Laws of the Blood 1: The Hunt Read online

She didn’t want an Enforcer bothering her happy little nest, she meant. He didn’t blame her. Her quiet household was happy with their intellectual pursuits and each other. Joseph taught at UCLA, Selim believed, Gary studied at one of the small colleges in town, Andrew owned a coffeehouse that catered to the student crowd, and he played folk music there on weekends to pick up girls. Miriam wrote history books and biographies. They all went to a lot of movies. Siri had talked him into joining them at a multiplex for a screening of Fargo, then he’d had to listen to Joseph going on for hours about some people named Coen, and he had neither cared nor understood about any of what he’d heard. Siri had enjoyed herself, though. Selim used the old excuse about vampires not socializing with each other the next time Siri tried to get them all together.

  Selim wondered if this nest’s contented isolation from the rest of the Southern California vampires insulated them from the growing tension in the larger population.

  “No,” Andrew answered his thought. “I’m getting hungry.”

  “Do you think that anyone with the slightest psychic ability isn’t aware that something is going on?” Miriam asked. “I don’t think all the daydreams I’m having lately have to do with being watched by some annoying mortal stalker.”

  “Even I’m antsy,” Gary spoke up. “Can’t keep myself from ordering rare steak anytime I go out . . . and I’m a vegetarian.”

  “So, if there’s going to be a Hunt anyway—” Andrew began.

  The telephone rang before he could go on. Gary got up and picked a cordless receiver off a wall cradle over the counter. He listened for a moment, then passed the phone to Andrew. Andrew listened, gave a bark of laughter, then brought the phone to Selim. “It’s for you, man.” He was grinning in that bright, sharp-toothed way the young cultivated.

  Selim was not surprised when a deep, angry voice asked him, “What are you? A cop? Another one of her lovers? She knows how I feel about her having more men in her house. You better leave, or she’s going to be very, very sorry.”

  “Well, someone’s going to be,” Selim replied. He switched off the phone and looked at the waiting nest members. “Does this . . . fucker . . . have a name? I need pertinent details before I can set it up for you.”

  “We get to kill him?” Andrew jumped happily to his feet. “Cool.”

  Like called to like often enough that Siri wasn’t in the least surprised when the big blond man walked into Jamba Juice, gave her a long look, then took a seat on the other side of the busy smoothie shop. She took note of him, then paid him no more mind. Her thoughts were on Selim, as was right, proper, and usual, so nothing else held her interest for long. Not in the mood she was in, anyway.

  Three hundred and eighty-four days, she thought sourly as she glanced through the shop’s wide side window toward the tall old building down the street from where she sat. It was six stories high, took up most of the block, was topped by domes and fake minarets, surrounded a garden full of palm trees and roses and a high wrought-iron fence. It was an altogether hideous piece of architecture left over from the last century, a local landmark. Fortunately, its overdone facade was mostly in shadow now that the sun had gone down. She always sat at this side table because of the view. It was the closest he let her get to him in the daylight these days. The time was currently just past sunset. It was precisely fourteen minutes before she was allowed to approach him. He said he needed time alone when he woke up. “You know what I’m like until I’ve had coffee.” He used to let her make the coffee after they woke up.

  They needed to talk about the last year. More than a year. Three hundred and eighty-four days, to be precise. And counting.

  Not that I’m counting, of course. “What is the matter with that man?”

  She was going to confront him for sure this time, she decided. Point out that he wasn’t the only one with needs, wants, desires. It was just that he was so busy lately and—

  Oh, stop thinking like a honeymooning companion! She chided herself, just as the cell phone on the table beside her rang. Siri knew who it was before she answered. It was a gift with her. “Cassie, what am I going to do with him?” she demanded as she flipped the phone open.

  “Slip a little Viagra in his dinner bowl?” her friend answered promptly. Cassandra and she had had this conversation before. Cassandra yawned. “What am I going to do about Sebastian?” her friend questioned Siri back.

