Laws of the Blood 4: Deceptions: Deceptions (9 page)

Until today he hadn’t thought he believed in vampires.

Consciously he certainly didn’t, but his traumatized subconscious had come up with a pair of fanged women who’d fought over him like a pair of bloodsucking bimbos in a B movie. These could not be real memories, of course, but he’d managed somehow to convey his mind’s ravings. Every member of the Walker team had tapped into their own view of the same scenario—him on the
ground with a huge dog at his throat, while two female vampires, one a small blonde, the other tall, dark, sharp-featured, and utterly fascinating, argued. None of the Walkers had picked up the vampires’ words, audio was generally not a part of the Walking experience.

The aching bruises on his body were the only thing he knew for sure to be true. But this fantasy, this group hallucination—there was no way Grace wasn’t going to want to go back there, despite any direct orders to the contrary. She could get the project in trouble, discredited, canceled, and those were the least dangerous consequences Falconer could think of. Because—what if it was true?

Impossible. Ridiculous. But so was Walking, if you thought about it.

Maybe the others wouldn’t let her try to go Walking into the past. Maybe they wouldn’t go with her. Maybe she was scared enough by the hallucinations they’d run into to back off and continue doing things by the rules. Maybe she wouldn’t run off and talk her friend who did the past life regressions into exploring this new area of research with her. Walking techniques were classified. Falconer didn’t think Grace would share them with anyone outside the project deliberately, but she was such an enthusiastic, unconventional kid. More unconventional than all the others combined, come to think of it, which was saying quite a lot.

He really was too fond of her, he admitted with a smile. Maybe she took the place of a daughter he’d never had. He was long divorced, and they’d never had kids. He’d been married to the military rather than to the woman he loved, and she eventually figured that out. The lesson had taken him a lot longer to learn.

Falconer considered listening to the tape, but what good would hashing over the nonsense on it do him in trying to remember what had really happened? He considered destroying it, but it was evidence of—something. A gut reaction told him it might come in handy, or be
the most dangerous thing he could possibly possess. His head told him it wasn’t evidence of vampires, but something else far riskier for the future of the Walker Project. This tape was evidence that the Walkers could be easily led into a group hallucination by an inadvertent suggestion. That was dangerous news for the project. He feared the bureaucrats in charge of funding far more than he did vampires. He wasn’t ready to give up on the project yet, not when there was plenty of other objective, verified evidence that this time the mix of psychic talent and scientific method promised to yield valuable espionage and reconnaissance data. This was a glitch, an anomaly. He could destroy it, listen to it, or lock it away.

He decided to lock it in his office safe, but that still left him with the nagging certainty that Grace wasn’t going to abandon trying to repeat the exercise.
Don’t worry about it now,
he instructed himself after he turned from locking the safe.

He left the office and considered having dinner, but settled on a glass of iced tea and flipping channels for a while. He ended up watching a cooking show, which didn’t seem like a manly, soldierly sort of thing to do, but the WNBA game on ESPN couldn’t hold his attention, and he couldn’t understand why anyone needed three golf channels when one was more than enough to cure insomnia. Eventually he changed channels and found himself staring at a dog show on Animal Planet.

It was the sight of a group of rottweilers in the show ring that sent the adrenaline rush of terror through him. Falconer was out of the chair, out of the room, and halfway down the hallway to the front door before he came to himself. When he halted he was breathing hard, and sweating, and he had a hand clutched protectively around the bruises on his throat.

“O-kay,” he murmured, looking around the narrow hall while his heart pounded in his ears.

He didn’t pretend that he imagined the shadows moving on the walls, or that he felt the hot breath of a hound
from hell fading behind him. He didn’t imagine it, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t real all the same. As real as the crazy scene he’d relived and the others had witnessed in the exercise in the meeting room this afternoon. He lowered his hand and stood there, making the terror drain away.

All right, that did it. Mike Falconer turned on his heel and marched back into his living room. He switched off the dog show and flipped off the lights. Seated in the dark in his comfortable leather chair, he propped his feet up on the coffee table, closed his eyes, ran through the exercises that brought on a state that was something like light sleep, and let himself do the thing he’d been consciously avoiding since he had had the dream that was akin to Walking the night before.

All right, he thought stubbornly. If there are any vampires in town, I’m going to find them.

Sara cleared her throat. “Uh . . . hello?”

Her voice was so dry with nerves that she barely got the words out. Sara took another step farther away from the path. Branches from a bush caught at her hair, and a mosquito buzzed around her ear. She could hear the creek nearby, and traffic on the high bridge that spanned the stream. There were lights and people, in the distance, leaving her feeling alone and more than a little bit terrified. This was so embarrassing. Sara had no idea how to go about a clandestine meeting at midnight in the dark and spooky woods. In truth it was a well-used national park, and not all that far from where she lived, but homeless people, junkies, and crazy people slept in the more secluded areas. Even without vampires, Washington wasn’t the safest city in the world. The point was, there weren’t supposed to be any vampires in Washington. The one she was trying to find was breaking the Law simply being in town. Which made him technically a strig, beyond the protection of strigoi law and technically lawful prey for the Enforcer of the City to take at her leisure.
He knew all that, and Sara had to admit that this was actually rather reasonable behavior for someone who wanted to die anyway. Maybe not reasonable, because an immortal being who wanted to die seemed completely unreasonable to her, but she supposed his acting like a strig was logical.

“Hello?” she tried again, and she took another step, around a bush and slightly uphill. “Hello? It’s very dark under the trees, isn’t it? Is anyone here?”

“It’s not dark at all,” a man’s voice said from behind her. It didn’t help that his fingertips lightly brushed across the back of her neck as he spoke. The touch was soft, warm, and utterly terrifying.

