Vampire Most Wanted (12 page)

It was Vincent who said what he couldn’t. “But she went at you with a mop for not waiting for permission to enter and burst one of your baby makers.”

Marcus winced at the memory. “Yeah. Hurt like hell too.”

“I can imagine,” Vincent said, and Marcus noticed that he unconsciously squeezed his legs together as if his own baby makers were shriveling in sympathy.

A choked sound, suspiciously like a laugh, came from Jackie, and both men turned to glance at her with matching expressions of outrage.

“Having your ball busted is no laughing matter, Jackie,” Vincent said with a frown.

“I’m sorry,” she said at once, her expression truly apologetic, but then that expression slipped away and she gave a little laugh and said, “It’s just—I mean, men are always calling women ball busters, and usually when they don’t deserve it, and now Divine has actually
earned
the title and it’s just . . . not funny at all,” Jackie ended solemnly when she noted their expressions. Shaking her head, she added, “Definitely not funny.”

“Hmm,” Vincent muttered, not appearing mollified.

Jackie cleared her throat and said, “But she didn’t mean to . . . er . . . bust your ball.”

“No,” Marcus acknowledged. “I don’t think she did.”

“And she took care of you afterward, putting you in her bed to heal,” she pointed out.

“Yes, she did,” Marcus agreed. “And that’s where I was when a man entered the RV. At first I thought it was Divine and just laid there waiting for her to say or do something, but then I caught a whiff of the person and knew it definitely wasn’t Divine.”

“Did you see who it was?” Jackie asked, moving closer to the bed.

Marcus shook his head. “I opened my eyes when the door closed but they had gone. I got up to go after them then, intending to find out who it had been, and that’s when the RV went up in flames.”

“But they saw that it was you in the bed not Divine?” Jackie asked with a frown.

“I don’t think so,” Marcus said at once. “I was burrowed into the covers, most of my face even under it. Only my forehead and hair stuck out a bit and it was dark in there.” He shook his head. “I’m pretty sure they didn’t know who was in the bed. They probably noted the lump under the covers, presumed it was her, and left to set the fire.”

“So two attacks on her in one day?” Vincent said thoughtfully.

“Two attacks in two nights,” Marcus corrected. “I’m pretty sure she must have taken the head wound right after we returned from town Thursday night.”

Jackie didn’t look certain about this. “So you think what? That she was attacked on returning and somehow rode off on her motorcycle? You said she returned on it the next day, right?”

“Yeah.” Marcus knew it didn’t make sense. The amount of blood in the RV and dried in her hair had suggested a terrible wound. One she wouldn’t have been able to walk away from, let alone jump on a motorcycle and ride away from. Besides, where had her attacker gone? What had they done while she was escaping? The motorcycle had been gone and the RV dark and silent when he’d got to it intending to return her helmet. It couldn’t have taken him more than ten or fifteen minutes to get to her RV after she’d dropped him off. That wasn’t a lot of time. Whatever had happened, had happened quickly. Glancing from Jackie to Vincent he asked, “Did you see anything about the attack in her memories?”

“No,” Vincent admitted. “But then I wasn’t really looking for anything specific, and as I said, her thoughts and memories are sort of organized and disorganized at the same time. She . . .”

When his voice trailed off, Marcus followed the man’s gaze to Jackie to find her staring hard at Divine with concentration. She was reading her now, he realized and almost protested, but the donning horror on Jackie’s face stopped him. He watched with a sickening knot growing in his stomach as Jackie paled, then flushed, then paled again, this time actually going a bloodless gray before she suddenly turned away and rushed for the bathroom.

“Well, that can’t be good,” Vincent muttered, hurrying after her as they heard her retching.

Marcus glanced back to Divine and then followed the couple. He watched silently as Vincent held Jackie’s hair back as she lost whatever meal she’d last eaten. He waited as Vincent murmured soothing words and dampened a cloth to wash her now flushed face, then just as he was about to ask what she’d seen, Jackie glanced to him, swallowed, and, voice husky, said, “She isn’t harboring Leonius. She’s one of his victims and the man is an animal. Worse, a monster. The things he did to her, at least the little bit I saw . . .” She shook her head. “She’d never harbor someone like that. He—”

The rest of what she would have said was lost as she turned and retched into the toilet again.

