Blood Revealed (33 page)

Eloise helped her and for the first time in several days, they were the only two people in the house. Patrick and Dominic had returned to the big house in Bel Air that morning, not long after she had woken. She had not protested, even though she had grown to like the custom that had sprung up, with Patrick and Dominic making breakfast for the kids, while she slept. She would never breathe aloud to anyone her worry that sleep deprivation would make her clumsy when she was hunting at night.

Patrick had seemed to sense it anyway and for days he and Dominic had been there to get the kids off to school. It was
so
domestic that it should have made her break out in hives, except that it was a pragmatic arrangement. She could not fight all night and function normally during the day without help. So she had forced herself to accept the help and had come to enjoy it.

In the evenings, life felt very much like it used to be. They would sit around the supper table and share news. The fact that the news was violent and blood-filled she ignored. They were still managing to be a family despite that.

The front door slammed a few minutes later. She relaxed as she heard Jake and Simone hurry inside. They ran straight into the kitchen, their eyes wide and she put the knife down, alarmed. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

Jake was trying to get his breath.

“Jake spoke to an Elah!” Simone said. Her voice came out squeaky with excitement.

Blythe’s pulse leapt. “
What
?”

Simone nodded and fished her cell phone out of her back pocket. “I took video of it. Look!”

Everyone bent around the screen, their heads close together, as she pulled up the video and kicked it into gear.

Her hold on the phone had been jerky and her rushed breath loud in the microphone. Blythe forgot all about that when she saw what Simone had been focusing upon.

The creature wore jeans.
Jeans
. There was a light windbreaker over the top of them and what looked like the neckband of a simple tee shirt underneath. That made it even more surreal.

“It looks sick,” Eloise said softly.

“It’s gray skin, but I think that’s the way it’s supposed to be,” Jake said.

The Elah walked toward Simone and a line of people waiting for the bus. Its gait was very similar to a human’s, which meant its legs, knee joints and hips were similar, too.

The video halted as the creature took its place at the end of the line, just like anyone else would.

“I can only take thirty seconds of video at one time,” Simone said, as she pressed the screen to call up the next video.

In the several seconds that passed before Simone had been able to start the second video, the bus had pulled up next to the bus stop, only no one was getting on the bus. They were all standing back, away from the Elah. She could see their fright in their stiff shoulders and shocked faces.

The Elah edged past them and Blythe wondered if it was as wary as everyone else. It had to be. They had clearly studied humans enough to know how to dress as one of them. So they must have absorbed enough of human culture and history to know that humans did not deal with outsiders very well.

What the creature was doing now, if it was doing what she thought it was, was one of the gutsiest things she had ever seen.

She held her breath as the Elah stepped up to the open door of the bus, then took the two steps up to stand next to the driver.

The video stopped and Simone quickly called up the next one.

From the way she was standing, Simone had only been able to capture the back of the creature. She was close enough that the microphone of the cell phone had been able to pick up what happened next.

“I want to go,” the Elah said.

“Holy fuck, it speaks English,” Blythe said to herself.

Eloise giggled and she realized that she had spoken aloud.

The bus driver sat there goggling at the creature. The Elah lifted its hand and pointed through the window with stubby fingers. “We go?”

“I’ll need to see your ticket,” the driver said. It was a miracle the man had been able to pull himself together enough to remember what his job was.

The video blanked out again and Eloise sighed.

“I can’t help it,” Simone said. “This is Mom’s crappy cast off, remember?”

“It’s all right,” Blythe told her. “I think it was fantastic that you kept your head together enough to even think of taking video. Is there another one?”

Simone glowed. She brought up the next video and they all bent over it again.

Jake was standing next to the Elah and the driver, talking.

Blythe gripped the counter and reminded herself to breathe as panic squeezed her chest. He was here right now, he had come through this. So she made herself concentrate on the cell phone.

“… Money for a ticket, or a day pass?” Jake was saying. “Do you even have money?”

