Laws of the Blood 4: Deceptions: Deceptions Read online

  Falconer shook his head. This was all post-Walking paranoia, of course, some odd flight his imagination chose to run off on when the only objective fact was that there was someone walking behind him at one in the morning.

  Falconer was a careful man, carefully trained as well, though his commando years were behind him. He was still confident of his own abilities, certainly not afraid to walk the streets of his own neighborhood at night. Georgetown was as safe as you could get in the Washington area, anyway. Sometimes it was said that there were more police than citizens in this affluent neighborhood of embassies and historic houses.

  He’d been rattled and restless when he started out, distracted certainly, by more things than he wanted to think about, but he wasn’t so bad off that he didn’t soon realize that someone was following him. For a few minutes he let himself think that the person moving so quietly behind him was simply going in the same direction, then the paranoia set in. It wasn’t a long walk from his house to the Canal. The long street that fronted the Canal was a popular place; the almost silent footsteps came from that direction. Maybe it was some lost tourist. Maybe he should pause and ask if she needed help.

  Maybe or not, he began to walk faster. The darkness got darker, though the light from the frequently placed streetlamps still shone as brightly. When he heard the laughter in his head, there was an unmistakable undertone of sex to it. The silent sound told him this was neither dream nor Walking, but waking nightmare. She wanted him and would have him and then he would know what it was like—

  Falconer did not panic, but he did begin to run. He went past Christ Church and up P Street, but from that point on he had no idea where he was. The world around him simply grew darker and darker and filled with the scent of a spicy perfume. Her arousal bit into his self-control, and her anger seared him. Anger at him because he refused to let terror overwhelm him, anger because her arousal sparked no answering heat in him. She could catch up to him anytime, she wanted him to know that. He believed it, but he didn’t let it matter. He concentrated, fought to punch through the surrounding darkness. He could hear his own ragged breathing, and the pounding of his heart, and her bubbling, vicious laughter. For a long time they were the only sounds in the world.

  But they weren’t alone in the world; they were still in the heart of a great, noisy city. Even in the quiet evening streets of Georgetown, there was plenty of traffic. Hunter and prey were not the only people in the world. He wouldn’t let himself forget that. The thought brought him back to sanity. It lifted the suffocating darkness a little. He listened for the sound of cars and the pounding of his footsteps on the hard pavement, and not to the drumming of his heart. Falconer hunted for the outer reality and found a wisp of it in the sight of a black gaping hole. For a moment he thought he was running toward the mouth of hell, then realized it was only the entrance to a park, a simple iron gate flanked by tall old trees. He pelted through the gate and into the silence of the park, knowing it was a mistake even as he did so, but he couldn’t make his feet go any other way.

  She was close on his heels, and her hungry laughter grew even louder as the world narrowed down to the two of them again.

  “What the hell?”

  Bitch shot away from her side even as Olympias halted and swung sharply around at the scent of the hunt. She sniffed the air in the dark emptiness of the quiet side street, tasted the tang of fear and arousal with a swift flick of her tongue. It took less than a heartbeat for her senses to spread out and flow through every living thing in the crowded neighborhood. Olympias sorted easily through the mortals and discarded them as pale imitations of real thought and emotion. It was the electric wave of ecstasy and hunger from one of her own kind that tingled through her blood, bones, and mind, washing through her, jarring Olympias to the core. Her stomach churned and roiled so hard that she gagged and had to lean against a building for a moment to get herself under control. Her claws scraped against the wall, going through thick layers of grime and paint to gouge narrow channels in the old bricks.

  She hadn’t experienced this for a long, long time, and would be happy never to feel it again. She brushed the reaction aside, forcing the old ache down. It was only residual lust, nothing to do with her. All she’d thought she’d wanted was to take her dog for a quiet run around the neighborhood; it seemed her restlessness had had another purpose all along. It was nice to know that her gifts were still intact, even if she didn’t have to use them all that often.

  She took a deep breath and let her claws extend farther as she turned to follow the hellhound. She grew hunting fangs, as well, though she didn’t go so far as to make the full transition to her Nighthawk form. Nobody messed around in her town. Olympias kept pace with Bitch, coursing with her, a partner in the hunt. She didn’t need the dog’s help to follow the scent, but knew the animal might need her for protection if it tried to interfere with a hunting vampire on its own.

