Laws of the Blood 4: Deceptions: Deceptions (6 page)

Bentencourt took the seat opposite Sara and turned his intense scrutiny on her once more. “Do we have this sort of get-together often?”

She was saved from making any immediate answer when the last companion that had been invited came into the private room and slammed the door behind her. “This had better be good, maggots,” Cassandra from the Bethesda nest announced. She took a seat, snatched a warm roll out of a linen-shrouded basket, and finished it off in a shower of crumbs before adding, “My lover won’t forget the insult from your mistress.” She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth, then turned and slapped Gerry, who’d dared resume the seat beside her. “You can stand, maggot boy.”

Sara sighed and gestured Gerry to take the chair next to Gavivi.

“How did a sow like you get to be a companion?” Gavivi asked.

One moment Cassandra was pouring herself a glass of water, the next, the crystal pitcher shattered on the wall behind Gavivi’s head. Shards of glass and ice flew around the room, a sideboard and the green floral wallpaper were splattered with water.

Note to self,
Sara thought.
Cassandra is close to popping fangs.
Olympias would want to know that a new baby vampire was about to enter the underneath world. Some made the transition smoothly, others got a little more—tense. It looked like Cassandra was going to be one of the difficult ones. Too bad the Hunt necessary for the rebirth would have to be put off a few weeks. By the time the woman couldn’t take the pressure anymore, making the arrangements would not be Olympias’s problem—meaning it would not be Sara’s problem—other than making sure the Bethesda nest settled in an area where an Enforcer was available to oversee the transition process.

Which brought her to the crux of this meeting. There was a dense silence following Cassandra’s outburst, and
everyone was carefully not looking at each other. Sara said, “The Enforcer of the City wishes me to convey a decision about each of your nests to each of your nest leaders.”

Cassandra banged a fist down on the table, rattling dishes and silverware. “We don’t run errands for slaves.”

“We aren’t being asked to,” Roger Bentencourt spoke up reasonably.

“Try to listen to what the woman says,” Gavivi added.

“You’re being told to convey the message,” Gerry spoke up. “We realize that the method is circuitous and rather old-fashioned, but we are—as the saying goes—only following orders.”

Sara wondered what demon of insecurity had let her talk herself into bringing Gerry along to this meeting. Strength in numbers didn’t mean anything when she and Gerry were equally lower forms of life to the vampires’ companions. Facing these people was tough, but so what? She was Olympias’s representative. These people didn’t have to like her, and she shouldn’t want the support of a friend and equal when facing the companions. Especially not when Gerry wasn’t in a mood to back Olympias up. The subversion in his words wasn’t that overt, but tone, body language, and the psychic energy he projected spoke volumes to this very gifted trio about his frustration with the world as it was. As Olympias’s representatives they needed to be careful not to do or say anything that could possibly undermine her authority. A word, a hint, a look—Gerry needed to remember that the strigoi were predators.

Sara felt the intense scrutiny from the three companions like bruising pressure on her skin. The newcomer, Bentencourt, was the one whose interest seemed to reach deepest through her inadequate shielding. Sara turned her full attention on him. The sympathy she saw in his eyes was nothing like pity for the poor state of her feeble psychic talent. His look conveyed understanding that she was doing her best to perform a difficult job. She couldn’t
help but give him a small, ironic smile and shrug, which got an encouraging nod in reply.

Before she could continue with the explanation the companions waited for, a trio of servers entered the room. Meals were placed before everyone at the table, wine and coffee was poured, the mess from the broken water pitcher was efficiently cleaned up, and then the wait staff exited. Sara was aware of Cassandra’s foot tapping impatiently during this interlude, and she was also aware that the tension in the room eased somewhat, while they waited for privacy once more. Gerry and Gavivi even engaged in a bit of flirtatious small talk. Roger Bentencourt discreetly studied everyone, and Sara discreetly studied him.

Once they were alone again, Sara dropped the bombshell. “You all have to move,” she told them. “Olympias has decided that the three remaining nests in the Washington area pose a threat to the whole strigoi community. You are to inform your nest leaders of her decision. The nests have a month to relocate.”