  That wasn’t a question Siri felt qualified to answer. After all, how many parents had to deal with a son who could have gone through the terrible twos as a serial killer? Not that Sebastian had, of course. Cassie and Tom were doing a pretty good job raising their baby. It was just that no one knew what to expect from the first dhamphir born in the last six hundred years.

  “What’s the problem?” Siri asked, as sympathetic as a woman who had no children could be to a friend with a rowdy four-year-old.

  “His birthday’s coming up,” Cassandra answered.

  “He wants to have a party?” Siri guessed. “Invite all his little friends over?”

  “Can you imagine Tomas letting him do that? It took me a year to talk Tomas into letting Sebastian play with anyone but the . . . help. He still throws one of his glaring fits every time I schedule a trip to the park for Sebastian.”

  “He’s just being a concerned parent,” Siri soothed.

  “I know. Do you know what else Sebastian wants? He wants to go to school like everybody else. Where does he get these ideas?”

  Siri shrugged. “I don’t know. Sesame Street?”

  “Probably.” Cassandra sighed. “I know there’s nothing you can do to help me, girlfriend, but you’re the only one I can vent with.” Cassandra wasn’t even supposed to do that with another vampire’s companion, but neither of them mentioned that. Besides, everybody talked to Siri. It was well known that she was the reason the Hunter was so well-informed. That sort of made it okay to bend the rules. “I better go,” Cassandra said. “Gotta see to the needs of the lord and master.”

  “Tom or Sebastian?”

  “Both. Bye.”

  When Siri put the phone down, the blond man was sitting on the other side of the table from her. He’d been there for several seconds, but she’d been ignoring him. Oh, he’d moved swiftly, silently, and cloaked in a cloud of telepathic you-don’t-see-me projected thoughts, but Siri was good. The best in L.A. This guy was good, too, but he was still just some vamp’s companion, while she was the City Enforcer’s girl.

  “You’re wearing sunglasses at night,” she said. “Very Hollywood, but not the way we do things around here.” She didn’t recognize him, and she knew everybody. “You’re new in town.” She held out her hand. He kissed it. Very old-world. “I’m Siri.”

  “I know.”

  The accent was old-world, too. “And you are?”

  “Yevgeny.”

  “Nice to meet you.” She glanced at her watch. She was very new-world. “I’ve got five minutes. What can I do for you? Make it fast.”

  Chapter 4

  “YOU COULD HAVE told me you weren’t going to be at home.”

  “I forgot how far it was to Claremont. It’s not as easy as it used to be to take shortcuts; jumping over all that razor wire on fences takes time. Then we ended up working late. Miriam has a spare bedroom. She let me stay through the day.”

  “Gary could have driven you home.”

  “In the trunk of his car? I don’t think so.”

  “So you took a commuter train home? You couldn’t call and tell me where you were?”

  “I called.”

  “To have me pick you up at Union Station. I was waiting for you in Pasadena.”

  “You didn’t have to be.”

  “I always do. You know that.”

  Selim stared out the windshield as they waited for the streetlight to change. He watched a bus lumber by. The headlights of the Mercedes raked across the ad for an upcoming blockbuster movie painted on the bus’s side. Something mind-numbing, with lots of explosions, he suppo
sed, from all the flames boiling up in the background of the advertisement. The sight of the flames lingered in his mind after the bus was gone. Or maybe it was Siri’s seething fury that ignited images of fire. The girl could project when she wanted to. The girl could do anything she wanted to, he thought proudly. She was the most amazing woman he’d ever known, even if he hadn’t told her so recently.

  Maybe that was what this was all about. From his point of view, he’d simply behaved in a logical manner. He had a busy evening ahead; a run home as soon as he woke after sunset would have been tiring. His actions made perfect sense, but women were strange. Maybe he shouldn’t even have had her drive him now, but she knew where to find this Geoff Sterling, which saved him the trouble of hunting the strig down on his own. All he had to do was show up and act omnipotent. That was another wonderful thing about Siri; she always made him look good.

  “I was inconsiderate,” he admitted. “I’m sorry.” Damn it! He wasn’t supposed to do that. He was the vampire. She was the companion.

