Heart of a Warrior (14 page)

Glaring at Ivan, Marcos lit another cigarette and inhaled deeply. Ivan could imagine what Marcos would like to do to him if he ever got his hands on him. Ivan continued to press his advantage.

“What do you think would happen if it got out that you, a trusted member of the Board, sanctioned hit squads to clear territory to hand over to
females
? You know, Marcos, we male vampires are the last bastions of male chauvinism. I wouldn’t want to be you or the rest of the Board when this gets out.” Ivan shook his head and continued. “So, here’s how it’s going to go. Give me the girl. I keep my territory, and if you don’t piss me off, I don’t press the Send button on you and the Board.” Ivan hoped his bluff worked.

Marcos took a step forward. “If you did that, do you realize the carnage that would ensue?”

“As a matter of fact, I do. I was there during the Euro-Asian war, remember? No, you’re too young.”

“The government would never survive.”

“No, the
government
would, the current Board members, however…” He left it hanging.

“You don’t believe this bullshit, do you Marcos?” The woman, listening to the exchange, glared at Ivan.

Marcos’ eyes narrowed at him. “No. I think you’re bluffing. If you had someone in your pocket, I would have heard about it by now. Besides, I hold all the cards.” He held up his fingers and ticked them off, point by point. “One. I have the girl. Ask Annie what you should do. Two. We’ll hunt you down, and you know it. Three. When we find you, we’ll burn your bitch first while you watch, and then it will be your turn. Four. Well, there is no four. You’ll be burning in hell. Play it safe, old man, just like you always do. Just disappear. Take a walk and don’t look back.”

Marcos was right. They could run, but eventually they’d be found. That was later. Right now, Marcos had the girl. Annie’s mortal sister.
Shit, I’m screwed
. He’d have to work the deal, get the girl, and deal with Marcos later.

“All right. But I need time.” Ivan’s shoulders slumped, and he hoped it would fool Marcos.

“Good. I’m so glad you’re being reasonable. Tomorrow, I expect you to turn over your deed and disappear.”

“No good. I need a week.” Ivan shook his head.

“A week? What do you need a week for?”

“You have to take into account business days.” Ivan bargained.
Just give me a few days, you bastard
. “I have accounts, investments, and properties.”

“Three days, no more. Then I want you gone.” Marcos raised his hand, and the woman jerked the girl back to the car and pushed her in.

“How do I get in touch with you?”

“We're using Draco’s lair.” He pulled out a business card and flipped it toward Ivan. It sailed to the ground about ten feet from Ivan. “Reach me with that number.”

Ivan didn’t move toward the card. It would put him too close to Marcos.

“You give your word she won’t be touched. Not a mark on her, not one taste, Marcos.” Ivan growled around his fangs. “Or the deal’s off, and I will personally escort you to hell.”

“My word as an Elder.” Marcos nodded and climbed into the car. He slammed the door, and they pulled away, leaving Ivan holding a weeping Annie.

He let her go, and she sank to her knees. Walking over to the card, he bent and picked it up.
Marcos
and a phone number were the only things printed on the card. He turned it over, but it was blank, and then he shoved it in his pocket and walked back to Annie.

“Not my sister, oh God, not Amy.” She looked up into his eyes. He saw the fury in them. At him.

“I had to try to bargain,” Ivan tried to explain.

“You would have sacrificed my
sister
for your stinking territory? For a piece of this stinking
town
?” Her hands were fists as she stood and faced him, and pushed him in the chest. “You would have thrown us away, like garbage? Like we, like I, didn’t matter to you?”

He grabbed her by the wrists and held her. She tried to kick him, but he stepped to the side.

“Absolutely not! Understand me, Annie. I don’t intend to just hand my territory over if I can help it. And I have to make sure we
all
get out of this alive.”

“They have my sister. They hold all the cards.” She jerked her hands away and wrapped her arms around her body.

“Not all of them.” Ivan smiled. “I still have one or two left.” He took her by the arm and led her to the van parked a few blocks away. They got in and drove off. Ivan made several detours to be sure they weren’t followed.

He had a number of his own to call in case of emergencies. If this didn’t qualify as an emergency, he didn’t know what did.

