Blood Unleashed (Blood Stone) Read online

  It was time to disappear.

  * * * * *

  Marcus saw the cops from the corner of his eye, standing in a rough triangle around the edge of the fight, keeping a wary eye on everything at once. It forced him to draw in a shuddering breath to calm down, or else risk drawing attention to himself. He patted at his jacket and shook the open fronts, as if he was rooting out and fending off an insect, then walked back to the chair and gripped the back of it, trying to think around the panic the adrenaline had induced.

  Moving with the same natural movements, he pushed his finger through the hole in the chair from behind, judging the trajectory of the bullet by the shape and angle of the hole. Then he looked up, following the imaginary line the bullet must have taken.

  The top of the City National building.

  Then, deliberately turning his back, he followed the same invisible line from the chair to the grass. While the flesh between his shoulder-blades rippled uneasily, he told himself the danger had passed. The sniper could have taken a second, third, fourth and perhaps even a fifth shot while he had been analyzing the sound of the first shot. If they hadn’t used their spare, they weren’t going to. Not now. They would already be far away from the roof.

  He found the tunnel the bullet had dug for itself between grass blades, and sat on the grass cross-legged, so that his right hand rested on the grass next to his hip and next to the hole. Over the next five minutes he dug down into the hole with his hand, while watching the fight peter out through exhaustion and lack of feather stuffing. The grass at the feet of the fighters was a mottled white from all the feathers that had drifted to the ground. There were still pounds of the stuff wallowing in the air above their heads, lifting up in flurries as empty pillows moved the air around.

  Still laughing and calling to each other, the fighters started to disperse, their empty pillow cases slung over their shoulders. Four of them remained, and these pulled small battery-powered air-blowers from their mounded gear and fired them up. Carefully, they began pushing the feathers into a pile, all under the approving gaze of the three cops, who had relaxed their stances and had moved closer to each other to chat.

  The bullet had buried itself deeply, which fit with how close the shooter had been, but Marcus finally drew it out of the gaping hole he’d made and dropped it into his pocket. Then he pushed the soil and turf back and patted it down.

  He brushed his hand off on his jeans and got to his feet. Time to report in. McLaren would have a cow over this.

  * * * * *

  Rick reached the rambling, Tuscany-styled home around noon. He parked on the quiet street, examining the wrought iron gate and stucco wall that separated the house from the curb. It was an unassuming, low key property, tucked in amongst some of the more outrageous estates parading up and down the long, winding street, each competing with the other in grandeur. Some of them were astonishingly large…and completely lacking in good taste. He grimaced. The Hollywood Hills held no appeal for him whatsoever, but for now he was forced to endure the place.

  The lock on the gate was not an issue. He had been given the security code months ago. He let himself in and closed it behind him. The front door was unlocked and he stepped inside. The interior of the house matched the exterior. Spanish tiles and subdued walls, terracotta planters and big green leaves. It was cool, quiet and peaceful, the silence broken only by the soft clicks of a keyboard.

  That would be Sebastian slaving over one of his computers.

  Rick moved through the arch that gave access to the big front office. Winter had told him that the house once belonged to a famous director whose name he had not bothered to remember. The office had been the director’s central headquarters and was correspondingly large. It had been one of the features that had convinced Nial, Sebastian and Winter to buy the house, Sebastian in particular. There was one other feature that had locked in the sale, of course.

  The appearance of the office was one of controlled chaos. There was computer equipment everywhere, including a bank of servers that provided Sebastian with his own private Internet service.

  Four computers sat on the two tables, back to back, while the cupboards pushed up against the walls held peripheral equipment including printers and a five foot long plotter, a very professional-looking scanner and other office equipment including a large-scale laminator. One cupboard was devoted to paper – including a stack of perfectly ordinary letter-sized blocks of white paper. The other paper assembled there in tidy stacks was of a more interesting range, including watermarked blank government sheets for forms, letterhead from an astonishing range of government departments and big corporations, blank passports, blank credit cards including Visa, Mastercard, and American Express – all of it a forger’s delight.

  The man behind the computer at the far end from the door was not Sebastian. He raised his head as Rick entered and nodded at him.

  Rick nodded back. Dominic Castellano was one of Nial’s strays, and utterly deaf. He hadn’t been born that way, for he could speak after a fashion. But he did not read lips and he wasn’t well versed in sign language, for Rick had tried all the various forms with him. Dominic had recognized only one of them and his knowledge of it was sporadic. It told Rick that the injury that had stolen his hearing was a recent one.

