Laws of the Blood 1: The Hunt Read online

  “Good.”

  Selim could feel Don Tomas preparing to hang up. He asked a question quickly. “You’ve met Istvan, right?”

  “You haven’t?”

  “Never had the pleasure.”

  “We met once.”

  “What does he look like? Tall, slender, but with broad shoulders and long arms, big eyes under heavy brows?”

  Selim wanted to ask if the dhamphir in any way resembled Nicolas Cage. That was who Istvan looked like in the dream. It had felt like someone had cast the actor for the part of the world’s most dangerous vampire. Like he’d been watching a movie. Weird. But that was only a dream. Some dreams were real. Most weren’t. Besides, Siri was a big Nicolas Cage fan, and most of Selim’s dreams were about Siri. He was very confused.

  “He looks like that. Why?”

  It had just been a bad dream. Either that, or Istvan was coming.

  There could only be one reason. Selim wasn’t about to discuss it with Sebastian’s father. “Nothing,” he told Tomas. “Just wondering, that’s all.”

  Selim hung up the phone and checked his watch. It was time he got going. He needed a shower and some breakfast before he went out and killed a vampire.

  Chapter 9

  IN THE END, Siri simply couldn’t make herself do it.

  She couldn’t wear black. Not even to the Viper Room. The whole Goth vampire thing just wasn’t her. Neither was looking cool and hip and with it and just like everybody else. She’d done her short, sexy, little black dress thing back in the eighties, at the Rainbow, the Whisky, the Roxy, and the other rock clubs on the Strip. She missed the eighties, but she couldn’t make herself dress like that anymore. She was a grown-up now, for God’s sake!

  She did go to the Viper Room, though.

  She remembered when the club at the address was called Filthy McNasty’s. That had been a lifetime ago, but Sunset hasn’t changed much, Siri decided as she waited by the velvet ropes outside the club. There wasn’t any more traffic or any fewer tourists. The giant billboards that lined the street were gaudier and more numerous than she remembered. There were fewer hookers, or they weren’t as obvious as they used to be. The tattoo places, strip clubs, and psychic reading rooms hadn’t gone away, though there was a darker, more degenerate feel to them than she remembered.

  People just don’t know how to have fun anymore she thought. Getting tired of waiting to get inside, Siri made her way to the front of the crowd and caught the doorman’s attention. She smiled and thought about how much he wanted to open the door for the nice redhead in the slinky emerald green dress and he eventually smiled back and did as her thoughts told him. “Good boy. Have a biscuit,” she added as she forked over a generous tip on her way in.

  It was very noisy inside, the music from the stage overwhelmingly so. Siri didn’t expect to be impressed in any way with this hangout for the trendy but changed her mind the moment she let herself listen. The place had the best sound system she’d ever heard. All right, she decided as she made her way into the main room, she wouldn’t pretend to be bored and blasé about hanging out at Celebrity Central here. The music was great. She wasn’t sure whether to wander toward the stage or look for Yevgeny. She’d been listening to the Melissa Etheridge CD with “No Souvenirs” over and over in the car on the way over. She felt the need now for a song that was a bit less desperate. One that would help keep her mind off Selim.

  Yevgeny solved the problem of what she should do by stepping up behind her before she got very far into the crowd. “Let’s talk,” he said, and took her arm. His grip was hard enough to keep her from arguing. His whole attitude was more domineering than she wanted or liked. She went with him, willing to keep him company for now.

  “Macho, aren’t we?”

  “Yes.” He flashed her a grin. “Chicks dig it.”

  “What century were you born in?”

  “Nineteenth. Want a drink?”

  A few moments later, they were seated side by side at a small table. The couple who’d been occupying the table had felt a sudden, overwhelming urge to dance. Siri and Yevgeny smiled at each other as the couple, both bleached blonds, wandered off.

  “Was that someone famous?” Siri asked as she watched the pair disappear into the crowd.

  “Probably. Who cares?” Yevgeny looked at her with the sort of intense concentration she hadn’t felt from a man in over a year. It was the sort of look that made the temperature of the already hot room rise significantly. “Let’s talk about us.”

