Possession (21 page)

“It would be inappropriate for the Prince of the City to stoop and carry for me, but I must still work—work that you know requires considerable labor. Inman was only a dhampir, so I cannot be surprised if his mind has been persuaded against us.”

I guessed that was the situation Quinton had been warning me about when he said the vampires had a problem. “When did this happen?”

“A few weeks ago. The half-converted can be difficult to track since they walk the daylight as well as the night.”

“And you didn’t come to me?”

“I felt it would not be in our best interest to be seen to rely on your help too frequently, Greywalker. The current cabal is still young in power.”

Considering I’d helped put that group in power, I was well aware of how sketchy the underpinnings of the regime were and how quickly the situation could have turned into a bloodbath at any hint of weakness.

“How—?” I started, but Carlos cut me off with a look.

“This is not the best place for conversation. And I have things I would ask you, too.”

I was more shaken than I’d thought if I hadn’t the presence of mind to realize that chats with vampires are not best pursued in public places, like famous alleys in front of famous bars. I nodded. “Where would you prefer? I’m on the job, but, to be honest, it’s not going well. . . .”

He made a humming sound and motioned for me to follow him down the alley, blending into the night as only a vampire can. I came along behind, trusting him not to lead me into danger—which says a lot about our relationship in spite of the fact that Carlos is the most frightening thing I know. He went down the alley and ducked across Stewart Street, heading to a bench in a tiny courtyard behind the Inn at the Market. It was probably a lovely place to sit and talk during the day. At night it was secluded and dark in spite of its proximity to streetlights and busy roads. We sat uncomfortably close, his aura of death and pain lying over me like a blanket of horrors.

Once we were seated, posing like lovers conversing, I asked, “Why didn’t you come to me when your assistant went missing? You know I would take any case of yours as a priority.”

“I do, which is why I did not. Cameron suggested it, but he was dissuaded. We cannot be seen to run to you with petty internal problems.”

“But a rogue vampire is not a petty—”

He cut me off. “No, but we did not want it known that such a thing had happened. And I prefer to hunt those who defy me myself.”

I didn’t like the sound of that.

“Defy you? That sounds . . . complicated.” I wouldn’t have thought a demi-vampire could do other than obey the vampire to whom he was tied by blood and power. Purlis had managed a very dangerous coup. No wonder Carlos hadn’t wanted word to get out. It also gave me a new perspective on my ambitious and unpleasant nearly in-law.

“It is,” Carlos said. “Inman was not the first of our number to go missing. But he has been the first to come back.”

I shook my head, not so much confused as amazed at what I was hearing.

“He came back to spy,” Carlos explained. “The others may still live, but they remain wherever their captors keep them and we dare not risk an assault to recover them at this time. So we have allowed the situation to lie as it is. So far it has caused little trouble, but that won’t last. With Inman’s return, we face a problem that I had hoped to keep you out of. I would not like to ask you to choose between our faction—which you have protected and supported, however much you dislike our kind—and your mate.”

I felt exhausted by this skulduggery and closed my eyes, tamping down my anger at Purlis, Quinton, and the whole damned situation.

Carlos spoke into my protracted silence. “You see the difficulty I faced.”

I opened my eyes and looked at him, steeling myself against the effects of his gaze. “I do, but you shouldn’t have hesitated. Neither of us supports his father’s project. Or his ambitions. He’s been trying to drag Quinton in for a year, but it’s a no-go. Quinton won’t do it.”

“Because of you?”

“Because his father is a psychotic with an agenda that gets innocent people killed.”

Carlos nodded. “I see. I’m sorry that we hesitated—that
I
hesitated to come to you. But we should talk to Cameron. This changes the situation.”

He rose and expected me to come along, but I held my place, not least because I still felt disoriented and ill from the swift passage of events. “Wait. I have concerns of my own here. I can’t just abandon my inquiry to accommodate Cameron. Time is short on this one.”

He arched a brow. “You require something in return.”

“I will, yes.”

“What will you demand?”

“A favor—when I’m ready for it.”

Carlos chuckled, a rumbling that shook my chest and skull. “One to be named at another time. You well know that we owe you many times over.”

“Can you speak for Cameron in this?”

“No, but I doubt he’ll balk. Come, we’ll go to him.”

