Laws of the Blood 4: Deceptions: Deceptions (10 page)

He sighed. “Of course they are. Do you think I’d go to all this trouble otherwise?”

“I don’t know,” she answered. “Would you?”

Andrew stood, then helped her to her feet. “Let me walk you back toward civilization.” He took her hand and led her back the way they’d come. “I’ve been living in California and Texas lately,” was all he said on the way back to the walking path along the creek. “I’d forgotten how uncomfortably humid the nights here can be.”

“I’ve lived here all my life.” Sara was not used to volunteering personal information, and didn’t know why she felt the need to fill the deep, dark silence from Andrew with words of her own. “Why do you want to die?” she asked again when they reached the path, where the sound of the traffic and the nearby water somehow made the surroundings seem more safe, more civilized.

“Why?” he repeated her question. There was enough light for her to make out his features now. His smile was sad, and his eyes were haunted. “Why? For one thing, Sara, I’m going insane. Lately I’m being haunted by a ghost.” He shrugged. “Spirit of someone I killed, I suppose, though I don’t recognize him.”

“A ghost?”

Andrew nodded. “It was back in the clearing with us just now. Staring at me. I don’t suppose you saw it?”

Sara shook her head. “You saw a ghost? An actual ghost?”

“Not for the first time.” He shrugged again. “I told you I was crazy.”

“What the hell was that all about?” Mike Falconer asked as he pried himself out of the deep comfort of his chair. He paced for a few agitated moments, then noticed the empty glass and decided that a refill of iced tea was not going to do the trick right now. He went into the kitchen and got a beer, regretting that was the strongest alcohol he let himself have.

He very much wanted a drink, and something for the
blazing headache he’d brought out of the unmonitored Walking session. But he put the beer can down on the kitchen table and forced his thoughts to go back over what he’d seen while roaming outside his body. He’d gone looking for vampires, and what had he found? A couple having a clandestine meeting somewhere in a forest. No, not a forest. There was something familiar about where the couple had been. Falconer was sure it was somewhere he’d been himself, but the location hadn’t clicked in his memory yet.

Had he found a vampire? He’d caught bits and pieces of conversation, but nothing definitive. No fangs had been flashed. It was hard to tell if someone was a pale, bloodsucking fiend in the dark if no fangs were flashed and no blood was drawn. He’d caught mental impressions from both the man and the woman and a few words he couldn’t remember yet, which was not normal for a Walking experience. Maybe that was proof that they both had some sort of psychic talent. Falconer had received the stronger impression from the male. He was one confused, depressed guy. Was that normal for a vampire?

Falconer was sure that the man was the same person—monster?—he’d seen standing in the water with red eyes and bared fangs when he’d dreamed/Walked the night he’d been attacked. There was something familiar about the man—vampire?—even more than having seen him once before.

The weirdest thing—the impossible thing—was that Falconer was sure the man had been aware of his invisible presence. Last time that had happened, the man had turned into a monster before Falconer’s eyes. This time, he’d turned and walked away, carefully making sure the woman was safe.

Did vampires do that?

“
W
HAT IS WITH this man?” Olympias complained to the dog trotting along beside her as they headed toward Georgetown. Bitch looked attentive and interested, which was all the job required, while Olympias continued to voice her thoughts. “If I can’t find him dreamwalking, how did the girl spot him? Maybe because I’m not in heat. Senses do rev up a few notches when the mating urge hits.”

The first thing Olympias had done this evening was follow Sara at a discreet distance until she was certain that her mortal servant was safe with the suicidal vampire. She hadn’t been too worried, Andrew had always been a polite kid, a romantic. He was one of Rose’s, and Rose raised them right. The truth was, in Olympias’s opinion, Rose made a bad habit of taking wimps for lovers, but if that was how Rose liked them, she supposed that was fine. Wimps didn’t make very interesting vampires, but from an Enforcer’s point of view, interesting vampires weren’t all that desirable, either. Maybe breeding the monster out made for a more boring brand of strigoi, but it made for peace and quiet, it made for
survival for the entire species in these high-tech, hard-to-hide-in times.

