"Sizemore, Susan - Laws of the Blood 2 - Partners" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sizemore Susan)

Act on what? Do what? Char ran her fingers though her hair and wondered just what she was supposed to do. A mortal had died. It had felt funny - wrong - evil.

But had it felt like a vampire was involved? Had it been Daniel? Would even a young vampire kill someone so gifted? Wouldn't instinct have prevented him from destroying one of his own kind? Vampires didn't kill each other. They had mortals and Enforcers for that. But would an abused kid in need of sustenance recognize a potential companion when he didn't yet have the ability to focus on one lover? Maybe he had good reason to hate vampires. Or maybe he had the gene or whatever it was that turned normal vampires into Nighthawks.

Had Daniel just killed a mortal without permission? Never mind explanations of why. If Daniel had committed the murder, Char's job was to deal with it. If it had been a mortal that had killed the mortal woman, well, she would like to deal with it if there was time, but finding Daniel came first.

But what if what she had felt out in the storm was magic?

It wasn't an if, she just didn't want to believe she'd gotten hit in the face with a really ugly conjuration the minute she arrived back in town. Not that it had been aimed at her...

But maybe it had. She blinked at her reflection. "Don't be paranoid," Char said to the mirror. "No one knew you were coming." Except Helene Bourbon. "I never told her I'd go to Seattle. I just said I'd look into it."

She finished toweling off and walked into the bedroom. She'd left her suitcase in the car and had no intention of going out to get it now that she was warm and dry. She'd slept naked in this house before, she thought with a bittersweet pang. Fortunately, neither the bed nor any of the bedroom furniture was the same. Jimmy had done quite a thorough job of redecorating. It crossed Char's mind for the first time, as she settled into bed a few moments before dawn, that maybe the vampire who had made her had been as devastated by losing her to the Law as she had been.

Or maybe he'd just been bored.

Which was a hell of a depressing thought to fall asleep on.



"Good morning."

"It damn well better not be morning," Haven answered as he came out of the bathroom, voice rough with sleep, mood as bad as usual. Worse. "Hell of a dream," he said and took the coffee Santini cautiously held toward him. Weak stuff made in the little coffeemaker that came with the room, but fresh and hot. Haven took a look at the digital clock on the nightstand. It was morning, all right, but edging close to noon.

He'd turned off the light around three a.m. after having had one drink too many while reading more information on Danny boy and serial killers than he ever wanted to know. He'd been in prison, he'd heard talk, but crazy mass murderers were kept out of the general prison population. They didn't stay out of his head when he closed his eyes last night, though. The details of the murders occurring in the Seattle area turned his hardened stomach and freaked his brain into a rare nightmare.

The dream had been very real. He distinctly remembered hearing her voice, jumping out of bed, and running into the rain. He remembered standing on the sidewalk, a cold stream of water rushing over his bare feet, and staring up the empty street, knowing that she was up on a mountainside. She was calling to him, but she was already dead - dumped like a slab of meat - her soul torn in two, drained out of her, eaten.... Then he was there, in a clearing in the deep woods. He could smell the pine. The wet cold froze his bare skin. Then reality shifted again, and he was yanked backward, back to the sidewalk outside the hotel, then back into his bed. He sat up as she called out for help - to him. She looked him in the eyes from miles away and begged him for help. Her eyes were green. One moment they'd been alive with terror and impossible hope, looking into his. The next there'd been nothing in them, they'd been like bits of green glass.

When he woke up, he knew he'd dreamed it all. The memory chilled him, tore at him, pulled him out of thoughts of his past and awareness of the present. He'd been asleep through the horror. He knew damn well he'd been asleep, that he'd seen the desperate woman in a dream, that there was nothing he could have actually done to help her. But he knew he'd failed her, all the same. He could still hear her screaming over the sound of thunder.

He gulped down the coffee. Burned his mouth, too, and the stuff boiled relentlessly down into his empty stomach. It felt like he'd swallowed hot coals for a minute, but the agony finally got his head back into the real world.

When he could breathe again, Haven threw the cup away, but Santini caught it before it hit the hotel room wall. "Want some more?" he asked, grinning.

Santini had that manic look in his eyes all of a sudden. The one that told Haven he was bored and restless and ready for anything. They'd been cooped up in the cheap hotel near the airport for two days while Haven did some research. Once upon a time, he'd been the impulsive type. Sometimes he still went off like a madman. He felt like doing that now, after doing nothing but reading for hours on end. He wanted to find the woman in the dream - and he knew that was crazy.

"Walls closing in?" he asked the biker.

"Got a job for me?" Santini asked back, eager as a rabid hunting dog on a scent.

"Known body count is six, four unidentified. Go find out who they were."

"Seattle's got a big homeless population," Santini said. He rubbed his bearded jaw. His grin widened. "Want me to go undercover?"

Sometimes Haven wondered why they bothered talking at all; they always thought along the same lines. He answered with a brief nod.

Santini started toward the door but turned back when he got there. "What are you going to do?"

"Go hunting," Haven answered. He didn't try to explain that he wasn't going to be able to do anything else until he found out about a woman who didn't exist and a murder that hadn't happened. "Up in the mountains," he added. That was where the imaginary woman hadn't died.