Laws of the Blood 2: Partners (5 page)

The Disciple still served, but he was no longer special to the Demon and the Prophet. He wanted to live forever, but what if they decided to take the Angel’s gift from him? The thought formed sometimes, like now, and blew through him like the November wind. It left him shaking, like now. He couldn’t enter the sanctuary while the fear gripped him. The Demon was attracted to fear.

It was all the Witch’s fault that he was having a panic attack. He needed to turn his fear into hate but not by thinking about the Witch directly. It would not be wise to call up any specific images. So he stood at the stop
light a while longer, making himself hate all women until he was good and angry. Then he smiled and crossed the street and went into the building that looked like a warehouse on the outside. But inside, it was heaven and hell on earth.

It was dark inside, of course, but warm. The Disciple didn’t notice the warmth at first because there were three of the Angel’s slaves squatting near the door eating fast-food hamburgers and fries. The scent of the cooked meat and greasy potatoes gagged him and sent a wave of dizziness through him that nearly brought him to his knees. He shouldn’t have worried about fighting down his fear on his own when all he needed to do was step inside and have everything but nausea driven out of him. The trio were laughing and talking among themselves. They were covered in bite marks, scratches, and bruises, and happy as clams about it, the little sluts. They didn’t take the ceremonies with the seriousness and gravity the sacrament deserved. But, then, they were slaves; they weren’t going to live forever. The Angel took their blood and their bodies, and that was enough for them. They gave the Prophet everything else, bringing him everything they earned or stole. They were only slaves, but his was a greater calling, and he paid them no mind as he passed though he heard their sneering comments behind his back.

He went up the two flights of metal stairs and through the small rooms that had once been connected offices but now led inexorably, door by door, to the innermost sanctuary, to the Holy of Holies where the Angel slept. The Angel never looked upon the sun. The Prophet said
the sun could not bear it. The Disciple knew only that he needed to be near the Angel who gave him life. It had been too many days. He was growing weak. If he didn’t feel the touch of the Angel soon, he’d be driven to the abomination of having to taste and swallow the same earthly swill as the slaves gobbled downstairs.

Pain twisted through his guts at the thought of being forced to eat like that. The spasm was so sharp that it drove him to his knees only a few feet away from the sanctuary door.

It was the Vessel who found him there and nudged him with his foot. “Pitiful.”

The Disciple looked up, then was caught by a fresh wave of dizziness as the Vessel reached down and hauled him to his feet.

“Come on. You’re wanted.” The Vessel pushed the Disciple before him into the sanctuary and shut the door after them. There were no windows in the sanctuary. Scarves had been draped over the long strips of fluorescent overhead lights, softening and diffusing their harsh white glow. The Prophet and the Demon were there, sitting on the altar, arguing, as usual. The Angel slept in the wide bed in the corner, a girl on either side of him. Whatever was said or shouted would not disturb him now.

“We need more deaths,” the Demon said as he banged a huge fist down on the altar. “At least one a night until the Night of Knives. Then a hundred must die all at once.”

“We can’t,” the Prophet answered. “You know we can’t. My way is simpler. Using the Vessel—”

The Demon sneered. “We must. Your magic isn’t strong enough to perform the Ceremony using only a Vessel with what we’ve been doing.”

The Prophet drew himself up angrily. “My magic is strong enough for anything!” He pointed at the Angel. “We have all we need right here. I brought him to us.”

“We need a huge store of energy. Only death brings us the energy we need.”

“We’ll have enough with the Vessel.”

“No we won’t.”

“You’re a glutton. You only want to feed.”

“Weak mortal.”

The Prophet laughed. “You’re as mortal as I am—but uglier.”

“And hungry. But it’s your weakness that we have to counter.”

“Neither of us will be mortal much longer. We have the secret and the key. You need patience.”

“You need power.”

