Blood Bound (21 page)

“Stefan told you all of this?” I tried to imagine the conversation.

She nodded. “Sure.” She gave me a considering look. “Look, I don't know where he went, but I know he was keeping a sharp eye out on the local news and the papers. He had a map of the 'Cities and he marked where there was violence. Yesterday he was pretty excited about something he'd noticed about the pattern.”

“Do you have the map?” I asked.

“No. He took it with him. And he didn't show it to any of us.”

I slid off the chair. “Thank you…”

“Rachel.”

“Thank you, Rachel.”

She nodded her head and then opened the fridge again, dismissing me. I walked to the front door slowly, but no one else appeared, so I let myself out.

Andre was waiting for me, sitting on the hood of his car. He jumped off and asked, “Did they know anything?”

I shrugged. “They didn't know where he was, but I found out how he decided where to look. Maybe it'll help.”

I looked at Andre and wondered if Marsilia had left out the part about decapitating the staked vampire on purpose. It didn't take much thought for me to decide she had.

“How would you kill Littleton?” I asked him.

“Fire,” he said promptly. “That's the easiest way. Staking works, but you have to decapitate them afterwards.”

It didn't mean anything. From my question he'd have known I'd asked Stefan's people.

“That's not what Marsilia told me.”

He gave me a faint smile. “If you just staked him, she could capture him, make him hers. There aren't a lot of vampires, Mercy, and it takes a long time to make them. If Daniel hadn't belonged to Stefan for so long, he'd have died permanently. Marsilia doesn't want to waste a vampire—especially not one who has all the powers of a demon at his touch. If he is hurt badly enough, there are ways of bringing him back under the control of a more powerful vampire, like Marsilia. He would make her position unassailable.”

“So you intend to capture him?”

Andre shook his head. “I want the bastard dead. Permanently dead.”

“Why is that?”

“I told you, Stefan and I, we have been friends for a very long time.” He turned his face into the light that illuminated the driveway. “We have our differences, but it is…like family squabbling. I know this time Stefan was really angry, but he'd have gotten over it. Because of this sorcerer, I will never get the chance to make peace with him.”

“You are so certain Stefan is gone?”

Stefan's VW Bus was parked off to the side of the garage, covered by a tarp to protect its unusual paint job. What kind of vampire drove an old bus painted like the Mystery Machine? Last Christmas I'd gotten him a life-sized Scooby Doo to ride in the passenger seat.

He must have heard the answer I wanted in my voice because he shook his head slowly at me. “Mercedes, it is difficult to keep a human captive. It is almost impossible to imprison a vampire. Stefan has ways…I don't think that he could be imprisoned—yet he has not come home. Yes, I think he is gone. I will do everything I can to see that this Littleton follows him.”

They made too much sense, he and Adam. I had to believe that Stefan was gone—and Ben and the young vampire I'd only met the once were dead as well. If I wasn't going to cry in front of him, I had to leave really soon.

I glanced at my watch. “I have to be up in three hours.” If I knew how long it was going to take us to find the sorcerer, I'd have had Zee take over the shop, but I couldn't afford to do that for more than a few days a month, not and keep up on the mortgage and food.

“Go home and go to bed.” He took out a slim leather case and withdrew a card, handing it to me. “My cell number is on this. Call me tomorrow at dusk and we can discuss where to go from here.”

I tucked the card in my back pocket. We'd stopped at the door to my car so I opened it and started to sit down when I thought of another question.

“Stefan said that Littleton was new. Does that mean there's another vampire controlling him?”

Andre inclined his head. “A new vampire is under the control of his maker.” He gave me a smile that was faintly bitter. “It's not willing service. We all have to obey our maker.”

“Even you?”

He gave a short, unhappy bow. “Even I. As we get older and accumulate power, though, the control diminishes. Or when our makers die.”

“So Littleton is obeying another vampire?”

“If the vampire who made him isn't dead, he should have to obey him.”

“Who was Stefan's maker?”

“Marsilia. But Stefan never had to play slave as the rest of us did.” There was sheer envy in his voice as he said, “He was never a thrall. It happens sometimes, but such vampires are always killed upon their first rising. Any other vampire would have killed Stefan as soon as it was apparent that he wasn't under their control, but Marsilia was in love. He gave her an oath of obedience, though, and to my certain knowledge, he never broke it.” He looked out at the night sky.

Abruptly, he shut my door. “Go home and go to sleep while you still can.”

“Did Marsilia make you too?” I asked, turning the key in the ignition.

“Yes.”

Damn it, I thought, this was so stupid. I didn't know
anything
about vampires and
I
was going to bring down one who had taken out two vampires and a pair of werewolves? I might as well shoot myself in the head right now. It would save time and effort.

“Good night, Andre,” I told him and drove out of Stefan's driveway.

 

I was tired enough to sleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. I dreamed of Stefan's poor menagerie, doomed, if Rachel was to be believed, by Stefan's death. I dreamed of Stefan driving his bus with that silly stuffed Scooby Doo perched in the passenger seat. I dreamed he tried to tell me something but I couldn't hear it over the noise.

I rolled over and buried my head under the pillow but the noise continued. It wasn't my alarm. I could go back to sleep. I was tired enough that even dreaming of dead people was preferable to being awake. After all, Stefan was as dead and gone when I was awake as when I was sleeping.

It wasn't a really loud sound. If it had been less irregular, I think I could have ignored it.

Scritch. Scritch—scritch.