  She passed the hellhound at the entrance to a nearby park. Bitch followed her past an overturned bench and into a stand of trees. Traces of mortal fear grew stronger with each step she took, but they didn’t lend any exciting edge to her emotions, and the vampire’s hunger disgusted her. The only thing she felt was fury when she reached the downed man on the ground and the creature kneeling over him.

  The vampire shot up with a snarl, swung around, and leapt at Olympias. Olympias slammed the smaller woman against a tree with all the force at her command. The tree shuddered, wood splintered and cracked, and small branches and leaves rained down from the impact. The female vampire slid to the ground. Olympias stood over her and planted a Nike-shod foot on her chest. By this time Bitch was standing on the mortal’s chest, bared teeth resting at his throat.

  Olympias ignored the man to concentrate on her own kind. “What do you think you were doing? You do know where you are? You do know who I am?”

  The woman glared up at her, full of lust and hate and hunger, but with their gazes locked, Olympias had the advantage. She remained calm, but for the righteous anger that she let burn into the woman’s brain. Moments passed into minutes, minutes in which the intruder was allowed to know that Olympias was letting her live. She let the young vampire know that she allowed her to regain control. Finally, the girl’s glowing eyes changed back to something closer to a look that might pass for human. Her hysterical need tamped down to a controllable level. The girl’s fury remained, but she managed to put it on a leash.

  Finally, she answered Olympias. “I know who you are.”

  “And you know where.” Olympias spoke very, very quietly. She stepped back and let the younger woman get to her feet. Bitch lifted her muzzle from the prone mortal’s neck, just enough to watch. The man took this small opportunity to try to move, but the hellhound let out a warning growl, and he subsided. Olympias left the dog to do its job. “I believe I have a dagger on me somewhere,” she said, and she backed the girl up against the tree once more. “You have five seconds to explain before I use it, strig.”

  The girl bridled at the insult. “I’m no strig!”

  “Three.” She put a hand under the girl’s jaw and pricked claws into her exposed jugular. “Two.”

  “I wasn’t going to kill him! It wasn’t a hunt! You know damn well—!”

  Olympias squeezed the young vampire’s throat. “Quietly,” she whispered. She was within her rights to kill this trespasser in her territory, but she felt the woman’s need through the heat of her soft skin and the pulsing blood so close beneath aching flesh. Her longing perfumed the night, stinking against more than one of Olympias’s senses. “Puberty,” she said in disgust, and took a step back. While the girl shuddered in reaction, Olympias finally took a look at the mortal man the girl’d set her sights on. “Who’s the bunny?”

  “Mine.”

  Olympias laughed at the girl’s intensely jealous reaction, and the man’s gaze slowly, carefully, lifted over the dog’s head and met her own. He shouldn’t have been able to move. He was big, broad-shouldered, and roug
h-looking. He had a wide, narrow mouth and narrow pale eyes. Someone had broken his nose once upon a time. She figured that standing upright he’d be at least six feet four. The young woman who’d been chasing him was maybe five two, not that controlling him would have taken any effort for her. At least not physically.

  She nudged him with her foot, and the girl snarled and moved up behind her. Olympias laughed again. Ah, to be so young! Thank the goddess she was not. She looked over her shoulder. “What’s your name?”

  The girl’s eyes looked like two dull coals in the night, her breath came in sharp, hard gasps, cutting through the gentle evening breeze. “Lora.”

  “From where?”

  “He’s mine,” was Lora’s insistent answer. “My right. You can’t stop me.”

  Olympias put her hands on her hips and reminded Lora of the rules. “You have a right to claim a companion if you’re ready, but not in this town. Not without my permission.”

  Lora made a sharp, furious gesture. “My nest leader said I could—”

  “Your nest leader didn’t talk to me.”

  “I want him!” Lora pointed at the bunny. “That doesn’t interfere with your rule, your highness.”

  Olympias had been a queen more than once in her life and took the title as right rather than as the sarcasm it was intended to be. She nudged the man in the ribs.

