Laws of the Blood 4: Deceptions: Deceptions (32 page)

Olympias’s grip on the hilt of the silver dagger tightened. “When I ask a question it gets answered.”

“Why does it matter who killed—”

Angela didn’t finish speaking before the dagger tip was pressed to her throat. Olympias pressed the claws of her other hand into the nest leader’s shoulder, drawing blood. Gavivi whimpered as her mistress bled.

“It matters because I asked.”

“I did,” Alec volunteered, stepping forward. “I brought him down, but we all shared. It was Lawful death,” he explained as Olympias turned his way. “He was a government agent trying to—”

“I know what he was.”

“Don’t lie to us,” Angela spoke up. “You don’t care about what happens to us. We had to defend ourselves! The government—”

Olympias whirled back around, swiping the blade across Angela’s cheek.

Gavivi screamed.

Angela gingerly touched the cut while she met Olympias’s gaze. After a moment she looked away. “I’ll shut up now.”

“Wise move.” Olympias turned back to Alec. “The killing—not a wise move.”

Alec nervously clenched and unclenched his hands. He refused to look away from Olympias’s night-black stare. “I acted under the aegis of my nest leader in eliminating a threat to my nest and all the strigoi.”

Olympias considered this and slowly nodded. “Nice spin.”

“It is the truth.”

“Except that the Enforcer of the City called no Hunt and named no prey. You acted on your own,” she informed Alec. “You know what happens to those who act on their own.”

“I know.” The words came out grimly.

“No!” Rose said. “Olympias, please.”

Bentencourt winced at his mistress drawing attention to herself. Alec’s death would not inconvenience Bentencourt, but Rose’s would.

“Let him go, my love,” he whispered to Rose. “Please let him go.” He took the stunned vampire by the hand and willed her to look at him. “Alec has accepted responsibility,” he told her. “He made the choice to Hunt. You did not order it.”

Rose’s lips moved as though she was going to protest, but then she sighed and her shoulders slumped as if hundreds of years of weariness weighed them down.

Olympias accepted this sign of defeat from Rose and turned back to Alec. “Now . . .” she said—and changed.

Bentencourt knew that Nighthawks were as different from vampires as vampires were from mortals. He’d known, but he had not
understood
. The creature that Olympias became was a thing of pure nightmare horror. He’d always wondered at the legends and rumors; now he knew what it was that frightened vampires. “Impressive,” he murmured, but refused to give in to the urge to
panic. This was no time for it. “It’s only Olympias,” he reminded himself. “She will not win.”

“She already has,” Rose said, but he ignored her.

Alec made no effort to flee or defend himself when the Enforcer leapt on him. He barely even screamed. Maybe he didn’t see what use it would be. Bentencourt loathed the vampire’s easy submission to fate, but he welcomed the distraction.

“Now!” He ran, dragging Rose behind him. She came, but her steps dragged. If she’d wanted to she could have used her strength and speed to aid their flight. Instead, she only followed his lead, her will broken. “I won’t let you die,” he told her. “Help me!” he pleaded, but no response other than Rose putting one foot in front of the other, running at the best pace he could set. Even with such minimal cooperation, Bentencourt hoped to have them out of the park before the Enforcer finished feeding.

Olympias heard Rose’s companion urging his mistress to flee, felt the rush of air as the pair sprinted away, and raised her muzzle from her victim’s chest to watch Rose’s reluctant retreat. It was amazing and amusing to see how much influence the plain little man had over the nest leader, but she didn’t let herself be amused for long. Rising from the kill, she loped after them. She grabbed the companion around the waist and threw him against a fence that ran along one edge of the playing field. She heard him land with a painful jolt, but forgot about the mortal as she turned her attention back to Rose.

Olympias brought the nest leader down with a hard tackle and flipped Rose onto her back. Rose automatically responded with fangs and claws, instinctively fighting for her life now that it came down to conflict between her and the Nighthawk. Good for her, Olympias thought, and raised the dagger to strike.

