Dead Certain (Eve Benson: Vampire Book 3) (7 page)

The older looking man, who didn’t
give a name, looked at her, and then waved at her hands.

“You did this?” He spoke in
English. He had an accent, but it was very proper sounding to her. British,
rather than anything else. Refined seeming, which was slightly jarring to her,
given the rest of the Vampires around them.

His eyes were a deep black color,
showing no whites, and compelling, so she didn’t look into them too deeply. It
would be rude to have a battle for her mind just then, she didn’t doubt.
Especially with people that were only trying to be helpful. She rubbed at the
blood on her hands, but didn’t get to answer, Iryna letting her head come up in
a single tick.

“I barely saw them die, it was so
fast. Like The Lord himself, she moved. I think these two have come to remove
the vermin, as the Council has promised us.” She looked a bit worried though,
for some reason, her eyes going to the oldest man. “They didn’t say that,
however.”

Even though the words were said
very rapidly they were oddly clear. Eve smiled and shook her head, lying again.

“Nope! Sorry, we’re just here to
see the sights, and keep my friend here awake all day. I hope this won’t be too
much trouble for you? Bodies like this all over the place. It’s very messy of
me.” She tried to sound like she meant it, but it was clear that half the room
wasn’t going to buy it. Then, they didn’t need to.

No, all that was required of them
was that they didn’t go and tell everyone in Moscow that she and Nikki were
there, until it was too late. Worse, they honestly didn’t need to know that Bey
was coming, or even hear a rumor of it.

If that happened then a whole
bunch of Vampires would probably take the chance to run. By her schedule they
still had a day and a half before Bey was going to get there, and there was no
way to really get in touch with him. Then again, they
weren’t
stuck off
in the hinterlands here. There was a working phone right there, on a nice
wooden stand with a lace doily over it, and if the government was listening,
well that just meant she needed to be careful about what she said, didn’t she?

The men, and one of the Manthori
women, took the bodies away, and she was led to a nicely tiled shower room. It
had a great mosaic pattern worked into it, in greens and blues, with a few
browns. The picture was a forest scene, with an ocean on the back right hand
side. It was huge, too, being about three times larger than any shower she’d
ever been in before.

Neither she nor Nikki had a
change of clothing with them, but other than a few little spots of blood on her
t-shirt, she was fine. Eve scrubbed up well though, and then went to wait for
the morning to come. As soon as the others there moved off to sleep, dying for
the day, which it seemed they all did, she signaled for Nikki, who was still up
and around, to follow her.

As they ran, not going very fast
yet, she explained the new plan.

“We’re here to scout. So we need
to get to Moscow as soon as possible. That’s a decent way away, so we’re going
to have to go in fast and hard. We’ll examine the whole city, looking for
nests, and seeing if anyone is alive and awake right now. If they are, try not
to start a fight with them. I don’t actually know if the plan is to kill them
all. It might have changed since we last spoke to Bey, so I’d rather not get
that wrong. We can always kill them later, yeah? It’s harder to bring them
back, and I didn’t make arrangements for that.”

Waving, Nicole pretended to yawn.

“Lead on then? I’ll keep up.” The
voice sounded very confident, which was good, but the actions were a bit
lacking. Still, it was clear that the other woman really
was
doing her
best, and the trip, which should have taken about ten minutes, or less, for Eve,
given all the hiding and detours they had to make, still only took about
twenty. It was better speed, if not perfect, yet.

Nikki even managed not to scream
when they got there, which was amazing. If she could keep it up, the Southern
Washington area’s Proctor might not even annoy her to death before Bey got
there.

It was a good thought, one Eve
was glad to get to have, but Nikki had to ruin it, as soon as they got into the
city. They found their prey, at the second address they had for him, walking
outside a seedy looking thing that Eve was nearly certain was a bar.

That should have been a good
thing. Possibly a brilliant one. Eve hadn’t thought they’d even see anyone
during the day, and that they’d need to kidnap a few Vampires to torture for
information when Bey got there later.

At first there was a gasp, a
surprised thing, which was fine, but then Nicole went wide eyed. Because of
course things couldn’t just go easily, could they? Eve had to force her face to
go blank, as they stood across the street from the other Vampire.

