Laws of the Blood 2: Partners Read online

  Pain twisted through his guts at the thought of being forced to eat like that. The spasm was so sharp that it drove him to his knees only a few feet away from the sanctuary door.

  It was the Vessel who found him there and nudged him with his foot. “Pitiful.”

  The Disciple looked up, then was caught by a fresh wave of dizziness as the Vessel reached down and hauled him to his feet.

  “Come on. You’re wanted.” The Vessel pushed the Disciple before him into the sanctuary and shut the door after them. There were no windows in the sanctuary. Scarves had been draped over the long strips of fluorescent overhead lights, softening and diffusing their harsh white glow. The Prophet and the Demon were there, sitting on the altar, arguing, as usual. The Angel slept in the wide bed in the corner, a girl on either side of him. Whatever was said or shouted would not disturb him now.

  “We need more deaths,” the Demon said as he banged a huge fist down on the altar. “At least one a night until the Night of Knives. Then a hundred must die all at once.”

  “We can’t,” the Prophet answered. “You know we can’t. My way is simpler. Using the Vessel—”

  The Demon sneered. “We must. Your magic isn’t strong enough to perform the Ceremony using only a Vessel with what we’ve been doing.”

  The Prophet drew himself up angrily. “My magic is strong enough for anything!” He pointed at the Angel. “We have all we need right here. I brought him to us.”

  “We need a huge store of energy. Only death brings us the energy we need.”

  “We’ll have enough with the Vessel.”

  “No we won’t.”

  “You’re a glutton. You only want to feed.”

  “Weak mortal.”

  The Prophet laughed. “You’re as mortal as I am—but uglier.”

  “And hungry. But it’s your weakness that we have to counter.”

  “Neither of us will be mortal much longer. We have the secret and the key. You need patience.”

  “You need power.”

  The Vessel moved forward as the argument continued, to stand before the Prophet and the Demon. The Disciple inched closer to the bed, alert and listening, but his rapt gaze was on the sleeping Angel’s beautiful, bloodstained face.

  “What about tonight?” the Vessel asked. “Do we do one tonight?”

  “Yes,” the Prophet and Demon said together.

  The Vessel laughed. “That’s all I care about.” He rubbed his hands together. “Doing it.”

  “You! Get over here!” the Demon called.

  The Disciple reluctantly left off worshiping the Angel and came to kneel before the Prophet and the Demon. His knees sank deeply into the thick Oriental rug before the altar. He bowed his head as much to avoid looking at the Demon as to show respect.

  “You look like shit,” the Prophet said.

  “He’s starving himself to death,” the Vessel said from behind him. “Idiot.”

  “We need you.” The Prophet’s voice was kindly. He reached down and touched the Disciple on the shoulder. “You need the Angel’s blood, don’t you?”

  The Disciple dared to raise his gaze from the patterned rug. “Please let me taste eternity tonight.”

  “You’re going hunting,” the Demon said. “And watching the Vessel’s back during the sacrifice.”

  “He’ll pass out on me if he isn’t fed first,” the Vessel spoke up. The Vessel had no qualms about speaking to the Demon. The Disciple would have been grateful for the Vessel’s words if he didn’t hate him.

  The Prophet touched the Disciple’s cheek. “It’s not so long until sunset.” He smiled. “You can greet the Angel when he wakes.”

  “We need the Angel for the ceremony,” the Demon protested.

  “A light snack won’t hurt him,” the Prophet answered. The Vessel snickered.

  “Light snack.” The Demon’s harsh laughter rang through the sanctuary. The Demon’s huge foot shot out. The kick took the Disciple high in the chest and knocked him halfway across the room. He was too weak to rise. The room spun faster and faster. They all laughed. Before he passed out, he heard the chuckling Demon say, “He’s light enough, all right.”

  It wasn’t that far between Portland and Seattle, not in actual miles. You got on Interstate 5 and drove for a while and there you were. Psychologically, though . . .Physically, Char hadn’t been to Seattle since the CD on her car stereo was released. Empire came out sometime around 1990, right? That was a long time ago, in human terms at least. Even in strigoi terms, she’d been through two lifetimes in a little over a decade, which was not only unusual, it was desperately unfair.

  “For a tender, ladylike person such as myself,” she said, though she had to shout to even hear herself over the heavy metal music filling the car. Her plum-colored Cavalier was not in the best condition, but the sound system was good. Jimmy Bluecorn had installed it himself.

  Jimmy. Jimmy and Seattle were inseparable, and he was the reason it had taken her two days to work up the gumption to go home and face the places that would be empty without him. Finding Daniel was important, but searching Seattle was going to be one long, constant, wrenching reminder. If nothing else, it would be a reminder that she was not good at shedding past lives the way snakes shed skins, like proper vampires were supposed to. They used the owl as their symbol—some sources said it had something to do with Athena, others said it was a medieval adoption of—well, never mind the research. The point was, Char thought a snake symbol would be a more appropriate heraldic emblem for her kind than the owl.

