Companions (17 page)

"More's the pity," she muttered. All sunlight did was put them to sleep. This vulnerability could be dangerous, it could be fatal, but most vampires faced this crisis by sleeping in a nice, comfortable bed with the curtains drawn. Maybe in the past, they slunk off to heavily locked crypts with legions of Igors to guard them, but that sort of thing would be more conspicuous than practical these days. Of course, in theory, strigs needed to be a bit more cautious in their living arrangements than those who lived within the protection of strigoi society. But Chicago was a pretty quiet town as far as internecine vampire violence went. She and Ariel saw to that.

Larry's safe house was in the basement, but it was a studio apartment. He owned the building and was currently the only resident, part time at that. He was having it renovated and planned to rent it out to normal people through a management company. Vampires were big into real estate. Except her own dear Stevie. How typical that she'd end up with a male with no more use for money than spit — less probably.

Then again, maybe he had a secret fortune stashed away and only lived out of a Suburban to be perverse. Did Enforcers actually get paid? Who knew?

"Who cares?" she whispered, pausing in the dark entrance foyer that smelled of fresh paint.

The fear and madness were there as well, tangible as the paint on the air but fainter and harder to trace; Selena didn't need to follow the trace; she knew where to look. Still, she moved carefully down the stairs, with her gun in her hands. Selena did not forget that not only was Sandy not in her right mind — or rather, that she had too many people in there with her — but that Sandy also had a chainsaw and wasn't afraid to use it.

When she reached the basement apartment door, Selena reconsidered and put her gun away. A chainsaw was not the quietest weapon of choice. She figured she'd hear Sandy coming in plenty of time to defend herself if necessary. Of course, Sandy might be armed with more than a power tool, but she didn't see Selena as the enemy. Sandy had come to her for help.

Fine.

So, instead of breaking down the door, something not all that easy to do anyway, Selena stepped up to it and knocked. "Sandy? Sandswimmer?" She stepped back to the opposite side of the dark hall and waited with as much patience as her nature allowed. She risked keeping her own mental defenses relatively open, not trying to project her sympathy and concern, but letting Sandy read for herself, at least as much as her twisted brain could interpret. The process probably didn't go on for very long, but long enough to make Selena disoriented, dizzy, and send a shiver of paranoid fear through her. Sandy's fear, she told herself, but still she looked around, trying to fight off the creepy feeling of the night closing in.

"He has a nice computer," Sandy said when she opened the door. "I noticed that when I was here before."

Before Selena could say anything, Sandy retreated back into the interior darkness. Selena waited a moment longer, found herself looking around carefully as a chill raced up her back, then went into Larry's
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place and closed the door behind her.

Selena was used to blood, more from the gruesome details of her profession than any association with strigoi. Vampires were careful about how they took blood; they had uses for it. Mortals simply liked to spill it. She supposed she could drown in all the blood she'd encountered at crime scenes over the years.

She hadn't gagged at the sight or smell of blood for a long time. All the same, Selena had no interest in turning the lights on to have a look at this crime scene when she walked into the apartment. She was aware of the copper and iron smell, the sick, sweet reek of decay, and a lingering dampness in the carpet underfoot.

"Owls can fly," was the first thing Sandy said when the door closed.

"On United into O'Hare, probably," Selena replied, and wondered at her own words. The words came out of her like a subconscious answer to a riddle, or the response to some sort of code phrase. She shook her head. "Weird." Life with vampires was. "But vampires can't fly," Selena went on. Maybe Steve could, but… "It's against their silly laws, isn't it? To use airplanes."

"He
does what he wants."

Ah, the mysterious
he.
Selena knew what Larry had told her about his friend Peter and Peter's nasty friend. Those things intersected quite neatly with Sandy's ravings. That was assumption on her part.

"What's his name, darlin'?" she asked. "This
he
who took over your lover's nest?"

Sandy shook her head wildly. "You know how magic works. Say his name and he'll appear."

