Companions (10 page)

"If only there was an Olympic event for it, the girl'd bring home the gold. You'd do well to follow her example," she added before Selena could contribute so much as a snicker.

"But — "

"Never mind that, now. Come on." Aunt Catie led Selena from the reading room and up the stairs to her apartment.

Selena became aware of the vampire just before she stepped through the arched doorway to the living room. Selena was furious with herself for not detecting its presence sooner, but this was Aunt Catie's place, where the magical vibes were strong and contradictory enough to blend and conceal and cancel
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each other out.

"Besides," Aunt Catie said, "No one knows what's going on in my house until I want them to. Put that thing away," she added as she moved past Selena to lead the way into the room.

"I should have known," Selena grumbled to herself, and put away the Glock she hadn't been aware of drawing. She quelled the useless impulse to ask her aunt what a vampire was doing in her house and followed Catie inside to find out for herself.

The vampire lying on the couch did not look well at all. Pale from vampires she was used to, sickly, she was not. Selena studied the emaciated male who looked back at her with feverbright eyes and almost didn't recognize him through the expression of pain on his face. "Larry?" she asked finally. "What the hell happened to you?"

"He was attacked," Aunt Catie answered for him and spread another comforter on the pile that already covered him. She touched his forehead with the back of her hand.

"The poor dear." She turned back to Selena, who was just managing not to gape. "You two talk. I'll make some coffee."

Larry sat up with a great deal of difficulty as Selena came closer, and he made an effort to throw off the cocoon of blankets. She was amazed to see him so weak but didn't offer to help him. Once he was finally free of the confining coverings and sitting upright, she saw what his problem was. Somebody had cut off his left arm.

"Ouch," she murmured, almost sympathetic. "That had to hurt."

"No, shit." His voice was rough and weak.

Selena took a seat in the chair on the other side of the couch. There were quite a few questions she wanted to ask the injured vampire, many of them quite personal. Of course, she could guess the answers to many of the personal ones, and the one about just how close her aunt and Lawrence were she didn't really want to know.

"He hasn't bitten me, if that's what you're wondering," Aunt Catie said, coming back into the room.

Of course not,
Selena told herself, almost embarrassed at her own relief. She'd have recognized the difference in her aunt if there were some psychic thread binding her to a vampire lover. The bonds between the strigoi and the mortals they put the bite on were easily detectable by anyone else involved in the life. Weren't they?

Selena eyed her aunt critically. Glenda the Good Witch here
might
be able to mask her private life from prying vampire hunters. Larry was a strig, after all, a loner who was technically rightful prey to the Enforcer of the City, should Ariel decide he was in the mood for a nosh some evening. Rightful prey or not, the Enforcers usually left strigs alone as long as the vampires who lived outside the system kept their heads low and noses clean. Larry was a law-abiding sort of guy, in his own way. She'd been there when he'd gotten disillusioned. His nest leader, Maria, the Enforcer of the City at the time, went bad and had very nearly gotten every vampire in Chicago killed for her own mad, selfish reasons. Larry had helped Selena and Steve take out Maria, but then, in disgust, he walked away from the life as much as he could.

Selena didn't hold with bad cops, either, and applauded Larry's decision to leave a system he thought was corrupt.

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Which was more than Larry could do right now.

"What are you smiling about?"

Selena wiped the smile off her face and answered her aunt, "Bad joke."

"I can guess." Aunt Catie's look was reproving.

Selena squared her shoulders and forced herself to take the matter of an injured vampire seriously. She
liked
Larry, who had once refused to make her his companion because he didn't bite people who didn't want to be bitten. He was no vampire rapist. A lot of them were. They deserved to be cut up, slowly, but not Lawrence. "You going to be all right?" she asked first. "What happened to you? Do you know who?"

In the kitchen, the coffeemaker buzzed. Aunt Catie left the room.

Larry held up his hand, blinked a few times, and focused his attention on Selena. "I'm left-handed… I
was
left-handed. This is going to take some getting used to."

