Laws of the Blood 1: The Hunt (21 page)

Selim took great pleasure in informing Kamaraju just who and where his nest was going to Hunt. Kamaraju’s temper boiled while he listened. Selim looked forward to the coming protest. The fledglings stirred restlessly but limited their objections to tense muscles and dirty looks. They kept most of their attention on Kamaraju, waiting to see how he’d respond. Selim waited as well, hoping the nest leader would react badly. But before Kamaraju could even manage to start swearing at him,
they were caught by the headlights of another car as it turned into the parking lot.

Cars had been going by on the street during the conversation, but this was first one that had penetrated the psychic warning barrier that kept the space free of everyone but vampire kind. The fledglings disappeared once more; Lisa retreated to the backseat of the limo. Siri opened the tinted driver’s-side window of her Mercedes to get a better view. Selim could feel her fingers hovering tensely over the ignition of the new car, ready to bring the engine to life if Selim signaled her to leave. Selim turned, arms crossed on his chest, to face the intruder’s blazing headlights. Kamaraju stepped up beside him, showing uncommon solidarity. Selim figured he was trying to impress the young vampires in his nest.

“Why am I not surprised?” Selim said when the newcomer cut the lights and the engine and stepped out of the car. “Did I invite you to this party?” he added as Geoff Sterling approached him.

Sterling shrugged sheepishly. “Couldn’t stop myself.” He didn’t look particularly happy about being here. He was wearing a tuxedo jacket over a tab-collared shirt. He was gestured back toward his car. “I was driving Moira to Crazy Girls for a drink. She’s never been there, so after this premiere we were at—”

“Cut to the chase,” Selim suggested.

“Moira?” Kamaraju asked. His gaze shifted from the young intruder to Sterling’s car. “Tasty.” Selim could feel her there as well, bright, curious, virginal. What was the boy thinking to bring an unbitten human to a meeting of vampires? What was
he
doing here?

Selim took Sterling by the arm and led him to stand next to the Mercedes. “Got a bad feeling, did you?”

Sterling nodded. “From you. I felt this compulsion—Don’t you just hate when that happens?” He looked unhappy. “We’re connected.”

Selim didn’t feel it. Unless, of course, some of his fashion sense had rubbed off on the strig. Sterling looked very different since he’d recovered from his leather and
torn lace phase. “Three days ago, you hated and feared me. I miss that.”

“Me, too. I’d rather concentrate on Moira, but I’ve also got this need to—” He shook his head. Sterling looked across the lot at the scowling vampire standing by the limo. “Who’s the asshole? Jager’s ex?”

It occurred to Selim that this kid from Seattle who’d lived as a loner since he came to L.A. could use a briefing on the town’s players if he planned to become one himself. “My companion knows all and sees all,” he told Sterling. “Have a long talk with her.” He glanced at Sterling’s car; it was something in a low-slung speed machine. Ferrari, maybe? “New wheels?”

Shrug, followed by a wry smile and a wistful look toward the passenger of the sports car. “I’m trying to impress a girl.”

“Courtship rituals elude me. Speaking of eluding,” Selim went on. “Did it occur to you that paparazzi might tail you to this—private—meeting? Please tell me you’ve got that covered.” Selim could feel Kamaraju sneaking around his shielding, attempting to listen in on the conversation. The other vampire’s curiosity had a very unpleasant feel to it; nothing new in that. Selim ignored Kamaraju while he waited for Sterling’s answer.

“It’s covered,” Sterling assured him. He wiggled his fingers and rolled his eyes. He grinned. “People will ignore you if you just know how to ask properly. Telepathy has its uses. I got used to telling the media to go away when I was stalking her. She’ll have privacy with me,” he added, with a loving glance toward the woman in his car.

Selim was happy to hear that the young vampire was already well aware of security precautions. He still wished Sterling hadn’t brought his—fiancée for lack of a better term—with him tonight. Selim decided that it wouldn’t serve any purpose to give Kamaraju a chance to complain about homeless hunting along the concrete river or question what a human was doing here. Selim opened the passenger door of the Mercedes with one
hand, pointed Sterling toward the sports car with the other. “You don’t have to come running every time you feel something from me.”

