Laws of the Blood 1: The Hunt (5 page)

“I couldn’t go into specifics over the phone,” Joseph pointed out.

“I appreciate that. But I trust you, Miriam. I still thought it best to speak with you in person first.”

She smiled graciously. “Thank you. I didn’t think it would be safe for me to try to make it to the meeting tonight, knowing he might be watching me.”

“I appreciate your concern for security.”

“Did you see the Jeep outside?” Joseph asked Selim. “He’s taken to hanging around outside the house. He claims that he first saw her coming out of a theater at the Ontario Mall and fell instantly in love. That he had to have her. It started with letters and progressed to phone calls. He’s sent photos of her along with some of those love letters.”

“And your response?” Selim asked Miriam.

Joseph answered. “First Andy tried putting the eye on him, but the dude doesn’t hypnotize.”

“He’s gifted?” Selim asked.

Andrew shook his head. “A little. Not enough to do anything productive with. Enough to form this obsession for Miriam, though. Enough not to respond for more than a few hours to the deepest command I can manage. His
need
has too deep a hold on him for anything to break it. I did beat the shit out of him,” he added. “There weren’t any phone calls for three weeks after that.”

“I don’t want to go near him,” Miriam apologized. She dragged her fork across her dessert plate, gathering crumbs and frosting without showing any real interest in eating.

“She shouldn’t have to,” Joseph spoke up. “Touching a mind like that freak’s, one that’s full of filth aimed at her, could overwhelm her. It’d be like he mind-raped her before she could do anything about it. She’d be trying to tell him to leave her alone, and he’d be showing her all the things he plans to do to her. It would be giving him what he wants.” Joseph and Miriam held hands while his fierce, protective anger boiled around the room. They all absorbed the righteous feel of it, and after he calmed, he went on. “I thought about getting a restraining order, but Miriam vetoed that.”

“I should think so,” Selim responded. “You should have called me sooner, Miriam.”

“I didn’t want to bother you.”

She didn’t want an Enforcer bothering her happy little nest, she meant. He didn’t blame her. Her quiet household was happy with their intellectual pursuits and each other. Joseph taught at UCLA, Selim believed, Gary studied at one of the small colleges in town, Andrew owned a coffeehouse that catered to the student crowd, and he played folk music there on weekends to pick up girls. Miriam wrote history books and biographies. They all went to a lot of movies. Siri had talked him into joining them at a multiplex for a screening of
Fargo
, then he’d had to listen to Joseph going on for hours about some people named Coen, and he had neither cared nor understood about any of what he’d heard. Siri had enjoyed herself, though. Selim used the old excuse about vampires not socializing with each other the next time Siri tried to get them all together.

Selim wondered if this nest’s contented isolation from the rest of the Southern California vampires insulated them from the growing tension in the larger population.

“No,” Andrew answered his thought. “I’m getting hungry.”

“Do you think that anyone with the slightest psychic ability isn’t aware that
something
is going on?” Miriam asked. “I don’t think all the daydreams I’m having lately have to do with being watched by some annoying mortal stalker.”

“Even I’m antsy,” Gary spoke up. “Can’t keep myself from ordering rare steak anytime I go out . . . and I’m a vegetarian.”

“So, if there’s going to be a Hunt anyway—” Andrew began.

The telephone rang before he could go on. Gary got up and picked a cordless receiver off a wall cradle over the counter. He listened for a moment, then passed the phone to Andrew. Andrew listened, gave a bark of laughter, then brought the phone to Selim. “It’s for you, man.” He was grinning in that bright, sharp-toothed way the young cultivated.

Selim was not surprised when a deep, angry voice asked him, “What are you? A cop? Another one of her lovers? She knows how I feel about her having more men in her house. You better leave, or she’s going to be very, very sorry.”

“Well, someone’s going to be,” Selim replied. He switched off the phone and looked at the waiting nest members. “Does this . . . fucker . . . have a name? I need pertinent details before I can set it up for you.”

“We get to kill him?” Andrew jumped happily to his feet. “Cool.”

Like called to like often enough that Siri wasn’t in the least surprised when the big blond man walked into Jamba Juice, gave her a long look, then took a seat on the other side of the busy smoothie shop. She took note of him, then paid him no more mind. Her thoughts were on Selim, as was right, proper, and usual, so nothing else held her interest for long. Not in the mood she was in, anyway.

Three hundred and eighty-four days,
she thought sourly as she glanced through the shop’s wide side
window toward the tall old building down the street from where she sat. It was six stories high, took up most of the block, was topped by domes and fake minarets, surrounded a garden full of palm trees and roses and a high wrought-iron fence. It was an altogether hideous piece of architecture left over from the last century, a local landmark. Fortunately, its overdone facade was mostly in shadow now that the sun had gone down. She always sat at this side table because of the view. It was the closest he let her get to him in the daylight these days. The time was currently just past sunset. It was precisely fourteen minutes before she was allowed to approach him. He said he needed time alone when he woke up. “You know what I’m like until I’ve had coffee.” He used to let her make the coffee after
they
woke up.

They needed to talk about the last year. More than a year. Three hundred and eighty-four days, to be precise. And counting.

Not that I’m counting, of course.
“What is the matter with that man?”

She was going to confront him for sure this time, she decided. Point out that he wasn’t the only one with needs, wants, desires. It was just that he was so busy lately and—

Oh, stop thinking like a honeymooning companion!
She chided herself, just as the cell phone on the table beside her rang. Siri knew who it was before she answered. It was a gift with her. “Cassie, what am I going to do with him?” she demanded as she flipped the phone open.

“Slip a little Viagra in his dinner bowl?” her friend answered promptly. Cassandra and she had had this conversation before. Cassandra yawned. “What am I going to do about Sebastian?” her friend questioned Siri back.