Vincent immediately dropped the cloth he’d used to wipe her face, slid his arm around her shoulders again, and murmured soothingly as he held her hair back. Marcus turned away from the scene to peer at Divine in the bed, wondering what the hell Jackie had seen.

Twelve

D
ivine woke up making a strangled sound she recognized at once as a scream caught in her throat. She’d woken up like that many times over the years. She used to wake up like that daily, surfacing from nightmares that claimed her while she slept. But they’d waned over the centuries and millennia. She rarely had them anymore. She supposed it was the pain of healing that had brought them back now.

Pushing the dark memories determinedly from her consciousness, Divine concentrated on the here and now instead, taking careful note of the room she was in. It was the same rose-colored room Jackie and Vincent had shown her to before chaining her down so she wouldn’t hurt herself and giving her the bagged blood. The chains were gone now, she noted, probably removed once the worst of the healing had ended.

That was a good sign, she decided. It meant they had no idea she was the Basha Argeneau they were looking for.

Sighing, Divine sat up, pushed the sheets aside and grimaced at her bloodstained clothes. She looked like a two-year-old wearing her last meal. Wrinkling her nose with distaste at the nasty dry stuff, she slid out of bed and then headed for the bathroom Jackie had pointed out earlier. She’d considered showering and stripping then, but it had seemed a waste of time at that point when she knew that the healing would leave her feeling slimy and dirty anyway. It always did as impurities and damaged tissue were broken down and pushed out through the pores.

Jackie and Vincent would probably have to throw out the linens and beds she and Marcus had lain in while healing . . . unless they had really good bed protectors. She hoped they did. She’d hate to think she’d cost them anything. Maybe she should give them money for their trouble, Divine thought as she turned on the shower and stripped off her clothes.

The warm water pounding down on her head and body went a long way toward clearing away the last of the darkness at the corners of her mind. Divine hated the nightmares that occasionally plagued her. It was bad enough to have suffered what she had once; having nightmares about it just seemed to her like her own mind continuing the torture originally visited on her by Leonius Livius. She didn’t deserve that. No one did. That being the case, she’d learned to give the nightmares as little room as possible in her waking mind. On waking, she always pushed them back into an imagined closet in her head and firmly closed the door. To her mind it was the only way to handle it.

Divine felt pretty good after her shower, even better when she walked back out into the bedroom and spotted the clean clothes folded neatly and placed on the end of the bed. The fact that the blankets she’d tossed aside on waking lay half over them told her they’d been there when she’d got up and hadn’t been brought in while she’d showered. Jackie was obviously not only thoughtful, but the organized type, figuring out what needed doing and doing it before it was needed. Divine appreciated that.

Dropping her towel, she picked up the clothes and began to pull them on, surprised to find there were still tags on everything. Pretty pink panties, a matching bra, a flowy skirt in deep red similar to one of her own skirts that had probably gone up in flames, and a white peasant blouse with red stitching along the neckline that suggested it was Mexican in origin. There was a large skirt scarf too, but without the coins that she’d sewn onto her own scarf. There was also a pair of high-heeled, knee-high black boots.

It wasn’t as elaborate as the costumes she usually wore as Madame Divine, but it would do and she appreciated the effort put into the outfit.

Once dressed, Divine grabbed the towel and returned to the bathroom to hang it over the shower door to dry. She then looked around in the drawers and found a brand-new toothbrush in its wrapper, toothpaste, and a brush. She used all three items to make herself more presentable, and then walked back out to strip the bed.

There
was
a mattress protector, she saw with relief. So only the linens would have to be thrown out. No amount of washing would remove the stench and stains from a healing. After a glance at the windows showed her that it was early evening, the sun just setting, Divine rolled the pillowcases inside the sheets, picked up the bundle, and headed out of the room in search of Marcus and her hosts, sure that if they weren’t already up, they would be soon.

The murmur of voices coming from below as she descended the stairs told her someone was up. Divine followed the sound up the hallway toward the kitchen, but slowed as she reached the door when she heard Marcus ask, “Lucian said he was coming here? Why? We don’t know that she’s Basha.”