That was when all hell broke loose. And these three dangerous, furious creatures Sara and Gerry had to deal with were still mortal humans. Lord knew what it would have been like if there were vampires in the room being told they were being evicted. No wonder Olympias sent the help to deal with this. Sara knew she wouldn’t have wanted this job if she’d had any choice in the matter—but she didn’t. That was what being a slave was all about.

“Okay, maybe it wasn’t such a good idea,” Grace conceded to the room full of stunned, staring, pale Walkers.

She’d been the control who’d talked them through the session, so she wasn’t in as bad a shape as the others. There was buoyancy in her attitude that told Falconer she was ready to try again—as soon as the aftereffects wore off. He sighed. He wasn’t as bad off as the rest of them, but there was a lingering sense of disorientation and a dark anger he didn’t understand. Though the very real
bruises from the attack were a constant dull ache, his own head was not aching from trying to relive the experience. He knew all the others were suffering various layers of pain and nausea. He could sense the pain without actually going through it, a kind of odd empathy he’d never felt before.

Michael Falconer had been through many types of testing over the years that confirmed he possessed many forms of psychic talent, but mostly he didn’t give a shit. Having a new talent crop up was the last thing he wanted. All he’d ever really wanted was a career as a soldier, and as a soldier his duty was to serve where his superiors chose to send him—as a leader of loons. He shook his head. Maybe this surge of bitterness was another aftereffect he experienced from Grace’s little experiment gone awry.

“I threw up,” Jeremy muttered, his gaze fixed firmly in the tabletop. “I don’t throw up—a Walker shouldn’t be physically ill in the performance of his duty.”

“That wasn’t real walking,” Sela said. “That was—nightmare country.”

“It wasn’t that bad,” Grace protested.

“You were awake, I wasn’t. I know a nightmare when I have one.”

“Off limits,” Jeremy rambled on. “Unprofessional. We had no authorization . . .”

Falconer listened to Jeremy’s muttering and sympathized with the time-serving bureaucrat’s outrage at a known procedure being shot to hell. The sour aroma that filled the meeting room where they’d convened to conduct the regression experiment confirmed Jeremy’s reaction to the experience. Donald leaned back limply in his chair, with his eyes closed. Falconer looked away when Donald lifted his hand and began to sign the letters of a word Falconer didn’t want to think about.

Sela rubbed her temples as she glared at Grace. She pointed to the floor. “I ain’t cleaning that up.”

Grace ignored this implication. “We need to analyze
results.” She reached for the tape recorder they’d used to document their experiences.

“No,” Falconer said before she could rewind and play the questions and answers she’d posed to each of them on their attempted psychic journey back to his being attacked the night before.

He leaned forward and snagged the tape recorder from in front of her. He popped out the cassette and put it into his shirt pocket. Grace turned a pleading look on him. Grace Avella had big, brown, expressive eyes, and the emotions she aimed at him were full of intense trust, hope, and curiosity. It was not easy to ignore her.

“No,” he said again. “We are not analyzing this. We are not going to even listen to it. It was an unauthorized experiment. It didn’t work. We aren’t going to try it again.”

“But—”

“We’re wrecked.” Sela cut Grace off. “Mike’s right.” She stood up. “I’m going home. I’m not going back to a park full of—”

“Nothing but our imaginations.” Falconer cut her off.

“My imagination is not that sick!” Jeremy protested. He glared at Grace. “You don’t have the training to be a control. You influenced us somehow, made some sort of improper suggestion that led us to impossible conclusions.”

Grace popped up angrily out of her chair. “I did no such thing! Maybe we picked up on Mike’s subconscious reactions to whoever attacked him. It came out as freaky imagery, but you all went to the same place, witnessed the same event and—”

“Can it,” Falconer intervened. “Everybody go home. Forget about this. We’ll get back to our real work tomorrow.”

“It’s weird, but not as weird as this,” Sela said. She helped Jeremy to his feet. Then tapped Donald on the shoulder to get his attention. When he opened his eyes, she pointed to the door. Donald didn’t waste any time
before getting out. Sela and Jeremy followed quickly after. Grace lingered for a moment. Falconer frowned sternly and pointed. She flounced out like a disgruntled teenager, but at least she did go without any further argument.