  “I’m supposed to await with breathless eagerness on your beck and call.”

  “I was just going to think that.”

  “Never complain or ask questions or make demands.”

  “That, too.”

  Her small hands were white-knuckled on the steering wheel. “I do.”

  “Yeah. Right.”

  “I would if you’d let me.”

  “You have better things to do with your life than await on my beck and call. With or without breath.”

  She snarled and swung around in the seat to face him. “I hate you.”

  He ignored her blistering look and ruffled a hand through her short red hair. “Sure you do.” Behind them, people were honking their car horns. “Light changed, Siri. Drive.”

  “Yes, master,” she mimicked an Igor accent. Her foot came down hard on the accelerator. “Driving, master.”

  He drove her crazy! He knew he drove her crazy, and he didn’t care. He thought it was funny. Thought she was funny. Life, she thought, after three hundred and forty-eight days, is not funny. Okay, sometimes it was. She wasn’t one who could stay despondent, or even angry, for long, especially not when she was around Selim. But he was driving her crazy. “I was inconsiderate. I’m sorry.” Yes, he was; and no, he wasn’t. She growled, deep in her throat. Sometimes she just wanted to rip his throat out!

  “Going to have to get you to a vet, girl, if you keep that up.”

  Any other time she would have laughed. Now she just kept her attention on the road, resentment glowing like a hot coal deep inside her. She’d get over it, she knew she would. In a few minutes. There was work to be done. In the meantime, she nursed her hurt and kept the things she’d been going to tell him about Yevgeny to herself.

  “Get in the car.”

  Siri heard Selim through the closed window of the Mercedes and couldn’t stop the smile. His voice was low, menacing, dangerous, utterly butch. And a complete turn-on. That wasn’t the reaction Selim received from the young strig outside.

  “I don’t think so.”

  She heard the deep anger in Geoff Sterling’s voice. The hate. She also read that the strig was scared half out of his wits. Which was actually a very good reaction as long as he didn’t do anything stupid. Selim had her chase Sterling into an alley off Melrose after spotting him cruising the busy street. Sterling looked conspicuously Goth, all done up in leather and torn black lace. “It’s a wonder the fashion police haven’t gotten to him first,” had been Selim’s comment as the strig began to feel his presence and took off. She’d backed Sterling into a chain-link fence at the end of the alley with the bumper of the car. Selim got out to talk to him before Sterling could make the leap to the other side of the fence.

  “Do you know who I am?” Selim asked.

  Siri frowned as a glob of spit landed on the windshield. The strig either had bad aim or a certain amount of sense; Selim was standing right in front of him.

  “Pervert,” Sterling said to Selim. “Dhamphir.”

  Selim didn’t bother to correct the youngster’s misapprehension, but Siri took immediate offense. Just because all dhamphirs were Enforcers didn’t mean that all Enforcers were dhamphirs. It was just that the one dhamphir that was an Enforcer, and totally insane but efficient, gave all the others a very bad reputation. She knew that Cassie didn’t want Sebastian to grow up to become one of the Enforcers of the Law, but did the little boy have a choice?

  Siri took a great deal of exception to Sterling calling her Selim a pervert because he had the ability to do what others couldn’t. Vampires could not kill each other, despite the hideous battles they sometimes got into; they couldn’t even commit suicide. The only kind of vampire that could bring death to another vampire was an Enforcer. It was a skilled profession, not a perversion, or so the Enforcers and Strigoi Council chose to believe. It was an honorable profession, no matter how hated and feared they were by the others of their kind.

  Not that Selim had told her any of this. Vampire stuff was all supposed to be a big secret until companions came of age and all that bullshit. She had her sources; she had a brain to figure things out. She could read Selim’s mind a good deal of the time. Siri loved being married to a cop and did what she could to help. Lord knew, he needed it.

  “Hey! Watch the finish!” she complained as Geoff Sterling landed forcefully on the hood of the car. She winced as she heard his shirt buttons scrape against the glossy enamel.

