Laws of the Blood 2: Partners (4 page)

Char tried for gracious calm when she said, “Apology accepted.” That sounded like the right sort of thing for an Enforcer to say. She kept a firm hold on the bad-tempered tom and sat back down. Lucien’s sleek fur was pure white; Char ignored that it was also wet from the rain at the moment. She concentrated on Helene. “Tell me all you know about Daniel.”

“I think he’s from Seattle,” was the first thing the nest leader told her.

Those few words held layers and layers of meaning. Char worked her fingers through Lucien’s wet fur while she thought about the implications. The cat relaxed and seemed to grow heavier in her lap. He began to purr. “How old is your Daniel?” she asked after a while. “In mortal years.”

Her guest answered reluctantly. “Late teens, I’d say. Young, but not as young as the ones—”

“Some of them were around sixteen or seventeen.” Legends were growing up around the Seattle affair, but Char had the truth from the source—his version and as much as he’d been willing to tell her in one short phone call. As disturbing as it had all been, Char at least had the consolation that Jimmy Bluecorn hadn’t been involved. Helene gave Char a curious look, which reminded Char that she wasn’t the one who was supposed to be explaining things. “Go on,” she said.

“My guess about Daniel from a few things he said is that he was one of the victims that were changed rather
than destroyed. That is one of the rumors, that several of those abused children were salvaged to become strigoi.”

“I’ve heard that rumor,” Char answered, rather than confirm or deny. Istvan was not merciful; everyone knew that.
He
would never turn anyone into a vampire. “But baby strigoi don’t generally say anything that makes sense.”

Helene nodded. “Sex and blood. That’s all the greedy little monsters can focus on. It’s always so nice to get them beyond that stage and be able to treat them like people.” Helene laughed, her expression softened with fondness. “As much like people as any teenager can be, that is. Getting them to realize that just because they’re vampires doesn’t mean they don’t have to clean up their rooms and take out the garbage is quite another challenge. Then there’s teaching the little monsters that the Laws aren’t just words but survival tools and getting them to believe that the consequences are fatal if they don’t obey them. Daniel was almost ready to—” Helene cut herself off and took a deep breath. “But you want to know about Daniel’s disappearance, and here I am giving a demonstration of why everyone on the coast thinks I was made to adopt their unwanted brats.”

Char was glad she didn’t remember the infant stage of her transformation, at least not the first and most difficult change from mortal to strigoi. From strigoi to Nighthawk—that transition was terrifyingly memorable, but at least it didn’t take as long. Depending on how long a person had been a companion, the period of
adjustment for a newly made vampire took anywhere from several months to a couple of years.

“Daniel’s adjustment has been difficult?”

Helene nodded. “He’s very disoriented. He’s restless. He’s wandered off before. No one died that time,” she added. “Thank the goddess for that.”

“I see.” Char didn’t, but the words sounded both comforting and ominous, which seemed like a useful mixture for an Enforcer.

Lucien abruptly took it into his furry head to jump off Char’s lap. The tomcat bounded across the coffee table, spilling a pile of books in his wake, and settled once more on Helene’s lap. This time the nest leader reacted to his presumption by rubbing his head.

While the cat’s loud purring filled the silence, Char gathered up the disturbed books, set them on the floor, and glanced at the clock on the VCR across the room. Plenty of time before dawn, but the night seemed like an unusually long one. First the Haven assignment and now someone coming to her rather than Marguerite for help. It never rained but it poured, as her great-grandmother used to say.

She wanted to ask why Helene had chosen her rather than Portland’s official Enforcer, but she could guess the main reason. Oh, Helene Bourbon would make some excuse about how Marguerite couldn’t be expected to leave the city or how a missing person’s case would be good experience for a young Nighthawk just getting her claws bloodied. Truth was, Helene thought that Char wouldn’t come down too hard on her for having lost a nestling. And she assumed Char was more likely to
return the lost cub to her rather than kill him if he’d betrayed the Laws.

Truth was, those suppositions Helene Bourbon wouldn’t voice were probably quite true. Char was a wimp, and she knew it; it didn’t even bother her unless someone tried to use her. Like now. And right now it didn’t bother her because hunting for a lost nestling was not only a very important duty, it was an excellent excuse to put off killing Jebel Haven for a while.

She could let him do his work while she pursued justice and protection for her own kind. “Do you have any idea where I should start looking for your nestling?”

Helene nodded. She picked up a leather bag she’d set beside her on the floor. She took a folder out of it and handed it to Char. “When Daniel disappeared the first time, he wandered north. I asked him where he was going when I caught up with him, but all he would say was, ‘The underground.’ ” Helene stopped petting Lucien for a moment and got a complaining yowl and her hand batted with a paw for her temporary neglect.

“Which underground?”

The strigoi had called so many places the underground over the millennia that Daniel could have been referring to almost any cave, cellar, basement, subbasement, crypt, vault, archaeological dig, or hidden room on the planet. Then there were the passageways, subway tunnels, and sewers, not to mention all the revolutionary groups, freedom fighters, criminals, and paramilitary types whose underground existence attracted vampire attention, usually as food sources. And, of course, there
were cemeteries. Vampires used to live in graveyards. In fact, all those huge, overdecorated marble and gilt Victorian mausoleums had been terribly popular dwellings until Stoker’s book attracted tourists and ruined real estate values. These days, urban graveyards attracted druggies, Goths, and television crews filming documentaries with titles like
In Search of the Supernatural
. These days, a cemetery was the last underground place a sane strigoi would head for.

A young vampire that had recently been a sexually abused mortal teenager might not know any better. Or—

“I think we both know which underground,” Helene said, interrupting Char’s thoughts.

A tense knot formed in Char’s stomach. “Why would he return there? Because it’s all he remembers,” she answered herself. “Poor baby.”
And if you know where he is, why don’t you go find him yourself?

