Heroes (8 page)

Something more important than production and distribution deals was going on out in the city. Something fit for a vampire’s energy. He hadn’t felt the need to hunt singe his blood for a long time. But the craving was there under the stunted, grieving surface, wasn’t it? He hadn’t wanted the way only strigoi could want since Moira’s death, or at least he hadn’t let himself.

“I would have given her immortality.” He ran a finger down the cool surface of glass, the claw extended without his thinking about it.

Moira had been so weak, so vulnerable. She’d never had a chance against the nest that hunted, raped, killed, and consumed her. Prey. Rightful prey. Damn the Laws, and all those who enforced them. At least the Enforcer of Los Angeles had seen the injustice, had allowed Geoff his revenge. So, he couldn’t damn all the Enforcers. He couldn’t be one of them, either.

The woman he’d held in his arms high over the city was an Enforcer. Or at least she was a Nighthawk. He wanted to see her again.

Like calling to like?
he wondered.

If nothing else, he wanted—needed—to know what they’d done and how.

If he thought about it hard enough, he could probably trace her. There was a scent about her, mental and physical, that was strong, familiar, and intoxicating. She’d sparkled. Hell, she’d
burned.
And she’d run—the scent of fear was the easiest to follow. He could find her.

He nodded at his faint reflection in the window glass. And he stared into the night and took a deep breath. He scented a kaleidoscope of life and blood and energy of all types and kinds. Out on the streets was the easiest place to start.

Valentine was going to have to go to the party without him.

 
“Why am I not surprised?”

Valentine looked around the room one more time, not that she really thought Geoff was standing in a corner waiting for her with the shadows pulled around him like Dracula’s cloak. No, he was gone all right. It wasn’t that she minded, exactly, it was just that his running off into the night without her was so predictable.

She didn’t want to go to the party either. She was committed to tonight’s affair only for Geoff’s sake. He was trying to cure her nervousness about being around people. Mostly she suffered from genuine agoraphobia, but there were other reasons she’d tried to swear off parties. When she went to parties, she met people. Meeting people led to trouble, especially for the people she met. Brought home. Bit.

Fortunately for the mortal population of the planet, she wasn’t feeling particularly horny at the moment. Fortunately for the vampire population, she wasn’t feeling particularly hungry.

What she felt was—restless. Dreadfully restless. Restlessly dreadful? A restless sense of dread?

Valentine nodded. Yes, that covered the mood.
Something
was going to happen. Something was always going to happen, of course. Maybe she spent most of her life safely ensconced in her apartment, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t aware from a distance of all the twitches and tribulations that rode the psychic links which tangled her up with all her children. Generally, she tried not to tap into it, except for the occasional story idea. Too bad there was so little new to tell. Life was a soap opera, vampire life even more so. Eternity was the stuff of drama—and Valentine had always preferred comedy.

“Or at least satire.”

She pressed her lips together firmly, adding annoyed at talking to herself to her general annoyance. At least if Geoff were here, she could hold a conversation with someone else. Not that she actually needed another’s physical presence to hold conversations. If she wanted to talk to Geoffrey Sterling, all she had to do was reach out her mind.

And if she did that, she was likely to become aware of other vampire minds out there, not all of them the sort of persons she wanted any contact with.

Take Eddie, for example. Valentine had taken him a lot once upon a time. He’d never been a favorite of hers, but the pickings for companions were rather slim after the Black Death swept through the world.

She remembered even now how dark the world had been then. Even for those like herself who dwelled in the night, the darkness had been suffocating. Darkness of spirit, darkness of hope had been all around. Decay and silence everywhere. But it was a painful silence that came hard and heavy after the cries for mercy rose to heaven, then turned to curses, to rattles of death and wails of mourning.

The world of the Plague years existed in the sort of death-saturated atmosphere your modern Goth types would consider vamp heaven, but it hadn’t been any fun at all. There weren’t even that many vampires in the world at the time of the Black Death. So, even if it had been a vampire party waiting to happen, there wouldn’t have been many guests to exploit the pain and anarchy of the suffering mortal world.

The grand experiment of a vampire city-state had died less than a century before. Most of the vampires in the world were destroyed when the Asian city fell. Valentine hadn’t been there. She didn’t know exactly what happened, but she hadn’t mourned when what few refugees there were brought word of the city’s demise. She hadn’t thought founding the city was a good idea to begin with. Nothing good came from the insularity and growing decadence of the place as far as she was concerned. If the Mongols hadn’t shown up to tear down the city walls, it would have blown up from the inside from slave rebellion or the experiments with dark magic.

There were rumors that slaves and companions had revolted, letting the Mongols into the city. Those rumors, and much other knowledge, had been ruthlessly quashed and hidden by the Council that was formed to regulate the survivors of the city.

Of course, no one asked the strigoi who’d never lived in the city to be on this new ruling Council. Most of the noncity vampires continued about their business, paying no attention to the refugees’ pretensions.

