To Kill a Sorcerer (7 page)

“He is not the only one.” She slid over, pushing her lush body against mine, and pressed her cool lips to my ear. “And not just vampires are after me, either.”

Her breath triggered a tremor across my shoulder blades. “Must you always tease me?”

“Yes. I must.” She gave her tinselly, girlish laugh. “You are soooo fun to play with.”

Aliena often searched for her prey in LA’s nightclubs. Once, seeing her in the center of an admiring group of men and women, I had been envious, knowing that she would drink one of them later that night. She rarely killed, and though the blood loss caused weakness for a couple of days in the mortal body, men probably considered it worth it to get that close to her.

I certainly did. With her somber brown eyes and delicate, exquisite features, in tandem with that indecently generous backside and wicked set of hips, Aliena was lavishly feminine, Aphrodite’s dark reflection.

Her hand rested on my thigh, our faces close enough for me to see the smooth porcelain of her complexion, so different from the porous matte of most human flesh.

“Have you and Marcus ever . . . uh, dated?”

“Jealous?”

“Yes, I suppose I am.”

She leaned over and whispered in my ear, “I will tell you a secret.”

“What kind of secret?”

“A real secret about me.” Her eyes grew ever more luminous as she looked into mine. The press of her breasts against my arm threatened to overload my senses. “About Marcus and the others . . . well, I have never been intimate with anyone.”

“What?”

“No.”

“But you have been alive for over three hundred years. In all that time . . . ?”

“There has been no one.”

“You must have had many suitors.” Captain Obvious speaks up, thus dispelling the notion that he possesses above-average intelligence. What can I say? The girl does that to me.

“Yes. But even vampire men can be detestable. And the pool of available lovers is considerably smaller for us than it is for humans.”

“Yes, I understand.”

“So far,” she said, breathing in my ear and running her fingernails along the back of my neck, “no man has excited me.” Her voice trembled.

The cab seemed to float through the dark streets, warm and intimate. I ran my fingertips along her cheek. She closed her eyes, her lips parted.

“Your skin is so warm,” she said.

Her face entranced me, her beauty ethereal, skin aglow where there was no illumination. She was a child of the moon. Not even the lack of street bulbs in this area of town could dim the incandescence of her honey-colored hair.

“Aliena, my darling Aliena,” I whispered and stroked her hair. I leaned forward, wanting only to kiss her upper lip and that sexy mole. She opened her eyes and placed a hand on my chest.

“Slowly, Sebastian.” She gazed at me, and I could sense her indecision. She was tempted.

I ached for her, beyond temptation.

She placed her hand over mine and pressed it to her cheek. “You do not mind the cool of my skin?” she asked.

“I find it delightful.”

She closed her eyes again. I sat spellbound, watching her. We stayed like that for only a few seconds, but time seemed to slow down, extend, spin into a lifetime. Every detail of that cab ride remains etched in my memory. Finally, she pulled my hand into her lap and covered it with the other.

“You know you are special to me. I need time to think.”

“That is exactly what you do
not
want to do,” I said. “In any case, I have no desire to rush you. You will know when you are ready.”

She squeezed my hand painfully, nearly breaking my knuckles. “You might have said
if
, you conceited bastard. And now that I think about it, I am not sure you are up to the task.”

“You devastate me.”

She grinned wickedly, raised my hand to her mouth, and nipped the end of my index finger.

“Ow.”

She slowly licked the blood off with her smooth, icy tongue, all the while staring into my eyes.

“You wouldn’t be doing this to tease me further, would you?”

“I might be.” She released my hand and scooted back to her side of the cab.

“You’re a devil, Aliena.”

“Yes. For you.”

Wednesday, December 22, 2:34 a.m.

The cab stopped at Gladstone’s, and I drove us back to my place. Once inside, I grabbed a bottle of whiskey, cracked the seal, and drained it. While waiting for the burn in my throat to subside, I watched the hypnotic sway of Aliena’s hips as she sashayed across the living room.

She sat on the couch, pulled the computer to her, and began scanning the police files.

