Laws of the Blood 1: The Hunt (25 page)

“Just tell me what you’re talking about,” he said. “Who?”

“Yeah,” Siri chimed in. “Who’s the slave? Who owns him?”

Selim flashed a quick smile at his companion. Siri, thank the Goddess, had cut to the chase. “Names,” Selim said. “Who do I hunt?”

“Art Rasmussen, of course,” Alice said. “The man who runs Arc Light. It should have already been obvious
that whoever provided the script is controlling the production our way.”

“Enslaving a studio?” Rene asked. “Is that possible?”

“It wouldn’t have to be everybody,” Siri pointed out. “Besides, there have to be a few artistic people left in the film industry. Most artists have a certain degree of the gift.”

“I passed a call from Rasmussen on to Angela a day or two ago,” Alice went on.

Angela was Alice’s other companion, though they wouldn’t be together much longer. “And this is important how?” Selim asked.

“Angela handles community affairs,” Siri explained to Selim. “So to speak.”

“She told me he was looking for something in a dominatrix scene. Told her he loved his wife and kids, wasn’t into kink, but had this new connection that was stronger.”

“Sounds like a new slave,” Selim agreed. A distracting ripple of fear wavered through him as he spoke. It was an outside sensation. Probably something to do with the murderer nearby. He attempted to shut it out and concentrate on his own problems. “How did Rasmussen find you?” he asked Alice. “Who does he belong to?”

Alice gave him a skeptical look. “A slave is going to give one of my girls more than the necessary buzz-words to get what he needs? I don’t think so.”

“Fine. I’ll have a talk with him,” Selim said decisively. Here was something he could work with. Something he could do to start putting his world back in order. Go ask Alice, indeed. “I need an address for this guy.”

Siri stood up, quivering with anxiety. Her eyes flashed at Selim. “He has a wife and children. I doubt if he’s a volunteer slave.”

“Most are, these days,” Alice agreed. “We should find out how he came to be enslaved before deciding what to do about him.”

Selim found that his claws were slightly extended.
He wondered how long he’d been puncturing and shredding the fine cloth of Alice’s drapery. He let the curtain go and stepped away from the window. He fought to focus completely on the women. “I don’t care how he got involved with our kind,” he informed them. “I just want to know what he knows.”

“And we all know how you plan to do that,” Siri answered belligerently.

Alice put her hands on her hips and lifted her chin stubbornly. “I won’t have it, Selim.”

“Won’t have what?” Red rage filtered into his consciousness, but it had nothing to do with these foolish females. Nothing to do with his reaction to their foolishness. It came from outside, from far away. Not aimed at him, but he was part of it. He fought off confusion. “Won’t have what?” he repeated to Alice.

“Won’t have you torturing an innocent man just because it’s the quickest, easiest way. Let me find him,” she urged with her usual persuasiveness. “Talk to him. It may take a little longer, but no harm will be done.”

Before Selim could argue, another rush of terror hit him. He staggered forward. Siri was by his side instantly. Alice a step behind her. He felt like he was being hit on the head with a hammer. His blood started to burn. He stared at the concerned women. “Do you feel that?” They shook their heads. To Selim it looked as if they were puppets moved by the same string. A laugh ripped out of him at the sight.

They tried to help him to a chair, but he pulled away. Wildness built in him.

Help! Please! Geoff! Someone help me!

Laughter answered. He laughed with them. He joined with
them.
Running footsteps, pounding heartbeats, bloodfire.

Not too close. Not too fast. Play the game. Play it out. Make it last. Feel her? Close your eyes and follow the fear. Taste her terror on the air. Taste her hope. Sexy sweet and hot. She doesn’t see us, thinks she’s free of us. Slow down. Stalk the bitch.

Selim shook his head. Freed himself from the vision. It was happening right now. Should have felt it sooner. The human murderer’s vibes covered over signs of the Hunt. Hunting without his permission.

With an animal cry, Selim tore away from the clutching grasps of the women. The change came. Wild. Freeing. He laughed again, loudly, the sound issuing from a mouth full of monstrous fangs. He could feel who now. He was drawn to where it began. Not far. He didn’t have much time.