The Vessel moved forward as the argument continued, to stand before the Prophet and the Demon. The Disciple inched closer to the bed, alert and listening, but his rapt gaze was on the sleeping Angel’s beautiful, bloodstained face.

“What about tonight?” the Vessel asked. “Do we do one tonight?”

“Yes,” the Prophet and Demon said together.

The Vessel laughed. “That’s all I care about.” He rubbed his hands together. “Doing it.”

“You! Get over here!” the Demon called.

The Disciple reluctantly left off worshiping the Angel
and came to kneel before the Prophet and the Demon. His knees sank deeply into the thick Oriental rug before the altar. He bowed his head as much to avoid looking at the Demon as to show respect.

“You look like shit,” the Prophet said.

“He’s starving himself to death,” the Vessel said from behind him. “Idiot.”

“We need you.” The Prophet’s voice was kindly. He reached down and touched the Disciple on the shoulder. “You need the Angel’s blood, don’t you?”

The Disciple dared to raise his gaze from the patterned rug. “Please let me taste eternity tonight.”

“You’re going hunting,” the Demon said. “And watching the Vessel’s back during the sacrifice.”

“He’ll pass out on me if he isn’t fed first,” the Vessel spoke up. The Vessel had no qualms about speaking to the Demon. The Disciple would have been grateful for the Vessel’s words if he didn’t hate him.

The Prophet touched the Disciple’s cheek. “It’s not so long until sunset.” He smiled. “You can greet the Angel when he wakes.”

“We need the Angel for the ceremony,” the Demon protested.

“A light snack won’t hurt him,” the Prophet answered. The Vessel snickered.

“Light snack.” The Demon’s harsh laughter rang through the sanctuary. The Demon’s huge foot shot out. The kick took the Disciple high in the chest and knocked him halfway across the room. He was too weak to rise. The room spun faster and faster. They all laughed.
Before he passed out, he heard the chuckling Demon say, “He’s light enough, all right.”

It wasn’t that far between Portland and Seattle, not in actual miles. You got on Interstate 5 and drove for a while and there you were. Psychologically, though . . .Physically, Char hadn’t been to Seattle since the CD on her car stereo was released.
Empire
came out sometime around 1990, right? That was a long time ago, in human terms at least. Even in strigoi terms, she’d been through two lifetimes in a little over a decade, which was not only unusual, it was desperately unfair.

“For a tender, ladylike person such as myself,” she said, though she had to shout to even hear herself over the heavy metal music filling the car. Her plum-colored Cavalier was not in the best condition, but the sound system was good. Jimmy Bluecorn had installed it himself.

Jimmy. Jimmy and Seattle were inseparable, and he was the reason it had taken her two days to work up the gumption to go home and face the places that would be empty without him. Finding Daniel was important, but searching Seattle was going to be one long, constant, wrenching reminder. If nothing else, it would be a reminder that she was not good at shedding past lives the way snakes shed skins, like proper vampires were supposed to. They used the owl as their symbol—some sources said it had something to do with Athena, others said it was a medieval adoption of—well, never mind the research. The point was, Char thought a snake
symbol would be a more appropriate heraldic emblem for her kind than the owl.

Jimmy liked owls. He’d even gotten involved in the whole tree-hugger save the spotted owl controversy. He’d said it was his duty to protect his people’s totem animal, but she knew he just liked raising hippie hell. Jimmy had taught her a lot about raising hell and having fun and—

Sometimes weeks would go by without her thinking of Jimmy. Sometimes longer. “Decades,” she said now, knowing it was a ridiculous lie. But if she couldn’t lie to herself in the privacy of her own car as she drove down a mountainside at sixty miles an hour in a blinding, cold rain, what was the use of living? What was the use of living, anyway, without Jimmy? She’d been asking herself that even before the change came and he’d had to leave her.

“Decades,” she said again, with no bravado this time.

