Sleight of Hand (18 page)

I gave her my sorry-I-wasn’t-really-staring look and turned away. God, it must be chilly in that outfit! No place to hide a weapon, anyway. The pair of them went down to the back of the car and sat together, heads close, sharing earphones from an MP3 player and nodding along to the music while chatting. Good multitasking skills.

I couldn’t see well into the car behind them without appearing to stare, but I did make out a tall couple getting on, hand in hand, and then the doors closed. The train started to move.

I couldn’t let the paranoia take over. Nothing was going to happen on the train. I would just have to be alert when I got out.

At the second station the athletic guy from the front car got out and walked away. So much for the best suspect. A few more people got on, but I didn’t bother to add them to the list. The warmth started to relax me and my eyes half closed.

Glancing back down the car, I realized the goth girls were now completely oblivious to me. Sucking face, as they say. Eeek!

While they were otherwise engaged, I looked hard at the couple in the car beyond, but they were sitting with their backs to me and paying no attention.

Colorado Station finally came and I got down, casually glancing around.

The couple from the car behind mine got out and walked off without a glance, buttoning up their long coats. So much for them too. Just another white-collar couple out for some excitement at an illegal rave.

The goth girls stumbled out and made it to a bench, where they collapsed. The blonde had her head in her hands and the Vietnamese girl was murmuring in her ear, stroking her back. I wanted to stop and check that they were okay, but if I was being followed, I didn’t want to draw any attention to them.

I sighed and started walking. No one followed. I was sure that the paranoia would keep me alive, but maybe it was also going to keep me on edge unnecessarily. I walked onto Colorado Boulevard and down to Evans, then across behind the office to the car.

At the car, my nose twitched with the smell, but I was too slow. One second I was unlocking the car door, and the next I was pinned against the car. There were two of them, and they had to have been inhumanly quick and quiet to get me like this.

I wrenched to the left, intending to feint, then spin to the right and start kicking ass. The move died before it got started. It was like pushing against the side of a building. All I managed to do was bang my nose on the car. I added inhumanly strong to the list.

“Please, do not struggle. We are much stronger and quicker than you,” said a quiet voice in my left ear—a female voice, a nice voice, a voice you could trust. “We have no intention of harming you.”

I twisted my head around until I could glare at her. It was the woman from the couple on the train.
Damn, completely suckered.
No, not a woman, a vampire
. “Then why sneak up on me and slam me against my car?” I said.

“We want to talk. Would you have just come along if we’d asked nicely?” She smiled at me, all sweet reason. And she was right. A couple of vampires suddenly up and ask me to accompany them and I’d have been running or fighting again. Much good that would have done with these two. The four in LoDo had been ordinary. These two were something else entirely.

“Maybe not,” I conceded. “Going where?” This conversation was becoming surreal.

Her eyes held mine, near as I could tell in the darkness. “The Master would like to meet you,” she said.

“As in the Master of the Denver vampires? And that’s supposed to make me feel calmer?”

She leaned closer and I cringed. It was an unconscious reaction, but I was defenseless in their grip and she was in range to do whatever she wanted. Like bite me. As soon as she saw the reaction, she moved back.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t intend to alarm you further. I assure you there is no harm intended, no violence that you do not bring,” she said carefully. She thought for a moment and added, “On my Blood, I so swear.”

I could hear the capital letter in her voice and strangely, that comforted me. I got a slightly better feeling about this.

I turned to the man on my right. “What about you?” I demanded.

His smile was a little tight. I got the feeling he wasn’t happy with the oath. “What she says is binding for me. But there’s no way that you’d know that, so, on my Blood I swear, no harm is intended to you.”

I turned back to her. “Okay,” I said. “I suppose I have to say something like I’ll come quietly.”

The grip on my left wrist eased experimentally. When I didn’t move, she backed up and let me go. I glared at the man and he let me go too.

I turned around slowly and we stood looking at each other while I rubbed my wrists. They were both taller than me, dressed in long coats against the chill. I could barely make out their features.