“But—”

“I’ll call you.”

“What if you need my help?”

“I’ll call you,” Selim repeated, slowly and distinctly. Sterling returned to his car, and Selim settled into the seat beside Siri. Her curiosity filled his senses. “Drive,” he told her.

“Fine.”

He silently put up with her annoyance until they were well on their way to Pasadena. Finally, he asked her, “What’s Crazy Girls?”

She spared him a brief glance. “It’s a strip club. Why?”

He threw his head back against the thickly padded seat and laughed. “Thank goodness. The boy isn’t turning into Eddie Haskell on me after all.”

“Who?”

“You’re too young. Never mind.”

“Fine.” Siri had many, many questions, but she could tell that Selim wasn’t going to answer any of them. “I don’t know why I put up with you.”

“Chemistry,” he answered. Then he sighed and got serious. “Sometimes,” he told her. “I wish—”

He was thinking about Kamaraju and Lisa and about Geoff and Moira. She didn’t catch the images, but she knew that’s what was bothering him all of a sudden, coloring his feelings toward her. “We aren’t like either couple,” Siri pointed out.

“Maybe I should have courted you first,” he said, looking out the windshield instead of at her. “Maybe I should let you go.”

“Maybe you should shut up,” she answered. “Maybe you should stop worrying,” she added as his pain pricked her. “We are. Why worry about past or future?”

He still didn’t look at her. She felt his reluctance to
talk. She’d been feeling this reluctance for over a year. She was surprised when he fought his way past it. “Maybe I should tell you—”

“Why you haven’t made love to me for over a year?” Maybe she should wait for him to go on, but she asked, “Is it because you don’t want me to change into a bloodsucking fiend? Because—”

“I’m a selfish bastard,” he cut in. “Who doesn’t want to live without you.”

It was Siri’s turn to stare silently out the windshield for a while. “What we’re doing now isn’t living,” she managed after a while.

“I knew you’d say that. Drop me off at my place,” he added, “Don’t ask to come in.”

“Bastard.”

“Yes.”

“Fine.” The miles passed, but she heard not another word or thought from him. “This place has been turned into a senior’s residence, you know,” she pointed out when he got out of the car in front of his building. “Someone’s going to notice that you don’t look like you belong here sometime. You could move in with me.” It was an old discussion, one he didn’t bother to respond to. He just waved her away and went inside.

Siri drove home too fast in the light, late-night traffic of Pasadena. She didn’t know if there had been any progress between them tonight. On any front. She concluded that she should get some rest, then maybe she could think. She wanted to sleep but dreaded once again retiring to an empty bed. Checking her voice mail helped put the moment off a few minutes more. There was only one message.

“Girlfriend, I need a big, big, huge favor. You’re his godmother, an aunt, really. And the only one I can trust,” Cassie’s voice told her. “It’s about Sebastian’s birthday party. Yes, I said party. Don’t tell Tom this, but—”

Cassie went on. And on. Siri listened. Then replayed the message. “I don’t believe this,” she said. She
believed it, all right. She just didn’t want to think about it. Siri decided that going to bed, even alone, and getting some sleep was the only sensible way of dealing with vampire dramas, domestic and otherwise. “My next boyfriend will not have fangs,” she muttered as she settled her head on the pillows. “And neither will his relatives.”

T
HE BACKGROUND MUSIC
on the shop’s sound system was fashionably retro. Dire Straits’
Portobello Belle.
From the early eighties, she thought, maybe the late seventies. Siri wasn’t quite sure which decade was currently being regurgitated as style. The stores in Pasadena’s Old Town were a nice mix of traditional and trendy, so maybe the owner of this high-end toy store wasn’t trying to prove a point. It was possible that she just liked Mark Knopfler’s insidiously insistent singing style. Siri did know that she found the music far more soothing than seeing the prices of the items she picked up.

