Laws of the Blood 2: Partners (17 page)

Char wasn’t only feeling halfway to psychically burned out, she hurt physically as well. She needed a good day’s sleep, a very large meal, and lots and lots of caffeine before she was ready to take up the trail again. Okay, so she was a superhero, but she was new on the job. If she thought Daniel’s life was in any danger from the jokers holding him, she might not let herself consider resting, but she figured the last thing they were going to do was harm their ticket to eternal life.

“Idiots.” She rubbed the back of her neck. Idiots or not, they’d slowed her down tonight and escaped for the moment. Her fault for having approached Daniel’s companion the night before. She wondered if the scrawny weirdo even knew he
was
a companion. But wondering didn’t do her any good right now. She checked her watch. Time to pack it in before she keeled over and spent the day passed out in this den of iniquity.

Speaking of people who had no doubt spent time in dens of iniquity . . .

She turned around and marched out of the room. She squatted beside the unconscious man and shook his shoulder. “Mr. Haven?”

Nothing.

She checked his pulse again. Somewhat to her disappointment, he was very much alive. Maybe she could leave him here. But who knew how long he’d be out? The Angel’s Children or whatever they called themselves might come back to finish moving the furniture before he woke up. Haven could end up their next human sacrifice. That would solve one of Char’s problems, but it wouldn’t help her dispose of the demon or find out how much the FBI knew about Haven’s vampire-killing crusade. She was going to have to take him with her, wasn’t she?

She stood, picked Haven up, and slung him over her shoulder. His weight didn’t bother her, but he was a big man and she was a medium-sized woman. Carrying him through the second-floor offices and down the metal stairs wasn’t hard, but it was awkward.

She didn’t remember Santini until she was in the main area of the warehouse. Not that remembering him did any good, because when she left Haven on the cold concrete floor and went in search of his partner, the man was nowhere to be found. She finally came back to retrieve Haven and headed for the door. She was going to assume Santini was safe, and if he wasn’t safe, it was his own fault.

She wished he was there to help her through the dark barrier before the doorway, but she’d negotiated it once before, she did it again. It wasn’t quite so terrifying the second time.

Haven finally started to come around by the time she had him stuffed into the passenger seat of her car. She was getting ready to start the car engine. He grunted.
She checked her watch again. She wondered if he’d be able to drive if she took him back to his Jeep. Doubtful. Would it be her fault if he was mugged if she simply dumped him by his vehicle? Which might not happen.
He
could wake up in the daylight, which was not an option for her.

Maybe she could get him back to his hotel. He moaned. She shook him and asked him where he was staying. He mumbled an answer that had airport in it. She swore and put the car in gear.

It looked like she was going to have to take him home with her.

“Where am I?”

“Go back to sleep, Mr. Haven.”

Haven’s head hit the couch arm again—this was the second time he’d almost come awake—and his mouth opened slightly. His body went slack, and his arm slid down toward the floor. He hadn’t opened his eyes this time. Char took that as a good sign.

Char stood in the doorway between the bedroom and living room and shook her head at the sight of Jebel Haven, vampire hunter. Getting him into the condo had been relatively easy, but keeping him neutralized while she slept the day away . . .

“I’m an idiot.” She shook her head again. “This time, stay asleep,” she told him, whispering into his mind as persuasively as she knew how. “ ’Cause I have to go to bed now. We need our sleep.”

“Bed,” he said, and rolled over. It was a wonder he didn’t fall off the couch. He tucked his hands beneath
his cheek and smiled. She would have expected him to look innocent in his sleep, or perhaps a bit foolish. He was smirking, and he didn’t look any less dangerous.

She shook her head again and left him where he was so she could get ready for bed.