“I presume that’s why,” Vincent said, and she could imagine him shrugging as he said it. “To find out if she is.”

There was a brief silence and then Jackie said, “Don’t worry, Marcus. Whether she is Basha or not, there is no way she is in league with Leonius. Lucian will see that. He got the wrong information. She would never be in league with him after the things he did to her.”

“What the hell did he do to her?” Marcus growled, and the frustration in his voice suggested it wasn’t the first time he’d asked the question.

“I told you, that’s not for me to say. You’ll have to ask Divine,” Jackie responded solemnly.

Divine turned slowly away from the door and moved silently back up the hall. She carried the sheets all the way back up to the room she’d woken in, set them on the bed, and then simply stood there for a moment, her mind racing.

Lucian was coming.

The thought terrified her despite Vincent and Jackie’s reassurances to Marcus that everything would be well. The man was as much of a monster as Leonius had been. While Leonius had haunted her nightmares, Lucian had haunted her waking hours. The fear of his finding her, of his killing her and Damian. She’d been hiding from the man for more than two millennia. It was ingrained now and her mind was screaming at her to run and hide. But a lifetime of training kept her from simply running willy-nilly. That rarely led to good results.

Stop, think, plan
, Divine told herself. He wasn’t here yet. She had time. She had to do this all carefully, figure out where to run to, and where she could hide.

Carnivals wouldn’t be safe anymore, they’d look for her there. She’d have to give up that life, but then she’d seen the end of that coming anyway. Hoskins was one of a dwindling number of self-owned carnivals left in the industry. Big corporations were moving in, buying them up, and taking them over as they did everything else.

Divine knew that Bob and Madge themselves had been approached twice now about selling. She also knew that they had seriously considered accepting the offer and retiring. They hadn’t said as much, but she’d read it in their minds. The couple were both in their late fifties, carnie life was hard, and the offer got better each time they were approached. The only thing holding them back was the carnies themselves.

Bob and Madge thought of most of their people as family. Many of the carnies had been with them from the start, others for nearly as long. Bob and Madge felt like they’d be betraying kin by retiring, but Divine knew it would take only one bad thing to change their minds, another greenie trying to lure a child away from the midway, or finding out someone they trusted was robbing them. It was why Divine had got in on the hiring and helped clean house when she’d joined the carnival. Well, that and because she had genuinely wanted to help the couple.

Divine glanced to the bundled sheets on the bed and frowned as it suddenly occurred to her that the RV fire might be the one bad thing to change their minds and make them accept that next offer. Certainly it could be if they learned the fire had been deliberately set. She’d smelled the gasoline around the burning RV. Had they? She wasn’t sure if mortals would have been able to, but certainly their fire inspector or whoever it was who investigated such things would be able to tell an accelerant had been used.

“Crap,” she muttered, and spun to pull open the door to reveal a startled Marcus standing in the hall, one hand raised and curled to knock.

“Oh. Good. You’re up,” he said after a pause. He shifted from one foot to another and then gave her a crooked smile and asked, “How do you feel?”

“We have to go,” Divine announced, pushing past him into the hall.

“What?” Marcus said with surprise, and then hurried to follow her. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Divine. You’ve just woken up. You aren’t really through with healing yet. You should rest a bit and—”

“What day is it?” she asked as she started down the stairs.

“It’s Tuesday evening. About 4
P.M.
,” he answered helpfully.

“Damn, I’ll never make it to a bank before it closes,” she muttered and then shrugged. She would worry about that later. Right now, she had to get to Madge and Bob and see what was going on.

“Divine.” Marcus was sounding less caught out, and more exasperated. He was regaining his footing after his initial surprise. The fact that it had taken this long, though, told her that he, at least, still wasn’t fully healed. She supposed she probably wasn’t either, but she felt fine. A little thirsty, maybe, but the marks from his stabbing her with the arrow and clawing at her chest were gone. There wasn’t even the faintest scarring anymore. Any healing still taking place would be inside.

“Dammit, Divine, stop!” Marcus suddenly barked, catching her arm as she stepped off the stairs and headed for the front door.

