Laws of the Blood 1: The Hunt (32 page)

Something by Dire Straits, I think.
Valentine’s surface thoughts were terrifyingly calm. The emotions beneath the words she sent him were anything but calm.
Mark Knopfler once did the soundtrack for a movie I worked on.
She gazed helplessly on the people they couldn’t reach.
Dire straits is certainly what they’re in right now.

Dire Straits?

Siri’s gaze flashed to him, even though he wasn’t there. “Dire Straits! That’s it!” She laughed, an evil, nasty, triumphant sound, and whirled back around.

The music stopped.

She moved nearer to Yevgeny. “You don’t want to do this,” she told him. “You’re crying. You don’t want to harm a child.”

“No,” he answered. He turned his head but not to look at her. He looked straight at Valentine. “I don’t want to do it this way.” He waved the knife around wildly. His shout was a deafening roar. “Damn you, Valentine! I don’t want to do this! I can’t do this! I can’t go on like this!”

Yevgeny turned the knife in his hand, bringing the point of the blade toward his heart. At the same instant, Siri hit him in the back with a chair. She kept on hitting him long after he stopped moving, long after the blood from the wound in his chest had flowed into a wide pool on the cold, concrete floor. She swore and snarled and
laughed, and prayed, and occasionally kicked the still body of the man who had invaded her mind and threatened the child.

Selim watched until, after a long while, Siri finally grabbed the unconscious little boy and ran with him to somewhere safe and full of sunlight.

“D
ON
’
T LOOK AT
me like that.”

Selim continued to glare at Valentine, who was standing at the end of the bed. He’d only woken up a few moments before, with the last of the sunset, but she seemed to have been up for a while. She was dressed, her hair combed. Her eyes were red-rimmed. He wondered if she’d been grieving in her sleep, but the idea of any physical activity while sleeping was still too foreign for him to get his mind around. He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed.

After a few confused moments, Selim asked, “Where are my clothes?” He distinctly remembered dropping them on the floor when he stripped down to his shorts before getting into bed. They were not where he’d left them. He glanced back at Valentine. “Well?”

“In the laundry. Darling, those chinos and shirt were covered in blood, remember? I’m not letting you out of the house like that.”

He stood up. Yawned helplessly, and rubbed a sweaty palm over his grimy chest. He was disgusting. “This is a ploy to buy you time, isn’t it?” he asked as she tossed him towels. “You know I have to find and dispose of
your darling
Yevgeny’s
body.” He sneered at the name.

Valentine pointed toward the bathroom as she wiped away tears with her other hand. “We have more important things to discuss.” She left the bedroom before he could ask what.

He came into the living room a few minutes later, feeling much better for the shower. He had a companion to find and comfort. He needed to talk to Don Tomas. He wasn’t through with Kamaraju yet. There was still the Hunt. Valentine needed to be watched like a nighthawk as she canceled plans to make this movie of hers. The last person he wanted to see was Geoff Sterling, and the boy’s problem was the last thing Selim wanted to deal with. But there Sterling was, seated on the couch, his head in his hands, with Valentine hovering over him like a worried nanny.

She waved Selim aside when she saw him. He followed her reluctantly to the corner where her desk sat. She pointed to Geoff. “The bloodburn is eating him up. We have to help him.”

Selim cocked an eyebrow at her. “We?”

She looked disgusted, distracted, and very, very unhappy. She sighed dramatically. “We. You can’t do this on your own.”

“Can’t do what?” Selim demanded. “Listen, Valentine, I do not have time for Sterling’s problem right now. He’ll be fine for a few more days. Not fine,” he amended as Sterling fell to the floor with a hideous groan. The boy clutched his belly and rolled into a fetal ball. Selim couldn’t stop the wave of sympathy for the young vampire, but he did try to ignore it. He forced himself to face Valentine squarely. “I have to put out some fires you started, woman. That’s my first priority.”

