Companions (25 page)

Larry sniffed. "Not all of them are vampires." He licked his lips. "Warm-blooded creatures out there."

Oh, dear. He
really
was hungry. She wasn't sure she'd be able to stop him if he decided to step out for a bite, or even if she wanted to.

"Slaves?" Aunt Catie asked.

"Probably."

"Watching Karen's apartment?" Her voice was low, but her indignation was fierce. "How dare they?"

"Obviously strangers in town," Larry said.

"Obviously?" Selena asked.

"No local vampire's that stupid. None of the established nests would dare mess with the Baileys," Larry told her. "There's been an unspoken understanding among the local witch families and the strigoi for decades."

Selena scratched her cheek. "Really?" She gave her aunt an annoyed look. "They messed with me.

Maria Ventanova — "

"Paid for it, dear."

"I wish you'd told me you knew about vampires
before
I had an encounter with them."

"That was two years ago. Get over it. It's worked out fine for you." Selena sputtered while her aunt went on. "They are a private people. We respect their ways, as long as they respect ours." Catie sighed. "But there's no Law stating they have to leave us alone."

"It's just the opposite, really," Larry said. "The Law says we have the right to take anyone we want who has psychic gifts, to use as slave or companion, depending on the degree of their talent. The religious strigoi see it as an obligation to bring the gifted into the life. You can't become a vampire without that certain psychic something that you Baileys have in spades. Of course we're attracted to your family."

"But acting upon that attraction is frowned upon," Catie added.

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"By who?" Selena asked. "Ariel?"

"By me."

"Ariel would be better. He's the Enforcer of the City."

After a stubborn pause, Catie finally said, "Yes, that would be better." She sighed. "Ariel is new to Chicago. He's quite the conservative and well aware that there's no official treaty between our kind and his. He is aware of me, but not too impressed. You, on the other hand, Selena, impress him."

Selena shook her head. "No, I don't. Steve made him forget about my existence."

"How inconvenient. At least for the moment."

Not necessarily, Selena thought. Drawing an Enforcer's attention while she was busy rousing the rabble wasn't a very good idea. Steve's not wanting anyone to know about her wasn't only good for his loner reputation, it gave her cover as well.

"Ariel couldn't legally tell these jokers to back off, could he?" Selena asked Lawrence, who shook his head in response. "Doesn't sound like he'd want to, either. Why Karen?" she wondered. "Why now?"

"Another old tradition," Lawrence said. "Claiming a mortal bride or a groom as a companion on their wedding day goes way, way back. You bite the mortal, and the mortal instantly dumps the person they're marrying to become your devoted love slave. Kind of tasteless, if you ask me… you know what I mean."

"You mean it's a cruel, vicious, heartless way vampires have of thumbing their noses at the mortal world?"

"Those are the sorts of dreams that have been terrifying Karen for the last few nights," Catie said. "Of having a dark-haired stranger forcing himself on her at her own wedding. And she's felt like she was being watched."

"Looks like she has been," Selena said. Selena cursed herself for thinking for even one minute that the warnings from her subconscious had been anything but true. She'd been lulled into thinking it was a trauma-induced reaction. That almost comforting explanation had done nothing but waste precious time.

Damn it. She'd really believed Rosho and his crew had gone back to Denver. Instead, he'd had days to make his plans for her cousin. "Damn vampires."

"Listen, Selena, we aren't all like that. Most of us aren't like that anymore."

She patted Larry's shoulder. "I know." But the ones who were still operating under the old rules had to go.

"Do you think we should have a talk with this bunch?" Aunt Catie asked. "Warn them off?"

"Am I supposed to show them my badge and tell them to move along?" Selena asked. "You going to get out of the car and throw a curse at them?"

Aunt Catie nodded emphatically. "We could do exactly that."

Lawrence flashed a bit of fang. "Want me to make an example out of one of the slaves?" he suggested.