“Money. Yes.” The Elah dug its hand into his its hip pocket and Blythe felt the same disconnect from reality as she had when she realized it was wearing jeans. It looked perfectly normal and natural. It held out its hand and she could see even on the fuzzy video that it was holding US currency.

“I’ll need the correct fare,” the driver said.

“These are all twenties,” Jake told the Elah. “You need a five dollar bill. Do you know what that means?”

“Five,” the Elah said. “One, two, three, four, five. Yes?”

“Yeah, that’s right. You need a five dollar note.” Jake held up his hand with all five fingers extended. “He’s not gonna let you on unless you have that. You get that?”

The video cut out again and Blythe curbed her impatience. Simone was right, it was her crappy cast-off phone. Who’d ever have thought they would need a video camera in their back pockets for occasions like this?

The next video had been taken from the back of the bus, focusing through the glass at the pavement they had just left behind. The Elah stood there, watching the bus leave. Simone kept the video rolling as the bus bumped over the potholes and the Elah grew more distant. In the last seconds before the video cut out again, the Elah turned and began to walk away.

“That’s it,” Simone said.

Everyone stood up and Blythe remembered to stir the meat in the saucepan, that had been simmering in taco spices. Taco salad again. It seemed incredibly unimportant that they were having taco salad for dinner.

“Mom?” Jake asked diffidently. “It was trying to be like us. I just helped.”

“I think it was a good call,” Blythe told him, as she poured the meat into the salad and stirred. “Except that it was so incredibly dangerous. We don’t know anything about the Elah. What if it hadn’t liked that the driver wouldn’t let it on the bus? You don’t even know what their instinctive responses are.”

“No one does,” Jake said. “Only, now we know that they’re not trying to fight us, right?”

“That’s not an assumption I’m ready to make just yet,” Blythe told him. “Although this seems like a very positive sign. You did well, Jake. I’m proud of you.”

Jake swelled with pride. “What’s for supper? I’m starving.”

“Everyone finish setting the table. We’ll eat quickly. How would you like to go to the big house for the evening?”

“Really?” Simone breathed the word disbelievingly.

“That would be so cool!” Jake said.

Blythe nodded. She helped them set the table, and put the salad in the middle. “I think Nial needs to see this video. And there’s a vampire there, Sebastian, who will be able to string the videos together into one.”

“My videos?” Simone said. Her eyes were shining.

“Eat quickly,” Blythe told them. “I’d like to get back at a reasonable hour so let’s make it fast.”

She made herself eat and carefully didn’t point out to any of them that no one had so much as flinched over the idea of visiting a house filled with vampires. If they could get used to that idea in a few short weeks, perhaps spotting Elah catching buses would become commonplace, too.

* * * * *

Suzette had suggested to Kate that they meet for lunch at one of the new and trendy restaurants along Rodeo Drive. Kate was gun shy about being seen in public these days and proposed that she bring food to Suzette’s office and they eat there.

Kate splurged on lunch from Spago’s, which made up for sitting hunched over Suzette’s desk. For fifteen minutes they ate without speaking and Kate could feel herself gradually relax.

Once the meal was finished, Suzette cleared away the remains and sat back in her chair again. She studied Kate. “You look very tired. You’ve been pushing yourself hard lately.”

Kate laughed. “You’re responsible for most of the reasons why I’m tired. I’m starting to get really sick of interviews.”

“I saw you on Reggie Yuma’s show last night. I thought you did well.”

“You did? I thought I sank like a stone.” She sighed. “There is no way to spin things anymore. Vampires are real, so get over it. The others are real, so get your head out of the sand and do something about it. The Summanus feed off humans. So suck that up, too. There are only so many ways I can say that nicely and not get stoned to death right where I’m sitting. Yet for some strange reason everyone thinks I’m the best person to say it.”

“That’s because you’re human. The real experts are all vampire. Humans are still adapting to that. They’re still more comfortable with a human telling them the plain facts.”

“You don’t seem to be having too many troubles with it,” Kate pointed out.