It was coming from my window near the bed. It sounded like the rosebush that had grown outside of the window of my mother's home in Portland. Sometimes it would brush against the house at night and scare me. I wasn't sixteen anymore. There was no one but me who could get up, go outside, and move whatever it was so I could go to sleep.

I pulled the pillow tighter over my ears. But there was no blocking the noise. Then I thought—
Stefan?

In an instant I was fully awake. I threw the pillow on the floor, sat up in a rush, and turned to press my face up against the window and look out.

But there was someone's face already pressed up against the window. Someone who wasn't Stefan.

Gleaming iridescent eyes stared at me through the glass, not six inches from my own. I shrieked Samuel's name and jumped out of bed, away from the window. It wasn't until I was crouched and shaking in the center of my bedroom floor before I remembered that Samuel was still over at Adam's.

The face didn't move. He'd pressed so hard against the glass his nose and lips were distorted, though I had no trouble recognizing Littleton. He licked the glass, then tilted his head and made the sound that had drawn me from my sleep. His fang left a white mark as he scored the glass with it.

There were a lot of little white marks, I noticed. He'd been there for a long time, watching me as I slept. It gave me the creeps, as did the realization that unless he was very, very tall, he was hanging in the air.

All my guns were locked in the stupid safe. There was no way I could get to them before he could burst through the window. Not that I was sure a gun would have any effect on a vampire anyway.

It took me a long time to remember that he couldn't get into my home without an invitation. Somehow that belief wasn't as reassuring as it ought to have been with him staring at me through a thin pane of glass.

Abruptly, he pulled away from the window and dropped out of sight. I listened, but I couldn't hear anything. After a long while, I accepted that he was gone.

I wasn't going to be able to sleep on that bed though, not unless I pulled it away from the window. My head was throbbing from lack of sleep and I staggered into the bathroom and got out some aspirin and gulped them down.

I stared at myself in the mirror, looking pale and colorless in the darkness.

“Well,” I said. “Now you know where he is, why aren't you out tracking him?”

I sneered at my cowardly face, but some of the effect was lost in the darkness so I reached over and flipped the light switch.

Nothing happened.

I flipped it twice more. “Stupid trailer.” The breakers often switched off on their own—someday I was going to have to rewire the trailer.

The breaker box was on the other side of the trailer, past the big windows in the living room and the smaller one in the kitchen. The one in the kitchen didn't have a curtain.

“Fearless vampire hunter my aching butt,” I muttered, knowing I was too thoroughly spooked to go and reset the breaker unarmed. Stalking out of the bathroom, I opened the gun safe. I left the pistols in favor of the Marlin 444 rifle which I loaded with silver—though I didn't know if the silver would do any more harm to a vampire than regular lead. They certainly wouldn't do less.

At any rate, the Marlin would give me enough confidence to go back to sleep.

I shoved the finger-long bullets into the gun impatiently. If those things could stop an elephant, I had to believe they'd make a vampire sit up and take notice too.

I knew I shouldn't turn on the bedroom light. In the unlikely event that Littleton was still here, it would ruin my night vision and it would silhouette me in the light, making me a good target if Littleton the vampire and sorcerer decided to use a gun—unlikely considering how much he'd enjoyed killing that poor maid slowly. I wasn't enough of a threat to deprive him of that much fun.

I hit the bedroom switch next to the bathroom door, anyway. Nothing happened. The bedroom and the bathroom were on different circuits, they couldn't both be thrown at the same time. Had Littleton cut the power to the trailer?

I was still staring at the switch when someone screamed Samuel's name. No, it wasn't just anyone screaming—it was me. Except that I hadn't screamed again.

I jacked a shell into the Marlin and tried to take comfort from its familiar weight and the knowledge that Littleton couldn't come in.

“Little wolf, little wolf, let me come in.” The whisper filled my room, I couldn't tell where it was coming from.

Breathing hard through my nose to control my panic, I knelt on the bed and looked cautiously out the window, but I couldn't see anything.

“Yes, Mercy?” Samuel's voice this time, light and playful. “Sweet Mercy. Come out and play, Mercedes Thompson.” He had Samuel's voice down cold, too. Where had he heard Samuel speak?

Something scratched down the side of my trailer, next to the window, grating with the unmistakable sound of bending metal. I scrambled away and aimed the Marlin, waiting for his shadow to pass in front of the window.

“Little wolf, little wolf, come out, come out wherever you are.” Warren's voice this time. Then he screamed, a roaring sound of pain beyond bearing.

I had no doubt that Warren had made those noises, but I hoped he wasn't making them right outside my trailer. I hoped he was safe at Adam's house.

It was a good thing that he'd started with my voice—if I'd believed Warren was screaming outside my trailer I'd never have been able to stay inside. Where it was safe. Maybe.

The last of Warren's cries subsided, but Littleton wasn't finished with me yet. He tapped his way along the wall that was the end of the trailer. There was a window in that wall too, but I didn't see any sign of him, though it sounded as though he was tapping on the glass again.

He can't come in
, I reminded myself silently, but I still flinched as the metal siding of my home shrieked and the trailer rocked a little. Then there was a brief silence.

He resumed his tapping, though it sounded more like banging now. Each time he hit the walls, both my home and I jerked. He continued around to the back, the sounds he made changing as he hit the bathroom wall. One of the tiles fell off the shower stall and shattered.

I kept the Marlin aimed toward him, but I kept my finger off the trigger. I couldn't see where I was shooting, and my neighbors' houses were well in range of the Marlin. Even if I managed not to kill any of them, shooting a gun would be bound to draw their attention. My nice neighbors wouldn't stand a chance against a vampire, especially not this vampire.