When the refugees moved into Europe, Valentine took herself across the Channel to visit the White Lady, who’d been Nighthawk and Protector of the Isles since Roman times. The Lady didn’t hold with any foreign vampires in her territory, but she made an exception for Valentine, who was, after all, the bloodmother of the vampire that had sired the Lady herself.

Valentine took up the life of a traveling minstrel, but at exactly the wrong time. As she roamed the country, she bore witness to the Plague running like wildfire through the towns and fiefdoms. Many, many of the Black Death’s victims were those born with psychic gifts. Vampires could not be touched by the Plague, but those born with the ability to be reborn into the vampire life were particularly susceptible to it. Valentine felt those deaths and mourned them, each one the passing of a child she would never have. It brought her to one of those black times in every immortal life where she would have welcomed her own passing.

Then she met Edward. He was a feudal lord with a retinue reduced to a handful by the Plague. She’d felt the magic in him as she approached the castle where he’d hidden himself away. He was light after so much darkness. A feeble light, but enough to make a companion. Enough light to save her from her own growing darkness.

After several years of sharing bed and blood, she’d sent him out into the night a new-made vampire, to be nurtured in the nest of the White Lady, who released him into the night as soon as possible, Valentine heard. His transition into the underneath had not been one of Valentine’s success stories. He’d been a born user, a petty schemer, lived his life as a noble without any noble intentions as a mortal. He hadn’t gotten any better with time. That he’d ended up a neon junkie in Vegas didn’t surprise Valentine at all.

She could feel him out there in the night, all grimy, greasy, and covered in fear sweat. She wondered what it was he had to be afraid of. She reminded herself it was none of her business. She also noticed that she was standing facing the closet, her back to the window and the outside world.

So, what were her choices for the evening? She could stay here with the curtains closed and be perfectly content. She could put on a slinky black dress and attend the party Geoff had already ducked out on. She could check up on Eddie . . . but the idiot was an over-six-hundred-year-old grown man responsible for his own life.

Of course, knowing Eddie, if he was in trouble, it was because he’d gotten someone else into even more trouble. She knew all about the Rasputin business, and some of the other scams he’d been involved in.

He’s a neon junkie now,
she told herself, not causing anyone trouble but himself. Then again, the atmosphere in this town was positively
fraught
with impending weirdness. She did not want to wonder what was up, but she did. And if anybody was going to be involved with nasty goings-on, it would be her old pal Eddie.

Valentine’s conscience, and curiosity, nagged at her enough so that she took a seat on the edge of the bed, and closed her eyes. If any information flowed in out of the night, she’d absorb it. It wasn’t as if she was obligated to
do
anything about it.

Chapter 7

“My, my, my,” Valentine said, and shook her head. Even skimming the surface of Eddie’s thoughts left her feeling in need of a brain shampoo. She wondered who the young vampire harassing him was, and what the conversation was about. “Something
fraught,
” she complained. “The whole damn town’s full of fraught. Should have stayed in L.A.”

Not only fraught, but the Scrolls of Silk were in the mix as well. Which meant the woman’s agenda was political, and extremely anti-Nighthawk. The scrolls were a Goddess-damned nuisance, and no matter how many times the Enforcers destroyed what was supposed to be the last existing copy of the thing, another copy eventually cropped up. Some things were best forgotten. Some books were best burned. The Scrolls ranked up there with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as sicko propaganda best kept from the world. In the case of the Scrolls, the purpose wasn’t anti-Semitism as it was in the Protocols, but vicious accusations against the Nighthawk line.

It was all that hotel’s fault, she decided. Call a place the Silk Road, capitalize, even indirectly, on vampire mystique, and weird things were bound to happen. Somebody ought to do something about it, she thought. Then Valentine got dressed, combed out her long black curls, carefully applied very red lipstick, and went to the party.

“You’re pacing.”

Haven stood still long enough to look at Char. “So are you.”

He was wearing a suit, an expensive, well-tailored suit Char had picked out for him. She’d suggested the shoes, the shirt, and the tie as well. Haven didn’t mind her choices since he didn’t care much about clothes. Char didn’t care much about clothes either, but she looked good in what she was wearing. For once she wasn’t in black, but a floaty blue and white print dress. The spaghetti straps showed off her buff shoulders and arms. He would have liked the skirt to be shorter, to show off her legs. He guessed a certain amount of modesty was suitable for a wedding.

The room was full of roses, lilies, and orchids arranged in tall crystal vases. The floor was shining white marble; the walls were hung with palest pink watered-silk drapes. A fountain burbled gently in the center of the room. It was all very tasteful, feminine, and romantic, Haven supposed. This wasn’t even the wedding chapel but a reception area. The chapel was through an arched doorway on the other side of the reception room. The staff was discreetly out of sight since welcoming them, and hopefully wouldn’t reappear until the happy couple put in an appearance.

“Are we early or are they late?” he asked. “Think we should have picked them up at their hotel?”