Selim turned and ran. He leapt through the window, paying no mind to shattering glass or to any nearby shouts and cries of alarm. He concentrated on the screams for help coming from miles away as he hit the ground running.

There was a wall surrounding the grounds. Inside the wall he found an odd combination of long, low, functional-looking structures punctuating street after street of facades from every era and style of architecture. These buildings showed painted faces in front, with nothing behind them. Not a real place at all; a front; a mask. A television studio, he realized as he rushed down empty, dark streets. These were simply outdoor sets. Reality wasn’t to be found outside. The grounds went on and on, mostly dark and deserted. It was still early in the evening, though, and there were people working in some of the buildings. Selim slowed as he neared one that was surrounded by parked vehicles. He came to a halt not far from an open doorway, waited and watched for a few precious seconds in shadows he made even deeper. People moved around inside, puzzled, afraid. The sound of questioning, shrilly angry voices came to him on the air, and in his thoughts.

Damn.

Someone had been damn sloppy, leaving a mess for him to clean up. Deliberate. A distraction for him. A diversion.

“Son of a bitch,” Selim snarled and reached out to
touch the most receptive nearby mind. In a few moments, a petite young woman came out of the studio and walked into Selim’s shadow. Selim took her by the hand, tilted her chin up and they gazed into each other’s eyes. “Tell me what you saw.”

After one brief sigh, the girl answered. “A blond. A skinny, pale, hard-eyed woman. She came onto the set and stared at Moira.
Stared.
It was scary. I don’t know why, but it was. Tony was going over to tell her to leave, but Moira said it was okay, that she knew her. That the intruder was from her agent’s office.”

Kamaraju’s Lisa,
Selim thought without surprise. “And?”

“Moira left with the woman. She shouldn’t have left the set, but she went. Without a word. She looked dazed. I thought the woman must have given her some bad news, but I don’t think the blond said a thing. They didn’t speak to each other. It was very eerie. We waited, but Moira didn’t come back. Tony sent someone out to look for Moira, and he didn’t come back. And we thought we heard screaming in the distance, but it was like we couldn’t move. Nobody wanted to, really. Then in a few minutes this crazed . . . creature. Some guy in a vampire mask, I guess. He came running in screaming for Moira. Then he ran out again. It was like—well, he looked at me and I got a headache. Just from his looking at me—into me.” She blinked. “I threw up after he left.”

“What did he look like?”

“Like a vampire—or a werewolf. Something with fangs and gigantic, glowing eyes. Great makeup and prosthetics.”

For once Selim blessed any and all involvement between his kind and the entertainment industry. His work with these people was already half done. They didn’t believe in the supernatural, but they were intimately involved with makeup artists. Within a few moments he’d have them recalling seeing someone that looked like a vampire somewhere on the studio lot, but not here, not
only a few minutes before. It wouldn’t have anything to do with Moira’s disappearance.

He could feel the Hunt once more. Prey and hunters were on the other side of the studio’s walls, well away from people now. He had an image of Moira’s black hair flying behind her in the moonlight. She was running across an open, grassy area. Stumbling, gasping. Surrounded. The prey’s terror ripped through him. Instinct was to give chase, but not after the girl being hunted. Instinct was fought down in the face of duty, in the face of the Law. None could know of their existence, no human could remember what they’d really seen here tonight. He had to do damage control.

“He had dark hair,” the girl recalled of the vampire she’d seen. “And a great ass.” She smirked at the memory. “He was wearing tight jeans and a white shirt. No cape. Not a proper vampire costume without a cape.”

Geoff Sterling, Selim supposed. The girl’s description suited the young vampire well enough. Why the hell couldn’t it have been one of Kama’s nest that showed himself so openly to the humans? “Damn,” he grumbled, and then proceeded to ease deeper into the girl’s mind. Once inside, he switched her memories around a bit, told her a story she was happier believing, anyway. There were no vampires, real or fake, in the version she knew when he pulled out a moment later.