Ivan found the number on his cell phone, listed under ICE, or In Case of Emergency. He hit Send. It rang three times, and then the line connected.

“Dmitri?”

“Ivan Cognovich, you old bastard. It’s been a long time, my friend. What trouble are you in now?” Dmitri’s Russian-accented voice still sounded like whiskey and gravel even after seventy years.

“I’m throat deep in it, my friend.” Ivan filled him in on the events at the frenzy. When he finished, he said, “Now I find out Marcos arranged to have the four of us killed to move some bitches in.” Ivan rubbed his eyes.

“Shit. There have been rumors of secret negotiations. I was afraid something like this would happen. Did they get everyone in the city?”

“Yeah, everyone but yours truly and a fresh convert.” Ivan leaned back and put his feet up on the coffee table.

“Shit.” Dmitri blew out a lungful of air. “What do you need?”

“First, I want to know if this was sanctioned.”

“Not that I know of, but there’s all kinds of shit going down around here. The Board’s in a panic. The females are uncharacteristically unified. Word in the tunnels is they brought in lawyers, and you know how nasty that can get. And they call
us
bloodsuckers.” He snorted.

Ivan frowned. “Can you help me? I need some muscle.”

“How many are you going up against?”

“I figure, with Marcos, at least eight, maybe a dozen.”

“Fuck, that’s a crowd, even by our standards. Who do you have?”

“Just me and the girl.”

“She’s new, right? Won’t be much help. Give them the deed and walk away.”

“I can’t do that.”

“You’d be going up against the Board, not just Marcos, you realize?”

“It’s the principle. If they can do it to me, they can do it to all of us.”

“I told you long ago, your honor would be the death of you.” He sighed. “When was the last time you went to war, because that is what this is going to be, my friend.”

“I think you know the answer to that, comrade.” Ivan slipped into Russian as if he’d never stopped speaking it.

The man on the other end of the line chuckled and replied in Russian. “We were walking hell, back then, Cognovich, do you remember? Death on two legs.”

“
Da
.”

“The streets of Warsaw ran with Nazi blood that winter. Good times, Cognovich.”

“Right, good times, Dmitri,” Ivan agreed. A long time ago.

Annie watched, gnawing her thumb. When she drew blood, she winced and then sucked it until it healed.

“I don’t know what I can do. Wait. Let me make a call. I’m going to put you on hold.”

Ivan looked at Annie. “I’m on hold.”

After a few minutes, Dmitri came back on. “Sorry. I can’t divert anyone to you now. Orders have just come down, everyone stays put. No travel allowed. Seems you’re going to have to handle this by yourself.”

“Let me guess, by order of the Board.”

“Right. The situation around here is very delicate. Everyone in the administration’s waiting for the fang to fall. The tunnels are empty. Everyone is holed up in their lairs waiting to see who is standing when the smoke clears and night falls. Word is there will be some changes on the Board of Elders. Sex changes, if you get my drift.”

Ivan understood. Self-preservation was the name of the game, especially for those who worked the inner tunnels of their kind’s sketchy pseudo-government. In their world, a power shift usually came with a body count.

“I’m not surprised Marcos is siding with the females. He always was pussy whipped.” Dmitri barked out a hoarse laugh. “And I emphasize the whip part.”

“Well, thanks anyway.”

“If you survive, comrade, call me,” Dmitri said.

“You too.” The call ended.

•

Annie could tell by the sound of resignation in Ivan’s voice and the look on his face that it wasn’t good news. He snapped the phone shut and threw it across the room, where it bounced off and hit the floor.

“Oh, Ivan. Your friend won’t help us.”

“Can’t. It looks like we are caught up in a major power struggle. The females are trying to force some of the Elders out, to be replaced by women. In the meantime, the Board has frozen all travel. No one can get to us. Conveniently.”

Annie slumped against the sofa. She watched Ivan. He looked so pale. She could tell something was bothering him.

Ivan leaned back and rubbed his eyes. “I need to think.”

“How did they know how to find my sister?” A dozen questions formed in her mind.

“You’re in the database.” Ivan sighed. “Marcos must have accessed it when he found out you were still alive.”
Which I told him. Damn.

“What database?” She sat up.

“The Elders have kept records for hundreds of years, for tax purposes.”