This was possibly the stupidest thing she’d ever done, she told the image in the bathroom mirror as she brushed her teeth. Char knew she was too softhearted when she ought to be stern, commanding, and ruthless. Bringing even an unconscious vampire hunter home was probably against some official rule. It certainly bore no relation to common sense. It was enough to make her wish that she at least owned a pair of handcuffs. He was a victim of a nasty psychic bombing, she reminded herself. He wasn’t likely to regain coherence for many hours, even if he did wake up. And he wasn’t likely to wake up. Really.

Char repeated this to herself several times while she hurriedly washed up, got undressed, and pulled on the T-shirt she used as a nightgown. She almost believed it by the time she opened the bathroom door.

To find Jebel Haven sprawled on his back across the queen-size sleigh bed.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she shouted as she stepped into the bedroom.

“Bed,” he said. He was still smirking. “We sleep.” He turned his head on the pillows but didn’t open his eyes. “You said bed.”

She’d brought this on herself. She realized this even as she fought off the panic reaction. She’d suggested bed
to him, and his filthy male subconscious had responded in a typical libidinous way.

“Men,” Char muttered. And now she was going to have to lug this lummox back to the living room couch. “Like I have time for this.”

Unfortunately, sunrise caught up with her just as she reached the bed. She was hit with a flash of amazement that worrying about the fool man had actually screwed up the excellent sense of time that was standard issue along with her fangs and claws. A rare wave of dizziness hit her, and she fell forward, just barely able to catch herself and settle onto the unoccupied side of the bed before the dizziness turned to a wave of enveloping darkness. She couldn’t keep her eyes from closing or her muscles from going slack. All she could do now, no matter who shared her bed, was go to sleep.

That was a daymare, right? A ludicrous, farcical daymare. Had to be.
Char would have breathed a sigh of relief if she had any control of her body at the moment. Her mind was the only part of her that was free during the daylight, though her awareness was limited, and perception was weird when she was in the waking dream state at all. Most days she spent in sweet, sleeping darkness, and her dreams were real ones.

And the daymare about Haven in her bed was a doozy.

Must have been what roused her. Just as well. She needed to get her mental act together and try dream walking again today. The combination of telepathy and astral projection and elements that were unique to the
strigoi was wearing yet, but if she was going to find the sorcerer and demon holding Daniel, then she needed to make the effort. Besides, practice made perfect and all that.

The first thing to do was make herself remember what she’d done last night, separate what had really happened from the weird daymare about her and Haven and Santini at the abandoned hideout and the magical trap and bringing Haven home and checking out with him sleeping in her—

Bed.

Oh, good lord.

She had, hadn’t she? Brought him home. Where was he now? How long had she been out? Was he awake? Had he noticed her lowered body temperature? That she was still as death and that her pulse was slowed to the point of being undetectable? It wasn’t like she was dead or anything, but she understood how her daylight condition might appear a little odd to, say, a stake-wielding vampire killer. The older a vampire was, the more the narcolepsy resembled a deep, sound sleep. Well, she wasn’t all that old in vampire terms, and what she looked was dead. She would most likely be dead if he noticed. Unpleasant images of being staked, beheaded, and burned flashed through Char’s mind. Haven was the thorough type.

It took a great deal of concentration—it took a hellish amount of concentration—but Char went looking for the man lying in bed beside her.

Please let him still be lying beside her.

She floated, hovered, searched without sight or
hearing. She became aware of the heat of familiar blood, scent of warm skin, the scrape of the rough edges of a mind in turmoil, blunted, thoughts disassociated but still rasping on her awareness. Haven. She’d found him.

Having found him, she touched him.

He was sleeping.

Char’s awareness resonated with relief, but she couldn’t relax, couldn’t do anything but will him to remain blissfully, deservedly, deep, deep asleep.

This ploy lasted for about three hours, until he grunted, shifted, muttered, “Gotta take a leak” and heaved himself up out of the bed.

Char couldn’t have moved if she’d tried, but even if she could have, she might have curled up on her side, frozen with the mortification of sharing a bed with a strange man.

“Sound sleeper, aren’t you?” he said when he slipped in beside her.