“It makes you want to puke,” Olympias observed, remembering an era when being a vampire had been a lot more fun.

There was nothing a girl could sink her fangs and claws into these days that wasn’t regulated by the Council and the Laws. Maybe she was a member of that Council and she was likely to vote on the conservative, cautionary side on the rare occasions the Council met to decide how to cope with the modern world. But that didn’t mean she liked being forced to hide deeper and deeper in the shadows. She didn’t mind that her kind were a minority—predators needed to be in the balance of nature—but being a marginalized minority fighting hard not to become an endangered species was a pain in the butt.

What I need is this bunny’s name, Olympias decided as she walked along, her long, quick strides eating up distance. A phone number. Something concrete and factual, since I can’t seem to wrap my mind around his and suck out what I need to know in the nice, old-fashioned, traditional way. What’s the use of being one of the few truly powerful, genuine psychics in the world, with long-practiced and -perfected technique, with thousands of hours and years of experience under my belt, when I need a phone book to look up this joker to see whether or not I’m going to let a wet-behind-the-fangs bimbo turn him into a vampire?

Olympias paused to take a mental breath and patted Bitch on the head. If she gave it some effort, she could find the vampire kid. But the idea of approaching the girl for help after having made such hard-ass pronouncements about the matter was embarrassing, demeaning, and would weaken her standing in a time when she was heading for a showdown with every vampire in the area about their living arrangements. She didn’t expect them to take it quietly and didn’t yet have a clue where the attack
would come from. She didn’t know whether a show of superior indifference would cow them into shuffling off in a surly, mumbling heap of resentment. That was the plan, of course, but it was more likely someone was going to challenge her. Olympias didn’t want it to come down to her having to kill someone, because, frankly, though it was necessary to clear the nests out of their territories, it wasn’t the vampires’ fault that the mortal government was spreading farther and farther out of the central city. The Law was clear about vampires living in the capital cities of mortal lands. It could be argued that there were nests in Moscow, but she’d argue that those old Imperialist farts still thought St. Petersburg was the capital of Russia. Olympias’s territory was Washington, and she saw the need to keep the city clean of bloodsuckers. At least of the immortal variety. In fact, she’d waited too long to order this move and knew it, even if the nests wouldn’t agree.

That was a situation she’d think about later. Right now she wanted to get what should have been a minor vetting job out of the way. She’d decided that the best way—the only way left—was to find the park where she’d stopped the girl from raping her prey.

“This is where you come in, Bitch,” she told the eager dog. She rubbed Bitch’s ears and passed a mental image of what they were looking for into the animal’s mind. “First one to find the scent of the party gets a treat.”

Bitch took off instantly. Olympias laughed and kept pace with the hellhound, the pair of them becoming moving shadows passing through the quiet streets of Georgetown. She should have thought of this sooner, for it didn’t take long at all before she caught the lingering mental signature of lust, fear, and anger. Within a few blocks she spotted the park, a dark square of trees, grass, and flowerbeds circled by a wrought iron fence and surrounded by narrow streets lined with row houses. Parking in Georgetown was always at a premium, and even though there was little traffic, the narrow streets were
jammed with expensive cars, squeezed in nose-to-trunk, taking up every inch of curb.

Before entering the park Olympias noticed a plaque on the fence by the gate. It stated firmly that no animals were allowed inside, a rule Bitch had already disobeyed. The hellhound was already sniffing around a stand of trees. An unnatural chill halted Olympias just inside the gate. The unexpected sensation cast an odd overlay to the fading mental energy already spread across the area. She looked carefully around, searching for the anomaly with all her very sharp senses. She picked up images—no—impressions of images. Faded, indistinct columns of energy—energy that wasn’t really there? Images that weren’t there but left a residue anyway? Like sensing someone on the darkened side of a mirror? She knew nothing had been there, but that it was a nothing that left its mark. Four or five—entities—intelligences—anti-images scattered all around . . . but not here now.

