Night Runner: Falling From The Light Part 5

Of all the things that wouldn't be a problem. "Yes, ma'am." I kept my tone light and polite even as anger bloomed. As if I was some bite junkie who'd snuck in hoping to score.

Her head tilted to the side. "My rules offend you."

Did it offend me to be thought of as a blood wh.o.r.e for any sucker I could get my pathetic human hands on? Li'l bit. Was I going to tell her that?

"No, ma'am."

Her gaze lowered, and all the fine hairs on the back of my neck stood up as she focused on me.

"You bear the imprint of a vampire but you are unmarked." It was almost a question, then her voice darkened. "And Malcolm Kelly somehow forgot to tell me this."

"My apologies." My restless legs kept trying to turn and direct me to the door to the parking garage, but while the sun might stop her, that wasn't the end of her territory.

"Unmarked is unclaimed," she said, patient rather than irritated, "and unclaimed humans do not remain that way for long among guests such as ours."

"I'm not looking for trouble, I swear."

"You come willingly to a house of the undead, so you'll forgive me if I do not believe you." Her eyes glittered, a little burst of light rather than the usual foxfire glow. It faded as she got down to business. "Use the door you entered through. Stay off the lower floors unless you are chaperoned. Those are for named guests only. This floor is humans and servants. You may access the roof at will, but I will not stand for disruptions. Feeding is not permitted in the pool. Send your servant to collect your meals or anything you need."

"Right. Perfect. Will do."

"Violence and force are not allowed in my territory, not by anyone. As you are unclaimed, punishment will be mine to decide and there will be no negotiation. Do you understand?"

"Yes." I took two steps, making a conscious effort not to hug the wall as I pa.s.sed, then stopped. "Um, speaking of my...servant. He'll need to feed. How can he..." How did you ask if the hotel had a blood buffet?

"He may inquire with Guest Services. You have only to permit him to leave you."

"Good. Thanks. Thank you. This..." I swept my arm wide. "It's a beautiful place you have here."

"You seem more restrained than Malcolm Kelly. I hope you'll be a good influence on him for the duration of this visit."

I didn't run, but I rounded the corner pretty d.a.m.n quickly. Chev hadn't attempted to influence me-a rarity from a vampire-but the conversation hadn't exactly been comfortable. Finding my room was easy. It was the one with a vampire standing outside of it, sporting colossal sideburns and a heavy frown.

"Senorita?"

Maybe it was my enormous relief, or the chemical need for comfort after dealing with Chev, but I was really happy to see him.

"Hey, Thurston." I nearly apologized for leaving him out in the heat, but caught myself. A superior vampire wouldn't apologize for such a thing, and we were maintaining protocol. The key turned with a solid thunk. "Have you been standing out here all day?"

"These are your rooms."

How was that an answer? "Do you have one of your own?"

He shifted his weight and squinted as though looking into the distance. I rolled my eyes and pushed the door open.

"Thurston, you can't stay in the hall." He hesitated and I crossed my arms, holding the door open with my heel. Time to be all mastery. "Get in here or I'll make you go back to the car again."

He did a big man's impression of slinking as he dodged past me into the room, then turned in a circle, probably seeking a place to stow himself. The sitting room was s.p.a.cious, with large, geometrical paintings where the windows should have been and two open doors with the shapes of beds beyond them. A metal locker stood in the corner, probably for securing electronic equipment. There might even be a phone or a TV in it. Mickey had spread her purchases over an orange couch, three low-backed yellow chairs, and a rusty red table. It looked like a department store had exploded on a sunset.

"What did that witch want?" she asked, hands on hips.

"She was just, you know, welcoming us."

"I prefer hugs and pastries."

"Yeah, well, maybe she'll work up to that." I turned to find Thurston staring, like he'd been focused on the back of my head. "We met Chev on the way in. The owner. She said that you can ask the front desk for...um...for when you get hungry."

"Should I go now?" he asked, uncertain.

"If you want," I muttered, distracted by a sudden rush of warmth. I drifted toward the door as Mickey started speaking to Thurston in Spanish. She was her usual enthusiastic self. His responses were brief and tense. I opened the door and leaned against the frame as Malcolm walked into view.

He wore a thin brown sweater over a white T-shirt, and the cuffs of his dark pants were red with dust. Petr shuffled along beside him, his limp more p.r.o.nounced as he pointed something out on the armful of paperwork he carried. Mal raised a hand to wave him off and, antic.i.p.ating it, Petr shoved a couple of pages into his palm before falling back.

"Of all the hallways in all the p.r.i.c.kly vampire hotels in all the world, you walk into mine," I said. "Whatcha been doing?"