"It'll grow back, right?"

"I hope so. Your aunt says I can stay in her basement while I'm waiting to see if the regeneration stuff is a legend or not." He eyed Selena nervously. "That okay with you?"

At first, she wondered why he was asking her, then Selena remembered that he was the only vampire in the world who knew about her and Steve. Steve didn't want anyone to know and neither did she, but they owed Larry. Apparently, Larry was also her aunt's friend. "It's Catie's basement," she told him.

"Who she keeps there is no business of mine… or anyone else." She wasn't going to promise that she wasn't going to let Steve eat him, or mess with Larry's head if he took a mind to. She only made promises she knew she could keep, but if Steve hadn't messed with Larry by now, she doubted he was likely to. "You probably picked the safest spot in town."

"You have a good heart." His eyes took on a twinkle more of humor than fever. "Sorry, bad joke."

"Mind reader," she accused, with something that sounded disgustingly like affection.

"Goes with the territory. But never yours," he added. He glanced at his left shoulder. "What is the sound of one vampire hand clapping?"

Catie came back with steaming mugs and handed one to each of them.

Larry looked into his and made a face. "Chicken soup?"

"Broth." Catie left again. Selena sipped her own coffee. Larry sipped the broth. Catie came back with a mug for herself and sat down on the couch near the vampire. After a few oddly cozy moments, Catie said, "Tell Selena what happened, Lawrence."

"Somebody cut my arm off."

"Lawrence."

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He took a deep breath. Vampires hated telling anyone anything. "I was asleep. It was daylight. I was out, but I was sleeping, not dreamriding or doing any out-of-body stuff. Then I felt somebody in my house. I couldn't move, and I never came fully awake enough to focus. I heard a noise… roaring. Felt this overwhelming fury. And then it
hurt.
It hurt like hell, and that was all I knew for hours." He glanced at his shoulder again, and the dangling sleeve of the plaid bathrobe he wore.

"He brought his arm to me," Aunt Catie said. "It's on ice in the basement. It wasn't a hack job like with a knife or an ax. Not that precise, either, but a pretty clean slice."

Larry looked like he was going to throw up at the description of his wound. He focused on Selena. "She could have killed me."

"Aunt Catie?"

"Of course not! What are you talking about?"

"You said
she."

He blinked. "I did?"

"Yes."

"Yeah. She. I think." He closed his eyes, thinking with great effort. He looked weak and weary. "The anger that hit me… yeah… it had a female feel to it. I didn't see anything. I don't know who did it." .

He wasn't telling her everything. "Where were you?" Selena put her mug on the coffee table and leaned forward. "Were you alone?"

"That's not — "

"You live near Oak Street Beach, off Goethe. And you had company." She had not known it was possible for a vampire who had lost a lot of blood to blanch, but Larry did. She didn't let him know her knowledge came from working homicide and not from having special powers as Steve's girlfriend. "Who was he?" she asked as Larry slowly nodded.

"He?"

"I need to know. Better me than Ariel, or — "

"I don't want any trouble!"

It was so annoying that she didn't even have to say the
dhamphir'
s name to get that reaction. Of course, if she didn't want to scare Larry into full cooperation, she shouldn't allude to the thing that scared him the most.
Only using a cop's trick,
she told herself,
getting cooperation from the suspect the easiest way.

Larry wasn't officially a suspect in anything yet. Right now, he was a victim of attempted murder, but he was trying to hide facts. Detective Crawford didn't put up with that.

"Then tell me who the murdered vampire was."
And why am I having this conversation? It's not my
job!
Neither Ariel nor Steve would appreciate her interference. That made her smile and gave her all the reason she needed to go on. Annoying the lords of the underneath world was much more fun than giving in to the compulsion to serve at their command. "I need to know everything, Larry."

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"And she won't go away and let you rest until you tell her," Aunt Catie added. She patted him on the knee. "Finish your broth first, then tell her."