Sara didn’t scream, but she did freeze like a trapped rabbit.

“I hope you were looking for me,” he said.

“Olympias sent me. Please don’t eat me,” she said, stupid with total, awful awareness of what was standing behind her.

“Of course not. I’m not that sort of monster,” he answered. His voice was surprisingly pleasant, restrained, and polite. “But you’re certainly not who I was expecting.” Gentle hands on her shoulders turned her easily to face him. “Why would the Hunter send a girl to do an Enforcer’s job?”

“I’m not a girl, I’m a—”

“You’re a very pretty girl,” he interrupted. “I was born in 1936, so the remark is not sexist—to me you are a girl.”

“What about the pretty part?” she asked. The words came out before she knew she thought them. Even with mortal vision and in the dark woods she was aware of his height, wide shoulders, and strong, handsome features. He didn’t look like he’d been born—but, of course he wouldn’t. Had she forgotten for a moment? How very odd.

“Come on,” he said. He took Sara by the arm without answering her question and led her deeper into the more
isolated wooded part of the park. He broke the silence when they reached a small, littered clearing. “I’ve been camping out here. Long time since I lived like this.”

A break in the trees let in moonlight. Sara couldn’t help but look around in consternation at what appeared to be a refuse heap. “Lived like a homeless person? Where do you sleep?”

“Lived off the land,” the vampire answered. He did not sound offended at her less than respectful tone. “I sleep in the ground, as it should be. I keep to myself. I am a homeless person,” he added.

“A
strig
.” A flash of anger blazed through him at the word. Sara felt it as a lick of flame against the fragile defenses of her mind. “Sorry!” She didn’t realize that she’d put her hands over her eyes until he took them away.

After a considerable silence while the vampire held her wrists, he said, “You have nothing to fear from me.”

He sounded so sad and so very tired that his words brought tears to Sara’s eyes. “I—didn’t mean to offend you,” she told him.

He shook his head. “I’m being sensitive to a word that has no meaning in the real world.”

“Real world?” She couldn’t help but ask. “How do you define the real world?” She only belatedly recalled that she was here to interview him. She supposed this was as good a way to start the process as any, though she really wanted to know what this vampire stranger thought.

“How do you define the real world, companion to a monster?”

“Companion?”

She must have sounded as offended by that word as he had when she called him a strig. He looked down, and she realized that he was still holding her even as he let her wrists go. “Not a companion, I see that now, but you feel—”

“Attached? I’m Olympias’s
slave
.”

“I hate that term.”

“But it is my reality.”

“Really? I’m sorry.”

What did a vampire have to feel sorry about? “That’s how it is,” she said. “Some are born to serve.”

“But—that isn’t how it should be.”

Oh, good lord, he was a hippie do-gooder! Sara wasn’t sure if the world could do with more or fewer of them, and here she’d been sent to help make that decision. “Olympias told me about you.”

“She told you I wanted to die?”

No. I told her. No need for him to know how Olympias really worked. “She said you were a beatnik with a social conscience.”

“The less of that sort of person in the world, the better,” he said, with a soft, deep chuckle.

She couldn’t make out details of his features, but Sara liked his voice. “It’s not for me to decide that sort of thing.”

“What? Life and death? Do you think that’s really true? Does being a slave—being mortal—absolve you from such responsibility?”

Oh, God, spare me! A philosopher
.

“And I can read minds, too. Have a seat,” he directed as Sara’s mind froze with the panic of knowing she was alone in an isolated spot with a supernatural being that fed on mortal emotions and flesh for sustenance. This being desired the death he couldn’t give himself. Who knew what he was capable of—“I wouldn’t try to get Olympias angry with me by killing someone she cares for.”

His reassuring voice came very close to her ear, and Sara realized that they were seated on the ground and that his arm was around her shoulders. He had said something about sitting, hadn’t he? Sara stared into the night as the vampire’s warmth shielded her from a cool, humid breeze. After a few minutes it permeated her awareness that she felt safe now, calm, reassured by his presence. He was playing with her head, of course, something only
her mistress had a right to do, but Sara appreciated his efforts to put her at ease.

“She shouldn’t have sent a mortal,” he said when she tilted her head up to look at his shadowed face. “This is not the sort of thing a mortal should have to know about. Mortals need to keep their distance, their innocence.”

Sara realized he believed what he said and that he truly was concerned about her mental as well as spiritual well-being. “Why do you want to die?” she came out and asked.

He smiled at her directness. “My name’s Andrew, you know. I imagine the Hunter told you that much about me. Let’s not be formal right now, shall we—?”

“Sara.”

“Nice to meet you, Sara. May we have a brief and productive acquaintance. Now, tell me, where’s the Enforcer this evening?”

She’d expected him to ask why Olympias had sent a slave rather than coming herself. She expected him to at least be offended and condescending, if not downright violent, about discussing life and death matters with an underling. “I have no idea where she is,” Sara answered honestly. “But the Enforcer is doing something very important,” she hastened to add. “Or she’d be here herself.”

A snort of laughter greeted this statement. “Don’t tell me Olympias has changed since I’ve been out of town.”

“She has more responsibilities than you can imagine.” Sara rushed to her mistress’s defense.

“Apologies, Sara.”

“She wanted me to talk to you first,” Sara admitted. “To report my impressions of your—your state of mind.”

“To find out if my intentions are really serious.”

She craned for a better view of him. How she wished she had at least some of the vampires’ night vision. She strained her weak psychic senses to try to read him. She did get the impression of deep despondency from him, of agitation beneath his calm, polite exterior. “Are your intentions serious?”