And we wouldn't want that, would we?
Selena thought. She almost smiled, remembering how an anguished, silent cry from her had brought Steve to her bed a few nights before. Her slight amusement died, and she nodded acknowledgment of Sandy's words. Selena didn't tell the vampire's victim that she very much would like to meet the monster that had done this to Sandy. That sort of bravado was stupid when justice was what was required.

She gently took Sandy by the elbow. "Let's go back to my place. You can't stay here."

Sandy looked around and drew anxiously close to Selena. "It's not safe here," she whispered in Selena's ear. Selena led her out the door and up the short flight of steps to the building entrance. Sandy balked at the main door. "Maybe we should wait until the sun rises."

"It's not far to my car." Selena opened the door. Sandy's steps dragged, but Selena got her outside and down to the sidewalk, only to find herself standing before the building in the middle of a quiet block and wondering where the hell she was. And how had it gotten so dark?

The shadows moved.

"Oh, shit."

"He's
here." Sandy's voice came from very far away.

"I believe you're right."

Selena swung her head from side to side. Shadows. Moving shadows. Everywhere.

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Selena knew what they were like. She knew it was the wrong thing to do. She grabbed Sandy's wrist and said, "Run."

It wasn't that long until dawn, maybe half an hour, forty-five minutes. Long enough for two mortals to die. The trick was to stay alive for the last half hour of this short summer night.

Live to fight another day?

Selena had the oddest thought, wondering if she'd ever get a decent night's sleep again as she dashed between a pair of parked cars, Sandy half a step behind her.

Her instinct was to call in for help, but to whom did she make the officer in need of assistance call? She didn't want to risk the lives of mortal cops, even for a half-hour distraction. Let's see, she didn't have Ariel's number on her speed dial; besides, he might have sanctioned this hunt. She didn't think so.

"Denver vampires?" Selena asked, as Sandy pulled her to a halt. They ducked down by a car door.

Shadows swirled, figures darted, someone laughed softly nearby, but no one approached.

"Donavan's with them," Sandy said with a whimper. The longing came off her in a wave the vampires could pick up a mile away. "My Donavan."

"Your death, sweetheart. Get over it." That was the problem with being a companion. You couldn't dump the bastard and move on. They couldn't dump you, either, to be fair about it, which this was no time to be.

"He's
here." Sandy clawed at her forehead and moaned. "Calling me." She swayed drunkenly.
"Wanting
me."

Selena caught her by the elbow to keep her from falling over.

They won't kill their lovers,
Selena remembered.
Can't.

That's a legend. How real was the legend? They'd messed up Sandy's head, more than messed it up.

Did they want her back? To keep punishing her, or to kill her? She'd killed two of them. Would kill more if she got the chance.

The Denver nest was in Chicago. She bet Ariel didn't know there were strangers in town, hunting for meat on his streets. Speaking as the meat, she was not in favor of this. She knew about hunts. She'd been caught by vampires once before. She still had nightmares about it. She wasn't going to let it happen again.

Maybe they could get to Ariel. Maybe they could survive this.

To be hunted down tomorrow night.

Now, there was a pleasant thought. It took Selena a moment to realize it wasn't hers.

He liked playing with heads, did this bad guy from Denver. "Yeah, me too," Selena whispered, easing her Glock from the holster at her waist. A head shot was about all that would slow the bastards down.

She had to be able to see them first, if she was going to get a clear shot. Their presence pressed in
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against her senses, sending cold fear through her on a hot night. She was aware of darkness within darkness, but see them? No, she couldn't see them. Maybe they should have kept running instead of pausing to hide like this.

"Okay," she said to Sandy. "It's like this. We can stay here and die, or we can run and die. What do you think?"

Sandy clutched at her head. "I'm dead. In here."

"Yeah. Right. Let's run."