He gave her a piteous look. "I could use a drink."

"I've got a call out for a volunteer."

"Talk to me," Selena interrupted. Larry gulped down his chicken broth and told her. "His name was Peter. I barely knew him. He was a friend of the vampire who made me. I keep in touch with the old crowd."

"The old crowd where?" Selena prompted.

"Why?"

She gave him her steeliest look.

"Colorado."

"Could you be a bit more specific?" He was trying to protect his home nest, she supposed.

Commendable.

"You're a strig now," she reminded him. "They wouldn't protect you."

"In theory."

"Yeah." Friendships and loyalties often went beyond the letter of the law, in mortal and immortal worlds.

"So why was this guy running from Denver?"

He shrugged with his one good shoulder, winced, and showed not a twinge of reaction to her naming a city. "He told me he needed a place to stay."

"To lie low?"

"We usually do that."

"He was on the run from someone. They found him."

"Peter's an ancient one, an Old Country strigoi."

"Was."

"If a strigoi doesn't want to be found…" He trailed off in a low, pained laugh. "Sorry about the bravado, Hunter. Habit. Yes, I guess they found him. Found us."

He didn't notice using a title Selena had no right to, and she didn't correct him. "But the murderer didn't kill you." She bit her lip and rubbed her chin. "Why? Chainsaw ran out of fuel? Left you as a warning?"

"About what?" Aunt Catie asked.

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"I've no idea. I'm just throwing out ideas here." She looked back at Larry. His head was thrown back, eyes closed. About at the end of his strength. Odd to think of one of
them
sick and vulnerable. Selena didn't think she was going to get any more help from Larry tonight. She stood. "Want me to help you get him downstairs?" she asked her aunt.

Her aunt got to her feet. "I'd appreciate that. Then you'd better get home, yourself. Oh, and Selena," she added. "I did a reading for you today. Be careful."

"Lucy, I'm home!"Selena would have jumped out of her skin if she hadn't known that was exactly the sort of reaction Steve wanted. She considered whirling around in the small kitchen and demanding to know what he was doing back in Chicago, back at her place, specifically. She considered throwing her soapy arms around him and kissing him silly, but that wasn't what
she
really wanted to do. She firmly did not think about having left Aunt Catie's place an hour ago. Instead of following any impulse, she didn't bother turning away from the kitchen sink where she was doing dishes, and said, "Don't you mean, Mina?"

Istvan studied Selena appreciatively for a moment. She was wearing a gray sports bra and biking shorts.

Her workout clothing showed off pale skin over well-toned muscles. Very well-toned muscles had his amazon princess cop. She knew he was studying her, and her scent changed in subtle, inviting reaction.

They both hated that the girl couldn't help it. To keep his mind off what both their bodies contemplated, he said, "I was quoting an old television show you're too young to remember."

She laughed. "Honey, they're quoting
ILove Lucy
on Alpha Centauri by now.
Everybody
knows what you were talking about."

"Oh." He reached out and put a hand on her bare shoulder, drinking in the mortal warmth. He couldn't help it. "Then what were you — "

"Dracula,"
she said. He jumped back.

"What did you say?"

"You know, Mina, Lucy, Jonathan, Count Dracula, ruler of the land beyond the forest."

"How did you know —?"

Steve sounded shocked out of his wits. Rather than feeling as if she'd won some sort of victory from him, Selena turned in surprise. There was an expression in her vampire's blue eyes that was almost painful and not quite here. It made her heart ache. He backed away from her. She failed to fight the urge to take a step toward him. "What's the matter? You've never heard of Dracula?"

"Heard of him?" He laughed, a sound so caustic it must have burned coming out. "Honey, I used to work for him."

She crossed her arms under her breasts. Bubbles of dishwashing soap dripped from her fingers.

She laughed, and if it wasn't caustic, at least it was sarcastic. "Yeah, right."

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