“As soon as your clothes are dry.” She took a step back to look him over in all his near-nakedness. “You aren’t going to save the world wearing only a pair of briefs.” She crossed her arms. “Even Superman wears a little bit more than that.”

He mirrored her gesture. “Can I borrow a cape?”

“No. You can eat breakfast, and we can make some plans while you wait for your pants. Half an hour,” she added before he could protest. “That’s all I’m asking for. Then you can rush off as heedlessly as you like—if you still want to rush off heedlessly, that is.”

Selim couldn’t keep from looking back at Sterling. The bloodburn had hit the boy fast. He recalled his own stupid, angry gesture the night before. “Stupid,” he muttered.

“Feeding him before he was ready?” Valentine nodded. “Yes, it was stupid. Now we have to deal with the consequences.”

Once again, Selim said, “We?” And how was it she knew about the burn? The feeding?

“It’s a family thing,” she said and led him to the kitchen counter.

There was a heaping plate and a full mug of coffee already waiting for him there. He hadn’t realized he was hungry until he’d wolfed down most of the high-protein breakfast. The thinly sliced meat was smothered in grilled onions, garlic, and mushrooms. Selim stared at the plate. He poked his breakfast with his fork. After staring at the remains on his plate for a few moments, Selim asked, “Who is this?”

“Oh, just some strig I had in the freezer. For years, actually. Why, is the flavor off?”

Selim looked from the plate to Valentine, then from Valentine to the plate, then back to Valentine. She had sounded so innocent. So very
smug
. “You’re not a Hunter.”

Behind them, Geoff Sterling groaned again. She looked over her shoulder, gave a sympathetic shake of her head, then turned back to Selim. “Aren’t I?”

He couldn’t take his gaze off the gentle little storyteller. She smiled. And changed.

Selim jumped off his chair. It fell over backward with a loud clatter. He pointed at the monster, with the fork still grasped tightly in his hand. “You’re—you’re—!”

“The Mother of all Hunters,” she answered around
a muzzle full of hideous fangs. “Retired.” She sighed, and her features settled back into human form. “Where the devil do you think you got it from?”

“But—but—” He was not used to being incoherent and didn’t like it one bit.

“Where do you think Olympias got it from? Amenarib? Patrician? Auliara?” she went on naming names, mostly of people he’d never heard of, as he tried to grasp hold of his fleeing sanity with both hands. She crossed her arms and looked at him sternly. “I know you never saw me as a Hunter. How often do you show Siri that face? Certainly not when you’re in bed with her.”

“But—”

“How?” She attempted to look coy and modest at the same time. “It’s a long story.”

He sat down in the chair that hadn’t been turned over. He managed to pry the fork out of his hand and put it down carefully on the counter. His heart raced. His breath came in great, sobbing gulps, like he’d run a marathon. He wasn’t taking this in—not into a mind already stuffed to overflowing with too many problems. There was a part of him—a raging, territorial animal part of him—that was deeply furious, bloodthirsty in the most literal sense, at finding another Nighthawk on his territory. Another part of him was shocked and ashamed that another Hunter had been on his territory for decades without his knowing about it.

“I don’t get out much,” she said. “And I haven’t hunted in California in years. You were having Mexican for breakfast, dear.”

She was so damned good, and she knew it. So confident of her power.

“I have every right to be.”

He snarled at her, but she only laughed. Selim calmed down, mostly because his curiosity won out over his instincts, his temper, and his chagrin. He leaned forward, resting his hands on the counter. He looked Valentine deep in the eyes. “If it’s a long story, tell me the abridged version.”

She put her hands on the other side of the counter. “It was a gift from the Goddess. I do believe in the Goddess; it’s just the practice of her religion that I gave up.” She took a sharp breath, as if to catch herself from going off on a digression. “Once upon a time, which is the best way to start a story,” she went on. “There were great crimes committed by our kind against humanity. We were born of humankind and had no right to abuse those who did not deserve the life and the death we brought. We were powerful creatures; many forgot all morality. Those who wanted justice for our kind, and for the kind we were born from, begged the Goddess for a way to control the evil ones among us. This was long before the Strigoi Council was formed, by the way. That’s another story.”

