Laws of the Blood 4: Deceptions: Deceptions (2 page)

 

“I had a situation in Chicago.”

No greeting, no preliminaries, no suggestion of anything between them in his voice. Olympias smiled as much as she ever did. There was glee in that gruff voice on the telephone, and animosity, and that said all that was necessary about their relationship. “Hello, Istvan,” she answered, brittle, bright, and polite. “What about Denver?”

“It was the same situation. Moved to the Midwest.”

“I don’t do situations. Certainly not Midwestern ones. What happened?”

“The bad guys are dead. Your secret is safe.”

Which was what she expected to hear. “It’s your secret too, Istvan.”

“So I’m told. Now I’m taking a long vacation.”

Which she hadn’t expected to hear. Olympias coordinated the activities of vampires in North America, and Istvan was her chief Enforcer. Istvan didn’t take time off.
“What’s the matter? Are you feeling all right?”

“I think it’s time to get in touch with my inner vampire.”

“You told me you don’t have an inner life.”

“I lied.”

“Where are you going?”

“A honeymoon.”

He had to be joking. “Did you bite a nice person?”

“A nice one? No.”

“Are you teasing your old mother?”

She wished she hadn’t asked, hoped he wouldn’t answer. He’d been hiding something from her for quite a while now. She hadn’t probed. She didn’t now. It would hurt her to discover the cord finally cut from the last great love of her long, long life. It was even more annoying to think she might be losing his very skilled services, even for a little while.

“Yes,” he answered her after a significant pause. Then he hung up.

Typical.

Bitch put her huge black head in Olmypias’s lap, and Olympias scratched the hellhound’s ears for a few moments, until she remembered what she was wearing and pushed the animal away. Fur on a Badgley Mischka gown. Great. Her own fault for kicking off her shoes and settling on the floor in the narrow front hallway of her house. The house rule was that what was on the floor belonged to the dog. Fortunately, Olympias had just returned from the fund-raising party at the Kennedy Center, so Bitch’s shedding on her clothes was aggravating more than disastrous. Sara wouldn’t see it that way, Olympias supposed, since she would be the one who took the dress to the dry cleaners.

Sara was overworked, and didn’t hesitate to complain about it. Olympias suspected she too would be overworked soon, if her best Enforcer was thinking of leaving the force. She’d suspected that was what he was calling about even before she answered the telephone. The phone
had been ringing as she came in the door. She almost hadn’t picked up the cordless receiver sitting on the entrance hall side table, since she’d had a feeling she’d be hearing from her most difficult offspring this evening. The foreknowledge had put her in a mood to bite something all night.

“You’re home. Have a good time?”

Olympias looked up as Sara came into the hallway from her office. “Until a moment ago,” she answered her slave. “Now I’m feeling a bit peckish.”

Sara smiled hopefully. “I’m always available.”

The girl didn’t know how tempting she was, but Olympias had learned the hard way to resist temptation. Olympias scratched the dog’s ears and relaxed against the wall. She had her black velvet skirt hiked up around her long legs, and the black and white floor tiles were cool beneath her bare thighs. “I’ll keep you in mind,” she answered Sara, but didn’t really mean it. Sara deserved other rewards for her service. Service. Olympias sighed. “You have something you want to talk about, don’t you?”

“Afraid so,” her right hand answered. “There are situations that need your attention.”

“Situations. What an awful word.”

“Better situations than crises. You could have a few of those if you like.”

“No thanks. Forget Istvan, I’m the one who needs a vacation,” Olympias complained. She pushed the big dog off her lap and rose to her feet. “There’s very little you can’t handle on your own,” she told Sara as she tossed the phone back onto the table.

“I appreciate your confidence, but flattery won’t work. You have to decide—”

“In the morning. Talk to me about—whatever—in the morning.”

“You won’t be awake in the morning.”