And this time I didn’t have a choice. I got up and followed Carlos. He went straight to my Land Rover and leaned against the side with a sardonic smile. “I prefer not to walk, as would you.” Which let me know Cameron wasn’t in downtown Seattle as his predecessor had preferred to be. Interesting . . .

I don’t like to transport vampires. Their presence makes me queasy under the best of circumstances, and the filtering effect of the big truck’s glass and steel doesn’t work on things already inside it. This was not going to be a pleasant drive . . . wherever we were going.

At Carlos’s direction, I drove out of the market and up through downtown and the University District to Laurelhurst—a neighborhood filled with sprawling, well-appointed houses that rolls along the lakeshore between Union Bay and Wolf Bay. Carlos sent me up a twisty street that terminated in a long private drive and a solid gate. I wasn’t surprised that he had a keycard for the gate. Nor was I entirely surprised that the gate didn’t open immediately. An athletic young woman with a swirling aura of crimson and indigo stepped out from behind a bit of landscaping and paused to look us over. She wasn’t wearing a uniform, but something about her outfit hinted at an organization. What she was wearing was a gun—something bigger than a handgun and smaller than a rifle that I didn’t get a good look at—on a quick-deploy sling. I guess the vampires were finally giving up arrogance in favor of safety, since even a top-level predator is only as good as his combat reach. Carlos turned a baleful glare on the guard but she didn’t flinch. Once she’d satisfied her curiosity, she keyed a radio resting on her collar like a cop’s and said something into it. Her energy corona flared and sparked as she spoke and I wasn’t able to understand her, though I knew she was speaking English. I was almost glad my left eye was still stubbornly seeing only in the Grey or I might have missed the spell in action. I wondered who’d cast it—the woman or someone else?

The gate opened and I ceased speculating and drove through. I cruised the truck down the long driveway to a dark gray house that stretched along a bit of the hill crest overlooking the Laurelhurst Beach Club and Wolf Bay. The view was spectacular even from the wrong side of the building.

The interior was equally impressive. An eclectic collection of art was casually arranged throughout the rooms in the way most people would display curios and family photos. The carpet in the living room was white—a rather daring choice for a vampire. The furniture was more traditional: black and arranged to face the floor-to-ceiling vista of the bay. Cameron was standing in front of the windows, tall and slim and blond as a young lion. He would always appear to be twenty-one—his age when we’d met a few weeks after his death—but he seemed older. He gazed out at the view with a melancholy posture.

“Don’t you find that a bit disturbing?” I asked, recalling that vampires and water don’t get along well.

He shrugged without turning. “I like to keep an eye on things that can easily kill me. It just seems like a good idea.” His voice now silvered the air with small charms of comfort and relaxation when he spoke. It appeared an effortless performance, though the deep red-and-black energy around him flickered very slightly as I noticed it. He was certainly being more thorough than his predecessor in controlling his environment—right down to how his visitors felt about him. It was masterly, but I didn’t like it.

He turned then, flashing a smile that went a long way to dispelling the roiling discomfort that I usually detected pouring off of vampires. His eyes were a deeper violet color than I’d remembered—or maybe that, too, went with the glamour from his smile. I shot Carlos a glance, but saw no magical workings on his part.

“Your former student has come along nicely,” I said.

He gave me a small nod of satisfied acknowledgment. “He comes into his own.”

I looked back to Cameron. “Very impressive.”

“I had the best teacher death could buy.” Cameron made a show of taking a deep breath—he’d stopped breathing about five years earlier, so it was strictly for effect—and changed the subject. “It’s a pleasure to see you, Harper.”

“Is it?”

“Yes. I like you. I owe you . . . pretty much everything.”

“That doesn’t always lead to joyful reunions and fond remembrances,” I said.

“Not for some people, but I’m not exactly
some people
. Am I?”

“No.”

He almost smiled. “Since you’re in Carlos’s company, can I assume this visit has to do with our sudden loss of membership?”

“A bit. Carlos seems to think we have things to discuss.”

“If he thinks so, then it’s so. Please sit down. Make yourself comfortable.”

I’m rarely comfortable around vampires, but with these two I’d do my best to fake it. Nevertheless, I was careful to sit where I could watch them both, which I knew they knew. Cameron’s mouth quirked a bit at one corner, but that was all the notice my caution warranted.