  O-kaay. Siri licked her lips. She chose to take his words in a general way. “How long have you been a companion?” she asked him. “Who were you with?” She’d asked Yevgeny these questions when they’d met. She asked them for Selim then. Now she asked because she wanted to know.

  As before, he avoided answering her. “Too long. And does it matter?” Yevgeny took her hand. He gazed into her eyes.

  She felt his thoughts probing her. She gave him a hard mental swat. He blinked. Anger blazed in his face for a moment. His grip on her fingers grew crushing. He relaxed before Siri could begin to struggle. He let her go and smiled.

  “You are very good.”

  “You know that already,” she told him. His eyes were an incredible shade of blue, the lines around them when he smiled were intriguing. Attractive. So were his broad, Slavic cheekbones. He certainly wasn’t hard to look at. Very different than Selim. For some reason that annoyed her. Which was stupid, since, if she was going to go looking, she should be looking for someone different from Selim.

  “You don’t want to look,” Yevgeny said, reading her surface thoughts whether she liked it or not. “That’s the way it is with us. Once we’re hooked, we’re hooked. That’s the strongest weapon they have. They make us drink in loyalty.”

  She did not want to think about that. She didn’t want to talk about it. A waiter came with drinks ordered by the dancing couple. She and Yevgeny accepted the diversion and the glasses. “Were you really born in the nineteenth century?” she asked when the waiter was gone. She supposed it was possible. Not likely, of course. But Yevgeny felt old.

  He looked around.

  “Were you?” Siri insisted. She trusted the sound system and crowd noise to cover any confidences they shared.

  He shook his head. “It’s a good line. How old are you? And where are you from, little girl? Where did you meet him?”

  “Right here on Sunset,” she answered and wished she hadn’t. Just driving up the street had done enough to flash her back to memories of that night she’d been drawn to a man playing with a handful of gold coins as he sat alone in the Rainbow Bar and Grill. A few minutes later, she watched him rip the heart out of a vampire. She’d woken up in his apartment the next morning. “Ten years ago.”

  “You sound surprised.”

  She took a long sip of very good scotch. She felt breathless, but not from the whiskey. Not from the cigarette and cigar smoke in the air, either. Not from the electronic music pounding in her ears. Not from the glint in Yevgeny’s eyes, nor the intense interest he radiated at her.

  “Time flies,” Yevgeny went on. “Among our kind.”

  She made herself put down the glass when it was still half full. She stared at the amber liquid as she spoke. “It just doesn’t seem like I’ve known him for ten years. That we’ve been together for so long.”

  “It seems like you just met him yesterday, doesn’t it?”

  “Day before,” she answered. The day before yesterday she’d been a happy, if restless, companion. Now, here she was talking to this . . . stranger. Companions didn’t do things like that. Didn’t even think about it.

  “Why not? Because you’re happily married?” His large hand covered hers, though she didn’t see him move to do it. Yevgeny stroked her cheek with his other hand, the touch gentle and intimate. “You think he has his reasons for the way he’s treating you now, don’t you? That he’ll get over it?”

  Shock seared down inside her, all the way down to the fear tha
t nothing would ever be right between her and Selim again. Yevgeny’s touch felt wrong. Different. Good. “I don’t want to talk about him.”

  He stopped touching her. He sat back in his chair. “You can’t think about anyone else.”

  “Shut up.” She finished off the scotch. Considered ordering another. When she looked up to get a waiter’s attention, a pale face in the crowd caught hers. “Shit. What’s he doing here?”

  Yevgeny turned in his chair to follow her gaze. “You know Larry Jager?”

  She flashed him an angry look. “Do you?”

  His answering smile was of the annoying, enigmatic kind. “We’ve had a few encounters.”

  “Is he the one who dumped you?” That would explain Yevgeny’s antivampire bias. Did one actually need a reason for antivampire bias? Would a real human think you needed a reason to hate vampires? Was she a real human? And did being a real boy—girl—matter to anyone not named Pinocchio?