I tossed the bottle into the recycle bin. A cigarette would have been a nice chaser, but I didn’t even consider it. Vampires have extreme senses and do not like the smell of burning things. Perfectly understandable.

I had been loath to give up my smoking habit. My body could not become addicted, but the blissful memories of early rituals involving tobacco remained deeply ingrained in my psyche. Today’s smooth, clean cigarettes made the act a joy. Sometimes I would smoke continuously for two or three days. Quitting was in my future, I knew, because Aliena hated the stink, but letting go of those relaxing, pleasurable moments proved tougher than I had anticipated.

Shoving my hands in my pockets, I leaned against the wall and watched as she studied the reports, marveling at the graceful curve of her neck, and the way the glow from the standing lamp caught the soft, golden spill of hair across her cheek.

The clicking of the mouse stopped. She had reached the picture folder. The tapping resumed, with long pauses in between. After several moments, her dark eyes found mine.

“I always knew humans were the real monsters.”

“Yes.”

She turned back to the screen.

I wandered onto the patio, the Pacific a soft roar in the distance.

She was a twenty-year-old woman living in Paris when a vacationing vampire, Claudius, had been smitten by her extraordinary beauty. He had taken her into the coven of darkness that same night. Claudius was the most ancient vampire, with powers none of the others possessed. Though Aliena was young for a vampire at just over three centuries old, no one would dare harm her knowing Claudius to be her sire.

That part of her history sounded storybook (like a dark princess) and attractive. Her unapproachable manner, however, did not have the same appeal. She had beguiled me for over a century, but I had learned at an early stage to maintain a certain degree of emotional distance. It proved difficult. Aliena had more than beauty and brains. She was immortal, a trait that held an obvious allure for me.

It had been centuries since I had allowed my romantic self to even peek at a woman. Love was not a prudent emotion for me, particularly with a mortal. And with Aliena? I had tried to visualize my future with her and could not.

The cab ride home tonight had been excruciatingly pleasurable. She had not been her usual aloof self all night. Upset over the pictures she had “found” of me, she had held my arm in front of Marcus, had left 49 with me, and had pressed against me on the backseat of a car, confessing that she had never had a lover.

Aliena had played coy in the past, including stripping in front of me so she could use my shower, but it was bawdy stuff, not romantic—and not an invitation.

However, even in the most clinical setting, watching her strip intoxicated the senses. Aliena is all womanly curves, breathtaking in the nude. You might think that after seven hundred years I had seen enough female bodies to be immune to such a simple thing.

Not a bit of it.

I went back inside. Aliena had finished the reports. She set the computer on the table and straightened up.

“Did your police friends say anything about her lack of defensive wounds?”

“Only that they didn’t know why she didn’t fight him,” I said.

“That’s unusual. Unless these wounds are postmortem?”

“No, the coroner confirmed she was alive when the first cut was made.”

She gazed at the computer screen. “With the herbs and the removal of the heart, pointing her head toward the ground . . . what he did to her obviously goes beyond a simple murder. Oh, Sebastian . . . she looks terrified.”

I clenched my hands, remembering. “What do you think about our killer?”

“He’s a mature man with good emotional control. He took his time, so he has self-confidence. The way he tied her to the ceiling demonstrates he is fit and strong. For a mortal. As for the cuts, I agree with you. This has the earmarks of something ritualistic.”

“Anything else?”

“Based on the dearth of evidence collected at the scene, he plans well and is a perfectionist. If he continues, he will be difficult to catch. He is unlikely to make mistakes.”

So far, nothing but bad news. “All the more reason . . .” I said, half to myself, forgetting that Aliena could have heard me even if she was on the roof.

“Is this one of your special cases?”

“If you mean do I intend to kill this murderer rather than turn him over to the police, I think so.”

Although LAPD had me officially listed as nine of twelve, my unofficial success rate was 100 percent. That’s because I had killed the three men I had not helped the police catch. In my estimation, those three represented a continuous danger to unarmed citizens and always would. There was no point in the city of Los Angeles putting them through the system to prosecute them. They were not worth the world’s time, money, or attention.