Before Char could voice the thought, Helene said, “I have no proof and no trail, only those newspaper clippings in the folder.”

Newspaper? Publicity? About a vampire?
Char said a bad word. She quickly reached inside the folder and pulled out a handful of clippings. “Oh good,” she said with a sigh of relief after reading through several pieces of newsprint. “It’s only a serial killer.” Not that reading about a mortal who preyed on mortals was anything to rejoice about, but the last thing she wanted to see was any hint of a reference to vampires in the media.

“Most of the stories are from the
Post-Intelligencer
.”

Char looked up at Helene. “I noticed that.” She hadn’t
planned on bringing it up, though. “Where did you get these?” Char asked.

“A friend in Seattle sent them.”

“There are no strigoi in Seattle.” Maybe a few lonesome strigs, but the nearest nest to Seattle in Washington state was in Carnation.

“The friend is not one of us, exactly,” Helene said. “There was a companion who lost her lover in the massacre, but she survived, after a fashion. She lived on the streets and in shelters until she began to recover from the loss a few months back. Now she runs one of the homeless shelters.”

Char nodded. “Della.”

“You know her?”

“Of her. I keep track of things.” Char didn’t say for who. Della was a loose end but a harmless enough one. Mortal still, but an ally. Strigoi weren’t supposed to have mortal allies outside of slaves and companions, but the Law and reality weren’t always quite in sync.

Helene said, “I called Della a couple of weeks ago to ask her to look around, see if she could pick up any word on a narcoleptic kinky sex addict anywhere in town. She sent me the clippings.”

“Nothing about the word on the streets? Nothing about why she thinks your boy might be involved with a serial killer?”

Helene shook her head. “Maybe being cryptic makes her feel better. Della’s a friend, but an angry one.”

Justifiably so
, Char thought. “Wait a minute. You called her two weeks ago?” She looked through the
clippings again. Some were over a month old. “How long has the nestling been missing?”

Helene’s hand stilled on the cat’s head. She looked down. “Since August, Hunter.”

Char was on her feet. “August!”

Lucien jumped off Helene’s lap and stalked away. Char moved around the coffee table and pulled the older vampire to her feet. “What do you mean, August? You do know that it is now late November, don’t you? How could you have misplaced a nestling for three months?”

“Maybe I didn’t want to find him!” the woman shouted back.

“He’s your nestling!”

“I never invited him in.”

“But still—”

“Maybe I’m tired of taking in other people’s mistakes!” Helene cut her off. “I’m sick of being the Mother Teresa of bloodsucking monsters.”

Well, yes, Char could see how someone could get tired of being imposed upon. The woman obviously had a conscience that had eventually acted up about the missing boy, or they wouldn’t be holding this conversation. But somehow Helene Bourbon’s diatribe did not sound completely convincing.

“Then why come to me now?” Char asked. “Why not pretend you’ve never heard of this lost kid?”

Because the nest leader suspected Istvan was the one who left Daniel on her doorstep, and she didn’t want to face retribution from him? Or was it more complicated than that?
Char doubted she’d learn the complete truth from Helene Bourbon. Vampires were secretive by
nature and justifiably paranoid about dealing with Enforcers.

Char realized she was holding Helene by the woman’s jacket lapels. She was also fighting down the urge to shake the woman like a terrier with a rat. This was really a quite unacceptable urge. She’d already let her emotions get out of hand far too much this evening. She dropped her hands and stepped back. She wanted to be alone. She wanted the world to be the same as it had been a few hours ago. Then, she’d
fantasized
about excitement and about people coming to her for help. Reality, as usual, sucked.

“You better go home,” she told Helene Bourbon. “Your nest needs you.”

Helene made a small, imploring gesture. “You’ll—”

“Look into it?” Char felt the weight of the mortal death she didn’t want any part of. Haven was a lucky man tonight, even if she was stuck with going back to her hometown to give him some extra time. Home for the holidays, she thought; just what she needed, when everyone she loved was dead or gone. “Yes,” she said to the nest leader. “I’ll look into it.”

“
P
UTZ
,”
THE WITCH
said, and spat on the sidewalk in front of his feet.

He stepped over it and kept on walking. The Disciple didn’t look at her; she had the fire of eternity strong in her eyes, but her voice rang in his ears. Even worse, he felt her fire burning into his back as he walked quickly away. He knew when she went back inside the building and slammed the door, though he was halfway down the next block when she did it.

The Disciple had tried to kill the Witch once, not long after he’d found his own key to eternity. Her cold laughter still rang in his head when he thought about it. He didn’t want to save her, he didn’t want them to know about her, he wanted her gone. He wanted to be the only Disciple. He was strong, but she’d beaten him and laughed while she did it. She knew about living forever, but she didn’t want anything to do with them. They’d want her, though, he was certain, if they knew about her. So he kept one secret from those he worshiped, afraid they would look into his heart and read it someday.

He stopped for a red light at the next street corner
and waited there after the light had changed and changed again. Traffic and people swirled around him, unnoticing in the night and the fog. A cold wind whistled up off the bay, and gulls circled and cried overhead, their racket loud even over the traffic noise. He concentrated on the sound of the birds, on the icy daggers of the wind, trying to make himself believe that his shivering was from cold, the ringing in his head from too much raucous noise. It was a way to control the bout of fear triggered by the glaring Witch.

He never used to be afraid of the ones he served. At least no more fear than was right and proper at being allowed to look upon the face of gods. He used to take what was given with reverence and joy and humility, and go out into the street to use his gift and bring back other converts. He’d been happy in the knowledge that he served and would serve forever. Then he had sought out the serpent they’d told him to find, and the serpent became the Vessel. The Vessel was more important than the Disciple.