Laws of the Blood 1: The Hunt Page 3

  After a few more seconds, Selim finally made the connection. “Someone is killing people and horses in Burbank and North Hollywood. Alice lives in Burbank.”

  Siri nodded. “Rene’s upset.”

  “Tell him not to be. Anything else?”

  “Well, there’s Jager.”

  “Consider him taken care of.”

  “Kamaraju won’t like that.”

  “He’ll cope.”

  “Okay. Got another strig situation, though.”

  “Why me?” He sighed. Los Angeles attracted more loners than anywhere else. Problem was, there really was no such thing as a lone vampire. “What now?”

  “You need to have a talk with Geoff Sterling. That boy’s got himself into a situation.”

  The name wasn’t familiar. “A new strig?”

  She nodded. “Moved here after that mess in Seattle. Wasn’t looking for a new nest. Then . . . he met a girl.”

  “How does that constitute a situation?”

  “Been stalking her.” Siri sounded outraged. Probably thought he should be. He waited until she went on. “The girl’s an actress. Has a role on a television series.”

  Ah. That was decidedly different, one of the hazards of living in this town. “I’ll have a talk with him.”

  He could tell that there was more she wanted to discuss, but a patrol car slowed and turned into the parking area before they could continue. He waved as the beam from the headlights swept over them. They stood and headed for the car before they could be told to leave. Selim opened the driver’s side door for Siri. “See you later.” He kissed her cheek. The gesture left her stiff with disapproval.

  He ignored it, closed the car door for her, took a deep breath, and began to run. As he picked up speed, what she’d told him about this Geoff Sterling got him to thinking about how they’d met.

  Murad fingers the gold coins. One slips from his fingers and falls to the floor. A woman seated at the next table picks it up.

  SARA

  (Looks at coin):

  An owl.

  MURAD

  (Holds out his hand):

  Yes.

  SARA:

  Night hunter. Silent. Deadly. Beautiful.

  (Their gazes meet. Lock.)

  MURAD:

  Thank you.

  SARA

  (Tosses coin; catches it):

  Dumb as posts, though.

  MURAD:

  What?

  SARA:

  Owls. Gorgeous creatures. Efficient. But nothing like their PR reps. Of course, how much brains do you need to catch mice?

  MURAD:

  I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me, owl bait?

  Valentine finished rereading the pages she’d faxed to her agent. She was almost pleased with them. She wasn’t pleased by the tone that had been in her agent’s voice when she picked up the phone and heard, “We have to talk about this latest draft.”

  When she was done reading, she spoke into the phone. “Just what is it you don’t like about this?”

  “I like the woman,” her agent told her. “Adding the romantic element is nice. I’m not sure about the direction you’re taking the romantic element, though.”

  “Sex sells.”

  “Yeah, but a romance with the vampire? Shouldn’t the hero be the romantic interest for Sara?”

  “The vampire is the hero.”

  “That’s right, you got rid of Davy in the last draft. I don’t know, Val, a vampire as a love interest is kind of sick.”

  “Depends on the vampire. Murad’s a nice boy.”

  “Vampires aren’t nice. And what’s with the name change?”

  “You didn’t like Suleiman.”

  “But why Murad? Who’s going to see a movie about an Arab vampire who’s not only the hero but the love interest?”

  Valentine began to experience outrage for the first time in years. She gripped the cordless phone so tightly that the black plastic began to crack. The only light in her apartment came from the glow of the computer screen on her desk and the blinking answering machine she hadn’t checked in days. She scrolled through a few pages of the script file, reading as she answered, “I don’t see anything wrong with that.”

  The voice on the other end of the phone was reasonable, coaxing. “We both know there’s no money in that, Val.”

  Valentine’s attention was only half on the conversation as she reread the words she’d written the night before. The woman’s character needed more fleshing out. She wanted to know more about the girl. That would be tricky, but she thought she had a way. She answered her concerned agent. “Don’t call me Val. What about truth? What about originality? What about my production deal? This is the movie I want to make.”