Then Nicole, old and wise to the
ways of the world very nearly alerted the man that they were there.

“
Bohdan
? God, we aren’t
here to kill Bohdan Constantine, are we?” The words were freaked out enough
that it was clear that the answer was going to have to be no. Regardless of
what happened later. That or they were going to make a giant scene on the
streets of a busy city. This was off the beaten path, in a slightly run down
area, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t have police around, sooner or later.

Eve shook her head, then lied
like a pro.

“No. We’re here to watch him. The
target is someone else. I think. Why, do you know him?”

There was a nod, and then a
pained look that went directly into Eve’s eyes. Like Nikki didn’t really
believe her for some reason.

“Um, well, you know those
boyfriends that I kept stealing from Lenore? He was one of them. About two
hundred years ago. We get together every thirty years or so, and you
understand, we… You know, have a relationship?”

It sounded weird to her, but she
just nodded.
That
wasn’t going to complicate things at all, was it? It
might explain why Nicole was so good at Russian though.

Eve tried to think about what
might have set her up to bring Nikki in on this, but her mind went blank. After
a bit she realized that it was probably pure dumb luck, rather than anything
else.

Her stupid, insane luck. That or
someone was pulling strings so subtly that she wasn’t going to be able to
figure out who it really was.

“
Fuuuck
.” Eve jogged along
behind, and slightly to the right of her companion, who was making the biggest
mess of things possible.

“Bohdan! Over here!” Nikki was
moving toward the other man, who was fresh faced, and clean shaved. His hair
was as black as Eve’s, but longer, being a whole four or five inches on the
top. The look could have been nearly trendy, for the States even, except that
he wore a charcoal gray suit, with well shined shoes, and a long overcoat. The
kind that would have been just about right on someone from a nineteen-forties
movie.

The Vampire in question
was
cute though. His face wasn’t particularly strong, being almost girlish, which
shouldn’t have been possible on someone that lean. In a way he was nearly
pretty, which wasn’t the kind of thing that men ever truly wanted to hear about
themselves. Not even six hundred year old Vampire men, she was willing to bet.

This fiasco, and Eve had no doubt
that’s what was shaping up in front of her as they moved across the street
toward the being she was supposed to be scouting at the moment, was all her
fault. If she’d been more secure in herself, she might have traveled alone. Or
waited for Bey, if she weren’t trying to seem so independent all the time.
Leaving Nikki back in the States would have worked, too, no doubt.

Or simply mentioning the name of
the main target earlier, so that they could have had a conversation about the
whole thing in the back of a yogurt shop, rather than running up like morons,
about to die.

Eve sighed, thinking about the
whole thing, and realized that in part, at least one person was more deeply
tied to what was about to happen here than she was.

Lenore.

It made sense, after a fashion,
that they’d all know each other, as unlikely as that felt.

It was odd to the point of
strangeness to her, since she was used to living in a world of billions of
people she would never know, but there were a lot fewer Vampires in the world.
Probably around thirty or forty thousand, at a guess. The vast majority of them
would be young, too, like her. If there were forty thousand such beings, which
really was a guess, than something like ninety percent of them were
under
a hundred years dead.

Bohdan here, a day walking six
hundred plus year old, was probably one of less than a thousand such beings on
the planet. Given how old Vampires could get to be, all the really good ones
probably not only
knew
each other, but held grudges against, or had
relationships with, almost everyone else of a certain age.

That Nicole knew, or even liked
Bohdan was probably not that big of a stretch then. Lenore however, would have
known
that. At least to the point that they’d dated and he was one of the men that
her older sister had stolen from her in their long lives.

That meant she might have
mentioned it to them, back in Vancouver, didn’t it? What the fudge was Eve
supposed to do now? Her initial impulse was to simply speed up, and start
fighting this Bohdan without warning, so that he wouldn’t have time to figure
the whole thing out. If Nikki started to run her mouth right off the bat, or
warn him that Bey was coming, then the whole thing was going to end up being
something that Eve didn’t really want to deal with.

Worse, if it was a real set up,
designed to get her sister killed, then Eve was going to have to find Lenore,
and kill her. She had actual orders to do that, from Bey, himself.