“Weird,” she muttered, while the hairs on the back of her neck rose in reaction. Whatever this nothing was, it was like nothing she’d ever encountered. Considering she’d encountered about every type of psychic and supernatural thing that existed in her more than two thousand years of life, that was saying quite a lot. This made the mystery of her mystery man even stranger, and she didn’t like that at all.

It was supposed to be a simple job.

Bitch gave one deep bark. Glowing eyes looked anxiously at her out of the dark.

“Coming,” Olympias answered. “Yesterday upon the stair, I saw a man who wasn’t there,” she said as she moved very carefully toward her dog. “He wasn’t there again today.” She laughed, remembering a version of the rhyme she’d read somewhere that ended, “I think he’s from the CIA.”

What she’d come here to do was pick up the man’s mental signature and follow it to where he lived. That was what she was still going to do. Once she found him,
she’d ask him not at all politely what he knew about the weird things in the park that weren’t vampires.

When her pocket rang, Olympias discovered that Sara had thoughtfully tucked her cell phone into her sweatshirt jacket. It was an unlisted number known to one mortal and every Enforcer in the country. The Enforcers were instructed not to use it unless they had a strigoi-threatening emergency on their hands. Indirect forms of communication were so much easier to keep secret than a conversation on a cellular telephone. Enforcers were semiautonomous, very capable, and she was the one who usually called them with instructions. It kept on ringing, and Olympias was tempted not to answer. Olympias didn’t want to cope with a national emergency right now. But if Sara was in trouble with Andrew, she’d call for help. That must be why Sara slipped the phone into the jacket.

She pulled out the phone and flipped it open. “What?” The voice was not Sara’s. Olympias stood very still and listened. “Memphis?” she asked. “There’s an Enforcer in Nashville, but not in Memphis. Right. I see to—hold on, I’ve got another call on the other line.” She hated call waiting and made a mental note to tell Sara to get rid of it as she answered the other call. This caller wasn’t Sara, either. “How’d you get this number?” There was the old boys’ network, then there was the old girls’ network, and the caller was a very old girl indeed. Olympias listened to her for a few moments, dread growing, then said, “Yes, I know about the hotel opening in Las Vegas. Oh. That’s not good.” She looked around the park. She had no time for bunny hunting right now. “I’ll call you back. Right. I don’t have your number. Call me back in half an hour, on a landline.” She switched to the first caller. “Stay there. I’ll call you back.”

Olympias switched off the phone and called her dog to her. She had to get home and start the process of putting out a pair of serious fires. She would worry about
local emergencies later—which seemed to be happening more and more these days.

“Memory doesn’t lie, but it does hallucinate. I hope,” Falconer muttered to himself as he made a careful search through the park.

“What?” the friend he’d brought with him asked.

“Nothing.” Falconer was looking for a particular tree. Though it was daylight, the place was thick with unnatural shadows, as if it didn’t want him to know it was here.

But he knew he was in the right place, though he couldn’t explain to his forensic scientist friend that his certainty came from the psychic residue of the Walkers, and not because this was where the attack had to have taken place. The thing was, he shouldn’t have forgotten where he’d been attacked. He hadn’t suffered any head trauma, and there was no logical excuse for him to have forgotten the existence of a park he passed on his walks all the time. When he’d come to his senses it had been like walking out a long, black tunnel, and he’d found himself standing stupidly in front of the door to his house.

Maybe he should forget the incident and move on, forget the weirdness the Walkers had encountered yesterday, and forget the man who might or might not be a vampire who showed up in visions and dreams when Falconer was looking for something else. Of course, if he were serious about dropping any investigation, he wouldn’t have called Russ Krantz from the FBI forensics lab and asked for a private crime scene investigation. Russ was ex-military, and he and Falconer went way back. Tight-assed as the Feds were, Russ hadn’t balked at the request, only at the early hour Falconer asked him to meet him. Falconer had placated him by bringing coffee and donuts. Now, as heat built and storm clouds loomed in the early morning sky, the two men ignored curious glances from runners on the park paths and methodically quartered the block-square area.