  Jimmy liked owls. He’d even gotten involved in the whole tree-hugger save the spotted owl controversy. He’d said it was his duty to protect his people’s totem animal, but she knew he just liked raising hippie hell. Jimmy had taught her a lot about raising hell and having fun and—

  Sometimes weeks would go by without her thinking of Jimmy. Sometimes longer. “Decades,” she said now, knowing it was a ridiculous lie. But if she couldn’t lie to herself in the privacy of her own car as she drove down a mountainside at sixty miles an hour in a blinding, cold rain, what was the use of living? What was the use of living, anyway, without Jimmy? She’d been asking herself that even before the change came and he’d had to leave her.

  “Decades,” she said again, with no bravado this time.

  Decades meant a lot to mortals. They were used to mark off the passage of brief eras and gave them artificial symbolism in this age of instant history. In human terms, she guessed she was an ’80s woman, though as a vampire, her significant changes had come in the ’90s. It certainly looked like the upcoming century was going to try its best to be more eventful than she liked, as well. She was a superhero now, Char reminded herself. She should welcome all opportunities for adventure.

  “I want to go home.”

  One of the reasons she’d settled in Portland was that Marguerite, who was Enforcer of the City, had let her. But mostly she’d stayed after Marguerite had helped her make the transition from strigoi to Nighthawk because it was such a nice, peaceful place. Seattle had a cryptic, edgy quality to it, clinging to its steep hills over the deep, dark bay. A lot of things, bad and good, had spilled into the water around Seattle, and the psychic residue remained. Portland was a city for roses and walking in the rain without constantly feeling the need to look over your shoulder. The wide, powerful river washed it clean, took its bad moods out to sea.

  Portland was a good town for pedestrians, too. She rarely drove these days and wished she could have taken a plane rather than renew rusty driving skills in the heavy interstate traffic. Vampires couldn’t fly. This had nothing to do with the fact that they didn’t have that particular supernatural power, which they didn’t, but because it was forbidden by Law. Unless they booked passage on the Strigoi’s private airline, which cost an arm and a leg. Sometimes literally. But the airline was for long journeys, and booking passage required the approval of the Council or a very large bribe to the companion who actually ran the three-airplane private c
harter operation. Char had neither the money nor the clout to make plane reservations. Besides, she was in no hurry, and she did own a car.

  She packed a few things and her laptop and left Portland two nights after the visit from Helene. She could have left sooner, but there was the matter of psychological distance to deal with before she could make herself head back to the place where her life had begun and ended.

  “Not ended, changed,” she said over the cranked-up roar of the car’s stereo speakers and the constant swoosh-splat of the windshield wipers turned to the highest setting. She wiped away tears the way the wipers did rain and was glad she was alone—well, she was generally glad of that—as the skyline of her hometown filled the view before her. The sky was laced with lightning as well as city lights. To her left was the huge expanse of Boeing Field, as was only right and proper since the song rattling the inside of the car was “Jet City Woman,” which was close to being her favorite song. “At least from the good old days,” she said and gave yet another in a series of melancholy sighs.

  She didn’t plan to keep this mood up for much longer. She couldn’t afford to and knew it. Nostalgia was a dangerous thing. Sentimentality even more so. She didn’t indulge in either very often, but this return was bound to bring out the memories and the longing. For what? The good old days? There was no one left from the Seattle of her happy days, not among the immortal population, at least. The bad ones were dead and the good ones gone. As for the human she’d been as child, teenager, and college student in this same city? She didn’t cry for the girl who had been Charlotte. She didn’t think about her mortal family very much these days. Char missed—

  “The exit,” she snarled, and she quickly shifted the car over two lanes slick with icy rain to get into the correct lane for exiting the interstate at the next street. She could double back easily once she turned onto the city streets. She might not want to go back, but at least she had a place to stay. Jimmy had sent her the keys to their old place when he took off for Alaska. He’d promised in his note that he’d had it redecorated and performed a banishing spell himself before he left. Technically, there should be no residue of them left in the condo at the top of a Capitol Hill street. She knew that there would be nothing familiar but the shape of the rooms, the view from the tiny balcony, the surrounding buildings.

  “The sky, the earth, the sea, and my memory of thee,” she quoted, but Char didn’t know what fool romantic poem or song she quoted from.

  Jimmy liked poetry and music. Loud music, sexy music, rhythm-section-driven guitar-hero rock and roll music. She’d tried to get him interested in classical music, but Jimmy said he’d been there when it was invented and it wasn’t classical to him. He also said Seattle stopped being fun when grunge caught on outside the local clubs, and he should have moved on when Pearl Jam got a big recording contract.

  Char knew that Seattle stopped being fun when Jimmy was no longer there. “But that’s all right. I’m not here for fun.” She had a job to do.

  The car pulled into the three-stall parking lot behind the old mansion that had been subdivided into a trio of condominiums without her feeling like she had any control over where the machine went. It was like it knew its way home even after so many years.

  Char turned off the engine and wiped her eyes. She knew she would not let herself cry anymore. She would run in out of the rain, go into the place that no longer had Jimmy’s magic attached to it, and she would unpack.

  “There’s no magic here,” she said. “Just a job.”

  After a good day’s sleep, she would start looking for Daniel. How hard could it be to sense the presence of a vampire in a town where no vampires were supposed to live?