“Your cell, please,” said the man. I handed it over and he switched it off and placed it in the glove compartment.

My nose hurt from smacking against the car, and when I touched it, I came away with a drop of blood. Crap.

“I have a nosebleed,” I said warily. “Is this going to be a problem?”

I could have sworn they were laughing at me. “Oh, no,” the man said, “we fed before coming out.”
Not a man, a male vampire
.

“Please get in the back, Ms. Farrell,” the female vampire said, opening the door.

I got in. She was on my left and he went around and got in the other side, so I was trapped between them in the back seat.

“This car doesn’t drive itself,” I said, though what the hell did I know. I seemed to remember a Dracula movie where a horse carriage drove itself up to the castle. Again, I got the feeling they were amused.

The driver’s door opened and the third vampire got in, heralded by a fog of cheap perfume and the smell of dope. No wonder I hadn’t smelled anything on the train.

She sat in the driver’s seat—
my seat
—and turned to look back at me over her leopard-spotted shoulder.

“Oh, your spotter. How appropriate,” I said sarcastically. “Pretty tatts, Pussycat.”

She gave me a cool smile with a hint of fang beneath the black lips. “Fooled you, Round-eye.”

The demon in my throat snapped back in bad Vietnamese. “It won’t work twice, little sister, and the only real fool is the last fool.”

The eyes widened a touch and the smile went a little strained, but she didn’t reply as she set about changing my seat to suit her.

The one beside me snorted in amusement. “We should not talk to you beyond the essential, Ms. Farrell. And I regret,” she held up a black blindfold, “it will be necessary to cover your eyes.”

I glared at her, but she let it bounce off and waited patiently, holding the blindfold. Finally, I turned my head angrily and let her fasten it. It was a good blindfold; not even a hint of light came through.

The car started and we moved off smoothly. So vampires can drive, even an old stick shift like this.

“One last question,” I said. “What happened to the other girl?”

“She’s fine,” came from the front.

“Enough,” came from my left, and I shut up.

I was stuck there, kidnapped in my car. Not exactly without hope, but Morales’ tracker was sounding a lot better than it had yesterday. A bit too late for that.

There being nothing else to do, I tried my old army trick of visualizing complex movements. I mentally walked through Master Liu’s forms for calmness. It helped, some.

Chapter 23

The car slowed and turned, then stopped, calling me back from my meditations. A window opened and closed. Nothing had been said. Maybe they all did mind reading or sign language. I had a feeling we had just passed through security and we were waiting for gates to be opened, but if so, they swung or rolled silently. After a short time we moved again and the sound of the tires changed; we were on a gravel driveway.

The car stopped again and the doors opened. The night air was cold but full of the scent of plants. Buddleia, like Mrs. Desiarto had. Honeysuckle and jasmine. Vampires liked night blooming plants. It figured, sort of. These vampires had no trouble with sunlight, but they seemed to prefer the night.

“Come out this way, please, Ms. Farrell.” The vampire guided me out on her side, her hand on the top of my head to keep it from bumping the door frame. They were certainly showing every consideration for their kidnap victim.

“Walk this way slowly, please,” she said, bringing me around the door, her hand holding my upper arm gently but firmly. “There are steps here.”

I felt my way up some lipped stone steps and was guided through a door. I could feel the change in the air again. It was warmer and moister, carrying a hint of cooking smells, furniture polishes and something else. Underfoot, the floor was wood and our heels clicked on the surface. The room was large and gave a slight echo. I took comfort from the sound of footsteps departing, leaving just mine with my one escort.

On the other hand, the something else in the air was like the smell of my abductors, copper and cinnamon. I was inside a vampire house. The soothing effect from meditating in the car was gone and my fear spiked in my stomach again. I wanted to rip the blindfold off and lash out.

Immediately, her voice came quietly in my ear. “Ms. Farrell, we do not intend you harm. Please be at ease.”

“That’s a big ask, what with me blindfolded and kidnapped, in a vampire house.”