  “I don’t hate them,” Yevgeny told her. “Not at all.” He pointed toward Jager. “But you certainly know how to hate that one. Don’t think so hard at him, he’ll come over here. He’s not very good company.”

  “Not very good—? Do you know what he’s done? What he’s like?” Just thinking about Lawrence Jager left such a bad taste in her mind that she wanted to spit.

  “He likes them young.” Yevgeny shrugged. “Younger than you or me, certainly.”

  “You condone what he’s done?”

  “It’s not my place to judge them. Being one’s a bad habit to begin with.”

  “Bad habit.” She sat up straight and jabbed a finger, hard, in the center of Yevgeny’s broad chest. “Did you know that he had a fifteen-year-old companion?”

  “I know.”

  “Do you?” The man feigned indifference very well, but she could feel something, something strong and dark and unhappy beneath everything he said and did and thought. His knowing good old Larry Jager only served to make Siri more suspicious of Yevgeny than she already was. “Did he dump you for her? Do you know what happened to her?”

  “Selim let him have her.”

  “He didn’t want to,” she found herself automatically defending her Enforcer. “But she was a tough street kid. A runaway. It was decided that she was old enough, at least mentally, to be a companion for a strig . . . like being runaways together. Then Jager let her get hooked on heroin. He let her die of an overdose. They don’t let their companions die.”

  “More’s the pity, sometimes,” he said quietly.

  “That’s not even the worst part,” she went on. She wanted to stop. To shut up, but being so close to the loathsome strig triggered an indignation she couldn’t tone down. She could feel Yevgeny probing around her shields, too, urging her on, urging the words out. She didn’t know why he wanted to hear them, but she couldn’t stop them. “Now he’s sniffing around an eight-year-old. A child.”

  “You have great fondness for children, don’t you?” Before she could snarl an answer that her feelings were irrelevant, he went on, with deep sympathy and sadness, “It’s a pity our kind are barren.”

  A jolt of disagreement shot through her. She felt him catch it, question it, but she didn’t give voice to her knowledge. Cassie’s child wasn’t this strig’s reject’s business. “Jager intends to molest a human child. Kamaraju bit and abandoned Jager. Now he thinks he can do anything he wants.”

  “He’s a loner. The risks are his to accept.”

  “Not in this town.”

  Yevgeny threw back his head and laughed. The sound infuriated her. “You really expect Selim to ride to the rescue, don’t you? To protect the world.”

  “No. Just that child.” She did. She really did, but that wasn’t realistic, was it? He’d disclaimed any responsibility for humanity last night, hadn’t he?

  “Haven’t you learned that they only care about themselves? That they’ve forgotten how to be guilty?”

  “Guilty of what?” When he waved the question away, Siri went on, “There are limits. Child molesting is one of them.”

  “But it’s all right to eat them when they’re young and tender.”

  The words turned her stomach, but Siri persisted angrily, “Physical and mental rape of children is not allowed. You do know what happened when someone in Seattle tried it, don’t you?”

  He leaned close to her, intensely curious. “No. What?”

  The world blurred around her before she could answer. When her vision cleared, Yevgeny was gone. She was standing. And Jager was standing beside her. His hands were on her shoulders, with just the faintest touch of claw pressing into her skin. The thin silk of her dress offered no protection.

  “Well, if it isn’t Martha Siriaco. I haven’t seen you in a long time.” Jager smiled with all his teeth showing and drew Siri close.

  Selim couldn’t get a stupid song he’d never heard about some ex-lover leaving no souvenirs out of his head all the way from Pasadena to the Strip.

  He put on speed, but the music matched itself to the rhythm of his steps. He counted blocks and streetlights. He made a game of jumping fences and dodging speeding semitrailers on the freeway. Some of the drivers saw a blur as he passed, most didn’t notice a thing, and none heard his laughter as he ran by. Selim loved to run. Speed was the one gift he’d worked harder than any other to develop. He was probably the only vampire in history who would have taken up marathon running if it was a nighttime sport.

  Maybe it’s something I could organize, he thought wryly as he ate up the miles to his destination. Get a group of dedicated runners together and sponsor a charity event. Blood bank donations, maybe? He laughed and wanted to share the thought with Siri. Only she probably wouldn’t be amused by the idea at the moment. The girl was taking humanity far too seriously lately.