  She got out of the car and looked down the hillside and up at the building, letting the rain and fierce wind pour and pound over her. She glanced up at the storm-split sky. Lots of lightning tonight.

  The cold and the wet and the lightning didn’t bother her. The weather was a strong, powerful thing, but it was natural and right. The storm was a part of the city. The magic all around, though . . .

  She’d been wrong about there not being any magic.

  Char felt the dark surge of it beneath the power of the storm. Not Jimmy’s kind of magic, oh no. Evil. Dark. Vicious and barely controlled. Someone somewhere was conjuring, preparing to channel—

  Char stepped out into the center of the alley behind the building. There was a low fence on one side of the alley overlooking a hillside garden. She looked over the fence and down toward the center of the city. It was so very dark in the heart of town. She was cold, but not from the weather. Her nerves strung out tautly, her mind and heart ached, but not with her own old, well-known pain. A new sorrow filled Char, and a fear that was beyond bearing but not her own rose to a pitch that nearly made her scream.

  She tried to tell herself that what she experienced was the residue of recent events in Seattle. That she was feeling the deaths of the strigoi Istvan had executed. But Char knew what she sensed had nothing to do with her own kind. Or so she hoped, prayed. She hugged herself close and couldn’t help but mutter an old prayer learned in mortal childhood.

  It didn’t comfort her one little bit when the fear and agony rose up all around, exploded through her, and crashed down like all the water in Elliot Bay coming down like a tidal wave.

  Char clutched at the fence to keep from falling, but her hands slipped, and she went to her knees. It was not the blinding flash of nearby lightning or the crack of thunder immediately overhead that sent the worst shock through her. It was the sound of the woman crying out, “Help me!” as she died that sent Char over the edge into darkness, falling face first into the icy stream of water running down the alley.

  Chapter 5

  “MY MOTHER ALWAYS said I’d end up in the gutter,” Char said when she came back to her senses and found herself lying on the ground in a freezing stream of water. Her mother had never actually said any such thing, but a quip seemed the appropriate way to distance herself from the situation.

  She sat up, soaking wet and shivering, pushed hair out of her face, then wiped water out of her eyes. She pulled herself to her feet. Char had to hold onto the fence for a while to get under enough control so that she could make her way up the back stairs and into the building.

  She was so shaken that she barely noticed her surroundings once she entered the third-floor condo. The place smelled of dust and felt unused, and the psychic emptiness was fine with her. What was important was that there were towels and soap in the linen closet and plenty of hot water gushed out of the showerhead when she turned it on. She stripped out of her wet clothes as quickly as she could and stepped into the shower. She was so glad to feel hot water running over her chilled body that she almost forgot feeling the woman’s death for a few minutes. Almost.

  She had killed mortals, of course, several times and without any qualms. She was no angel; she was a vampire. She had killed a vampire once as well and had taken pleasure in the act, though she’d been quite disturbed about it later. She had the slim consolation of knowing that each death she’d brought about had been deserved. The mortals had preyed on other mortals. She had served all of humanity by ridding the world of them. The vampire’s death had been decreed necessary by the Council, and killing him had completed Char’s transformation into a Nighthawk. The world needed Nighthawks—Enforcers—to keep the strigoi and mortal worlds safe and separate. Each of those deaths had been accompanied by magic. Vampires and Enforcers were made by magic. Spells had to be cast as well as blood exchanged. She preferred to think of the process that was called magic as an advanced method of energy manipulation, but however you defined it, magic was all about power. You had to get energy from somewhere in order to manipulate reality. A human mind gave off a lot of energy, especially when experiencing strong emotions. Terror, and the release of death, were very powerful sources of energy. Char knew this in theory and in practice, and she preferred theory.

  The death she’d felt earlier ton
ight had not been theoretical, and it had been accompanied by ritual magic.

  “Maybe.” Char shuddered with the memory but held onto a shred of hope that she’d mistaken what she’d sensed. It was possible; she was out of practice and out of touch. The death had been real. The woman who had died had been psychic enough to shout for help. And asking for help at every level with every conscious and unconscious resource at your command was a logical way of reacting at the instant of death.

  “The woman was murdered.” Char shuddered again and shut off the tap at the exact instant that the hot water ran out. That wasn’t any magical talent, she told herself as she grabbed a towel. She’d used this bathroom every day for several years, and old habits were hard to forget.

  “Murdered,” she said again and looked in the mirror.

  She had a reflection, of course. Sometimes she thought it would fade, but that was on the days she was feeling particularly like a nonentity, particularly sorry for herself. It had nothing to do with her being a vampire. A great deal of the bad publicity that stigmatized her kind could be traced to other magic-using entities, but vampire was a catchy, sexy term that people remembered. You could hang just about any evil and ridiculous behavior pattern on vampires. True, there were some entities that couldn’t cross running water, some that reacted badly to all forms of alum. There were all sorts of behaviors, all of them restrictions that came about due to the type of magic that had created the entity. Vampires took the rap for all of them. Fortunately, no one really believed in vampires—strigoi spent a great deal of time and money seeing to it—so it didn’t really matter.