Laws of the Blood 4: Deceptions: Deceptions (23 page)

“It is Olympias’s choice,” Rose answered. “Though it shows the sort of person she is. She’s a wasteful, arrogant creature, and always has been. What more do you need to tell me?” She sounded irritated. “I really hate the thought of going to sleep with her on my mind.”

“I’m sorry. If you’d rather wait until—”

“No. The meeting’s tomorrow night. Tell me now.”

“There is a companion in one of the nests in need of rebirth. Olympias has done nothing to arrange a Hunt to deal with this.”

“I’ve heard about that.”

“Forgive me. Of course you have. You’ve been in contact with the nest leaders.” He sighed.

“There’s more,” she prompted. “What?”

“This does concern you in a way, which is why I think you should know. Andrew Falconer was once a lover of yours, wasn’t he?”

“Of course he was.” She smiled as she picked up his feeling. “No need for you to be jealous, we were lovers decades ago.”

“But you still have fond feelings for him. I can tell.”

“As I’ll have for you when you leave my bed. What about Andrew?”

“Olympias’s slave talked to me about him. She told me that Andrew petitioned the Enforcer of the City for permission to die, and Olympias has completely ignored him.”

Rose sat up. “Andrew wants to die? How sad. But if that’s what he wants—”

“He’s sought out the proper person to fulfill his wish under the Law, but she hasn’t made the time to pencil him in on her schedule,” Bentencourt told her.

Rose shook her head, and her gaze went to the portrait over the mantel. “She’s ignoring her duty. I don’t believe it.” Another shake of her head. “Yes I do. What does the creature do with her time?”

“Apparently she’s pursuing the same mortal Lora has requested as a companion.”

Her attention swung totally back to Bentencourt. “What?”

“Her slave makes excuses, but that is a slave’s duty. I believe Lora is in danger from Olympias.” He glanced at the clock on the nightstand. At the same time Rose glanced out the window. Now that he was certain that
there was no time for Rose to do anything about it, he added his last piece of information. “Lora went out this evening, and hasn’t returned. I fear she might have set herself on a collision course with Olympias.”

“You think Olympias is going to kill one of my nestlings?”

He said, “Let’s hope not.” But the truth was, he certainly hoped so. Even if things didn’t work out as he hoped, he’d certainly given Rose enough worries to chew on while she lay helpless during the long day.

“Sara!” Olympias called as she entered the house. Bitch barely had time to make it through the door before Olympias slammed it closed. “Sara!” she called again, and dumped the body on the hall floor.

Her legs still ached, but the long leaps she’d taken to put as much distance between herself and the crime scene would pay off. Olympias knew that the police would be troubled by finding such a short trail of blood outside Falconer’s house, and the crime lab would be puzzled by the anomalies found in those drops of blood, but nothing would come of the investigation.

Bitch had joined her at some point during the flight. The dog joined her now as Olympias sat down on the stairs. The dog sat on her foot and leaned heavily against her. Olympias rubbed the animal’s ears. She could feel that the house was empty. “Sara!” she called out anyway.

Where had the girl gotten to? She was supposed to be here when she was needed. Olympias stared glumly at Lora. “To help bury the body.”

Why did I kill her?
She wondered.
Killing’s easy. I should have
—

“Admit it.”

All right.

I killed her because I was jealous. Also—Mike was hurt, and that infuriated me.

“If she hadn’t gone for him . . .”

If, if, if. Deal with what is.

“I botched everything. Acted like the greenest Enforcer out there.” Made it personal rather than justice. What was the matter with her? Mike Falconer, she supposed. Damn it. She always screwed up when she let herself care for someone.

Speaking of caring—Olympias lifted her head and shouted again. “Sara!”

“
H
ANG IN THERE, Mike, you’re going to be okay.”

If that was so, why didn’t he feel like he was going to be okay? The excitedly cheerful voice belonged to Grace Avella. He was horizontal, which was not a good sign. He was in the hospital, wasn’t he? It smelled like a hospital, antiseptic, over-air-conditioned air. He didn’t remember the trip to the hospital, but he did remember how he’d gotten here. “Shit.”

“Oh, good. You’re awake.”

He should have kept his mouth shut. Falconer opened his eyes. Grace stood over the bed. The expression on her pretty young face flitted from concern to curiosity to anger and back again so fast that it made him dizzy. He closed his eyes again, but when he did he became aware of a sensation that resembled someone knocking on his head like it was a door. He wasn’t interested in letting anyone into his mind right now. To ignore the would-be intruder, Falconer turned his attention back to Grace.

“I’m awake.”

“You don’t look so good.”

He didn’t bother replying that he obviously didn’t feel
so good. Some memories came back of various medical types poking needles into him and waking him up throughout the night to tell him things when he would much rather have been unconscious than informed. He knew he’d been given a transfusion, that he had broken ribs and several bones in his wrist were also broken. He was lucky his back wasn’t broken—it only hurt like hell. They’d stitched up the deep cuts they believed were from his being mauled by an animal, and were running tests to see if he had rabies. He didn’t think you could get rabies from vampires, but hadn’t mentioned this to the medical staff.

“The police want to talk to you,” Grace said after silence drew out for a while. “They’ve got an officer waiting outside.”

“How’d you get in?”

She grinned. “How’d you think? Nobody noticed me ’cause I didn’t want them to.” She wiggled her fingers and made woo-woo noises. “This psychic stuff can come in handy.”