For the moment though, she
plastered a smile on her face and sighed, wondering what the crap bucket of
life had in store for her in the next few moments.

For his part, after a few seconds
of hard and skeptical looks, the pretty Vampire, with his pale skin and light,
ice blue, eyes, smiled hugely.

“Nicole! I hadn’t thought to see
you for some time. My love, how are you?” He moved a few steps toward her, and
picked her up into a very human looking embrace. They didn’t spin around, and
broke off after a few moments, just looking into each other’s faces, both of
them beaming like it was a freaking romance novel.

Eve held back just a tiny bit,
since she didn’t want to interrupt. Especially if it meant fighting Nikki and
this unknown at the same time.

Apparently that was the correct
thing to do, since the Vampire didn’t notice her at first, distracted by the
girl in front of him as he was. Finally he did look up however, and then stared
for a bit.

Then he glanced up into the sky
above him, where the pain orb lived.

“Come, friends, we should go
indoors. I was going to a business I own in this area, to check on my Human
employees. Is the sun too intense however? We could go in here, if you seek
shelter for the day?” He actually sounded worried about it.

That probably meant it was a set
up then. That, or he knew Nikki that well, and realized what a wimp she was.

Eve shook her head.

“We’re fine, thank you.” She
spoke in rather broken Russian, but the man seemed to understand her well
enough, and turned back to Nicole, who was standing there, holding his smooth
looking hands. It was endearing, which was the last thing Eve wanted to feel
about the whole thing. After all, odds were, she personally would end up having
to kill this guy.

Probably in the next few minutes,
once he worked out who they were, and why they were there.

Instead he pulled Nikki along,
down the street, and gestured for Eve to follow.

“I could have a car brought
around? The location isn’t far, but it’s a walk of a few kilometers. The sun
will be bright this day.” He glanced up again, into the clear blue sky, seeming
worried, and then looked at Nikki, who was still trying to look directly into
his face.

Almost like she were being
compelled to. So attracted to the being that she just couldn’t help herself.
Eve could kind of see that, based on how cute the guy was, but didn’t really
feel it, herself. He was hot, sure, but being dead between her legs, that
didn’t mean much to her. More, it really shouldn’t have to her companion,
either.

When Bohdan looked over at her
again, she kind of understood it all though. He was compelling. Constantly, and
in a general way, that probably made it seem like he was magnetic to most
people. She looked at his face, but didn’t lock eyes with him, just in case he
could capture her that way.

If it bothered him it didn’t show
at all.

“Nicole is normally in her bed by
now…” Again, the feeling behind it all sounded right, and not like he was
paranoid, and suspecting that death had arrived for him.

Eve felt like freezing, but then
just did what she probably should have the whole time, and told the truth. The
weak
lied, because it was their only defense. She might not be the most powerful
being ever, but she wasn’t going to keep acting like a baby either, if she
could help it. Trying to spare her partner in this had already led to problems hadn’t
it?

Still, she didn’t have to tell
the man everything all at once, so started with the Nikki centric things first.

“We’re traveling, in part so that
I can learn the language here, and in part to keep Nicole awake during the day.
It’s part of her new training. I’m Eve Benson.” She waited, in case the name
meant something to the man, but there was nothing more than a polite expression
on his face. It was nearly servile for a Russian, from what she’d seen of them
so far.

“I am most pleased to meet with you,
Eve Benson. I am Bohdan Constantine. Among other things I run Moscow, and the
surrounding area, for our kind. Currently we are having a dispute with the
Council, over taxes. It is a bit of a petty thing, but I fear it has put us
against them directly for a time, and we seek to remove ourselves from their
oversight.” He was staring right at her, and there was a fine sense of buzzing
in her head, which meant he was working to control her now, Eve suspected.

It was easy enough to change the
feeling though. To master it and shift her mind away. So either he wasn’t all
that powerful, or he wasn’t trying to do it too hard yet. She needed to stay
ready, just in case.

“Oh? Over the new blood rules?”
That was the thing most of the Vampires had a problem with, after all. It
wasn’t exactly hard to see either. Most of the good blood products were in
North America. These people had the hard rules, but no way to smooth that over
with their own people, did they?