It took him a precious five minutes more to implant similar recollections in as many of the others inside the studio as he could reach, and that was most of the actors and crew on the set of the television series about angels.

It wouldn’t have taken quite so long if he hadn’t felt Moira Chasen’s final horror as Kamaraju’s nest surrounded her. If he hadn’t heard her pleas and prayers and screams. If he hadn’t felt the rape. The pain. The death.

He was crying when his job was done. He hadn’t shed tears in years. He didn’t like them, didn’t want them. But for the Law, he could have saved her. But for him, she wouldn’t be dead. That she was dead shouldn’t affect him. But it did.

T
HE LAUGHTER WAS
the ugliest of several ugly sounds that filled the night. Cruel, menacing. Worst of all, dispassionate.

The voice that shouted in response was far too passionate. “You’re dead! You’re fucking dead, you bastard!”

More laughter followed the shout, but it didn’t hide the meaty sounds of flesh impacting flesh or the grunts of pain. Selim smelled blood on the air, tasted it with a quick flick of his tongue. Not just mortal blood, but the special sweetness of his own kind settled on his taste buds. “Fuckers!” he muttered, and increased his speed uphill, across springy, sprinkler-moistened grass.

He found them at the bottom of the hill, on the edge of a playing field somewhere deep inside the large park. Kamaraju’s limo sat squarely in the center of a parking area next to the field. Two of Kama’s fosterlings had Sterling pinned against the hood of the car, beating the shit out of him. As Selim drew closer, Sterling let out a howl like a banshee. The pain that reverberated with the sound had nothing to do with the physical punishment he was taking. Everything to do with grief.

Selim was on Sterling’s attackers by the time the young vampire’s cry faded in the night. One he tossed over the top of the car. The crack of the fledgling’s spine breaking as he hit the concrete on the far side of the limo ensured that he wouldn’t be getting up for a while. Selim heard Kamaraju’s cry of protest, was aware of the nest leader rushing to his fallen fosterling, but paid the touching little drama no mind. Sterling was splayed out on top of the wide hood, his shirt ripped open. The exposed skin on his chest was shredded by long claw marks, his clothes were soaked in the bright blood welling up from the wounds. His face was bruised pulp. Selim reached for Sterling’s other assailant.

The second of Kama’s pups tried to run. Selim didn’t bother with the silver dagger, he just ripped the bitch’s heart out and tossed the body aside. The heart he pitched over his shoulder, to Sterling. If the boy didn’t know what to do with it, he didn’t have it in him to be an Enforcer. Selim paid no more attention to Sterling. He was totally focused on Kamaraju as he leapt over the top of the limo and stalked toward the kneeling nest leader.

Kamaraju rose angrily to his feet as Selim approached, and he backed away from the injured fledgling. “What’s the matter with you!” he demanded. Selim was blood-spattered, the hot liquid on his skin cooling already in the chilly night air. There was no blood on Kamaraju. He didn’t even look like a vampire at the moment. He was impeccably dressed in a dark suit and a tab-collared silk shirt. There was no blaze of hunger in him. But there was outrage, fury, and smug satisfaction. He swept an arm around the parking lot. “Are you crazy, Selim?” he demanded. “Leave my people alone.”

“You moved fast after the murder,” Selim said, looking the other vampire over disdainfully. “Didn’t want any blood on your hands?” He sniffed. “I can smell it on you, though.”

“Murder? What murder?” Kamaraju gave an elegant
shrug. “There was a Hunt.” He backed a step as Selim continued to walk forward. Fear flashed through his controlled facade.

“You were letting them kill Sterling.”

Kamaraju held his hands up before him. “The strig? We were just playing with him. Teaching him a lesson for trying to interfere with a nest’s rightful Hunt.”

“A lesson?” The words were spoken with soft menace. Sterling’s almost mindless pain, the anguish of his loss, spread like fog across the night. The very
real
knowledge of it seeped into Selim’s being. It twisted in his guts, turned into a pool of molten lead in his conscience. “It looks like the lesson could kill him, to me,” he spoke to Kamaraju.