“Don’t you dare!” Sara suddenly screamed in her ear.

An instant later, Andrew kicked the dagger from Olympias’s hand. “Ouch!” he shouted, when the movement resulted in the back of his leg being ripped open
by her claws. The silver dagger went flying into the darkness. Andrew fell onto his knees. Olympias stood to confront Sara, but she kept a foot on Rose’s chest, just in case the vampire tried to escape again.

Olympias reverted to her normal shape so she could shout. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Saving you from making a mistake—as usual!” Sara shouted back.

“Hon, do you think this is a good time to—”

“Hush,” Sara cut Andrew off.

Olympias was so taken aback by the sudden assertiveness of her slave that she held off breaking Sara’s neck long enough to ask, “What are you talking about?” She jerked a thumb at Andrew. “What are you doing with him?”

“Same thing you’re doing with me?” Mike Falconer suggested, as he came up to the group. He’d stayed in the background while Olympias served out violent justice to the vampires who’d committed the murders, but now that his father had entered into the fray, he decided it was time for him to do the same. He put down a hand and helped Andrew to his feet. He quickly looked over a man who seemed half his age. “Hi—Dad.”

“Let’s talk later,” Andrew suggested.

“You won’t get a chance,” Olympias threatened. She glared at Falconer. “What are you doing here?”

“You’re supposed to say ‘thank you for helping me’ at this point,” he answered.

“How do you manage to appear as a ghost?” Andrew asked. “It nearly scared me out of my skin the first few times I saw you. Great vampire riot,” he added. “Good work.”

“Thanks. Olympias’s idea,” Falconer added, giving the devil her due. “She’s quite the strategist.”

“Thank you,” Olympias finally said.

She was seething, and even though he’d watched her commit some atrocities in the last few minutes, Falconer
couldn’t help but be amused. “You don’t play well with others, do you?”

“No.” Olympias decided to ignore her mortal for now, and concentrated on Sara. “You’re in a very precarious situation. You know that, don’t you?”

“I know everything,” Sara said. “That’s why you aren’t going to kill me. Or Andrew,” she added, looking at her lover.

Olympias grabbed the girl’s jaw and forced Sara to concentrate on her again. Rose squirmed beneath her foot, so Olympias moved and let Rose get up. “If you know
everything
,” she questioned the woman who had been her right hand for years, “why didn’t you tell me the nests were staging a revolt? Were you using it as a cover to escape with your lover?”

“You know, that would have been a good idea—if I’d realized sooner that the nests were being manipulated into taking you down.”

“If I hadn’t killed Sid a few minutes ago, they might have succeeded. Why an uprising? Who’d dare pull something like this?”

“I can answer those questions. But let me go first,” Sara requested. “I can barely talk with you gripping my jaw.”

“I ought to rip your face off.”

“Then I couldn’t answer.”

Olympias dropped her hand. She wondered if she should be asking her questions of Rose, who stood lethargically beside her, but intuition told her that Sara did know more about Rose’s actions than Rose herself. “I’m waiting,” she told Sara.

“It’s all your fault,” Sara said. “But the person to blame is Bentencourt.”

“Me? Who the hell’s Bentencourt?”

“I’ve told you about him. Rose’s bunny boy.”

“Bunny boy?” Mike asked.

Olympias ignored him.

“My companion,” Rose said. She sighed. “Roger
Bentencourt. Why are you blaming Roger?” Rose asked Sara. “He’s only interested in trying to save me.”

Andrew stepped up behind Sara and put his hands on her shoulders. “Listen to her,” he said as Sara relaxed against him.

Olympias’s impulse was to tell Andrew to get his filthy hands off her and swat him away from her property, but it wasn’t a strong enough impulse to act on. Maybe it was more habit than impulse. She was aware of the psychic connection between the pair. She hated it. She also could feel no trace of the connection she’d shared with Sara. Well, that had been a tenuous one anyway. Olympias felt more attachment to Mike, whom she hadn’t even shared blood with, than she ever had to the woman who’d been her slave. But Sara was hers, and—

“I’m listening,” she said. “Make it quick.”