  “What about a reality check, Valentine?” There was a pause, then her agent went on. “Assuming you can get the movie you want made, nobody will come to see it. Not with the story as it currently stands. What you’re writing isn’t what I asked for, what I promised you’d deliver.”

  “I haven’t finished the rewrites.”

  “That’s good. Because I think you need to trash what you’ve got and go back to the original premise. Monster movie, remember? Lots of blood, smart-ass dialogue, screaming teenage girls.”

  “There’s nothing real in that idea.”

  “There’s nothing real about vampires, Val.”

  “But there could be. What’s wrong with a story about how vampires really live?” She knew how that sounded and she didn’t care. She was on fire with her vision. “I can make a movie that will have humans believing in vampires,” she promised.

  “I’m beginning to think you believe in vampires.”

  “Of course I do. I’ve been working in Hollywood too long not to know a few personally.”

  Her agent laughed shakily. “Me, too.”

  No. Valentine forced herself to calm down, to keep from blurting out the truth to someone who wouldn’t believe her anyway. “So,” she said. “What do I have to do to get this movie made the way I want it?”

  Another laugh, cynical, not shaky. “You tell me, Val.”

  She considered her answer carefully. What were her options? The independent film route was fraught with more complications than she was prepared to cope with. It wasn’t the financing that bothered her or even all the other endless details. She planned on producing anyway. But there was no way she was prepared to stump the film festival circuit in hopes of romancing studio interest in a distribution deal once she put the movie in the can. She’d done Sundance once. The desperation at the parties had left a very bad taste. Being near all those film school auteurs pretentiously pretending they weren’t hungry to sell their souls for big Hollywood deals had actually given her a skin rash.

  She could get the movie made, then try for a cable or a straight to video deal. She shook her head. She didn’t like those options, either. She was used to being part of the system, to being on the inside. She wasn’t prepared to start over now.

  Fortunately, there was one other thing she could do. Her stomach curdled at the very thought of it, but she couldn’t keep from smiling. “I can do this.”

  “Do what?”

  She deleted several pages of dialogue. She’d been talking to herself, but she answered her agent. “I want you to arrange some meetings for me.”

  “You?”

  Her agent’s surprise registered against her senses even at a distance. Valentine’s smiled sharpened. “Me. Don’t remind me that I never take meetings. I have to do this in person.” She named names, said, “Bring them here.”

  Instead of waiting for arguments, she hung up the phone. Then she stared at the screen some more. “Definitely have to flesh out the woman.” She had some ideas, some knowledge, but not as much as she needed. All right, not as much as she wanted. She was curious about the girl.

  Valentine’s Dreaming had brought her bits and pieces of information in the last few weeks. Enough for her to start weaving a story, but she still hadn’t pinned d
own exactly what it was she both wanted and needed to tell. That the notion of telling the truth had turned into a hunger was something she didn’t deny. She knew hunger so rarely lately that she found the growing sensation very pleasant. Pleasure was something else she’d almost forgotten about. She’d lived her life in limbo and liked it, then desperation drove her to take the first step into someone else’s private world. Maybe she should be ashamed of herself, but voyeurism was proving to be fun.

  The girl was very prominent in the dreamworld Valentine had chosen, but there were many things about her that Valentine hadn’t been able to sense. She wanted a complete picture. She wanted more information than she could pick up on her own. Valentine sighed and glanced over at her personal phone line. The answering machine light blinked accusingly at her, bright red. She bit her lip and tapped a finger thoughtfully on the wrist rest of her keyboard while the light kept on blinking. She was going to need help, she decided. Not just with the girl but with the whole project. She simply could not do it on her own. She was going to have to call him, get him involved, make him do what she wanted.

  He would complain. Accuse. Rage.

  She could live with that.