Olympias smiled. “How about that?” She glanced at the black dog that was eyeing her dropped shoes. Olympias scooped them up. “Your auntie Sara is being such a
pain—all right, I’ll say it—in the neck. I don’t want to play dictator tonight.” Bitch, of course, merely looked at her devotedly, then raced up the stairs ahead of her as Olympias went to change clothes. She could feel Sara watching her as she went, but ignored the mortal’s frustrated displeasure. The night wasn’t all that old. Olympias decided she had plenty of time to take a long run.

 

Whoever was behind Falconer wanted him to know they were there, he was sure of that. The cool breeze blew her thoughts to him, like a sharply scented perfume. Whoever she was, she wanted him to feel vaguely uneasy, perhaps a little threatened by the presence of a nearly silent stranger in the darkness. There was a hole in the moonlight where she was. He knew that if he turned around he wouldn’t be able to see anyone, even though the narrow cobblestone street was quite well lit. He had the feeling that she—and he was sure with no proof that it was a she—had been waiting for him to leave the house. She’d been watching him for a long time. From the outside, not in his dreams.

Falconer shook his head. This was all post-Walking paranoia, of course, some odd flight his imagination chose to run off on when the only objective fact was that there was someone walking behind him at one in the morning.

Falconer was a careful man, carefully trained as well, though his commando years were behind him. He was still confident of his own abilities, certainly not afraid to walk the streets of his own neighborhood at night. Georgetown was as safe as you could get in the Washington area, anyway. Sometimes it was said that there were more police than citizens in this affluent neighborhood of embassies and historic houses.

He’d been rattled and restless when he started out, distracted certainly, by more things than he wanted to think about, but he wasn’t so bad off that he didn’t soon realize that someone was following him. For a few minutes he
let himself think that the person moving so quietly behind him was simply going in the same direction, then the paranoia set in. It wasn’t a long walk from his house to the Canal. The long street that fronted the Canal was a popular place; the almost silent footsteps came from that direction. Maybe it was some lost tourist. Maybe he should pause and ask if she needed help.

Maybe or not, he began to walk faster. The darkness got darker, though the light from the frequently placed streetlamps still shone as brightly. When he heard the laughter in his head, there was an unmistakable undertone of sex to it. The silent sound told him this was neither dream nor Walking, but waking nightmare. She wanted him and would have him and then he would know what it was like—

Falconer did not panic, but he did begin to run. He went past Christ Church and up P Street, but from that point on he had no idea where he was. The world around him simply grew darker and darker and filled with the scent of a spicy perfume. Her arousal bit into his self-control, and her anger seared him. Anger at him because he refused to let terror overwhelm him, anger because her arousal sparked no answering heat in him. She could catch up to him anytime, she wanted him to know that. He believed it, but he didn’t let it matter. He concentrated, fought to punch through the surrounding darkness. He could hear his own ragged breathing, and the pounding of his heart, and her bubbling, vicious laughter. For a long time they were the only sounds in the world.

But they weren’t alone in the world; they were still in the heart of a great, noisy city. Even in the quiet evening streets of Georgetown, there was plenty of traffic. Hunter and prey were not the only people in the world. He wouldn’t let himself forget that. The thought brought him back to sanity. It lifted the suffocating darkness a little. He listened for the sound of cars and the pounding of his footsteps on the hard pavement, and not to the drumming of his heart. Falconer hunted for the outer reality and
found a wisp of it in the sight of a black gaping hole. For a moment he thought he was running toward the mouth of hell, then realized it was only the entrance to a park, a simple iron gate flanked by tall old trees. He pelted through the gate and into the silence of the park, knowing it was a mistake even as he did so, but he couldn’t make his feet go any other way.

She was close on his heels, and her hungry laughter grew even louder as the world narrowed down to the two of them again.

 

“What the hell?”

Bitch shot away from her side even as Olympias halted and swung sharply around at the scent of the hunt. She sniffed the air in the dark emptiness of the quiet side street, tasted the tang of fear and arousal with a swift flick of her tongue. It took less than a heartbeat for her senses to spread out and flow through every living thing in the crowded neighborhood. Olympias sorted easily through the mortals and discarded them as pale imitations of real thought and emotion. It was the electric wave of ecstasy and hunger from one of her own kind that tingled through her blood, bones, and mind, washing through her, jarring Olympias to the core. Her stomach churned and roiled so hard that she gagged and had to lean against a building for a moment to get herself under control. Her claws scraped against the wall, going through thick layers of grime and paint to gouge narrow channels in the old bricks.