“I understand. The blindfold will come off soon.” Her hand squeezed my arm reassuringly. “May I ask you a question?”

“Sure, why not?” I recognize a distraction when I hear one, but it didn’t hurt me to play along. Maybe she would drop her guard and I could test that awful strength and speed again.

“What did you do in the car?” In the pause while I tried to understand the question, she went on, “I ask because you changed.”

“Changed?” I said, puzzled.

“You became very calm. I can hear your heartbeat, Ms. Farrell. I can smell the chemistry of your blood,” she said. “In the car, it was almost as if you had fallen asleep, but you had not.”

I shivered. “I was meditating, that’s all.”

“No, Ms. Farrell, that is not all. I’ve observed meditation before. You changed. People might express it that your aura changed. I don’t like the word, but it will do.”

I shrugged blindly. “If you say so, but I was just meditating.”

We had reached a different part of the building, moving into a room. Acoustics changed subtly. There was carpet underfoot and it was warmer than the entrance hall. She let go of my arm, and her hands touched my shoulders and turned me around. The blindfold loosened and was taken off.

She looked different. I had seen her first in the darkness behind my office and it had made her face seem hard and angular. In the soft light of this room she was serene, beautiful and mysterious, even strangely familiar.
And deadly,
I thought,
and not human any more. A vampire. Don’t ever forget that
.

If she could read my mind, she showed no sign of it, or maybe she read every word and it bounced off her like my glare did. Her face was serious, her eyes shadowed and staring into mine. Her hands were still on my shoulders.

What next, a little bite or two?
My stomach lurched again, and I felt my muscles tensing up—fight or flight. I knew she was strong and she had moved so quickly when they caught me, but her colleagues were not in sight. Maybe this would be my best opportunity. I was backed up against a wall, which would give me a good platform. My eyes flicked over her shoulder to see if I could spot the way out.

“Please, Ms. Farrell. Raising your heartbeat and flooding your body with adrenaline is not going to achieve anything here. We intend you no harm.”

That was the fourth or fifth time she had said it. She waited while I got all those muscle groups to stand down. If I did anything, I needed surprise on my side, and that was going to be difficult with her reading me like a book.

“You are standing on an elevator platform. This will take you down to an audience room. He will be there soon. Be calm and be careful.” She paused and went on, almost sounding concerned, “Respect would not go amiss.”

Before I had time to process what she had said, let alone respond, she let go of me and stepped back. Curved glass doors whispered around from behind me and shut with a snick, making me jump. The floor dropped, gently but swiftly.

I got another bolt of adrenaline. Whatever was going to happen was happening now and there seemed no way to get off this train before it crashed. I tensed up again, coming up on the balls of my feet as the elevator stopped and the doors whispered open, but the audience room was an anticlimax. It was even dimmer than the room above, but the light here was deep blue and directionless. The room appeared empty. I stepped forward and waited for my eyes to adjust.

I managed to stifle an impulse to giggle, afraid of the hysteria that hid behind it. If you thought modern subterranean vampire lair, you might well have conjured up something like this.

The floor was stone underfoot. In the darkness, I got the impression of pale lines running through it. I knelt and touched the floor. It was cold and hard; there was a glossiness to the finish and pale lines spread out like a network of veins through the blackness—maybe polished granite or marble. Slippery underfoot if it came to fighting. A horrible thought drifted through my mind—
very easy to clean and not liable to stain
. I suppressed that firmly.

I had thought it was silent at first, but I realized there was an almost imperceptible noise all around, unrecognized, yet tantalizingly familiar.

When I turned my head to try and locate a source I got a shock. My eyes, now better adjusted, could make out looming figures lining the sides of the room. I froze for a second before getting back to my feet in a rush. They remained motionless. My heart rate gradually returned to more normal ranges.

I took a couple of steps towards the sides of the room and they remained where they were. Had I just been spooked by a bunch of statues? I peered at them; they were almost human, but misshapen.