What did one get for a five-year-old who had everything, anyway? She wondered. Including fangs. Now, that wasn’t fair. Joking about Sebastian was one thing. She and Selim always did. But the truth was, Cassie and Tomas’s son showed no outward signs of being anything other than a normal, precocious, telepathic, overprotected, spoiled little rich boy. He didn’t exactly live in a normal environment, what with both of his parents being vampires, but they loved him and did the best they could to provide a stable, caring home life. At least Cassie did. Tom provided protection from the other vampires.

Those few vampires who knew about Sebastian’s existence would be happy to see the child dead. There was a fear—irrational, Selim assured her—that someday Sebastian Avella would destroy vampire kind. Or become king of vampires. Or replace Istvan as the most feared Hunter of them all. There were several conflicting prophecies. Siri had no opinion on Sebastian’s future and no visions of it, either. She did know that Cassandra worked very hard on keeping Sebastian human. Sometimes Cassandra called on her to help.

Right now, she didn’t want to. Siri had had only four hours of sleep and had plenty of other concerns to do with Hunting vampires. She was shopping when she was supposed to meet Joe at his office because Cassie’s long voice mail message had been the plea of a woman trying hard not to lose her mind and take her baby with her. Cassie was feeling the heat of growing Hunger. She wanted to keep Sebastian out of it, to distract him, protect him, keep him human. How could Siri turn away from the needs of a child? How could she deny her best friend, even though her best friend was now someone she hardly ever saw? Cassie was a different person now, something
other.
Okay, by Selim’s definition, Cassie was a member of a different species, but she was still Siri’s best friend.

“Damn it,” she muttered and released her death grip on the stuffed tiger she found she was holding. What to get a kid for his birthday? She thought again. She put the stuffed animal back on the shelf. Maybe he’d like a real tiger. Maybe the young
dhamphir
and the dangerous hunting cat would hit it off, have a lot in common.
Speaking of dangerous cats . . .
she thought, and looked toward the door. Yevgeny stood there. Big, blond, unshaven. He didn’t look like he’d slept in weeks. He looked more like a hungry wolf, actually, than a tiger. Or like a hungry vampire. That was the energy he projected, even without the physical changes that came with the hunting mode.

His broad shoulders blocked the doorway, his very
presence blocked the morning light that poured in through the plate glass window. Siri looked around for another exit. She did not want to be here with him. “You don’t look so pretty in the daylight,” she told him, putting on a brave front as he stalked up to her.

“That’s because I don’t belong in the daylight.”

“And you need a shower,” she added as his big hand closed over her arm.

“Let’s go,” he said and drew her toward the door.

Siri looked frantically around the busy toy store, but went with him without protest. The man felt even more on the edge of violence than he looked. She didn’t dare put anyone but herself at risk by calling for help. She sighed and dug her sunglasses out of her purse as they stepped out onto the sidewalk.

The morning was bright and hot, the desert sun fierce this close to noon, and she was more used to the cool California nights. She glanced at the sky, her gaze following Yevgeny’s. There were no clouds in the blueness overhead, but plenty of straight white jet exhaust plumes crossed the sky above barely visible tendrils of smog. He stood very still for a few moments, while people passed around them on the sidewalk.

Despite having a death grip on her, Siri didn’t think he was aware of her. “You’re saying good-bye to the light, aren’t you?” she guessed.

He brought his intense attention back to her. Looking into his wild, blue eyes, Siri wished she’d kept her mouth shut. “I won’t miss this,” he told her.

“California?” she mocked sweetly. “You’re leaving town? Came to say farewell?” She tried to pull away. “I’m touched. Have a nice trip.”

“Shut up.”

There was a small park at the end of the block, with hibiscus bushes and shade trees and flowerbeds set in a brick walkway. A tiled fountain bubbled in the middle of this mini-plaza, and there were benches set under the trees. Siri was relieved when Yevgeny took her to the park. The people already there, a woman with a baby in
a stroller, a couple romantically holding hands by the fountain, walked away from the park when Yevgeny pulled her down beside him on one of the benches. Siri was glad of the privacy. Also slightly reassured that they were, technically, in public. The more she was with this companion, the less she liked being with him.