  To her surprise he had will enough to grab her around the ankle. “Don’t.” The word was barely even a whisper, but he shouldn’t have been able to speak at all. Bitch stirred, looked at her questioningly, but she didn’t order the hellhound to rip his throat out.

  Instead, she stepped back and smiled down on Lora’s intended trophy. “Well, well, well.” She didn’t want to probe too deeply, but didn’t have to to realize what a psychically gifted prize Lora was defending so tenaciously. Tough with it. Trained to use it? “Quite a find you have here.”

  “He’s mine.”

  “You’re getting boring.” She made herself concentrate on the girl. Olympias backed Lora up against the tree, slowly, revealing to the young vampire the knowledge of just how powerful she was, step by torturing slow step. The girl hadn’t shown much respect up until now. Lora was crying like a suckling by the time the back of her head hit the shattered trunk of the tree. “Maybe he’s yours,” Olympias conceded once she’d put Lora in her place. “Maybe he’s a dead man.”

  “No!”

  The girl’s concern was touching and disgusting. Olympias didn’t know whether to sneer, snicker, or give Lora a reassuring hug. What she didn’t give was an inch. “You have no right to hunt even for a companion in this town. I could kill you for stepping over the border into my territory.”

  “Not your—territory.” Lora fought against terror, and Olympias’s control. “Not here—”

  Olympias grabbed Lora by the jaw again, made her meet her eyes. “I could kill you, couldn’t I?” She didn’t wait for a nod, but forced Lora’s head to nod up and down. “I’m glad you agree.” She backed off and gave in a little to the girl’s obvious need. She could remember what it was like to be so young, more’s the pity. “Maybe I’ll let you have your love bunny, but I have to check him out first. See if there are any complications. Your nest leader should have given me a call, then this would have been settled already.”

  She waited for Lora to give her the name, but the girl said nothing and was able to block Olympias’s quick probe. All Olympias was able to discern was that the block had been enhanced by a stronger talent than Lora’s. So whoever her leader was didn’t want any part of this trouble? Slacker. Olympias took as little interest as possible in nest politics. She preferred to concentrate on the mortal kind, so she didn’t bother to express her disgust.

  She jerked a thumb toward the park entrance. “Get out of here,” she told the girl. “I’ll be in touch.”

  “But—how? He—”

  “Bitch.”

  The hellhound sprang at the young vampire, all fangs and red-eyed ferocity, and two hundred pounds of sleek, immortal muscle and fierce loyalty to its mistress. Lora shrieked and ran, the hellhound close, but not too close, on her heels. Olympias had every intention of calling the hellhound back as soon as Lora was out of the park.

  In the meantime she glanced down at the mortal lying on the ground. She was going to have to be very firm with this one to get him to forget. His eyes were wide and too alert for the situation as she bent over him. “Who needs a companion?” she asked rhetorically, brushing fingers over his short-cropped hair. “When you can have a dog?”

  Chapter 2

  “SOMETHING HAS GOT to be done about that woman!”

  Roger Bentencourt couldn’t have agreed more. He’d thought so about Olympias many times before. This time, however, he was determined to do something about it. He nodded understandingly and patted Lora’s hand sympathetically. The sympathy was real, even if his thoughts were not as intensely focused on the young vampire’s problems as she would have liked. Vampires were vain creatures. He thought it was a good thing that the legend about their not being able to see their reflections in a mirror was indeed a legend. Of course, even if it were true, he supposed they’d find satisfaction in seeing their reflection in their adoring companions’ and slaves’ eyes.

  Lora failed to notice any distraction on his part as he patted her hand again. Rather, he patted her claws as Lora nervously snatched her hand away. Her flesh burned to the touch. The girl was suffering, but he found the contact electric and quite pleasant. She left the patio and paced the long length of the walled garden, while he remained seated on the patio. It was pleasant here in Alexandria this evening, with a breeze coming up from the Potomac to stir the leaves and cool the patio. He gazed up at the sky, more mindful of the time than the young vampire. Living at night was something he’d been getting used to for the last several years; his time sense was certainly heightened. He found it very advantageous to be a vampire’s companion. Though, of course, there were a few minor drawbacks.