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Catie did not look shocked, which did surprise Selena a little. "I think you should find out who they are before you have a nosh," Catie told Larry. "Find out everything the worm knows about his master's plans before you take his life."

It was a warm summer night, but they had the windows rolled up, and they spoke in whispers. Warm night or not, Selena felt a cold chill at her aunt's comment. She also realized she couldn't let Larry loose right now.

"He can't kill any of them, Aunt Catie. Not if he wants to survive as a strig in this town. The vampires out there know we're here as much as we know they're there. They're watching us, waiting for any move from Lawrence. They'd let him make the kill and then report what he'd done, with a couple of witch women egging him on. Ariel would come after Larry for hunting someone else's slave. He'd probably then sanction what their nest leader already plans to do. Besides, I know who they are. So does Larry,"

Selena said. "Their singling us out is more than psychic lines of probability coming together. I'm not sure if it's my fault or Larry's, though."

"Fault?" Catie asked.

"Me?" Larry protested.

"You know who they are. And how they know about us. Don't you, Lawrence?"

"Well — "

"You're still staying with my aunt aren't you? Why haven't you gone home?"

"I enjoy your aunt's company."

"You're a strig. So, when the new players took over your apartment building, there was no one you could complain to. What did they do, take over everything you own? Go through all your papers? Find your address book? The wedding invitation?"

"You're making this up as you go along, aren't you?"

"That doesn't mean it isn't the truth."

Aunt Catie tapped Larry on the shoulder. "What is she talking about?" she asked when he turned to look at her.

It amused Selena that Lawrence didn't try to evade her aunt's question. "Oh, hell, Catie. I'm a one-armed strig who's sworn off doing all the bad shit my people get into. I don't even have a companion to back me up. Everything Selena said is true. They moved in and took over while I was gone. When I went back to my apartment a couple days ago, I barely got away before the old bastard got his hands on me. I'm not getting into dominance games, and I don't mind being broke, but I never thought your family would get hurt. They must have found out about the Baileys through what they found among my possessions."

"And what you told Pyotr."

He shook his head. "I
never
mentioned any of you to him. I swear. If Rosho's looking for a new
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companion, taking your cousin's exactly the sort of thing he'd do."

"What do they know about me?" Selena asked before Catie could make a comment.

"It's not you they're interested in," Catie reminded her. "It's Karen."

Of course, Aunt Catie didn't know about the night Sandy Schwimmer died, that Selena had put up a fight against the vampires from Denver. She'd talked to them, been seen by them, attacked them before Steve intervened. Steve had made it look like he'd killed her. That was what he'd told her, wasn't it? She had some vague memory of his mentioning that. Problem was, she had too many vague memories from the whole affair, and those memories were mixed up with his memories, and a lot of hard-to-sort-out dream imagery. The one thing she was sure of was that Steve was good at covering his tracks. He'd have made sure to cover hers, wouldn't he? He was her soul mate, right?

And the thought occurred to her that even though he couldn't kill her himself, that didn't mean Istvan the Enforcer wouldn't let somebody else do the job in order to get a Roma woman he could get pregnant out of his life. Even as she thought it, she forcefully pushed the notion away. In fact, she shook her head hard as though that would get the thought out of her mind. He wasn't that cruel or cynical. Maybe he was a five-hundred-year-old creature of the night, a ruthless hunter and Enforcer of the Laws, but didn't mean he wasn't a nice Roma boy at heart.

"Yeah, right."

"What are you muttering about, Selena?"

Selena started the car. "I'm taking you two home," she told them.

"But — "

"Don't worry," she cut her aunt off. "And
don't
do anything until you hear from me."

Selena went back to her apartment and paced. It was all she could think of to do for a while, because she was too frantic to do anything but burn off some energy. What the hell were they going to do? What kind of resources did she have? How did a few psychically gifted mortals and one lame vampire fight off a nest led by an ancient strigoi that got his kicks from sadistic games? Sandy Schwimmer had tried to escape Rosho's clutches, and she'd died. Selena knew she and Sandy had been defeated even before Steve showed up to interrupt the hunt.

