Secret Vampire (25 page)

He looked at her with wide, earnest eyes. They happened to be blue-violet at the moment.

"I'm willing to take that risk," he said. "I have a
lot of respect for you."

James took the stairs two at a time, sending probing thoughts ahead of him and then refusing to be
lieve what his own senses told him.

She had to be there. She
had
to be....

He pounded on the door at the same time as he
was thrusting the key into' the lock. At the same time
as he was shouting mentally.

Poppy! Poppy, answer me! Poppy!

And then, even with the door flung open and his
own thoughts ricocheting off the emptiness in the
apartment, he
still
didn't want to believe. He ran around, looking in every room, his heart thudding louder and louder in his chest. Her duffel bag was gone. Her clothes were gone. She was gone.

He ended up leaning against the glass of the living
room window. He could see the street below, and
there was no sign of Poppy.

No sign of Ash, either.

It was James's fault. He'd been following his mother's trail all afternoon, from decorating job to deco
rating job, trying to catch up with her. Only to find,
once he did catch up, that Ash was already in El
camino, and had, in fact, been sent over to James's
apartment hours ago. With a key.

putting him alone with Poppy.

James had called the apartment immediately. No
answer. He'd broken all speed limits getting back
here. But he was too late.

Ash, you snake, he thought. If you hurt her, if you
put one finger on her
...

He found himself roving over the apartment again,
looking for clues as to what had happened. Then, in the bedroom, he noticed something pale against the light brown of the pillowcase.

A note. He snatched it up and read it. And got
colder and colder with every line. By the time he reached the end, he was made of ice and ready to
kill.

There were little round splashes where the felt-tip
pen had run. Tears. He was going to break one of
Ash's bones for each one.

He folded the note carefully and put it in his
pocket. Then he took a few things from his closet
and made a call on his cellular phone as he was walk
ing down the stairs of the apartment building.

"Mom, it's me," he said at the beep of an answer
ing machine. "I'm going to be gone for a few days.

Something's come up. If you see Ash, leave me a
message. I want to talk with him."

He didn't say please. He knew his voice was clipped
and sharp. And he didn't care. He hoped his tone would scare her.

Just at the moment he felt ready to take on his
mother and father and all the vampire Elders in the
Night World. One stake for all of them.

He wasn't a child anymore. In the last week he'd
been through the crucible. He'd faced death and
found love. He was an adult.

And filled with a quiet fury that would destroy
everything in its path. Everything necessary to get
to Poppy.

He made other phone calls as he guided the Integra
swiftly and expertly through the streets of El Camino.
He called the Black Iris and made sure that Ash
hadn't turned up there. He called several other black
flower dubs, even though he didn't expect to find
anything. Poppy had said Ash was going to take her far away.

But where?

Damn you, Ash, he thought.
Where?

Phil was staring at the TV without really seeing it.
How could he be interested in talk shows or
infomer
cials
when all he could
think
about was his sister?
His sister who was maybe watching the same shows
and maybe out biting people?

He heard the car screech to a stop outside and was
on his feet before he knew it. Weird how he was
absolutely certain of who it was. He must have come
to recognize the Integra's engine.

He opened the door as James reached the porch.
"What's
up?"

"Come on." James was already heading for the car.
There was
a deadly energy in his movements, a
barely controlled power, that Phil had never seen be
fore. White-hot fury, leashed but straining.

"What's
wrong?"

James turned at the driver's side door. "Poppy's
missing!"

Phil threw a wild glance around. There was nobody
on the street, but the door to the house was open.
And James was shouting as if he didn't care who
heard.

Then the words sank in. "What do you mean,
she's-" Phil broke off and jerked the door to the
house shut. Then he went to the Integra. James al
ready had the passenger door open.

"What do you mean, she's missing?" Phil said as
soon as he was in the car.

James gunned the engine. "My cousin Ash has taken her someplace."

"Who's Ash?"

"He's dead," James said, and somehow Phillip knew he didn't mean Ash was one of the walking
dead. He meant Ash was going to
be
dead, completely
dead, at some point very soon.

"Well, where's he taken her?"

"I don't know," James said through his teeth. "I
have no idea."

Phil stared a moment, then said, "Okay. Okay."

He didn't understand what was going on, but he
could see one thing. James was too angry and too
intent on revenge to think logically. He might
seem
rational, but it was stupid to drive around at fifty five miles an hour through a residential zone with no idea of where to go.

It was strange that Phil felt comparatively calm
it seemed as if he'd spent the last week being wacko while James played the cool part. But having some
one else be hysterical always made Phil go
levelheaded.