Another breath.

“The Goddess sent dreams and signs to the most holy among us. The signs were interpreted to mean that one of us was to perform certain rituals and sacrifices and trials and the Goddess would grant our prayers. I got the short straw, hon.”

Breath.

“All right, I volunteered. I was young and fearless and strong and righteously indignant about all the evil goings-on. I performed the rituals, and . . . changed. It was one of those experiences you never forget but never quite remember. I believe I actually drank some of the Goddess’s blood, but it’s all very fuzzy. Transcendent, but fuzzy.”

Selim listened to all this with a certain skepticism. A certain awe. A large grain of salt. But he didn’t disbelieve her. He’d seen her wearing the Hunter’s Mask, and it had nearly scared him out of his skin. Nearly given him a heart attack. He smiled faintly at the thought. That was what Hunters did, after all, gave heart attacks. He felt Valentine catch the thought. She laughed with him.

“How much of a hold do you have on me right now?” he asked. “Was . . . that . . . change an illusion?” She stiffened with indignation and lifted her hands
before her. Her claws came out . . . and out. “Good, God,” Selim murmured.

“Goddess,” she answered. She leaned across the counter to rest her hands on his shoulders, pricking the bare skin of his back with needle-sharp claw tips. “Do you want a demonstration?”

Selim shook his head.

“Good.” She moved away. “Because we haven’t got all night.”

Another groan from Sterling punctuated her words.

Valentine padded across the room to kneel beside the suffering boy. She took his head in her lap and ran her hands through his sweat-damp hair. “You’re just hungry, sweetheart,” she told him softly. “Don’t worry, we’ll make it better soon. Won’t we, Selim?” she added with a significant look his way.

Selim followed her into the living room. The bloodburn was so strong in Sterling that the air around him shimmered with heat. Selim stared at him helplessly; it was a sensation he was almost getting used to. It seemed like he’d been nothing but helpless since this whole thing started. Sterling’s back arched in a spasm of pain. Seeing the boy’s anguish drove the self-pity out of Selim. “Why is this happening so fast?”

Valentine shrugged. “Trauma, maybe. Maybe he has some Rom in his genetics. Who was his bloodparent?”

“I have no idea.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Her fingers kept combing through Sterling’s hair. “He has to Hunt. Tonight.” She looked up at Selim. “You can’t do it.” Before Selim could protest, she added, “We both know why. Unless you’ve changed since I met you—and I don’t think you have.”

For a moment, he didn’t understand what she meant. Then he sat down slowly, cross-legged on the floor. The thick carpet tickled his bare legs. He looked at Geoff Sterling. “Oh.”

“You’ve never had sons,” Valentine elaborated. “Have you? Never made a male Nighthawk, either? You can’t, can you?”

Selim rested his hands on his knees and took a deep breath. He probably looked like he was meditating. Inside, he was panicking at images of what was necessary in the making of any type of vampire: blood and death and . . . sex. He shook his head, looking bleakly at the other male. Revulsion twisted his stomach. “I can’t do that.” His gaze went to Valentine. “If I could—” He shook his head as bile burned the back of his mouth. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “I can’t. I thought there’d be time to get him to Olympias, or one of the others. But—”

“No time,” Valentine cut in. “You fed him, Selim.” The words were harsh accusation.

“I know he’s my responsibility!” Selim snarled back.

“Then why aren’t you helping him now?”

He watched the woman cradling the young vampire, comforting his suffering with her touch. He shook his head again. “I can’t.” It shouldn’t matter. He was too straight for his own good; he knew that. Too much so for Geoff Sterling’s good, that was certain. He focused on Valentine and realized that her concern for Sterling was real, but there were also streaks of triumph and cunning coloring her emotional landscape. There was a bright, considering glint in her deep brown eyes. “What?” Selim demanded. He reached forward and snagged her by the wrist. “What is it you want from me? What are you offering?”