Laws of the Blood 1: The Hunt (30 page)

“The child is more important to her than becoming immortal?”

“Of course!”

“Why ‘of course’?”

“You’ve obviously never been a parent.”

Yevgeny went very still, his thoughts going far from the car he was driving. “I have, actually,” he said after she’d watched him for a long while. He gave a soft laugh. “I’d forgotten. Two sons and a daughter. I loved them very much before I was taken from them.” He shuddered, and the determined look came back to his face. “It doesn’t matter. Tell me more about Sebastian. No,” he stopped her before she could go on. He held
up a hand. “Maybe it’s better not to know.”

Silence settled in the cold car as he turned onto Mulholland and drove up the steep, curving road. Siri stared out the windshield. Every now and then, a thought tried to break through the darkness that blanketed her. She caught glimpses of memory, of Yevgeny rousing her out of a fitful morning’s sleep. She was certain awful things had happened in the night, but she could only grasp at shadows. Yevgeny kept whispering in her mind that all that mattered was her taking him to Sebastian. Music tried to hum inside her head, but she caught no chords she could put together. Yevgeny’s determination kept getting in their way.

By the time they reached the gated drive of the Avella estate, she had a terrible headache.

“It will be over soon,” Yevgeny said gently and put a hand on her shoulder. He switched off the car engine. “I’ll wait here. Go to the door,” he instructed Siri carefully. “The slave’s waiting there for you with little Sebastian.”

This was not good. This was not right. Panic lanced through her. “I—”

Yevgeny’s grip on her shoulder turned harsh. He caught her gaze with his, bored the necessity to obey into her as he said the words. “Go to the door, Siri. Bring back the child. Bring him to me right now.” He repeated his commands over and over, until Siri nodded at last.

She got out of the car and went to the door. Two members of Don Tomas’s household were waiting with Sebastian by the door. The adults, a man and a woman, didn’t look happy. Sebastian, dark curls combed neatly, bright amber eyes shining with excitement, had never been happier. He threw his arms around Siri when she reached him. His enthusiastic embrace, reaching somewhere above her knees, threw her off balance. She had to grab hold of the adobe arch over the doorway to keep her feet. Siri gave Sebastian’s nanny a grateful look as the woman pried the little boy off of her.

“Behave,” the woman admonished and was ignored.

“I’m having a birthday party!” Sebastian crowed as he looked up at Siri’s face. He punched the air with a small fist. “Yes!”

She took Sebastian’s hand. “Yes, indeed,” she agreed. “We’re going to Andy’s place. He’s closed it for the day, and decorated it with dinosaurs and balloons. It’s going to be great.”

“I know,” Sebastian said. He tugged hard on her hand. “Let’s go.”

She started toward the car with Sebastian, the two slaves following close at her heels. Yevgeny stepped in front of them before they could get in the backseat, though. He caught and held their attention while Siri continued on to the Mercedes. Sebastian paid the man with her no mind. As she settled the little boy in the backseat and adjusted the seat belt for him, she heard Yevgeny talking to Don Tomas’s people. “That’s all right,” he told them, in his soft, persuasive way. “You won’t be coming with us. In fact,” he went on, friendly, confident, magnanimous. “I’m giving you the day off.”

Siri opened the passenger door. By the time Siri had her own seat belt fastened, the servants had started back toward the house. Yevgeny slid into the driver’s seat. The car started.

“Won’t this be fun?” he said and guided the car smoothly back down the driveway.

S
EBASTIAN TUGGED ON
Siri’s hand as they walked away from the car. “Why do we have to go here?” he asked her. “Why can’t my party be near where I live? How will my friends find me?”

Siri had been waiting for these questions. “Your mama told you why, didn’t she, owlet?” She waited until Sebastian nodded twice, to acknowledge that Siri had spoken the secret word that told him they couldn’t talk about the subject right now. He chafed against it, but, young as he was, most of the time he was good about keeping their secrets. “We’ll talk about it when we get where we’re going.”

