Companions

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COMPANIONS

Laws of the Blood 03

by

Susan Sizemore

CONTENTS

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Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Selena Crawford is a Chicago homicide detective. She is also the unwilling companion of Istvan, chief of the Enforcers. By the letter of the law, a vampire can do whatever he wants with his companion — and most do. In Selena's case, however, Istvan wants as little to do with her as she does with him. And though they cannot deny the bloodbond that drives them together in passion, they do their best to avoid one another…

That is, until they both find themselves investigating the murder of a vampire. How they must put their feelings aside to find the killer and maintain the secrecy of the vampire race. But when they find the killer and learn her motive, the threat turns out to be much more serious — and much closer to home…

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

LAWS OF THE BLOOD: COMPANIONS

An Ace Book / published by arrangement with the author

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PRINTING HISTORY

Ace mass-market edition / October 2001

All rights reserved.

Copyright © 2001 by Susan Sizemore Cover art by Miro Sinovcic.

This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission. For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc. 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10.014.

Visit our website at www.penguinputnam.com

Check out the ACE Science Fiction & Fantasy newsletter and much more on the Internet at Club PPI!

ISBN: 0-441-00.875-5

ACE* Ace Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

a division of Penguin Putnam Inc. 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10.014.

ACE and the "A" design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

For my dear Madison. Much love, March

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The companion is a vampire's property. A vampire may do with a companion as he or she will. It
is death to a companion who attempts to harm a vampire.

IN THE LAND BEYOND THE FOREST, 1457

He was a Roma peasant, but the boyars across the campfire were afraid of him. He was not surprised at their fear, but having a pair of nobles in their furs and jewels, with heavy swords on their belts, come humbly into the camp of his familia, did make him curious. Curious or not, he did not make it easy for the boyars by asking them what they wanted. He sat across from them, well back from the fire so that his face was shadowed, and ate roasted chicken in silence while they got up the courage to say what it was they wanted.

The rest of his familia gathered behind the boyars, staring at them. He was aware of the eyes of his people, their thoughts and feelings, always so aware that he had stopped paying much attention to them a long time ago. He knew they feared he'd brought them trouble and hoped that he'd bring them wealth.

When strangers had sought him out in the past, he'd always come back with gold. But no one had ever come to him before tonight that was not one of the Roma people.

Finally, one of the boyars tugged on his thick beard and said, "Are you the
dhamphir?"

It was his oldest uncle in the crowd standing behind the seated boyars who cackled, and answered,

"He'd better be, for he doesn't look like any Roma we've seen before."

He was tall. He was blue-eyed. But
gajo
soldiers raped Roma women all the time. Who knew who his grandfathers were? His parents, though, everyone knew who his parents were.

"He is
dhamphir."
The words came from his mother. If she said it was true, it was true.

This assertion brought the other boyar to his feet. His jaw jutted out proudly, and his hand was on his gold-chased sword hilt. "The prince has sent us to bring you to him."

While the rest of his familia gasped, he considered what the boyar had said. The prince was not a man to be disobeyed, not if you didn't want your hat nailed to your head or a stake stuck up your ass. The prince sending for a Roma peasant was seriously bad news for that peasant. Unless, of course, that peasant was a
dhamphir.
But if the prince had need of a
dhamphir,
that was seriously bad news for the prince.

He did not fear the prince; he feared nothing, either mortal or demon, but he was mindful that the existence of all Roma was precarious. He would not put his familia and his tribe in danger by refusing to go with the boyars. He tossed aside chicken bones and got to his feet.

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"I will go with you."

He didn't go with the boyars only because of concern for his people. He went because he wanted to see what sort of trouble Vlad the Impaler had gotten himself into.

"Do you act on your feelings,
dhamphir?"

The prince expected no answer just yet. When he did speak, the only word the man seated before him wanted to hear was
yes.
So he waited, down on one knee, gaze on the cold stone floor, head carefully uncovered, and his body as still as death, to find what it was he would be saying yes to. It would be deadly dangerous, that was certain, otherwise the man who ruled the towns and villages and great estates would not have brought a landless road rat into his own bedroom to ask for help.