“On the upside,” Suzette said, “as long as you’re in front of the cameras and people are seeing you, then you’re not completely beyond reach of finding finance for your movie. Are you still having trouble with that?”

“It’s as dry as a riverbed in August out there,” Kate said. “I didn’t have to work this hard to finance my first movie and this will be my twelfth and I have an Academy nomination to boot.” She tried to smile. “I’m still waiting for someone to tell me that they’re going to take the nomination back, because I used a vampire as the lead. I shouldn’t be dismayed by the hypocrisy, except that the vampires really are trying to help us.”

“And Patrick Sauvage wasn’t a vampire when you did the movie.” Suzette was as up-to-date with Kate’s life as anyone else she knew. As her PR consultant, Suzette needed to know the gritty details, long before anyone else did. “So what’s on your mind, Kate?”

“Exactly that,” Kate said. “I’m tired. There has to be a better way to handle this, other than taking every
ad hoc
interview offered to me.”

Suzette’s expression grew grimmer. “Do you want me to reassure you? Or would you prefer the plain truth?”

Kate sighed. “Truth, always. Although I have a feeling this is going to hurt.”

Suzette nodded. “I know you’re sick of the interviews, but if you stop doing them, then one of the few tactics vampires have at their disposal to turn the tide of human opinion will be gone. The truth is, Kate, the weight of public opinion is moving against vampires.”

Kate sighed. “Yeah, it’s about as bad as I thought it would be.”

“I’ve seen some research. There were a couple of polls done, one of them a national. People are still afraid of vampires. I think they always will be, to one degree or another. Vampires are all-powerful, they live forever and they stay young. For a lot of people, that’s reason enough to resent them. Then, on top of that, they’re supposed to be guarding humans. Except that humans never asked to be guarded. And a lot of people feel that it’s the vampires’ fault they have to be guarded in the first place. They did not ask for this war. They didn’t ask that the Others be released.”

“So every time they lose someone they love, every time the Summanus take someone, their family and friends don’t blame the Summanus, who are just behaving naturally. They blame vampires for their woes,” Kate said tiredly.

Suzette nodded. “That’s about it.”

Kate got to her feet. “Could I see the research?”

“Of course. I’ll email it to you.”

“I think Nial will find it very interesting. I know that Cyneric will deconstruct it down to the cellular level. I’d be interested to hear his interpretation, too.”

“Cyneric is that tall guy from England, right?” Suzette said.

“He’s a biological computer,” Kate said. “It’s freaky the way he can predict things just by studying events and people and data.” She picked up her bag from the floor next to her chair, thrust her hair back with her hand and nodded at Suzette. “Thanks.”

“That’s why you pay me the big bucks. I’ll keep scheduling interviews and I’ll try to space them out a little bit more. A break here and there wouldn’t hurt and it might help you get through them.”

“Oh, I’ll get through them. I just don’t think I’m ever going to like talking to the media ever again.”

“Try getting some sleep!” Suzette called after her as Kate left the office.

Easy for her to say
, Kate thought, as she left the building. She wasn’t living with two immortals who never slept, in a household that revolved around hunting and war.

There were times when she thought she would never get used to it, then she would watch the news and the constantly climbing numbers of people missing and killed, and knew she had no choice. Just like the people in Suzette’s poll, she resented the place she was in. That wasn’t going to change anything, though.

Oh, how she wished it
could
change!

The long dining table in the formal dining room was rarely used. Now it served as a perfectly good boardroom table and three people sat together on the windows side.

On the side that Patrick stood on was ranged every vampire who lived in the house and more besides. This was an assembly of all the leading vampires working in alliance with Nial.

Nial stood in front of them all, which was exactly as it should be.

The three people on the other side of the table did not seem awed by him. The woman on the left, had beautiful dark hair with thick streaks of gray and the most calm and peaceful eyes he had ever seen. Patrick remembered her from location shooting on his last movie. She was Iona. The man on the right was a nondescript, completely average and forgettable man, except for the fact that Iona deferred to him. His name was Vicent and Patrick had also met him on location.