

“Well, read them out then, and we'll see what we can find.”

None of the locations held the tree. Though they found several willows, when Lyssa laid her hand upon them, nothing happened other than the disruption of some ant trails along the trunk. They discussed the possibility that she might not have the power Keldwyn had intimated was necessary to release the spirit, but Jacob thought it more likely that they hadn’t found the tree. Something didn’t feel quite right about the ones they approached. His intuition, or what Lyssa called his psychic sense or his precognition, was attuned to certain situations, and this was one of them. It was like radar, and he could tell practically before they got out of their car each time that the targeted tree wasn’t the right one.

However, since they’d never freed a dryad before, he didn’t dissuade Lyssa from touching each one, just to be sure.

By three-thirty in the morning, they were running out of night, and trees that fit the parameters. “Now I’ve
really
seen far more of this section of the city than I ever wanted to see,” Lyssa commented, sitting on the car hood.

Jacob handed her a coffee he’d bought from a convenience store and propped his hips next to her.

The convenience store had a locked entrance and a pickup window, heavy bars on it and the doors.

Graffiti was scrawled on the wall's of the buildings along the side street where they’d parked. Since their search had been limited to the lower-income area of downtown Atlanta, each night they’d gotten their share of sidelong, calculating looks from human predators, but direct stares from both male vampire and queen had made those gazes avert fairly quickly, the petty criminals recognizing far bigger threats.

“I’ve got an idea,” Jacob said abruptly. “Hell, it’s worth a shot.”

Straightening, he studied their surroundings, then turned, listening. His nostrils flared, taking in a scent.

Lyssa watched that extraordinary still ness settle over him, something that happened when a vampire was focusing all his senses, reaching out far beyond mortal abilities. It not only underscored the fact he was no longer fully human, but how dangerous a predator he could be. She supposed it was one of those vagaries of female nature, that such a thing could stir her loins as well as her blood. Picking up on it instantly, he gave her a sidelong glance. “A fine time to distract me, my lady,” he murmured. “And such an image. Right here on the hood?”

“I trust you can enjoy the fantasy and exercise some self-control,” she returned evenly. “What are you about?”

“When computers and garden clubs fail, there’s a better source of information, the kind that only a former drifter and vampire hunter would know.” He held out a hand. “Care to take a little walk with me?

A female presence might be useful, even one as intimidating as yours.”

“As long as I can bring my coffee.”

“I wouldn’t be brave enough to pry it from you, my lady.”

She gave him a narrow look, but slipped her fingers in the crook of his arm, letting him escort her down the side street. Despite his teasing, he liked seeing her enjoy the coffee. Since becoming more Fae than vampire, she’d been able to actually eat, versus frugal sampling. Though his reserved lady would never be accused of gluttony, she had discovered some things were more addictive than others.

One night, on an earlier trip to Atlanta, she’d made herself sick on a one-pound box of buttercream chocolates she’d polished off herself. She’d been curled up in her favorite chair, reading. With Kane sleeping in a nest of pillows nearby, he’d stretched out on his stomach on the floor with his latest batch of comics, featuring new episodes of The Losers and Iron Man. He’d been close enough that she could rest her dainty feet on his backside, her preferred footstool so she could knead him with her toes like a satisfied feline. Whiskers had curled up in the small of his back, Bran lying to the left of his lady’s chair.

Jacob had been vaguely aware of the crinkle of the box liner as she reached for each chocolate, but neither of them had tracked how many she was eating until her fingers felt their way over the foil of an empty box. Later that evening, he’d held her hair back from her face as she threw up. He’d found it a tender experience, no matter how annoyed she’d been with him for feeling that way. After her stomach had settled down, for the next few nights her blood had possessed a delightfully sweet taste.

Since then, she’d been able to exercise a little more control, but he liked seeing her indulge in such pleasures, like her penchant for coffee. Now he squeezed her hand, seeing the corner of her pretty mouth twitch at the memories he was giving her.

He took her down several smaller , less well-paved streets, until they were moving in dank, poorly lit alleys between buildings. There they found Dumpsters, more graffiti, the smell of garbage and unwashed humans. Several of them. Jacob stopped, listening again.

Lyssa realized they were being watched, but stayed silent, knowing he was aware of it as well.

“I’m not going to hurt anyone, I promise.” He raised his voice. “I need information. Whether you can help me or not, I'll pay you for your time and honesty.” Silence. Giving Lyssa’s hand a squeeze, Jacob moved forward, nodding toward his target on the far side of the Dumpster. She answered with a shift of her body, showing she’d located the other two and had his back.

A tiny growl became a whimper, a dog struggling to make a noise against the hand clamped around the snout. Jacob dropped to a squat from his six-foot height, within a couple paces of the shadowed corner the Dumpster provided. He tented his fingers on the pavement, despite the questionable debris beneath them. “I won’t hurt you, ma’am. Alright? I’m looking for something, and if you’ve lived down here awhile, I think you'll know where it is. You probably see things a lot of people don’t.”