Vampires don’t have the same sense of time pressure that living humans have. But in this case, they had an immediate problem and I wasn’t yet sure if it was more or less urgent than my case in hand, so I kept a bland expression and waited them out.

Cameron sat down at last, in a chair at an angle to mine so he wasn’t in my space but still close enough to talk without raising his voice. Carlos kept to his feet, staying within a degree or two of Cameron’s shoulder. Cam leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees, the light reflected off the water illuminating one side of his face with wavering blue light.

“In the past month or so, several of my people have disappeared. It isn’t unusual for the weaker members of such a tribe as ours to move on or to fall away. Even we die, and accidents do happen. There have been other indications that something’s been a bit . . . off with some of our associates. Carlos said he saw signs of interference with magic—small things, but of interest and possibly dangerous to us. And I began to notice fewer homeless people on the streets.”

“You watch the homeless?” I asked, my cynicism coming through, while some other part of my brain wondered if he knew anything about Twitcher and if his death was part of the pattern Cam had detected.

Cameron met my eyes and looked disappointed. “Yes. While it’s true that the people who fall through your society’s cracks may become prey to the desperate and unscrupulous of mine, they aren’t cattle. They are human beings, as we were once human beings. We must coexist without drawing attention to ourselves and that means using every resource wisely. Something Edward didn’t always appreciate.”

He put one hand up as if warding off a comment he knew was coming. “Yes, I said ‘resource.’” His eyes narrowed a little and his face hardened with a touch of cold anger I’d never before seen in him. “The past few years have been a hard education for me. Ours is not a society apart from yours. We’re predators, but we’re also parasites. We are dependent on normal humans and creatures of magic to maintain us and to keep our existence secret. Unless human society changes in vast and significant ways, we’ll always be things that live in the shadows—nightmares, dreams, things half seen by moonlight. Phantom lovers who melt away at dawn,” he added, scoffing. “That is the fairy tale we perpetuate for our own interests—thank the gods for the pliant imaginations of Bram Stoker and Stephenie Meyer.”

He paused with a rueful half smile and made a slight change to his position in the chair—more for my sake than his, I thought—before he went on, his expression growing harder. “Because there are few of us, we’re ruthless. Because we’re long-lived, we’re acquisitive. And if we’re not clever and tricky about it, we’re dead. We have to tread lightly on the earth and we have to maintain the balance by husbanding resources, by being careful, abstemious, and—when warranted—manipulative, underhanded bastards. So, yes, I keep watch on the homeless, the transient, and the insane. They’re like a pack of idiot cousins—an obnoxious, smelly, drooling horde most of the time, but a few are quite likable. A decent custodian doesn’t just stand aside and let them all jump off cliffs. Or push them.”

I found his use of “our” and “your” startling and unsettling, but it was an eloquent speech and not at all what I would have expected of the chief vampire of Seattle. I had not given much thought to how much the terrified and confused living-dead college student I’d once rescued from a parking garage would be forced to change by taking the reins. I was pleased to detect a touch of student-activist-style passion there. Some things are, apparently, not exclusive to the living.

I bowed my head a little. “I hadn’t given it that kind of thought. But . . . much as I don’t like to sound petty, could we focus on the more immediate problem? I do understand the larger context, but for now, we both seem to have pieces of a larger puzzle and I’d like to put them together.”

Cameron chuckled. “Yes. I’m sorry. I get carried away on this topic lately. As I said, people have gone missing. Among the homeless it’s not uncommon for them to move on and we can’t always track what becomes of them. I didn’t pay that much attention at first, but when a few of my people disappeared, I began to worry. Initially it was our support people—catspaws, blood-bound, day servants—then a few demi-vampires and the ascending. Those are always dangerous stages, when it’s very easy for something to go wrong—you remember what I was like. But the apparent mortality rate was a little too high and then I started to notice that no one could positively say that any of these missing had died—it was just assumed. There should have been bodies, but there weren’t. No funerals, no rise in suspicious deaths reported to the coroner’s office. They were just gone. Like they’d been taken. But there was a lot more ghost activity—according to Carlos.” He indicated the other vampire with a small gesture. “I don’t have his acuity, so I can’t confirm it, but I’d assume you can.”