  The smoggy air began to burn in his lungs. He even began to sweat a little, as much as his kind could. The song kept going round and round in his head.

  He hated being haunted by songs, though it was a common enough occurrence. Being haunted by a song that was probably something Siri listened to was not so common. It made him think of her more than he wanted. Everything made him think of her. He didn’t have time for that sort of nonsense right now. He should never have let her get angry; she projected far too much when she was angry. It could be dangerous. Not just for his peace of mind. The city was full of hunger-crazed vampires. It wouldn’t take much to set the less stable ones off. A whiff of Siri’s energy could be enough. It occurred to Selim that he shouldn’t have allowed so many years to pass between Hunts, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

  He knew it wasn’t a good idea when he heard her scream.

  The sound drowned out the song. It drowned out everything.

  He heard her. Saw her. Knew where she was.

  It brought him to a dead stop in the middle of Santa Monica Boulevard.

  “Oh, my goddess!”

  Car horns blared and brakes screeched. People swore. Somebody shot at him. Selim ignored it all. These people had no idea what road rage really meant. As fear and fury built in him, it was a wonder the pavement didn’t melt beneath his feet.

  “The bastard was dead already. Now I’m really going to kill him!”

  Siri was still miles away. All Selim could do was run faster.

  Chapter 10

  “WHAT ARE YOU doing?”

  Geoff Sterling stepped out of the crowd as he spoke. His hand landed on Jager’s shoulder. Jager snarled at him. Geoff backed away, but the younger strig’s puzzled presence was enough to divert Jager’s attention momentarily from her. Siri grasped the diversion. Cloth tore as she twisted away. She ignored the pain, though pulling away from his claws left a faint scent of blood in the air.

  “Running,” she answered Geoff’s question, and took off.

  Siri caught a glimpse of Moira Chasen’s beautiful, curious, faintly freckled face somewhere in the background as she turned. She couldn’t tell whether Geoff was here with the actress or had followed M
oira to the Viper Room. At the moment, she didn’t care about this particular vampire soap opera. All she wanted was to put distance between herself and Jager’s fangs and claws.

  She was used to fangs and claws, it was the mad hunger in his eyes that set her heart racing. That triggered the very human instinct to escape.

  As she fled, she heard Jager say casually to Geoff, “Wanna hunt the Enforcer’s bitch with me?”

  Screaming black panic took hold of her. The screams were all inside her head, along with the prayers, and the calls for help. People moved out of her way. That was all she cared about, just getting to the door. She could hear Jager’s laughter, knew he was giving her a head start. Playing with her.

  Jesus. They were like big cats in the way they loved to play with the prey.

  Her heart hurt, a hard, burning knot in her chest, hammering like it was trying to get out, abandon her to flee on its own. The world around her was all pulsing light, black and red on the edges.

  Calm down.

  The voice in her mind wasn’t Selim’s. She didn’t pay attention to it. She found the door and rushed outside. It was just as crowded on the sidewalk outside the club as it was inside. Too many people. A damned, mindless, milling herd.

  It’s your fear he wants.

  He’s got it!

  Calm, little sister. Calm.

  The voice in her mind belonged to Geoff Sterling, and it was none too steady. He was close to losing it. Doing what he could to help, but he had the scent of her emotions as well. He managed to project that if she didn’t get herself under control, he would be Hunting, himself, in a moment.

  Knowing that there was about to be another vampire on her trail had an oddly calming effect on Siri. No way was she going to give either of them what they needed. She wasn’t cattle. She wasn’t prey. She wasn’t prepared to die tonight.

  The problem was, how was she going to stop it?

  She looked up and down the street. She knew Sunset. Maybe it had been a decade since she used to hang out at the clubs and bars, but the terrain hadn’t really changed. It was brighter than she remembered, with more streetlights and car lights and gaudy, illuminated billboards. Light had to be her friend, didn’t it? Against a creature of the night? Yeah, right. No light but sunlight would do any good. It was a long time until dawn.