There was a slow nod, as they
continued walking, his voice mellow and relaxed. The man was holding Nikki’s
hands as they did it, too. Like they’d never been apart, almost. That wasn’t a
great sign, at least given the current situation.

It wasn’t lost on her that this
Bohdan had almost instantly introduced the topic at hand either. He was,
without a doubt, trying to subtly influence her over to his side. More to the
point, he was trying to compel her to do that, without being too obvious.

“Yes. It is that conflict
directly. We have been placed under the boot of these new American rules, but
have not the resources that they enjoy. We are ordered to make do with animals,
but here, in the city, that is nearly impossible for most of our kind. Are we
to lose all we have then? Abandon our businesses, and homes, to run to the
countryside, in order to fulfill their wishes? For most of us here there is
little else that can be done, I fear. So we prepare to fight, even knowing that
death will come upon us at any moment.”

She could see that, actually. It
never paid to push people into a corner they felt they couldn’t get out of.

Nikki, still smiling at the man,
shook her head a bit. It was almost like she was trying to clear it from a fog,
or a dose of drugs.

“Bohdan… What if we could fix
that? There’s a new animal blood product being sold in the states. It isn’t
bad. Cow, of course, but it isn’t too expensive, or anything. If you had that
here, would that make any difference?”

Eve schooled her face, but didn’t
say anything for the moment, waiting for the angry rationalization, for the man
to growl about how unfair it was that they couldn’t eat people anymore. It was
kind of the common line, after all. Even she’d heard it, while selling blood to
people each night, and that was from the ones putting up with the rules.

Instead there was a long pause,
as they kept moving down the street. That surprised her a little bit, since
there was a lot of bright colors there, and it wasn’t a drab or particularly
dirty place really. No worse than Washington D.C. and the colors of the
buildings were better here. They had bright reds and golds in places, along
with blues and greens. Things were a bit more closely packed together here,
where they were walking, but it wasn’t ugly really. Just old. Some of the
buildings in the distance had cool round roofs, and were kind of like Christmas
tree ornaments. The fancy kind that Darla put on her tree.

The Vampire fellow looked at his
friend, making it clear that the other two were closer than was safe for Eve,
and finally smiled a bit.

“Ah. It is, I fear, not so
simple. We can get blood, there
are
farms and such here, like everywhere
else, but we can’t keep it for any length of time. The anti-coagulant…” He said
the word, but Eve just guessed that was what he meant, not recognizing it in
the language they were speaking. “Is a secret, unknown to even the finest of
chemists. We have not been allowed to know of it. No one in the world has. You
either buy blood from the Americans, or you suck on dogs and cats in alleyways,
hoping you are not seen doing it. We asked the Council to aid us in that, if
they were to insist on these new hardships they call rules, but to no avail. I
spoke to my own maker the other day, and was informed that we would be given no
aid that way, being forced to live like animals, at the pleasure of the
Council.” He wasn’t pleased by those words, apparently, since his eyes went
red. No fangs popped out though, and he managed to clear the rest of it after a
few seconds.

 Eve gave him a slightly
skeptical look.

“Hmmm. I
doubt
that,
Bohdan. What did she really say? That doesn’t sound right at all.”

The man glared for a bit, and
then stared at her, hard.

“You say that I lie? Why would I
do that?”

“I don’t know. But it
sounds
wrong, doesn’t it? The Council might want you under their control, I mean, I
want you under
my
control, and imagine that it works the other way, too,
but they have no reason to keep blood from you. Doing that with the new rules
would just
force
you to break them, right? So, what was it she
actually
told you?”

The man, for all he was probably
going to die sooner rather than later, wasn’t a complete fool.

“I didn’t say my maker was a
woman, did I?”

She shrugged, and glanced over at
him.

“Marissa, of the Council, isn’t
strictly a woman, but she tends to wear dresses, so that’s what I go with. It’s
the polite convention in the States. If a person wants to be seen a given way,
you try to address them like that, so they won’t feel uncomfortable. We’re nice
that way. Anyway, what exactly did she tell you? Please.” It never hurt to be
polite, did it? Even if it did sound a little annoyed at the moment.