“What’s going on?” Vincent asked, drawing their attention as he started up the hall toward them with Jackie at his side.

Marcus opened his mouth to answer, but Divine quickly said, “Thank you so much for everything you’ve done for us. But I have to go now.”

She sensed rather than saw Marcus’s head swiveling sharply in her direction. “A minute ago it was ‘We have to go,’ ” he growled, sounding annoyed.

Divine shrugged. “Well, I do. You don’t though, so I understand if you want to stay here with your friends. I can always take a taxi back to the carnival grounds.”

“You are not taking a taxi—” He stopped suddenly, realization on his face. “The carnival won’t be there anymore. They were moving on to the next town on Sunday night.”

“They might have been held up by the fire, it being arson and all,” Divine said quietly. “If they were, I’ll clear things up so they can continue with their schedule. If not, then I’ll still clear things up with the local firemen and police and what have you, and then I’ll follow them to the next town.”

She wasn’t sure if that last part was true. Divine had no idea what she would do. She might catch up to the carnival just long enough to see how Bob and Madge were taking things and to assure them she was all right. After all, she’d disappeared rather abruptly. But after that, she’d have to move on to something else. The problem was, she wasn’t sure just what she’d move on to.

“Divine’s right,” Jackie said thoughtfully.

“She is?” Marcus asked with amazement.

“About what exactly?” Vincent asked.

“Well, we’ve been so busy worrying about whether she was . . . er . . .”

Divine raised her eyebrows and simply watched as the woman floundered. She knew the ending to that sentence had been “whether she was Basha or not.” However, she also knew Jackie wasn’t going to say it now that she’d caught herself. The question was, what would she use in its place?

As it turned out, Jackie didn’t say anything. It was Vincent who saved her bacon by suggesting, “Whether she was healing all right?”

“Yes,” Jackie breathed on a relieved sigh and even managed to smile. “We’ve been so worried about these two healing that we didn’t consider what would be going on with the local authorities.” She glanced to Marcus. “You said you could smell gas and that the flames erupted all around the RV at once? Filling every window?” She barely waited for Marcus to nod before saying, “Well, it won’t take long at all for the authorities to decide the fire was deliberately set, and since you two disappeared directly afterward . . .”

Marcus blinked in surprise. “You think they’ll think Divine and I set the fire?”

“More likely they’ll think you set the fire since Divine wasn’t there,” Vincent commented, looking thoughtful. “But the two of you disappearing after that will probably make them think you set the fire and maybe kidnapped her or something when you realized she wasn’t caught in the fire.”

“What?” Marcus squawked with dismay.

“It’s all right. We can fix this,” Jackie said at once and then gave her head a shake and admitted, “Although I’m a little embarrassed that we didn’t think of this when you first arrived. The sooner we’d tended to it, the less fixing there would have been. By now, a lot of people are probably involved and every one of them will need mind wiping and such.” She clucked with irritation and then suddenly said, “Who are you calling?”

Divine didn’t bother glancing around from the phone she’d picked up, but punched in numbers as she answered, “Information. I need the number for a taxi service.”

Marcus immediately snatched the phone from her hand. “You don’t need a taxi. I’ll take you back. I’m certainly not letting you go back alone with people bashing you over the head and setting your home on fire.”

“We’ll all go,” Vincent said, suddenly sounding cheerful. “In fact that was the plan all along. Marcus was sure you’d want to return to the carnival as soon as you were up and about, so I called the office and had a couple of our vehicles sent over.”

Vincent moved past her to the front door, and threw it open with a dramatic gesture that was punctuated by the house alarm suddenly blaring all around them. Cursing, he rushed to a panel on the wall and began punching in numbers to silence it.

“Forgot about the . . . er . . .” Vincent gestured toward the panel with a grimace and then moved back to take her arm. “Close your eyes,” he ordered as he ushered her toward the door.

Divine reluctantly did as he asked, and allowed him to lead her outside. When he said, “Okay, open,” she blinked her eyes open to find him standing in front of her grinning like an idiot and blocking her view. Just as she started to arch an eyebrow, he waved his arms about like a magician and then stepped aside with a loud singsong of “Ta-daaaa!”