He didn't think much of the prince's bedroom. A man with the power to plunder the countryside ought to surround himself with piles of gold and silver if he was going to waste his time living inside thick stone walls. This prince didn't seem to need much more than a sure awareness of his place at the top of the world. He had a bed, a chair, and a fire in the grate behind him. The prince's clothes were rich, embroidered with pearls, but his bed hangings were shabby, and there were no rugs on the floor to ease the discomfort of a kneeling Roma with bony knees.

"I trust my feelings, always," the prince went on. Prince Vlad banged a hand down on the chair arm. His back was close to the fireplace, and he wore a heavy robe lined in thick black fur. "And my feeling about Tirgoviste is not a good one. Evil dwells there."

It was good to see that the prince was warm, but a cold chill permeated the
dhamphir
from the cold stone walls and the cold night air, but mostly from the fear he read in the great man he knelt to. Silence drew out for a while, and it occurred to him that the prince was not going to name the cursed thing that so disturbed his feelings about his capital city. The word was too dirty for his lips, perhaps?

If the prince would not speak the word, he might not want to hear it. So, practicing discretion, he said,

"The vermin I hunt rarely come into walled towns. They prefer drawing their victims to isolated places."

"So I had heard." Prince Vlad gestured sharply. "If it is true that it is their nature to live like wolves, what do I care if they thin the herds of the old and crippled?"

Because the herds are humans, and mostly Roma.
This prince was not shepherd to his kind, but he was.

He cared.

"But if, as I suspect, the vermin move into towns, perhaps into my own court, then I will destroy them."

No,
he thought.
Not you. You call on the only one who can destroy them.
He cared nothing about what went on in towns, but he cared about killing
them.
He had not stopped killing them since he first found out they were flesh and blood rather than fear and rumor.

"They never dwell alone," he said. "The true ones keep secret armies around them for protection."

"I have heard that."

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From where?
the
dhamphir
wondered.
Did one of them whisper into the prince's ear, feeding Vlad
some truth to use the prince to unknowingly stamp out a rival? It might bear looking into, but
later, after the prince's wishes were carried out.
It mattered not to the
dhamphir
who died first.

"They gather secret followers, you understand," he explained carefully. "People who appear innocent in the daylight, in the churches, in the beds of their husbands and wives, but live only to serve the darkness.

The slaves carry no physical mark."

Prince Vlad leaned forward. "But you recognize them? Them and their slaves?"

"I was born knowing them."

The prince pulled off a heavy gold ring and tossed it to him. "Show that, and you will be obeyed. Do whatever you must to cleanse the city. Destroy these creatures and their slaves, or I'll put everyone within the walls to the sword."

He did not try to explain to Prince Vlad that killing all the mortals within Tirgoviste would not necessarily solve the problem. Slaves could be replaced. Though he carefully kept his gaze lowered, he rose to his feet. "I will cleanse your city of the strigoi, Lord. This I promise."

The city terrified him. Not the evil that dwelled within but the size and very sight of the place itself. He'd passed through many villages. He had lived in a castle for a while when he was a boy, walled in among dozens of people. He had found it easy enough to cope with the presence of a few hundred in the stronghold of Prince Vlad. A city, though, was like nothing he'd imagined, though he knew well enough what such a place was. Tirgoviste was not even large as such places went. He remembered laughing at the unbelievable tales of a cousin who'd been to Budapest. He'd laughed even harder when that cousin made wild claims about the Hunyadi and even the Turkoman having cities that were greater still: huge walled places with thousands and hundreds of thousands dwelling within.

He wasn't laughing now.

But he wasn't showing his fear. He always claimed never to know fear, and did not like discovering he was wrong. He was angry with himself that a
place
could make him break out in cold sweat. There were too many streets within the thick walls, too many buildings, too many churches and inns and brothels and too, too many people. Their souls pressed against him worse than the stench of unwashed
gajo
bodies and the filth in the gutters.

The thoughts that came slithering into his head were mostly filthy as well, full of all those seven sins the priests spoke of, and some things beyond even priests' imaginings. There were very few wishes hidden away in the depths of his own heart: freedom, food, a barren woman for his bed who didn't fear him.

What he wanted to do in that bed with a woman who could not give him sons bore little resemblance to many of the imaginings that assaulted him as he rode through the crowds with the guards the prince had sent with him.