"Okay, look," he said. "Let's take this one step at
a time. Slow down, okay? We might be going in exactly the wrong direction." At that, James eased up on the gas pedal slightly.

"Okay, now tell me about Ash. Why's he taking Poppy somewhere? Did he kidnap her?"

"No. He talked her into it. He convinced her that
it was dangerous for me if she stuck around here. It
was the one thing guaranteed to make her go with
him." One hand on the wheel, James fished in his
pocket and handed a folded piece of paper to Phil.

It was a page torn out of a book. Phillip read the
note and swallowed. He glanced at James, who was
staring straight ahead at the road.

Phil shifted, embarrassed at having intruded on pri
vate territory, embarrassed at the sting in his eyes.
Your soulmate, Poppy?
Well. Well.

"She loves you a lot," he said finally, awkwardly.
"And I'm glad she said goodbye to me." He folded the note carefully and tucked it under the emergency brake handle. James picked it up and put it in his
pocket again.

"Ash used her feelings to get her away. Nobody
can push buttons and pull strings like he can."

"But why would he want to?"

"First because he likes girls. He's a
real
Don Juan."
James glanced at Phil caustically. "And now he's got
her alone. And second because he likes to play with
things. Like a cat with a mouse. He'll fool around
with her for a while, and then when he gets tired of
her, he'll hand her over."

Phillip went still. "Who
to?"

"The Elders. Somebody in charge somewhere
who'll realize she's a renegade vampire."

"And then what?"

"And then they kill her."

Phil grabbed the dashboard. "Wait a minute.
You're telling me that a cousin of yours is going to
hand Poppy over to be killed?"

"It's the law. Any good vampire would do the
same. My own mother would do it, without a second
thought." His voice was bitter.

"And he's a vampire. Ash," Phil said stupidly.

James gave him a look.
"All
my cousins are vam
pires," he said with a short laugh. Then his expres
sion changed, and he took his foot off the gas.

"What's the-hey, that was a stop sign!" Phil
yelped.

James slammed on the brakes and swung into a
U-turn in the middle of the street. He ran over some
body's lawn.

"What is it?" Phil said tightly, still braced against
the dashboard.

James was looking almost dreamy. "I've just real
ized where they've gone. Where he'd take her. He
told her someplace safe, where people wouldn't care
what she was. But vampires
would
care."

"So they're with humans?"

"No. Ash hates humans. He'd want to take her
someplace in the Night World, someplace where he's
a big man. And the nearest city that's controlled by
the Night World is Las Vegas."

Phil felt his jaw drop.
Las Vegas?
Controlled by the
Night World? He had the sudden impulse to laugh. Sure, of course it would be. "And I always thought
it was the Mafia," he said.

"It is," James said seriously, swerving onto a free
way on-ramp. "Just a different mafia."

"But, look, wait. Las Vegas is a big city."

"It's not, actually. But it doesn't matter anyway. I
know where they are. Because all my cousins
aren't
vampires. Some of them are witches."

Phil's forehead puckered. "Oh, yeah? And how did
you arrange that?"

"I didn't. My great-grandparents did, about four
hundred years ago. They did a blood-tie ceremony
with a witch
family.
The witches aren't my
real
cous
ins; they're not related. They're cross-cousins.
Adopted family. It probably won't even occur to
them that Poppy might not be legal. And that's
where Ash would go."

"They're cross-kin," Ash told Poppy. They were
driving in the Rasmussen's gold Mercedes, which Ash
insisted his aunt Maddy would want him to take.
"They won't be suspicious of you. And witches don't
know the signs of being a new vampire the way vam
pires do."

Poppy just stared at the far horizon. It was evening now, and a lowering red sun was setting behind them. All around them was a weird alien landscape: not as brown as Poppy would have expected a desert
to be. More gray-green, with clumps of green-gray.
The Joshua trees were strangely beautiful, but also
the closest thing to a plant made up of tentacles as
she'd ever seen.

Most everything growing had spikes.

It was oddly fitting as a place to go into exile. Poppy felt as if she were leaving behind not only her
old life, but everything she'd ever found
familiar
about the earth.

"I'll take care of you," Ash said caressingly.

Poppy didn't even blink.

Phillip first saw Nevada as a line of lights in the
darkness ahead. As they got closer to the state line,
the lights resolved into signs with blinking, swarm
ing, flashing neon messages. Whiskey Pete's, they an
nounced. Buffalo Bill's. The Prima Donna.

Some guy with a reputation for being a Don Juan
was taking Poppy in
this
direction?