So I disposed of them, making their last moments on earth as agonizing as possible.

“You do not think it would be better for people to know this murderer has been captured and is no longer a threat?”

“Better for them how?” I asked. “He no longer
will
be a threat, and that is all that matters. And he will never tell his story so that deranged people can imitate him. Hollywood can’t make a movie. No one but I will know who the killer was.”

“And I. May I kill him this time?”

“Yes, very well. Must you crush them while you drain them?”

“It is the same as squeezing the last bit of toothpaste from a tube.”

“So you’ve told me,” I said, revolted.

She laughed at my expression. She rose from the couch and walked past me to the open patio doors.

“What?”

“Nothing,” she said. “Did you see the tox panel?”

“Yes. It was in the coroner’s report. She was apparently clean.”

“That is strange. Sebastian, I would like to consult with Marcus on this case.”

“Marcus? Why?” In all the cases Aliena and I had worked in the past, she had never, to my knowledge, discussed them with anyone else. Vampires did not concern themselves with human affairs.

“I think he may be interested in it.”

“Again, why?”

She walked back to the coffee table, turned the laptop around, and moved the mouse so the screensaver cleared and we were looking at a long shot of Sherri’s hanging body. “I do not know. It is a feeling. She was also a virgin?”

“Yes, the rape kit proved that.”

“We’ve worked murder cases before, but this one has a different feel. I would like to apprise Marcus of the details. May I?”

She wasn’t going to give me any more. I suppressed a surge of jealousy at the idea of her discussing the case with the handsome vampire. However, there was no gracious way to forbid it.

“Of course.”

She turned and looked at the angel atop the Christmas tree.

“Do you like it?” I asked.

“Very pretty.”

She left at six thirty, lifting from my patio into the paling sky. For the last few months, she had been spending the daylight hours somewhere in the San Bernardino Mountains. Exactly where she slept was a secret she shared with no one.

I returned to the couch, opened the “Hamilton III” document, added several notes from my conversation with Aliena (including her claim on the kill), then sat back. The nascent beams of the sun crept slowly toward me across the carpet. Blowing smoke rings at the ceiling, I thought about the man who had killed thirty-seven hours ago and wondered if he was ready to kill again.

Wednesday, December 22, 8:50 a.m.

After ten cigarettes, I removed my jacket, tie, and shoes, stretched out full-length on the couch, and closed my eyes. Taking slow, deep breaths, I relaxed my muscles. The faint rumble of traffic on the Pacific Coast Highway drifted through the windows.

I do not sleep the way mortals sleep. Instead I remember, and the memories play out in my mind like dreams. It is not something I always control. The subconscious mind is a recalcitrant junk collector, retaining memories the conscious mind would rather not. And because the unconscious makes unpredictable, illogical connections, my dream may be an experience I had hoped to forget.

How I longed to close my eyes, remember my families as they were when we were happiest, clasp those images to my soul, and never again experience the darkness that fills my past.

For although love is one of the constants of history, so is death.

Even at a very young age, I knew there was something unusual about me.

I was born Sebastian Laurence Montero in July of 1274 near the castle town of Arundel in West Sussex, the oldest of three children. My family were free people working the land of Earl William Fitzhugh.

My father was tall and black-haired, with kind brown eyes and a big nose, built like a stone cathedral. My mother was a hardy, broad-shouldered, wide-hipped woman with fair hair and green eyes.

By the time I was six years old, I worked the fields with my father. By the time I was seven, I noticed one difference between the rest of my family and me: I did not need to eat.

Meals were rituals in which I participated out of habit. I had never felt hunger. Good food smelled and tasted delicious, so eating was a pleasure, but it did not occur to me until much later that everyone else felt a physical compulsion to consume food, a pang born of survival—an instinctive impulse I did not share.

I understood what starvation was. We had seen the funeral procession for a young boy from our village who had died from lack of food. During the service, I noted his parents were also skeletally thin. Most of the congregation was the same, as was my family. Leanness was normal.