The point was to get their attention, to get them to circle closer. To get off a shot so that at least one went down, and they could go through the hole in the ranks. It was the best Selena could think of, and she knew it wasn't very good. It was a very long shot for mortals to win against vampires in a situation like this.

Selena didn't expect it to go her way, but it did. As soon as she and Sandy made for the other side of the street, a circle of shadows formed around them. The shadows were vaguely man-shaped, projecting hunger and evil glee. Laughter and whispered threats echoed in her ears. They were having a damned good time. A gleam of fang showed on one of them. Selena fired a trio of shots into that shadow, aiming high, hoping to hit the bastard in the face.

The sound of the gun was almost drowned out by the mixed roar of pain from the vampire and Sandy's scream of anguish. The vampire went down.

Sandy screamed, "Donavan!"

Sandy would have fallen to her knees beside her lover, but Selena pushed her forward, through the temporary gap in their attackers. Laughter followed them as they raced up the empty street, Rosho letting them get a head start, Selena decided. Fine with her.

They didn't run very fast, not with Selena having to haul the hysterical Sandy along behind her. The woman struggled, sobbing Donavan's name over and over. The vampires laughed and followed at a walk. Selena figured someone in the nearby buildings must have called the cops by now, and she listened anxiously for the unwanted sound of sirens. There was absolutely no traffic in the street. If a car were to pass by, she knew she'd somehow manage a carjack. She figured the hunting vampires projected enough mental warning to keep any nearby mortals away.

The hunters projected fear at her, they projected panic. Selena was pretty sure she could have managed these reactions to being hunted on her own, and sneered at the attempts to intrude on her thoughts. She hauled Sandy as far as the street corner before one of the vampires dropped the cloaking shadow and stepped in front of her. "You should let her go," he told her. "You
might
have a chance on your own."

"Maybe." She shot him in the head. When he reached for her as he went down on his knees, she fired again.

"Bitch!" the wounded vampire shouted.

"Yeah, she's kind of cute that way," Steve said, appearing out of a blur of movement. He pushed her hand down before she could fire again.

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Selena screamed. So did several of the vampires. Her reaction was surprise, theirs was terror. They ran.

The ones who stayed backed off into deep darkness. She could feel their gazes, heavy with menace, but ignored them. She put herself between the Enforcer and Sandy and stood her ground. "I thought," she said, "that you weren't coming back."

"I was talking about to your apartment, not about doing my job."

He was so smug she wanted to strike him. "You followed me." It was a fact, not an accusation. "You were sneaking around inside my head the whole time you were explaining about
dhampirs
inside your dreams." The notion was so complicated it made her head swim.

He nodded. "You tried to distract me from knowing you'd been sent the nest's coin by the murderer. It was easier to let you think the distraction worked."

"You knew all along I was looking for Sandy."

"Knew you'd find her. I followed you."

Which brought them back to here and now on a Chicago street where they were still being watched by several vampires. Despite Steve's presence, Selena in no way felt like they'd just been rescued. Sandy was still sobbing, though she'd stopped trying to get to Donavan and was curled up miserably on the ground. The vampire she'd shot crawled away on his hands and knees while she and Steve talked. Police sirens were now blaring in the distance, and it was still too far from dawn to do them any good, though it was only a few minutes away.

"We've actually got closer to an hour," Steve said. He took a step around her, not moving with impossible speed, but she was still powerless to keep him away from the hysterical woman.

Selena put a hand on his arm. "She has good reason."

He gave her a look, the sort of disgusted look one cop deserved from another for offering that sort of defense for a perp.

"She's been raped," Selena told him. "Mind, body, and soul raped. She deserves protection, not — "

"She deserves nothing," a new voice spoke out of the shadows.

The vampire that stepped forward wore his arrogance like an old-fashioned opera cloak. He was dressed all in black, slender and black-haired, his saturnine features enhanced by a widow's peak and a goatee. Selena practically expected him to say, "Good evening," and that he didn't drink… wine.