“Taxes? You pay taxes?” Her eyes were wide.

“Well, they call them taxes, but I look at them more like franchise fees. You get a territory. It’s assessed at a certain income level according to the population census. You have to pay a percentage to the Board to help defray costs, whatever those are. How you get the money is up to you.” Ivan missed the days when you could plunder without giving anyone a cut of the take. He’d built a fortune that way.

“What about the vampires without territories, like me?”

“Flat tax rate.”

“What if you don’t pay?”

“They’ve gotten lenient recently due to the economy. They’ll give you time to come up with the money, but not much. If you can’t raise it…” He shrugged.

“What happens?” She bit her lip.

“If you’re lucky, it’s quick. If you’re not, it’s a sunshine bath.”

Annie hugged herself. “Draco never mentioned any of this stuff to me.”

“Well, he wouldn’t. He was carrying you on his taxes as a dependent. You would have received the packet when you were initiated.”

“Packet?”

“It explains all the benefits, taxes, and consequences of being a card-carrying vampire of the North American Brethren.” Ivan laughed. "Sorry, but it's ludicrous what our kind have become just to stay alive. Well, almost alive."

“You’re joking.” Annie shook her head. “There’s a vampire bureaucracy? Like the AARP?”

“Want to see my card?” He grinned at her.

“Only if it gets you two-for-one at the movies or discounts at the mall.” She waved him away with her hands and laughed.

"It's good to see you laugh." He stroked her cheek with his fingertips.

“So this database, I’m in it?” She leaned forward, and her smile faded.

“Yeah. About five years ago, someone convinced them to go high-tech. They converted a bunch of computer geeks to do the work. It was perfect. They sit down in some dungeon in small cubicles working on computers all night.” He flashed a grin. “Instead of Red Bull and Cheetos, they snack on pints of red blood. It seems they found their lives little-changed. Except now they get laid.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“No. They had all the old written records scanned into a huge database. Every time one of us takes a convert under our wing, we fill out a form and send it to the membership department, and it goes into the database.”

“Like my name and address, which Draco got from my driver’s license in my purse?” Annie exhaled and sat back.

“Right. Date of conversion. Locations. Territories assigned. Date of death.”

“This is nuts, Ivan. Do you know how lame this sounds? It’s a serious blow to the vampire mystique.” She placed her finger and thumb on her forehead to make a large
L
.

“In many ways, it’s better than the old days, believe me. We haven’t had a major war in a long time.”

“I want my sister. I don’t care about anything, your politics or wars. Understand that.” Annie stood and faced him. “If you aren’t going to help me get her back, tell me right now. I’ll leave and figure out some way to get her out of there by myself.”

Annie’s heart burned with anger and determination. She would try it, and if she died in the feeble attempt, so be it. As long as her sister lived.

“I need to take a walk, get some air, and think, baby.” He strode to the door and pounded up the stairs.

— • —

This is one of those moments I hate.

Decision time. Draw a line in the sand. Put up or shut up. Fight or flight?

Ivan sat with his elbows on his knees in the darkness of the porch. The neighborhood was quiet. Nearby, a dog barked and some distant dog answered. The stars were out in force, the moon was just a sliver, and the night air had that special quality, when sound is sharp and clear. Peaceful. Not as good as the beach, but still good.

If he fought and lost, he’d lose the territory, the mortal, and both Annie’s and his life. Right now, with just the two of them, losing looked like a sure thing. If it were just him, fuck, he’d go out fighting.

If he turned over the deed and left, and if Marcos kept his promise to let the girl go and let them all walk away, would it be such a big loss? He’d still have all his money, property, and resources intact, just no territory. Less taxes to pay, on the one hand. On the other, it meant traveling a lot, from lair to lair. Never staying in one place too long. He’d lived most of his long years just that way. Would it be so bad to go back to that life? At least he’d have Annie.

Annie
. When did she come to mean so much to him? He’d been fighting his growing feelings for her since they met. Shit, he hated having feelings. They only complicated matters. And Annie was definitely complicated. He couldn’t lie to himself; he’d gone to her willingly. The moment he’d given himself to her, gave her control of his body, she’d taken his stupid, old, worn-out heart right along with it.