“
I
HATE TO speak ill of the dead, especially when she’s standing over my shoulder and hasn’t yet had a cup of coffee,” Sara said, without turning from the desk where she was going through a stack of mail. “But there are some things, boss, that it would be better for you to handle.”

Behind her she heard Olympias yawn, not for the first time since she had come into the office. Sara’d been expecting Olympias’s arrival since she’d heard the shower go on upstairs a little after sunset. Now, here Olympias was, and Sara was prepared for their usual evening briefing, even if Olympias wasn’t quite awake yet. There was also a grunt and heavy breathing behind her, but that came from the huge dog that had crowded into the small room at the back of the house with Olympias. Sara continued sorting envelopes for a few more minutes. When she turned around her long-limbed mistress was seated cross-legged on the office’s hardwood floor. Bitch’s head was in Olympias’s lap, and she was lovingly scratching the ears of the creature that ran her life.

“You could make me a cup of coffee,” were Olympias’s first words of the night.

“Have you been in the kitchen?” Sara answered. “The coffeepot has a timer. It started brewing around sunset.”

“Oh. I always forget.” She pushed Bitch away and stood with a speed that was dizzying to watch. “I hate technology.” She was gone and back with two blue mugs of steaming coffee within the space of a few heartbeats. “Good coffee, though,” she added after handing Sara one of the mugs and taking a sip from her own. “Remember the first time I tasted this stuff. There was this Turkish prince who got himself bit—he introduced me to all sorts of Ottoman decadence while we were hanging out together. I’d been avoiding getting addicted to coffee, even though it was the drug of choice in the underneath since the Arabs brought qahwa from Ethiopia, but Selim looked at me with those big brown eyes of his and smiled an ‘I dare you’ smile—and here I am, hooked to this day.”

“Fascinating,” Sara said.

Olympias either didn’t notice the sarcasm, or chose to ignore it as she went on. “I took against coffee early on, when a companion of mine used it as an excuse to divorce her husband. Did you know there was an Islamic law that allowed women to divorce their husbands if they didn’t provide them with a daily allowance of coffee?” Olympias drained her cup and settled back on the floor again.

“There are chairs,” Sara pointed out. “They’re all covered in paperwork,” she admitted. “But I could move it.” There was a shredder in one corner of the office, and Sara always burned what she’d shredded, and vampires didn’t put a lot of things in writing, but there always seemed to be a lot of paper around.

Olympias sipped coffee and looked thoughtful for a while. When she spoke, it was with a deep sadness that tore at Sara’s heart. “It was a flimsy excuse, but she hated her marriage long before I came into her life. She wanted
out, and more than just to be with me. I could have made arrangements. What’s the use of having a companion if you don’t protect them? But she went to her husband while I was away—on damn Council business. He killed her, killed the mother of his children, rather than let her go.” She shrugged. “Needless to say, he paid for it. I raised the children, but never tasted them.” Another shrug. “Mortality can be a gift, you know.” She sighed. “Damned Council. And why do I keep remembering old companions lately?”

“Maybe because you’re lonely and could use a new lover?” Sara answered.

Olympias looked up. “Maybe that was a rhetorical question.”

Sara attempted to look innocent. “Really? I’ve never been very good at recognizing those.”

Olympias looked at her sharply. “Uh-huh.” Having finished her coffee, she put the mug down on the floor where Bitch proceeded to dip her huge tongue into it to finish up the dregs. “A hellhound with a caffeine buzz, won’t the neighbors love that.”

Sara didn’t recall any neighbor having actually complained about the huge dog in the five years she’d been living in the house in this very quiet neighborhood. Bitch wasn’t much of a barker and generally only went out at night. She’d terrified a few delivery people with her sheer size and the spooky intelligent look in her eyes when she appeared at the door when Sara opened it, but she’d never done any harm. Okay, she chewed up shoes, shed like mad, and had a name Sara found unpleasant, but human prey didn’t interest the hellhound at all. The neighbors didn’t complain, but there were others . . .