Faint lines crinkled around his eyes and his dimple emerged as he smiled.

"Communing with scrub brush and cacti. It's therapeutic, and pointy. What are you..."

His smile faded as he stared past me. I turned. Mickey held a pair of tighty-whities in one hand and plaid boxers in the other. Thurston slumped in the armchair in front of her, glowering up from beneath heavy eyebrows. Mickey tsked and gave me an exasperated look.

"Tell him he has to choose one."

"What? No. I'm not telling him that."

"He can't go without." She shook them at Thurston. "You cannot go without."

Malcolm backed away.

"Don't you leave me here with this," I hissed.

"As if I'd leave a lady in distress." Malcolm's arm snaked around my waist and he swung me against his side. "Come on. Let's see if we can find something to erase that scene from our memories."

"Are we going to drop acid?"

"I was thinking dinner, but do what you need to."

Chapter Five.

Malcolm and I sat in a red booth, sharing a side like we were at a diner, except the booth was velvet instead of vinyl. And diners didn't usually have Asiatic lilies floating in a carbonated pond inside the tabletop. Or a view of vampires and their huge stacks of luggage entering a lobby like they were boarding the t.i.tanic two stories below.

"This is the best sandwich ever," I declared, blissing out on smoked turkey and blistered Hatch peppers. Malcolm arranged papers over the table, blocking out the water and flowers eight by eleven inches at a time.

"Have another," he said.

"Urgh. As if I could fit it." I pushed my plate aside so that I wouldn't embarra.s.s myself by licking the aioli, and leaned forward.

It was nearly night and vampires swarmed the lobby. Those entering through the shelter of a valet tunnel were greeted by a team of hotel employees, all dressed in black pants and white shirts like Chev. I didn't get owning your own place and wearing a uniform, but it made the staff appear to be everywhere. Good for making people feel like they were being waited on hand and foot, better as a deterrent if anyone was considering misbehaving. Guests arrived in intervals, or maybe actually by appointment since sitting in a car in the sun, waiting for the line to creak along, would suck. The groups swirling through the lobby were more colorful and unique. Oddly, there were almost no lone vampires, just a few darting to and from the concierge desks. The low totem pole guys who couldn't sit around plotting and basking in luxury all day.

Mal had Soraya, and in Santiago he'd had a little band that he'd trusted. But the rest of the time he was surrounded by Bronson's people. How hard was it to walk alone when everybody else was part of a bonded group? It must be like high school, but where the cliques were killers in addition to being d.i.c.ks.

"How well do you know all the people here?" I asked. He glanced up, surprised. He glanced out at the floor, his gaze taking in and measuring the groups lined up and posing as they arrived.

"I know the ones I need to know." He leaned back, the energy that had momentarily tightened returning to a smooth flow. "When working with a crowd, it's a matter of gathering good intelligence ahead of time and keeping up on the latest news before you walk in the door. Once you're with them, it's still just a collection of individuals."

"And disguises. You can't be the only one who's masquerading as someone else."

"No, but that's not specific to vampires."

Point taken.

He raised an eyebrow. "Petr should have done better in selecting a name for you. You don't look like an Andrea. How do you like the car?"

"It's glorious. A tad conspicuous. Is that for a reason?"

"So your bodyguards have a decent target. They already reported that you're driving evasively."

"Efficiently." I raised a finger and followed it with an eyebrow. "I drive efficiently. If they can't keep up with a boat the size and color of the actual sky, that's a them problem."

His lips quirked. "You don't like it? We'll get you something smaller. What was the car you had in Santiago?"

"A bag of bones with a lawn mower engine and no dignity. That's a cheap shot, Malcolm Kelly! That car was the low point of my life." Actually, Santiago had featured a number of low points. And scary points. I rubbed at my wrist. It still ached on occasion.

"Hey. That's all done." He pulled me closer and rested his cheek against my head.

I nestled in. "You're better at moving on than I am."

"The effect of a long existence. We learn to ignore unpleasant things once they're done."

It was a skill I was starting to admire. I was okay, apart from the occasional nightmare. I rarely remembered them, but they bothered him. Those he wasn't ignoring. Maybe life wasn't all sunshine and roses, but if bad dreams were the worst thing about my relationship with a vampire, I guess that wasn't so bad. Things would be better the sooner we left this place, though, and that meant getting to work.

The entire table, other than my empty plate, was covered. Black and white photocopies of maps. Handwritten notes and drawings. My eye snagged on the sketch he'd placed on the far corner, as far from me as possible. A bone-thin figure drawn in charcoal, lying in a bed staring up with blank eyes. A gla.s.s of water and pill bottles on the side table. Not dead but no sunshine and roses there, either.