  But not right now. She turned her attention to the computer screen and thought about the script. How many drafts had she gone through? How many more? She was getting close, but not quite there yet. There would have to be a Hunt, of course. She’d finally admitted that a Hunt was the only kind of dramatic element a studio would go for: All the visceral drama and excitement and gore potential of the chase scenes would be a director’s wet dream. She could envision the shots done with a handheld camera.

  “You’re not a director,” she reminded herself. She shrugged and settled for telling a truth she did know, and decided to change the characters’ names one last time. This time the words on the screen said,

  SIRI

  (Looks at body):

  That was . . .

  SELIM

  (Draws Siri to her feet):

  Alive a moment ago. Let’s not talk about what he was.

  SIRI

  I’ve seen him before. Around.

  SELIM

  Of course you have. He’s been stalking you for months.

  SIRI

  He has? How do you know?

  SELIM

  Because I’ve been stalking you, too.

  (Takes Siri in his arms.)

  I won.

  Chapter 3

  IT WAS A modest one-story house, set well back on a sleeping street in the quiet college town. Surrounded by a large, elaborate garden of night-blooming flowers, it wasn’t so far from the houses on either side as to be conspicuous, but it wasn’t all that close to the neighboring buildings, either. A porch light was on, attracting moths, but curtains were drawn, blocking any other light from escaping the house. Streetlights shed small pools of light above the cross streets at both ends of the block, but the house was well away from the lampposts. The only car parked on the wide street was a Jeep Cherokee on the opposite curb a few houses up.

  Selim checked his watch, then looked at the gold coin carefully before he knocked on the door. He wanted to make sure he had the right one. The coin was twenty-four-carat gold, about the size of a nickel. It bore the image of an owl on one side and an inscription in a dead language on the other. Selim carried five such coins. Each one was slightly different.

  When he knocked, a slave named Gary answered the door. “Hi, Selim,” he said casually. His eyes narrowed as he looked around, but his attention wasn’t focused on the Hunter on the front porch.

  Selim frowned and held up the coin. “This is the point where you bow and grovel.”

  Gary stepped aside and let him in. “Yeah, right. This is L.A., man.”

  Gary was a postdoctoral candidate in human geography. “It’s Claremont,” Selim informed him. “And I’m not a man.”

  “That’s not what Siri says. Come on in.”

  “And Siri would know,” Selim agreed. “Your Lady around?”

  “In the bedroom. Come on.”

  Gary led Selim through the house’s small living room and into the heart of Miriam’s home. The bedroom was actually a library with a bed in one corner. Even the headboard contained a bookcase, and there was a pile of paperbacks on top of a crocheted comforter with a sleeping cat curled around them. Miriam sat on the floor, with her knees drawn up, leaning back against one of the bookcases. Her companion was seated next to her, head in a book, though he looked up as Selim crossed the room. Miriam was deep in a conversation with her fosterling, who was perched on the top of a desk in the middle of the room.

  Miriam jumped to her feet when she saw him. “Selim. Hi.” She waved a hand toward the vampire on the desk. “Andy and I were just discussing Hume.”

  “Hello Miriam. Andrew. Who’s Hume?”

  “You don’t want to know. She’s gotten into all things Scottish lately,” Andrew said as he rose to his feet. He shook Selim’s hand. He was tall and lanky, with big hands and feet, like a puppy. He wore his brown hair unfashionably long, having never quite recovered from being a guitarist in a rock band for awhile, back when he was human. “She’s thinking about moving us to Edinburgh,” he went on. “Please make her stop, Hunter.”

  “The nights are cold there,” her companion said. He rose to stand protectively behind Miriam with one hand on the short woman’s shoulder. His attention focused warily on Selim.

  Miriam tilted her head back. “But long, Joe. You’d like that.”

  Joseph looked between her and Andrew. “You’d like it. I’m a day person.”

  Andrew snickered. “Give it a few years.” He returned his attention to Selim. “Thanks for coming.”