"Okay," she muttered after a while. "Maybe all we have to do is cancel the reception. The reception's the only thing scheduled for the evening. If the plan is to grab Karen at the reception, we can eliminate the opportunity."

We can eliminate that particular opportunity, she thought, but if Rosho wants Karen, he'll find a way to get to her. If she changes her pattern of behavior at all, that'll tip him off, and he'll attack sooner. Hell, he knows we're onto him or at least suspect him. Of course, he's been broadcasting his intentions to every member of the family with the talent to hear him. The arrogant bastard wants a fight. Or maybe he just wants to let us know there's nothing we can do to stop him. This vampire thinks like a serial killer. He wants the attention, he wants to show that he's smarter than the cops, he doesn't think he'll ever get caught.

"Maybe he won't. He's been at this for hundreds of years."

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Don't think like that, you idiot! Don't let him box you into playing the game his way. You don't
catch the bad guy by following his scenario.

"Right. Glad we got that straightened out."

She was still prowling the living room. Selena wondered when she was going to start wearing a hole in the floor. To try for a change of pace, she put on a CD, Santana rather than Clapton just to break her own usual pattern. Point was, vampire Law couldn't touch him. He wasn't breaking vampire Laws. Steve said Rosho was very careful not to break the Laws of the Blood. So, she was going to keep a lid on the urge to send out a psychic scream for help to Steve. The last time she'd asked Steve to rescue someone from Rosho, the rescuee had died. This time, Steve would probably offer to give away the bride.

Selena had to fight down a bad bout of nausea at that image. "Okay," she said. "What do we do?"

Hit them when they're vulnerable, of course.
She sat down on the couch and tapped a finger on her chin while she thought. The night belongs to them, and they can monitor thoughts in the daylight. They keep mortals to protect them in the daylight, but mortals could be gotten past, and monitoring thoughts didn't mean you could completely protect yourself from the people thinking them by shouting mental orders at them. Sandy Schwimmer had gotten past guards and telepathic commands.

She'd killed two of the bastards, and she was one small woman. "Who had the strength and single-mindedness of the totally insane."

Selena had a flash of memory of the crazed look in Sandy's eyes when they'd talked in the Navy Pier parking garage. The woman had been mad, but she'd had the right idea. Sometimes insanity could work to your advantage, Selena supposed. She really wished she'd been able to help the woman who'd declared that Selena was the companions' Enforcer. She still had the coin Sandy had given her.

"What I do not need is a bunch of white witches to help with this. What I need are people used to dealing with vampires on a daily basis. People with experience." Like her little cadre of disgruntled companions. "Fearless vampire killers unite," she muttered. "If you can stop talking long enough to get anything done." What was she supposed to do, jump into the chat room and invite everyone there to attend her cousin's wedding reception? "Where stake will be on the menu."

She didn't think she could do this in a live chat. There was no guarantee who would be there, and the ones who were on-line would go off on chattering tangents and she'd never hammer home the point that this was something nasty happening in real time to them. She needed one-on-one, face-to-face confrontation with the only people who could possibly help her. The secure chat room ensured a bit too much anonymity for the participants. For all she knew, every one of the companions was too far away from Chicago to arrive in time to help. Or they could all be in Wauconda or Schiller Park or out in DeKalb. "Having a few phone numbers and E-mail addresses wouldn't hurt." Sandy had found her, if only she had access to Sandy's —

Sandy took a pink plastic diskette out of her purse. "For you."

"What is that?"

"Everything I could find." Sandy opened the glove compartment and tucked the diskette inside.

The memory came back in a flash of blinding pain. As the pain cleared, Selena remembered that Sandy
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had told her she worked in computer security. Selena had done a bit of that herself. She knew there were ways to track down the not-as-anonymous-as-they-thought users of the web. Sandy had given her the information. It was the only legacy the poor woman had left. Selena hurried to dig the diskette out of her purse and put it into the computer's A drive.