Sebastian fidgeted and looked worried but kept quiet. He held her hand and was careful to look both ways as they crossed the street. Siri sighed at the burden this life put on a child and was glad that she could do little things, like arrange birthday parties, even under tight security conditions, that helped ease the stress of growing up strigoi for Sebastian.

She glanced back once, worriedly, at Yevgeny. He walked behind them as they started up the hill. The sight of him disturbed her, but only for a moment. He put out
his hand to caress the back of her neck, and she was soothed, calmed. She walked on without any worries.

The noontime traffic was light, but there were plenty of pedestrians on the sidewalks, with college students and shoppers heading for cafés and coffeehouses in the central area of the town known as the Village. The street was lined with trees and flower beds, with an old-fashioned pharmacy on one corner and benches under the trees. The benches were full of young people eating quick take-out meals. Siri noticed the aroma of fresh, warm chocolate from a handmade candy store mingled with the hot, spicy smell of the curry being eaten by someone on the bench outside the candy store as they walked past.

They’d left the Mercedes in the train station parking lot, the closest parking space they found to their destination on the far edge of Claremont’s old-fashioned downtown. It was a two-block walk to Andy’s, a small, hole-in-the-wall place wedged between a dress shop and a store full of Tibetan art and jewelry. The coffeehouse was always very busy during the evenings but normally open for the lunch crowd, as well, offering sandwiches and desserts along with lattes and espressos. Now it was closed, the day help replaced by Gary and Joseph. At least, that was the arrangement Siri had made with them. The idea had been Cassie’s, to give Sebastian a party out in the real world, but in a spot that was quiet and safe, among people who could be trusted. It wouldn’t be as much fun as taking the kids to Disneyland or even the party room of a McDonald’s, but Sebastian had been convinced that it would be fun, and it was his only shot at normal at the moment. Sebastian wanted a normal life desperately enough to go along with anything—after the requisite hours of tantrums.

“Where are my dinosaurs?” Sebastian asked as the door closed behind them.

Yevgeny’s wide shoulders effectively blocked out the light from the half-moon window in the thick wooden door.
Blocking any exit,
Siri thought with a shiver. He
smiled reassuringly, and she returned her attention to Sebastian, who tugged his hand out of hers, and Gary, who came rushing toward her from around the counter.

“What is this all about?” he asked, sparing an anxious look at Yevgeny. “Who’s he?”

“Where are the decorations?” she asked the slave. “We’ve got six kids and their parents showing up for the party in less than an hour.”

The tables squeezed into the long, narrow room were bare. The overhead lights hardly shed any light on the room. There was a shadowy, claustrophobic feel to the surroundings that Siri had never noticed at night. It sent a cold chill through her. No balloons were in evidence, no presents. Definitely no dinosaurs.

“What party?” Gary asked as she turned an angry look on him. “You called this morning and told me the party’d been called off but to meet you here at noon. You had me call all the children’s parents.”

“I did no such thing! Where’s Joe?”

“At home with Miriam, of course. Do you think he’d leave her side when the whole community’s in danger?”

“What danger? We’re having a birthday party.”

“You canceled it. I assumed it had something to do with . . .” He glanced furtively at the man by the door, before whispering, “What Joe told us about.”

“Don’t I get a party?” Sebastian spoke up loudly. “Why not? It’s my birthday,” he added as Siri turned to him. “It’s an owlet thing, isn’t it? Why does everything have to be owlet stuff? Why now?”

Siri looked at Gary. “I never called you.”

“You did.” He was adamant, and he cast a nervous glance at Yevgeny. “He doesn’t belong here, does he? You don’t belong to Don Tomas, do you?”

“No,” Yevgeny answered. He didn’t move from the doorway but surveyed them all, one by one, with a cold blue stare. Ice stabbed through Siri’s heart as his gaze passed over her. She looked at him as though she’d never seen him before, as though she’d never noticed
how
large
he was, how dangerous. What was he doing here?

“You’re the guy from the Viper Room.”