S
ARA TOOK A deep breath and talked fast. “This is your fault because you haven’t had any personal contact with the nests in years. An Enforcer needs to enforce. They’re vampires, you know; predators itching for opportunities to Hunt. Telling them to leave town was a solution, but it wasn’t a good one. Maybe I should have pointed this out, but it would have made life easier for both of us. You always have too much on your plate to really be the city’s Nighthawk. You need to concentrate on keeping the government from knowing about the strigoi and supervising the other Enforcers. That may even be too much for one vampire administrator to handle. You do a good job of delegating, but there’s things—like the local nests—that a mere slave shouldn’t be asked to handle. Into a tense and not well-supervised situation with the nests came Roger Bentencourt. He saw the power vacuum and took advantage of it.”

“How?” Olympias asked.

“He’s the reincarnation guy, right?” Falconer asked. Sara nodded. “He’s the one who lured my loons out here to get slaughtered,” Falconer informed Olympias. “He
found out about us through Grace and set us up.”

“He gave the nests a Hunt,” Sara said. “Something you haven’t done in years,” she reminded Olympias.

“But—” Olympias hated being put on the defensive. Her claws itched to spring forth and rip into any dissension.

“Bentencourt’s persuasive,” Sara went on. “That’s his strongest gift. He has this charisma that he focuses on people. He gets them to do what he wants by making them think he cares about what’s best for them.”

“Yes,” Rose said softly.

“Gerry was seduced by him,” Sara said. “When Gerry found me in the park, it was because Bentencourt sent him looking for me. Bentencourt tried to get me to tell him things.”

Olympias gave her a sarcastic look. “Tried?”

“There were things I had to tell him—such as your order for the nests to move. You used me as liaison, remember? My contact with the nests was through the companions. Bentencourt sought me out with the excuse that he worked for Rose. What I think he was doing all the time was playing everybody.” Sara looked at Mike Falconer. “Bentencourt had contact with you?”

Falconer nodded. “I suppose he knew about me. He knew about the project through one of my people. He had her convinced he could teach the group how to—never mind. I do know he met one of my people doing past life regression sessions.”

“You told me he thought he’d been an ancient Greek king,” Olympias said. “He’s the reincarnation guy.”

Sara did not understand the sudden sharp smile that lit the Enforcer’s features, but she hurried on with her theorizing. “My guess is that he set Lora onto Falconer when she felt the urge for a companion. That his aim was to get you to kill Lora all along, as a way to foment more unrest among the nests. He coaxed me into telling him about Andrew and decided to use Andrew to make his own Hunter. He used the order to relocate, and
everything else he could come up with, to foment revolution.” Sara recalled with anger her own fear for Andrew and herself, the deaths of Gerry and the other mortal, the deaths of the three vampires. She was amazed at the scope of the destruction wrought by Bentencourt’s ambition. And it had almost worked. She looked back at the smiling Enforcer. “The object all along was to destroy you.”

Olympias was not at all shaken by this revelation. “Yeah. He’s tried it before.”

Sara was taken aback by this offhand statement. “You said you didn’t know Bentencourt!”

Olympias shrugged. “I don’t. But I think I know who he thinks he used to be.”

“Philip,” Falconer guessed. “Philip of Macedon. He’s the reincarnation of your husband.”

“Delusions of grandeur most likely,” Olympias said.

“But if
he
believes it—” Falconer began.

“He never loved me,” Rose interrupted mournfully. “Never.” She looked to Olympias for an answer. “How can a companion not love?”

“Sounds like Philip,” Olympias said. “A seducer, a manipulator, always good at finding weaknesses and playing off rivals. Easy to love, hard to forget,” she added. “Always in need of killing.” She stuck the dagger through a belt loop in her pants, laced her fingers together, and stretched her arms.

“I’ll do it,” the forlorn Rose spoke up.