She hadn’t experienced this for a long, long time, and would be happy never to feel it again. She brushed the reaction aside, forcing the old ache down. It was only residual lust, nothing to do with her. All she’d thought she’d wanted was to take her dog for a quiet run around the neighborhood; it seemed her restlessness had had another purpose all along. It was nice to know that her gifts were still intact, even if she didn’t have to use them all that often.

She took a deep breath and let her claws extend farther as she turned to follow the hellhound. She grew hunting fangs, as well, though she didn’t go so far as to make the full transition to her Nighthawk form. Nobody messed around in her town. Olympias kept pace with Bitch, coursing with her, a partner in the hunt. She didn’t need the dog’s help to follow the scent, but knew the animal might need her for protection if it tried to interfere with a hunting vampire on its own.

She passed the hellhound at the entrance to a nearby park. Bitch followed her past an overturned bench and into a stand of trees. Traces of mortal fear grew stronger with each step she took, but they didn’t lend any exciting edge to her emotions, and the vampire’s hunger disgusted her. The only thing she felt was fury when she reached the downed man on the ground and the creature kneeling over him.

The vampire shot up with a snarl, swung around, and leapt at Olympias. Olympias slammed the smaller woman against a tree with all the force at her command. The tree shuddered, wood splintered and cracked, and small branches and leaves rained down from the impact. The female vampire slid to the ground. Olympias stood over her and planted a Nike-shod foot on her chest. By this time Bitch was standing on the mortal’s chest, bared teeth resting at his throat.

Olympias ignored the man to concentrate on her own kind. “What do you think you were doing? You do know where you are? You do know who I am?”

The woman glared up at her, full of lust and hate and hunger, but with their gazes locked, Olympias had the advantage. She remained calm, but for the righteous anger that she let burn into the woman’s brain. Moments passed into minutes, minutes in which the intruder was allowed to know that Olympias was letting her live. She let the young vampire know that she allowed her to regain control. Finally, the girl’s glowing eyes changed back to something closer to a look that might pass for
human. Her hysterical need tamped down to a controllable level. The girl’s fury remained, but she managed to put it on a leash.

Finally, she answered Olympias. “I know who you are.”

“And you know where.” Olympias spoke very, very quietly. She stepped back and let the younger woman get to her feet. Bitch lifted her muzzle from the prone mortal’s neck, just enough to watch. The man took this small opportunity to try to move, but the hellhound let out a warning growl, and he subsided. Olympias left the dog to do its job. “I believe I have a dagger on me somewhere,” she said, and she backed the girl up against the tree once more. “You have five seconds to explain before I use it, strig.”

The girl bridled at the insult. “I’m no strig!”

“Three.” She put a hand under the girl’s jaw and pricked claws into her exposed jugular. “Two.”

“I wasn’t going to kill him! It wasn’t a hunt! You know damn well—!”

Olympias squeezed the young vampire’s throat. “Quietly,” she whispered. She was within her rights to kill this trespasser in her territory, but she felt the woman’s need through the heat of her soft skin and the pulsing blood so close beneath aching flesh. Her longing perfumed the night, stinking against more than one of Olympias’s senses. “Puberty,” she said in disgust, and took a step back. While the girl shuddered in reaction, Olympias finally took a look at the mortal man the girl’d set her sights on. “Who’s the bunny?”

“Mine.”

Olympias laughed at the girl’s intensely jealous reaction, and the man’s gaze slowly, carefully, lifted over the dog’s head and met her own. He shouldn’t have been able to move. He was big, broad-shouldered, and rough-looking. He had a wide, narrow mouth and narrow pale eyes. Someone had broken his nose once upon a time. She figured that standing upright he’d be at least six feet
four. The young woman who’d been chasing him was maybe five two, not that controlling him would have taken any effort for her. At least not physically.

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