“You’re crazy,” Gary breathed. “Crazy sick. You better leave, I’m calling—”

“Shut up, slave,” Yevgeny replied. He smiled, chilling the room down even more.

Gary grabbed Siri’s arm. “Why did you bring a madman here?”

She blinked, tried to summon some sense to the morning’s actions, tried to even remember the morning’s actions. So much was darkness. For a moment, all she got was music running through her head. “What is that song?” she said. “I can almost make it out.”

“Can you?” Yevgeny asked, soft and menacing.

He took a step forward. Siri wanted to turn and run, but his cold gaze held her in place. What she’d almost remembered slipped back into darkness. Beside her, Gary made a strangled noise, as though a protest was being pushed down his throat. Yevgeny snatched Sebastian off his feet. His hold on her and Gary broke somewhat as he held Sebastian up at eye level. Gary ran for the back of the building.

“It’s almost noon,” Yevgeny told the little boy. “We haven’t got much time.”

Siri hurried forward to see Sebastian gazing calmly back at the big, menacing man. She stopped, shivered, and did no more. Yevgeny brushed a hand through Sebastian’s hair. The soft curls clung to his fingers, and he drew his hand away as though he’d been burned.

“You’re going to kill me,” the young
dhamphir
announced calmly.

Yevgeny looked surprised. It was several seconds before he could answer. “Yes, little one.” He didn’t sound gleeful about it. He didn’t look evil but tired and desperate.

“My daddy won’t let you,” Sebastian told him, not showing the least fear. “Or Uncle Selim.”

“They’re sleeping. You have to die at high noon.
That it’s your birthday is a fortunate coincidence, but it will add strength to the spell.”

“Are you going to drink my blood?” Sebastian showed all the curious interest in this mayhem that any five-year-old male would when discussing cartoon and action figure violence. “So you can become a vampire like Daddy?”

“Are you reading my mind, young man?”

Sebastian nodded, his expression turning sullen, furtive, and sheepish in quick succession. “I’m not supposed to. Don’t tell my mom, okay?”

Siri rubbed the back of her neck and fought hard to get her memory back, to get her reflexes working, to think of a way out of this situation. She knew there were things she should be feeling, things she should be doing, but . . . what? Yevgeny set Sebastian down on one of the small tables. He brought out a knife, a moon-sickle curve of sharpened silver, the hilt studded with milky gems.

Sebastian reached for the blade. “Can I touch it?”

“No. It’s very sharp.”

“Sharp as my dad’s fangs?”

“Sharper.”

“Cool.”

“Aren’t you afraid, little one?” Yevgeny asked Sebastian.

“Yes,” Sebastian answered with a proud lift of his chin. “But I can’t show it.”

“Why not?” Yevgeny ruffled the boy’s hair again.

“My father says not to. Ever.”

“Because you’re
dhamphir
?”

Sebastian was puzzled at the word no one had ever spoken in front of him. “My name’s Avella. Avellas don’t show fear. We’re brave and strong and leaders of men.”

“Your father told you that?”

Sebastian nodded. “My father won’t let you hurt me.”

“He would help you if he could, I’m sure,” Yevgeny
answered. “If he were here.” Yevgeny’s hold tightened on Sebastian as the boy tried to leap off the table.

She had an urge to rush to the boy’s side, to throw herself between danger and her best friend’s child. Siri took a step forward and stumbled, nearly falling over one of the chairs crowded around the small tables. Yevgeny gave her a look that brought her to a halt. She found herself thinking,
Why does Selim have to be asleep now?
And concentrated on Selim, on calling up his face and touch and voice in her mind, recalled the scent of him to block out the awareness of the big blond in front of her.
I never went for blonds, anyway,
she thought.

Then Yevgeny said, “I’ll need your help, Siri.”

Sebastian started to cry. She fought the urge to take the boy in her arms and comfort him.

“I’m sorry it has to be this way,” Yevgeny said. He put his hand on Sebastian’s shoulder. He glanced briefly at Siri. The madness in his eyes was dampened somewhat by pain. “I burn. I can’t live with it anymore. I need the change.”