  “Sorry, hon!” Selim called and pulled Sterling off the hood by the back of his leather coat. A moment later, the rear passenger door opened, and Selim pushed the strig into the car ahead of him. “We’ll be going now,” he said to Siri.

  She saw Selim flash her a quick grin in the rearview mirror as she backed out of the alley, but she did the proper, subservient companion thing and drove in inconspicuous silence. Damn but Selim was hot, she thought as he settled into the seat beside the sulking strig. Sterling was a pretty boy, slender and androgynous, with dark hair and bright green eyes. Her vampire was skinny, but in a wiry, muscular way that looked great naked. Selim’s face was angles and shadows, with big, liquid brown eyes, a high forehead, and a sharply pointed chin.

  “When are you going to kill me?” Geoff Sterling asked as the Mercedes pulled out on the freeway.

  The question broke a long, tense silence. Siri was glad; all the emotion the young vampire projected into such a small space had given her a headache. Selim, she could tell from the Cheshire Cat grin she glimpsed when she glanced in the mirror, was eating all the fear and loathing up with a spoon.

  “Why would I want to kill you?” Selim answered the question with a question.

  After another silence, a sullen one this time, Geoff said, “Seattle.”

  “You weren’t involved.”

  “How do you know?”

  “You’re not dead. Besides, I’m sure you’re very sorry and will never be bad again, especially now that you’re on my patch.”

  “I don’t acknowledge your authority,” the young one replied.

  “Will that stop me from ripping out your heart? Should it become necessary, that is.”

  A spike of fear registered on Siri’s senses. She just barely managed not to swerve the car across lanes in reaction. Stop that! she thought loudly at Selim, but gave no outward sign of being involved in any of this.

  “It’s about the girl,” Selim said with no further games.

  “The girl?” Sterling sounded outraged. And jealous. “What about Moira? What’s she to you?”

  A complication, Siri thought. Don’t worry, hon, he doesn’t want your girl. He better not.

  She hoped.

  Never mind that vampires often had more than one companion. She had no business being jealous of this Moira, no more business than Geoff Sterling had being jealous of Selim. But both she and Geoff Sterling were jealous at one mention of a name. Everybody was so touchy lately. She hated that she was being drawn into this nonsense. She’d be so glad
when they got it out of their systems.

  “Back off, boy,” Selim said. “My interest in you and Moira Chasen is strictly professional. Do you know who she is?”

  “Of course I know.”

  “Until yesterday, I was blissfully unaware of her existence. I’m told she’s a black-haired beauty who plays an angel on some highly successful television show.”

  Sterling chuckled. “That’s what first drew me to her. Seducing an angel. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?”

  “A make-believe angel? If that’s fun for you, who am I to stop you?”

  “A dhamphir,” was Sterling’s bitter answer.

  “Hunter will do. Juveniles are so ignorant. But then, you were orphaned so young. You’re what? Two, three at most?”

  “I was a companion for—”

  “Doesn’t matter. It’s not the same. If you weren’t young and inexperienced, you wouldn’t even remember how many years you were a companion. You certainly wouldn’t think those years counted for anything.”

  Thank you very much, Siri thought. What was Selim talking about? What was his point? Why didn’t he just tell Sterling to leave the girl alone and kick him out of the car? Instead, he wanted her to drive them to a mall. What for? Was Selim planning on doing something to improve this kid’s wardrobe?

  “Do you think you’re ready to take a companion of your own? Or is there something else you have in mind?”

  “I don’t know,” was Sterling’s answer to both questions.

  “You haven’t thought about it? I see. The girl caught your attention, and you started stalking? You’re just playing owl and mouse without thinking about where it has to lead?”

  “I want her,” Sterling answered sulkily.

  “Does she have the gift?”

  Sterling nodded. “I’ve never wanted anyone like I want her. Wanting’s enough.”

  “Dead or alive? Either way is complicated,” Selim went on without giving the other vampire time to answer. “She’s famous. Her face is known. It’s time you made a choice. Ah, here we are.”