Decades meant a lot to mortals. They were used to mark off the passage of brief eras and gave them artificial symbolism in this age of instant history. In human terms, she guessed she was an ’80s woman, though as a vampire, her significant changes had come in the ’90s. It certainly looked like the upcoming century was going to try its best to be more eventful than she liked, as well. She was a superhero now, Char reminded herself. She should welcome all opportunities for adventure.

“I want to go home.”

One of the reasons she’d settled in Portland was that Marguerite, who was Enforcer of the City, had let her. But mostly she’d stayed after Marguerite had helped her
make the transition from strigoi to Nighthawk because it was such a nice, peaceful place. Seattle had a cryptic, edgy quality to it, clinging to its steep hills over the deep, dark bay. A lot of things, bad and good, had spilled into the water around Seattle, and the psychic residue remained. Portland was a city for roses and walking in the rain without constantly feeling the need to look over your shoulder. The wide, powerful river washed it clean, took its bad moods out to sea.

Portland was a good town for pedestrians, too. She rarely drove these days and wished she could have taken a plane rather than renew rusty driving skills in the heavy interstate traffic. Vampires couldn’t fly. This had nothing to do with the fact that they didn’t have that particular supernatural power, which they didn’t, but because it was forbidden by Law. Unless they booked passage on the Strigoi’s private airline, which cost an arm and a leg. Sometimes literally. But the airline was for long journeys, and booking passage required the approval of the Council or a very large bribe to the companion who actually ran the three-airplane private charter operation. Char had neither the money nor the clout to make plane reservations. Besides, she was in no hurry, and she did own a car.

She packed a few things and her laptop and left Portland two nights after the visit from Helene. She could have left sooner, but there was the matter of psychological distance to deal with before she could make herself head back to the place where her life had begun and ended.

“Not ended, changed,” she said over the cranked-up
roar of the car’s stereo speakers and the constant swoosh-splat of the windshield wipers turned to the highest setting. She wiped away tears the way the wipers did rain and was glad she was alone—well, she was generally glad of that—as the skyline of her hometown filled the view before her. The sky was laced with lightning as well as city lights. To her left was the huge expanse of Boeing Field, as was only right and proper since the song rattling the inside of the car was “Jet City Woman,” which was close to being her favorite song. “At least from the good old days,” she said and gave yet another in a series of melancholy sighs.

She didn’t plan to keep this mood up for much longer. She couldn’t afford to and knew it. Nostalgia was a dangerous thing. Sentimentality even more so. She didn’t indulge in either very often, but this return was bound to bring out the memories and the longing. For what? The good old days? There was no one left from the Seattle of her happy days, not among the immortal population, at least. The bad ones were dead and the good ones gone. As for the human she’d been as child, teenager, and college student in this same city? She didn’t cry for the girl who had been Charlotte. She didn’t think about her mortal family very much these days. Char missed—

“The exit,” she snarled, and she quickly shifted the car over two lanes slick with icy rain to get into the correct lane for exiting the interstate at the next street. She could double back easily once she turned onto the city streets. She might not want to go back, but at least she had a place to stay. Jimmy had sent her the keys to
their old place when he took off for Alaska. He’d promised in his note that he’d had it redecorated and performed a banishing spell himself before he left. Technically, there should be no residue of
them
left in the condo at the top of a Capitol Hill street. She knew that there would be nothing familiar but the shape of the rooms, the view from the tiny balcony, the surrounding buildings.

“The sky, the earth, the sea, and my memory of thee,” she quoted, but Char didn’t know what fool romantic poem or song she quoted from.

Jimmy liked poetry and music. Loud music, sexy music, rhythm-section-driven guitar-hero rock and roll music. She’d tried to get him interested in classical music, but Jimmy said he’d been there when it was invented and it wasn’t classical to him. He also said Seattle stopped being fun when grunge caught on outside the local clubs, and he should have moved on when Pearl Jam got a big recording contract.

Char knew that Seattle stopped being fun when Jimmy was no longer there. “But that’s all right. I’m not here for fun.” She had a job to do.