  “I’m not looking forward to carrying you inside if you’re out here when the sun comes up,” he called to Lora. “Maybe I’ll let you get sunburned and mosquito bit.”

  She stalked back to the patio. “Don’t tease.” She sat back down, and he poured her a glass of iced tea from the pitcher on the glass-topped table. She raked her fingers—fingers now, not dagger-tipped claws—through her short brown hair. She was a pretty girl at the moment, with gamin features that rather reminded him of a young Audrey Hepburn. Dressed in a denim skirt and sleeveless pink oxford shirt she certainly didn’t look like the sort of person you’d suspect of being a vampire. Not that anyone was likely to suspect anyone else of being a vampire in this day and age. One of the many things the strigoi got wrong was their paranoid belief that, in a world grown increasingly jaded as horror after human horror mounted through the twentieth century, anyone would actually consider a minor nuisance like themselves a serious threat at the beginning of the twenty-first. The world, of course, would be quite wrong about the threat, or could be, if the strigoi would abandon their fears and outmoded Laws and get on with claiming their natural destiny. Well, it wasn’t up to him to preach the error of their ways to them. He was but a lowly companion, after all. A servant. A concubine. Or, perhaps “boy toy” was a more apropos term in this age. He chuckled at the notion.

  Lora brought him out of his reverie with a sharp snarl. “What are you laughing about? The Greek bitch is going to wreck everything, I know it!”

  “Would you like Rose to talk to the Enforcer?”

  His mild question was met with the derisive laugh he expected. She shook her head. “I love Rose, I really do, but . . .” They were seated in the garden of Rose Shilling’s house. Rose was the leader of this Virginia nest and Bentencourt was her companion. Lora was one of the two fosterlings in the household. Alec was away on a business trip. Rose was inside reading; he was aware of the contented hum of her thoughts. The temptation was, of course, to be by her side, but she was a woman
who found a great deal of contentment in being alone. It had taken him a great deal of work to court and seduce the reserved English vampire into taking him as her boy toy. Now that she had him as her devoted possession, half of the time she seemed embarrassed by the situation, the other half, she didn’t seem to know quite what to do with him. Bentencourt found Rose’s diffidence quite delightful, but Lora was right, Rose was no match in any way for the Enforcer of the City.

  “Rose thinks everyone is as reasonable and civilized as she is.”

  “Turned out she was wrong about Olympias. They’re of the same blood, you know,” Lora went on, and laughed again. “Our mild Rose and that bitch queen who won’t let the rest of us enter her precious city.”

  He couldn’t hide his own sneer at the sound of the woman’s name. “Rose is of the Nighthawks?” he asked. Despite all he knew about his mistress, this information came as a surprise. He drummed his fingers on the table, the sound sharp on the thick circle of smoky glass. “Really? Two of them so close by? It’s a wonder they haven’t fought it out. Don’t they avoid each other?”

  “I don’t know. Nighthawks don’t all turn out Hunters, I guess. I think there’s some kind of change they have to go through. Like getting made into a queen bee or something,” Lora added.

  Bentencourt nodded, tucking this new bit of information away. It was so hard to draw even little bits of information from any vampire, harder still to sift legend from rumor from lie when he did. He’d have to do more research of course about the change that turned an ordinary vampire with the Hunter mutation into one of them. He wasn’t surprised Olympias had turned into a monster’s monster. After all, she’d been a power-hungry man killer in her mortal life; the transition to strigoi wouldn’t have changed her much.

  He glanced off to the east. “Sky’s getting light. You better get to bed.”

  She was strigoi, he was mortal. He should not be the one giving the orders, no matter how mild and solicitous his tone. Alec would have noticed; that was why he was currently away on one of the frequent business trips Bentencourt arranged. Lora didn’t notice that he’d given her a command as she rose from her seat. Obeying Bentencourt was something that was becoming habitual in Rose’s household. Besides, Lora’s mind was on the man he’d decided she should take as a companion. Colonel Michael Falconer would be an invaluable source of information of certain classified operations within the Pentagon, if Lora could manage the mating. If not, well, Falconer could still be sacrificed to the cause.