Laws of the Blood 2: Partners (9 page)

Now she needed to be out on the street instead of staying home and thinking about the past. She knew full well that the older a vampire got, the harder it was to live in the present. But she hadn’t been a vampire that long, and an Enforcer for hardly any time at all.

Char went out on the balcony, coughed, spat, and heard another piece of steel shot splash into a puddle below. She shook her head. “If I ever find the man who—” She closed her fist around the balcony railing and let her claws come out.

What she needed to do was find Daniel and get out of this haunted town. With no solid clues to rely on and no better way to spend Thanksgiving, she decided to follow the path taken by her dream self during the day and have a look around the heart of the city. The place would be dead on a holiday evening, she reasoned. Dead of night in a dead town: what better time for a vampire to have a look around.

“Irony, someone told me,” she murmured as she went
inside for her purse and car keys. “It’s your strongest weapon. Use it wisely.”

He was not quite drunk. Haven never got drunk, though he sometimes let himself get close. This was one of those times. There was a bottle beside him on the seat of the Jeep, his shotgun under the seat, an arsenal in a locked case in the back and a voice in his head riding him mercilessly as he drove the streets, looking for the creature he was going to kill.

He thought that if he took a few more drinks, the voice would go away. But if he took those drinks, he’d lose his edge, and the voice that told him he was a coward would still be there when he sobered up.

You panicked. You ran. Coward.

“Did you see that thing?” Haven was looking at the reflection of his own eyes in the rearview mirror when he asked the question. He reached for the bottle, then thought better of it.

The anger inside him raged on as a stoplight changed from red to green. Haven drove the Jeep too fast as usual down the steep street. Used to driving rugged mountain roads, he didn’t pay much attention to Seattle’s civilized streets. He did notice the lack of traffic on a Thursday evening and put it down to good luck, for once. He’d gotten a call from Santini. He was on his way to meet him. He hoped the biker had some action lined up for them, because Haven really needed to kill something, preferably supernatural, if only to shut up his own carping inner demon.

He wasn’t a coward. He’d shot the thing, and it still
kept coming. He’d never seen anything like it before. He thought it had come to the clearing to feed on the dead woman and figured him for fresh meat. There had been no use hanging around waiting to get torn to shreds when you could live to fight another day.

That made a lot of sense, but it didn’t stop Haven from calling himself a coward. He was glad Santini had telephoned him. Haven needed someone to talk to. That wasn’t easy for him to admit. He always firmly maintained that he didn’t need human contact, but after what he’d seen in the woods . . .

“Screw it.” He reached for the bottle at the next stoplight. He took a long pull and decided that maybe all he really needed was to get laid.

C
HAR DID NOT
know where she was. She did know two things with certainty. One, that the night was colder than it ought to be on some streets, made no sense. The second was the identity of the woman standing behind her.

Char stopped hugging herself in the effort to get warm and turned to face Della. Krystalle’s companion had changed a lot in the last few years. Blue eyes looked out of an unlined, dark-skinned face, but her heavy black hair was now peppered with white and cut buzz short. The mortal woman who had been slender to the point of anorexia ten years ago was now rounded and curved, gone from elegant to earthy. Her age showed in her eyes more than in the gray-streaked hair. Della wouldn’t start to show mortal age for a long, long time. That was one of the benefits of being a long-time companion, even a lost and abandoned one. Della carried Krystalle’s blood in her, still enhancing the psychic gifts she was born with.

Della held herself with a wary pride where Char expected haughty disdain as they looked into each other’s eyes. Char had lied when she’d told Helene Bourbon that
she’d only heard of Della. For a while Krystalle and Jimmy had shared a nest. Krystalle had a roving eye and hadn’t tried too hard to control her companion. Della had been jealous and had made life hell for everybody in the nest. Char hadn’t lived in the nest, but she’d been more than delighted when Jimmy decided to get his own place and had her come live with him.

“You’re thinking about the old soap opera,” Della said after a few tense moments. There was a smile on her face but not in her extraordinary eyes. She waved her hands. “Water under the bridge, Hunter.” She gestured toward an open doorway. “Come in out of the cold.”

How did Della know she was an Enforcer? Char wasn’t exactly wearing a sign.

“I know too much of everything.” Della tapped her forehead and laughed softly as Char looked around. “Street’s empty of everyone but you and me. Come inside and have a hot meal.” She gestured again. “You look like you need it.” She laughed. It was a rich, warm sound. Warmth had been very alien to the companion Char remembered. Della wagged a finger under Char’s nose. “As long as you don’t eat any of my guests, that is.”

Della was right about the street being deserted. There were only the two of them on the broken concrete sidewalk. This was not a good neighborhood. Subdued noise and warm light spilled out from the open door in an otherwise blank-faced brick building, but there was no one within hearing distance. Char recalled passing a bar that was open a few blocks back. Now she was in a
warehouse area not far from the water, but whether she was closer to Lake Union or Elliot Bay she wasn’t sure. She didn’t remember where she’d parked her car. Somewhere along the line, she’d gotten completely lost, thoroughly disoriented, and ended up in the one place she hadn’t intended to go.

“You’re confused,” Della said and took Char by the arm. “Come inside.”

“This is a homeless shelter,” Char said, remembering what Della did these days.

“Then you’ll feel right at home, won’t you?”

Char almost pulled away, but there was no barb in Della’s question. Well, not much of one. Sympathy far outweighed the sting in the words. “I—we—need privacy. To talk.”

“You,” Della said firmly. “Need a hot meal and a bit of company. Spend too much time alone and you get weird when you’re crazy like we are.”

“We aren’t crazy.”

“Do you have a cat?”

“What?”

“Bet you have a cat you talk to just to hear the sound of your own voice.”