Had he just slapped her butt? Yes, he had; she was certain of it. And he chuckled in her ear, as well. He was lying on his side, long body stretched out close to hers, spoon fashion. She was aware of his warmth all along her back and against her thighs. Sweet, mortal warmth. Jimmy always said that one of the best parts of having a companion was to be in that hovering state, body in a trance, mind weirdly aware, and to
know
in a half-dozen almost impossible-to-define ways that your lover was there, warm and waiting beside you. That it made a strigoi feel protective and protecting at once, safe, but with a hint of unpredictability, because complete control was gone and only trust remained.

Well, Jimmy was gone, Haven was no one’s companion, she was totally out of control, and it was three or four hours yet before the sun released her from the paralysis of daylight. And Haven wasn’t exactly asleep. She worked through her terror to realize that much. He wasn’t awake, exactly, but hovering in between, halfway in both worlds, as she was, but in the less restrictive, mortal fashion. Dozing. That’s right, that’s what it was called. She’d all but forgotten the mortal terms for sleep. He was as aware of her on some level as she was of him. Her senses were tuned to thought and emotion, his were tactile.

His hand was on her thigh. And moving higher. She didn’t think he was aware of it, but nonetheless, the man was taking the opportunity to feel her up. Was that an erection that had worked its way between them?

She wasn’t sure whether she was mortified or amused. She knew that if she were able to, she’d push the hand away, shift her hips, say something sarcastic, and maybe smile a little to herself at his unconscious interest. After all, just because she was a vampire, she wasn’t dead, and having a man touch her was rather pleasant under certain circumstances. She didn’t have room right now in her emotional spectrum for any reaction other than a survival response.

Any moment now Haven was going to wake up and notice he was aroused. He wouldn’t do anything about it other than be relieved that she was asleep and didn’t know that he couldn’t control his body. But he’d be awake. He’d rest beside her for a while, maybe staring at the ceiling with his hands tucked behind his head, his
subconscious would take notes. He’d take a closer look. Good-bye Char the Enforcer.

Rookie Enforcer.

Not a rookie strigoi, though, are you, girl? Or rookie female of any branch of the species? She would have smiled smugly if she could smile at all at memories of what she’d gotten up to in a similar bed in this very bedroom not too many years before. And she’d been a baby strigoi herself once, as sexually insatiable as young Daniel. She’d hunted, mortal and strigoi. She ought to be ashamed of herself if she couldn’t distract an already-aroused male for a couple of hours. All it should take was a lot of suggestion and a little imagination.

Char chuckled, in a virtual way, and got to work.

“
Y
OU DON
’
T HAVE
to look so smug.”

Haven smirked, leaned back against the headboard, and put his hand over his heart. “You did the seducing, sweetheart.”

Pleased to be alive, Char supposed that letting him revel in his prowess wasn’t too much of a price to pay. His chest was bare and fuzzy. Scarred in places, as well. Then there was the tattoo, a sharp, angular black design that stretched from his shoulder all the way down his left arm. The overall effect of his appearance was barbaric, to say the least. He looked every inch the ex-con, and there were a great many square inches of him visible all the way up from where the sheet barely covered his hips.

“Nice place,” he said, looking around the bedroom while she looked at him. “Thought you said you’re based in Portland.”

“Not my place,” Char told him. “Belongs to an old boyfriend. He’s out of town. I’ve still got a key.”

“Old boyfriend, eh?” He finally looked at her. “You
don’t seem like the old-boyfriend type. You seem like a keeper type.”

Haven’s assessing expression made Char wonder what he’d heard in her oh-so-neutral voice when she mentioned Jimmy Bluecorn. What was with him, anyway? Haven didn’t seem like the getting personal type. He seemed like the sex-as-recreation, leave-the-money-on-the-table-on-the-way-out type. Talking about Jimmy wasn’t easy, especially not to another man—one who was under the misapprehension that they’d spent the afternoon having sex.