“I thought I taught you to use your powers only for good.”

“I’m good.”

He grunted and pressed the button that raised the hospital bed to a sitting position. He noticed that the second bed in the room was empty and that the sun was shining outside the large window. His room overlooked a parking lot. How cheery. He was not currently in pain, which meant he must be pretty well medicated. His mind was clear enough, though. “Why’s there a cop outside?”

“They want to know what attacked you. Georgetown is jittery. There was a very large dog spotted in your neighborhood last night. And the media is speculating—as the media is wont to do.”

“Mmm. Anybody from the office waiting to see me?”

“I’m from the office.”

He raised an eyebrow sarcastically. It hurt. “Anyone who outranks me?”

She shook her head. “We’ve got it covered.”

Falconer didn’t like the sound of that, but let her go on without commenting.

“Sela explained to them how she was on the phone with you when it happened. The official story is that she heard someone break in. She said the intruder sounded surprised to find anyone at home. The intruder had what sounded like a large dog with them. From what she heard it sounded like a burglary that went bad rather than some sort of security breach.”

“And they believed her.”

“She only uses her powers for good, Mike. Or for you. We all work for you before we work for the Project. Except maybe Jeremy, but he wants to be in on exposing the existence of vampires for the sake of his career, so he’s hanging with us for the moment.”

Oh, God, vampires. Why had he told Sela about the vampire? Because he hadn’t expected to live for much longer after the vampire chick broke in, he supposed. Which had been a stupid excuse to involve his people in a dangerous situation.

“I don’t want to talk about vampires,” he told Grace.

Grace looked at him sternly. “Are you going to pretend that they don’t exist?”

“Yes.”

“Why? For the safety of the team?”

“Yes.”

“We saw them when we went Walking, Mike.”

“Linear anomaly.”

“Bullshit. Walking is accurate. Just because we didn’t want to believe in what we saw, doesn’t mean it wasn’t real.”

“We’re all loons,” he answered. “We had a mass hallucination.”

“That hallucination put you in the hospital.”

“I was attacked by a burglar with a large dog. Sela says so.”

“Your FBI friend called. He said the lab tests turned
up some weird shit. You want to tell me what he was talking about?”

“No.”

She was not deterred by his stubborn refusal to tell her all about it—and let her help. “We’re going to find them,” she declared. “The Walkers aren’t the only psychics in Washington, you know. We can get help.”

“No help. No taking this out of the group.”

“It’s already beyond the group. In fact, it has nothing to do with the project, or the government. This is humanity versus monsters. We can stop them.”

He remembered the one that had attacked him. He was a big man, and he knew how to fight. The vampire had been a small, fine-boned woman, and she’d tossed him around like she would a doll. And Olympias—Olympias had tossed the other vampire around with even more ease, and then she’d—

Ripped his attacker open with her bare hands and—

“Mike! Mike! Are you going to throw up? Do you want me to call a nurse?”

He blinked, and came back from the dizzy edge of nausea. “Stay out of this.” Her expression remained stubborn. She didn’t recognize that he wasn’t giving an order; he was begging her. Right now he knew there was nothing he could do to stop her. “We’ll discuss it when I’m out of here,” he said. “Please don’t do anything until then.”

Grace backed away from the bed. “We will discuss it,” she said.

It wasn’t a promise not to do anything. He knew he wasn’t going to get one. “Fine,” he said. “Thanks for stopping by. Don’t let the cop see you leave.” Someone was knocking on his head again. “I really need to get some sleep.”

He really did.

“Even injured you are one hard head to crack into.”

“I really wish you’d knock.”

“I’ve been knocking for an hour. Pretty girl, your
visitor. She looked familiar. What’s her name?”

“You don’t think I’m going to tell you anything about her, do you?”

“She seems to believe in vampires.”

“Lots of people believe in vampires.”

“And vampires believe in them until they get them to believe otherwise.”

“I’m not sure that made sense.”

“It seems a great many vampires believe in you. You Falconers draw attention to yourselves.”

“Animal magnetism?”

“Hot blood and sexy minds.”

“Falconers? Why the plural?”

“Long story. Vampires have lots of long stories. We don’t like to share them. With you I’m willing to make an exception.”

“Do you find this floating bodiless in space conversation as disconcerting as I do?”

“You want to go somewhere for coffee?”

“Sure.”

The next instant he was in the Afterwards Café, sitting across a table from Olympias. There were people sitting at tables all around them, all of them immersed in reading books and drinking coffee. No one was in the least aware of their presence.

“We’re not really here, are we?” he asked the pale woman on the other side of the table.

“Of course not. You’re on drugs, I’m comatose, we’re dreaming together. Which means the coffee is free, and it’s always fresh. Would you like to know the history of coffee?” she asked.

“I’d rather know what you are.” He noticed that they were both wearing black turtlenecks and slacks. She was wearing sunglasses. He experimented with the dream imagery, and his clothes changed into his uniform.

Olympias took off her dark glasses and looked him over critically. “Impressive. You learned that sort of control in the Walker Project?”

He picked up a large white mug of steaming coffee and took a sip. It was fresh, delicious, and scalding hot, but it didn’t burn his mouth. “The point of an information exchange,” he reminded her, “is to exchange information. What are you?”

“Sorry for what happened.”

“We both know what I mean. You saved me from the vampire chick. Twice. Why?”

“Don’t flatter yourself, doll. I was doing my job.”

“Which makes you, what? A vampire cop?”