That wasn’t a question Siri felt qualified to answer. After all, how many parents had to deal with a son who could have gone through the terrible twos as a serial killer? Not that Sebastian had, of course. Cassie and Tom were doing a pretty good job raising their baby. It
was just that no one knew what to expect from the first
dhamphir
born in the last six hundred years.

“What’s the problem?” Siri asked, as sympathetic as a woman who had no children could be to a friend with a rowdy four-year-old.

“His birthday’s coming up,” Cassandra answered.

“He wants to have a party?” Siri guessed. “Invite all his little friends over?”

“Can you imagine Tomas letting him do that? It took me a year to talk Tomas into letting Sebastian play with anyone but the . . . help. He still throws one of his glaring fits every time I schedule a trip to the park for Sebastian.”

“He’s just being a concerned parent,” Siri soothed.

“I know. Do you know what else Sebastian wants? He wants to go to school like everybody else. Where does he get these ideas?”

Siri shrugged. “I don’t know.
Sesame Street
?”

“Probably.” Cassandra sighed. “I know there’s nothing you can do to help me, girlfriend, but you’re the only one I can vent with.” Cassandra wasn’t even supposed to do that with another vampire’s companion, but neither of them mentioned that. Besides, everybody talked to Siri. It was well known that she was the reason the Hunter was so well-informed. That sort of made it okay to bend the rules. “I better go,” Cassandra said. “Gotta see to the needs of the lord and master.”

“Tom or Sebastian?”

“Both. Bye.”

When Siri put the phone down, the blond man was sitting on the other side of the table from her. He’d been there for several seconds, but she’d been ignoring him. Oh, he’d moved swiftly, silently, and cloaked in a cloud of telepathic you-don’t-see-me projected thoughts, but Siri was good. The best in L.A. This guy was good, too, but he was still just some vamp’s companion, while she was the City Enforcer’s girl.

“You’re wearing sunglasses at night,” she said. “Very Hollywood, but not the way we do things around
here.” She didn’t recognize him, and she knew everybody. “You’re new in town.” She held out her hand. He kissed it. Very old-world. “I’m Siri.”

“I know.”

The accent was old-world, too. “And you are?”

“Yevgeny.”

“Nice to meet you.” She glanced at her watch. She was very new-world. “I’ve got five minutes. What can I do for you? Make it fast.”

“Y
OU COULD HAVE
told me you weren’t going to be at home.”

“I forgot how far it was to Claremont. It’s not as easy as it used to be to take shortcuts; jumping over all that razor wire on fences takes time. Then we ended up working late. Miriam has a spare bedroom. She let me stay through the day.”

“Gary could have driven you home.”

“In the trunk of his car? I don’t think so.”

“So you took a commuter train home? You couldn’t call and tell me where you were?”

“I called.”

“To have me pick you up at Union Station. I was waiting for you in Pasadena.”

“You didn’t have to be.”

“I always do. You know that.”

Selim stared out the windshield as they waited for the streetlight to change. He watched a bus lumber by. The headlights of the Mercedes raked across the ad for an upcoming blockbuster movie painted on the bus’s side. Something mind-numbing, with lots of explosions, he supposed, from all the flames boiling up in the
background of the advertisement. The sight of the flames lingered in his mind after the bus was gone. Or maybe it was Siri’s seething fury that ignited images of fire. The girl could project when she wanted to. The girl could do anything she wanted to, he thought proudly. She was the most amazing woman he’d ever known, even if he hadn’t told her so recently.

Maybe that was what this was all about. From his point of view, he’d simply behaved in a logical manner. He had a busy evening ahead; a run home as soon as he woke after sunset would have been tiring. His actions made perfect sense, but women were strange. Maybe he shouldn’t even have had her drive him now, but she knew where to find this Geoff Sterling, which saved him the trouble of hunting the strig down on his own. All he had to do was show up and act omnipotent. That was another wonderful thing about Siri; she always made him look good.

“I was inconsiderate,” he admitted. “I’m sorry.” Damn it! He wasn’t supposed to do that. He was the vampire. She was the companion.

“I’m supposed to await with breathless eagerness on your beck and call.”

“I was just going to think that.”

“Never complain or ask questions or make demands.”

“That, too.”

Her small hands were white-knuckled on the steering wheel. “I do.”

“Yeah. Right.”

“I would if you’d let me.”

“You have better things to do with your life than await on my beck and call. With or without breath.”

She snarled and swung around in the seat to face him. “I hate you.”

He ignored her blistering look and ruffled a hand through her short red hair. “Sure you do.” Behind them, people were honking their car horns. “Light changed, Siri. Drive.”

“Yes, master,” she mimicked an Igor accent. Her foot came down hard on the accelerator. “Driving, master.”

He drove her crazy! He knew he drove her crazy, and he didn’t care. He thought it was funny. Thought she was funny.
Life,
she thought,
after three hundred and forty-eight days, is not funny. Okay, sometimes it was.
She wasn’t one who could stay despondent, or even angry, for long, especially not when she was around Selim. But he was driving her crazy.
“I was inconsiderate. I’m sorry.”
Yes, he was; and no, he wasn’t. She growled, deep in her throat. Sometimes she just wanted to rip his throat out!

“Going to have to get you to a vet, girl, if you keep that up.”

Any other time she would have laughed. Now she just kept her attention on the road, resentment glowing like a hot coal deep inside her. She’d get over it, she knew she would. In a few minutes. There was work to be done. In the meantime, she nursed her hurt and kept the things she’d been going to tell him about Yevgeny to herself.

“Get in the car.”

Siri heard Selim through the closed window of the Mercedes and couldn’t stop the smile. His voice was low, menacing, dangerous, utterly butch. And a complete turn-on. That wasn’t the reaction Selim received from the young strig outside.