There was the sound of newspaper being crumpled by movement, and Lyssa saw a shift in those shadows. However, she left that one to Jacob, turning to face the two men who stepped out of the gloom on the other side of the Dumpster. They appeared to be about Ingram’s age. Both were dressed in worn, layered clothing of dull colors. Their unshaven, thin faces and unkempt hair beneath grimy bill caps, the watchful, not entirely stable expressions, were the signature of the career urban homeless. One held a metal pipe, the other a length of board with nails stuck through the end, a crude mace. “Leave Essie alone,” the one with the pipe said in a voice roughened by outdoor living and smoker’s cough. “Don’t no one ever come down here in the middle of the night who don’t mean trouble.”

“Well, now someone has,” Lyssa said, holding him in her gaze. “We’re seeking a tree. A very special tree.”

Whatever they’d been expecting, it was obviously not that. As they exchanged a look, she extended the coffee. “I’ve only taken a little. Would you like the rest?”

“I don’t sleep when I drink coffee. Pete'll take it though. He drinks it like a fish.” Pipe Guy jerked his head at the other man.

Lyssa stepped closer, aware of Jacob’s careful attention on them and Pete’s tight hold on that lifted board. However, she stepped inside its range without fear. With or without vampire intuition, she had a pretty good grasp of human motives. She kept her gaze on Pete’s, not in challenge, but to show him her intentions. As he warily took the cup from her, she noted the cracked skin on his knuckles.

A creak of metal made her glance right. The woman Jacob had addressed was hobbling into the dim light with the help of a rusty shopping cart. She was much older than the men, perhaps in her seventies, or perhaps the elements were harsher on a woman’s thinner skin. Whatever story had put the men on the streets, this woman was here due to mental disorder. It was in the furtive way she looked at them as she muttered to herself and the little dog.

Lyssa suspected schizophrenia that had dovetailed into dementia as she got older, exacerbated by poor nutrition. Fear emanated from her, but also a belligerent streak of independence that had her clutching the small mixed-breed dog and jutting her chin at Jacob.

“You won’t make me tell you nothing. I know about your kind. What you want, what you see. You won’t get into my head.”

Jacob had worn a light jacket over his T-shirt and jeans. It covered the nine-millimeter and six-inch army knife he carried, along with a couple very well —sharpened stakes. He was vampire, but he never stopped having the mind-set of a vampire hunter, and he went nowhere with Lyssa where he wasn’t armed. But in this instance, he was carrying something more effective, something he’d picked up at the convenience store. Fishing them out of his pockets under Essie’s suspicious stare, he extended the chocolate bar and pack of peanut butter crackers, one of his favorite personal combinations before he’d become a vampire. He’d probably intended to have a taste and then offer the rest to Lyssa.

Throughout the centuries, Lyssa had seen unimaginable poverty and deprivation. As awful as it was, homelessness in twenty-first-century Atlanta was nowhere as bad as it could get for a human being. But it still stirred her pity, to see such shadow-dwellers, lost to the world through their own madness or other trauma and circumstances they couldn’t or wouldn’t resolve. The woman she was looking at had been on the streets for a long time.

Over that time, she’d probably been raped, beaten, her belongings stolen again and again.

As much as it stirred
her
heart, the man handing the chocolate to Essie had a chivalrous streak a mile wide. Leaving the woman here, in these circumstances, would go against everything Jacob believed was right, but he would do it, because she knew he saw the same thing Lyssa did. This was the only place Essie would live, the only life her madness would let her embrace. This was all she had, the world she knew. But he could give her his respect, and the chance to feel valued.

“Have you seen the tree?” he asked. “It will stand out. It has a special magic, an unexpected beauty.” She’d let the dog down. Jacob stayed in his nonintimidating squat while the terrier mix sniffed suspiciously at his ankles. “Your dog probably enjoys the shade there in summer. It’s a will ow tree. It looks like a beautiful slender woman, her hair rippling in the breeze.”

The woman opened the chocolate, sniffed it, then hid it in one of her pockets. She was continuing to mumble to herself unintelligibly.

“He crazy as Essie,” Pipe Guy said to his companion. That one nodded agreeably, propped on his spiked board, sipping the coffee. But Lyssa had seen the gaze they exchanged.

They know what you’re talking about, Jacob.

“I saw her,” Essie said abruptly. Leaning forward, she seized Jacob by the lapel of his jacket, peering into his face. The two men tensed, but Jacob lifted open hands, showing he wouldn’t react with violence.

“So long… younger then. More teeth.” She cackled, showing a mouth full of decay. Lyssa detected the odor at this distance, and knew Jacob was getting a direct blast. But he didn’t move, focused on Essie’s expressive face. “She ran. Ran like ballerina, so pretty. So graceful. Dancing through alley. Like girl with red shoes. Fairy tale. Tiny, delicate little butterfly wings, so she moved just over the ground, not very high. They were too small. They couldn’t carry her off and away, above their heads.

Bad men run after her.” She frowned then, her grip tightening. “Why you hurt her? What’s wrong with you?”

“It wasn’t me,” Jacob assured her. “If I was there, I would have helped. I would have protected her.”

“She protected herself,” Essie declared proudly, straightening. Her dog settled at her ankles, looking hopefully at the peanut butter crackers she still held in one fist. “She turns corner… boom, she gone.