  “You look winded, Hunter. You didn’t come here on foot did you? Would you like coffee?” Miriam asked. Selim nodded, and Gary headed for the kitchen.

  “Sorry we couldn’t do this with just a phone call,” Selim said after the slave left the room. He wanted to ask her to have her companion leave as well.

  “We’re all involved in this,” Joseph said belligerently before Selim could speak. “Gary as much as the rest of us.”

  Andrew nodded. “We’re a family, Hunter. No secrets.”

  “That’s true, Selim.” Miriam’s tone was much milder; hers the only voice that mattered to Selim.

  He shrugged. He wanted to say that how someone ran their nest was none of his business, though it wasn’t true, and they all knew it. He did let it go, a concession, something to remind Miriam of if she balked at being left out of the official Hunt.

  They all trooped into the kitchen and took seats around the table so that Gary could be part of the conversation while he busied himself with domestic tasks. “I made spice cake,” Gary said after the coffee was on and a pot of tea was brewing. He began cutting large slices and putting them on plates. “Siri says you love spice cake, Hunter.”

  Siri talked too much. But, what the hell? “I do,” he said, and accepted a piece graciously. “Thanks for going to all the trouble, Gary.”

  “We don’t get many visitors. And she only likes chocolate,” Gary complained jokingly.

  His mistress laughed and patted the place on her left. Joseph was seated on her right. Andrew was perched on the counter that separated the cooking from the dining areas in the small kitchen. His long legs rested on the back of one of the ladder-back chairs. Gary finished passing out dessert, then sat next to Miriam. The blended aromas of hazelnut-flavored coffee and Earl Grey tea filled the air.

  “So,” Andrew asked after Selim took a few polite bites of the cake, “do we get to kill the fucker?”

  “This is quite good,” Selim complimented Gary. He noticed Miriam’s slight grimace of disapproval at the fledgling’s language. “Siri only passed on the sketchy details you gave her about someone needing to be dealt with.”

  “I couldn’t go into specifics over the phone,” Joseph pointed out.

  “I appreciate that. But I trust you, Miriam. I still thought
it best to speak with you in person first.”

  She smiled graciously. “Thank you. I didn’t think it would be safe for me to try to make it to the meeting tonight, knowing he might be watching me.”

  “I appreciate your concern for security.”

  “Did you see the Jeep outside?” Joseph asked Selim. “He’s taken to hanging around outside the house. He claims that he first saw her coming out of a theater at the Ontario Mall and fell instantly in love. That he had to have her. It started with letters and progressed to phone calls. He’s sent photos of her along with some of those love letters.”

  “And your response?” Selim asked Miriam.

  Joseph answered. “First Andy tried putting the eye on him, but the dude doesn’t hypnotize.”

  “He’s gifted?” Selim asked.

  Andrew shook his head. “A little. Not enough to do anything productive with. Enough to form this obsession for Miriam, though. Enough not to respond for more than a few hours to the deepest command I can manage. His need has too deep a hold on him for anything to break it. I did beat the shit out of him,” he added. “There weren’t any phone calls for three weeks after that.”

  “I don’t want to go near him,” Miriam apologized. She dragged her fork across her dessert plate, gathering crumbs and frosting without showing any real interest in eating.

  “She shouldn’t have to,” Joseph spoke up. “Touching a mind like that freak’s, one that’s full of filth aimed at her, could overwhelm her. It’d be like he mind-raped her before she could do anything about it. She’d be trying to tell him to leave her alone, and he’d be showing her all the things he plans to do to her. It would be giving him what he wants.” Joseph and Miriam held hands while his fierce, protective anger boiled around the room. They all absorbed the righteous feel of it, and after he calmed, he went on. “I thought about getting a restraining order, but Miriam vetoed that.”

  “I should think so,” Selim responded. “You should have called me sooner, Miriam.”

  “I didn’t want to bother you.”