“I have a cat,” Char answered without meaning to, “because a stray jumped in my window and won’t go away.”

“But you still have a cat instead of a lover,” Della answered with a wide grin. “And now you’re blushing and I think your claws are starting to grow.”

Char knew Della for a tease but had never known her to be caring with it. “You
have
changed.”

“You should talk.” The humor went out of Della after she spoke. She stood very still, blinked back tears, then tugged on Char’s arm again. “Inside, Hunter. It’s cold out here.”

It was cold, all right, but not as cold as some of the places Char’d been this evening. This street was empty. Char looked up and down the blocks that stretched away under too-dim streetlamps. Empty, yes, but not devoid of—

Something.

She shook her head. “What am I missing?” She looked at Della. “What’s wrong with me?”

“You’re the hunter,” Della said, amiable expression going suddenly sly. Her body went stiff, her voice turned familiarly cold. “You figure it out.”

Char bit back the impulse to say that this was the Della she remembered. Della had been through a lot and had survived better than most. Char knew that if she’d lost Jimmy Bluecorn—

“Well, you didn’t!” Della dropped her hand from Char’s arm. “You’ve got it all. I have nothing!” She glared at Char as she wiped away angry tears.

“You’re alive.” Char grabbed the former companion’s shoulder. She kept her voice very low as she added, “And I know why.”

“But I didn’t think he’d kill her!”

“You knew very well what he would do. You like to pretend now that you didn’t.” Char hated the coldness in her own voice. She was appalled that she could be so callous. Well, honest, actually, but honest words could hurt. She liked to think of herself as more diplomatic
than this. She eased the tightness of her grip but didn’t let Della go. Her demeanor was a great deal gentler when she told Della, “You did the right thing when you told the Enforcers about the child abuse ring. You didn’t know so many strigoi were involved. Your help saved innocent lives.”

“Like Danny’s?” Della asked. Then she laughed. And when she stopped laughing, she was different again, back to the woman who invited a vampire in out of a cold night and offered her a free meal. “It’s Thanksgiving,” she said. “We always have food donations to spare on the holidays.”

Char didn’t hesitate any longer. She managed a stiff smile for the woman. “Thank you. I appreciate it.”

The first thing Char noticed was the smell of lemon-scented cleanser when she stepped into the entryway of the shelter. The room held a desk with an ancient Macintosh computer, a number of battered chairs, plastic shelving, and battered filing cabinets. The furniture in this room was old and scarred and nothing matched, but there was an air of comfort to the place. Maybe it was the colorful scattering of afghans and quilts on the chairs, or the play area with buckets of used plastic toys set up in one corner, or the warm blue and yellow tint of the walls. Char didn’t know what made the place seem homey. She had never been in a shelter of any sort before and hadn’t known what to expect of a place that took in the addled, desperate, and addicted.

“Most of my people have jobs,” Della told her as Char followed the former companion down a long hallway toward the rear of the building.

“Really?” Char heard a murmur of voices in the distance and the sound of rattling dishes. She could smell turkey, cigarette smoke, and about forty mortals.

They passed a succession of brightly painted doors along the way. Crayon and watercolor drawings decorated the walls between the rooms. Della answered, “Really. Not all homeless people are stoners and crazies. Some women who come here with their children have two jobs and still can’t make ends meet, so they have to sleep here. Those aren’t the regulars, though. Those are the ones who get on their feet eventually and find somewhere they can afford to live. The regulars.” She stopped and turned to face Char, speaking quietly, though they were alone in the hallway. “There’s some hopeless, shiftless, useless pieces of shit that wander in and out of here. Some have been leaving and not coming back lately.”

But did that have anything to do with vampires?
Char wondered. “Transients have a way of disappearing.”

“I don’t need to be reminded about the facts of my world, Charlotte.”

“Of course not. But—”

“Hush.” Della’s expression went from hard and not quite sane to warm and welcoming again. “Dinner first. We’ll talk later.” She opened the door at the end of the corridor and led Char into a large, crowded dining room.

It was late enough that most people were finished with the meal. Some lingered over pumpkin pie and coffee at a couple of long tables. Some were in the kitchen area cleaning up. A large group of women and children were gathered in front of a television on one side of the
dining room. A haze of cigarette smoke curled up from the people at the tables, but no one but Char seemed disturbed by it.

She tried not to cough or glare at the smokers. Della pointed at an empty table near the entrance, and Char sat down to wait while Della went into the kitchen. Char practiced putting up a mental barrier to keep her presence inconspicuous, but no one paid her any mind anyway, so she decided she was overreacting and quit it. Maybe no one was curious about her, but she was always interested in what was going on around her. She suspected she eavesdropped on strangers in public places because she was no good at making contact with them. She hated to think she was that pathetic and told herself she was studying mortal behavior—and in this case looking for suspects or some sign of what was going on in this town that might involve the missing nestling.

And there was definitely something wrong. That she couldn’t feel it or define it left her cold and frightened. It left her feeling like there were holes in her head—and who knew what might leak out if they weren’t plugged with some answers. She’d gotten lost in her hometown, Char remembered with a shudder as she waited for Della. It was not possible, but it had happened.

“What’s going on?” Char asked after Della set a heaping plate and glass of milk in front of her and took a seat on the opposite side of the table.

“You used to say please and thank you, Char-lotte.”

“Stop calling me that! And thank you,” Char added, almost automatically. She was even more hungry than she was polite, so Char the Enforcer set about eating
Thanksgiving dinner provided by charity in a homeless shelter while a mentally disturbed companion looked on with folded hands and a benign smile. Char was not used to surreal these days, even though surreal came with the territory. People who grew fangs and liked blood with their sex really should not be too freaked by anything the universe threw their way.