"Who's your artist?"

"Vesta. One of Bronson's soldiers."

"So how are things going with..." I couldn't quite say "Richard Abel." Okay, I could. But I didn't want to.

Mal spread his hands. "You tell me."

Dates, most of them ranges. Addresses, some with accompanying images captured in pencil and charcoal, others with short descriptions. Names, also with date ranges in addition to what looked like running medical notes.

"What're those?" I asked, my stomach turning.

"Feeders. The only blood bagged for feeding is on the reservations down here, and he's stayed off the radar. Didn't steal, didn't mail order."

"Might not have known where he'd be when it arrived."

"He had one feeder at a time." Mal slid a couple of pages toward me and I felt his gaze linger when I started to read the statements, made in hospitals or to the police. "Approached them out of the shadows, glamoured them. He didn't drink directly, but made them cut and bottle it. Then he'd turn them loose and grab someone new. He selected them for their age and relative health. Moved on every ten days no matter what shape they were in.

"So he didn't want the responsibility of thralls. Doesn't sound like he had any use for the people he'd s.n.a.t.c.hed other than blood." Ridiculously, that was a relief, that he only wanted their blood. "The last name is almost three months ago. You have locations up until a month ago. What happened then?"

Mal shrugged. "He might have stored enough up to tide him over."

Or he'd stopped turning them loose. I shuddered. "You talked to these people?"

"They were neglected. Heat. Exposure. Dehydration. Some of the locations didn't have utilities. Basically he ignored them. Sometimes they didn't see him for days."

"There was no..." I fumbled. I felt like I was getting a headache. They were all young, male and female, mostly street kids. Vulnerable. Vampires had saved my life the courier job meant money which meant security. But these sketches could have been me, at a different time, in a different place.

"No physical abuse other than the cutting," Malcolm confirmed. "He's not a recreational s.a.d.i.s.t, and our information on him shows him to be disinclined to s.e.x. About half of our population doesn't engage at all."

His attention was almost tangible, his power swirling around me, soothing even though he was anxious. I gave him a grimly rea.s.suring smile. I could handle this if it meant stopping Abel.

"These are the locations we've confirmed," Mal said. "Some of the humans were able to backtrack to the places he held them. In these he was sighted by or met with vampires." He tapped at addresses written in red, his finger lingering on one. I checked the date. My lip curled.

Abel had been in Los Angeles when he'd sent humans to attack me in Hawaii, back when he'd considered me a flag draped off of Bronson's castle or whatever. Back when he'd had some hope for his side winning against the Master and was still pulling strings.

After that, he'd swung through Arizona and New Mexico, back again to California where he'd meandered along I-5. Even with this many human reports of illicit vampire activity, the reports were spread out, with fuzzy descriptions. When he'd wanted to, or maybe when he'd remembered, he'd forced them to forget his image. How many other vampires operated like that, outside the rules, drifting through an oblivious human population?

Until his location had been lost, he'd spent almost two months in Arizona. No vampire confirmations, and no more unwilling feeders.

"How do you know?" I asked, flipping through sketches of run-down homes and boarded-up commercial buildings. Abel wasn't one for luxury, but he hadn't gone far enough underground that he'd hidden himself. Rooms empty except for a single chair, a single bed, he gave the impression of a soldier or a monk. He was neither, not if power drove him.

"Soraya has a talent for tracking, even an old trail. In a few, he or his activities had been noticed and reported to authorities or neighborhood watches. He's not concerned with humans."

"No wonder Bronson didn't want him." The Master was in tight with human politicians and corporations. Good relations mattered to him. "So when he had a plan, he stuck to LA and small towns east of there. LA has some vampire protocols; it's too big not to."

"Which is why he spent most of his time in surrounding communities. We think he'd grab someone with a remote home, and dig in. People who live off the grid aren't missed right away."

"I wonder if he set up a safe house or two, in case he had to disappear." I ran through the dates again. There was more speculation in the beginning of the timeline, more facts in the recent updates. "But since then he's been circling Phoenix. Why stay in the desert?"

"He might be sticking close to Tenth World, in case he needs to claim sanctuary in a hurry," Malcolm said, but he didn't sound convinced.

"Something's keeping him here." I looked down at the floor. The lobby was nearly full, and the size of the parties seemed to be swelling. Chev got a lot of traffic, important traffic if I had to guess. "Or he's waiting for someone?"

"The right someone. He's tarnished. That'll wear off in a few decades and he'll be marketable again. Unless the right master comes along, someone who doesn't care about offending Bronson."

"There are people like that here?" I asked. The Master had sealed a room from prying senses, then casually reached through fire. And I had a feeling that was nowhere near the limit of his power.