  Dominic was from Chile, but that was all the information he had shared about his personal history with anyone, as far as Rick knew. It was possible Nial knew the man’s story, but Nial was as discreet as Rick. He had not shared the tale.

  Rick rounded the first big desk and stood in front of the one Dominic was sitting at. He tilted his head toward the computer. What are you doing?

  Dominic gave a grin. “Sebastian wants me to hack into…a place. I help him.” His speech was skewed as deaf people who could speak did; ranging modulations and odd accents on words, simply because they couldn’t hear themselves speaking. But Dominic’s speech was not so terribly fractured, which was more evidence that his hearing loss had been not that long ago.

  The more interesting thing was how he had polished his English since arriving in the States without the ability to hear pronunciations or have his own corrected. That made Dominic Castellano very interesting. Had he lost his hearing after arriving? Had the loss of his hearing pushed him out of Chile? It was a minor mystery that prompted dozens of unanswered questions. It generated a sense of imbalance, of things out of whack, which bothered Rick in a small way. One day, when he had leisure time to spare, he would find the answers to his questions.

  For now he had more important priorities. He pointed to the computer he had seen Sebastian seated behind more often than not. “Where is Sebastian?” he asked, keeping his face turned toward Dominic.

  Dominic pointed down toward the floor.

  “Thank you,” Rick told him and turned back to the doorway.

  Dominic’s hand gripped his arm. Rick turned back to look at him and Dominic waved him forward, clearly asking him to step around the table and face the screen. He complied and saw there was a blank text document on the screen.

  Dominic looked up at him. “Last year,” he said in his mongrel English. “Nial and Winter…shot. Sniper?” He mimed bringing a rifle up to his shoulder.

  “I knew that,” Rick said and nodded.

  Dominic nodded, too. “Who shot them?”

  Rick stared at the man’s tanned, olive features, his mind turning. It was a very interesting question. He leaned over Dominic’s shoulder and typed one-handed.

  why r u asking me

  Dominic shrugged and grinned. “You know everything. You think.” He tapped his temple.

  Rick typed again. dont know that

  Dominic blew out his cheeks in a heavy sigh, then shrugged again. His smile was even warmer.

  Movement from the corner of his eye pulled Rick’s attention up toward the doorway. Nial was entering the room. Rick was always surprised by Nial’s height, which was greater than his own. He wore his hair short, with faux grey in it and glasses that
gave him an intellectual air that the broad shoulders and rounded muscles betrayed. Anyone with an ability to think coherently and pick up the clues on his body, his clothing and the way he walked could see that Nial was a physical man.

  “I thought I heard the front door opening,” Nial said. “We were wondering where you were.”

  “I’m here now.”

  “Come on down. I’m finishing up some business and we can talk down there.” He turned and left again.

  Rick lifted his hand in farewell to Dominic, who waved back and started typing with two-fingered fury on the keyboard, already immersed in his work. Rick wondered why he bothered with social niceties like saying goodbye. It was a by-product of working amongst and mingling with these people for nearly a year. The almost iron-cast rule Nial had put in place dictating no unnecessary congregations in large numbers meant their work was always done in domestic abodes – usually this house. Coming here always had to look like a social call for watchful neighbors. It was an irksome necessity, one of which Rick was in rare agreement with Nial.

  He had spent more time passing as human in the last year than he had for many decades before that. His social skills were creaky with rust and misuse – Heru had none, and Kurshid had not been ruffled by the absence of them -- but they had returned with a vengeance since coming to Los Angeles. Humans thought Los Angeles was a rude city, but they weren’t aware of the degree of social oil they used every day and every minute. It was probably this refreshed habit that made Rick mimic human customs without thought.

  Nial led him to the grandly scaled foyer where the stairs with their tiles and wrought iron bannisters wound up to the second floor. Nial turned his back on the stairs and rested his fingers against the chest-high wooden paneling, and pressed.

  The panel under his fingers depressed slightly, then a door opened up. The door was the height of the ceiling, which prevented the need for the disguising panel to have a horizontal seam at the height normal doors usually reached.

  Nial gripped the edge of the panel and opened it wider. There was a normal, man-sized doorway behind it. A strong halogen light illuminated timber stairs with an industrial carpet runner covering most of their width.

  “After you,” Nial said. “I need to shut the panel behind us.”

  Rick stepped down five steps then turned to look over his shoulder as Nial pulled the panel closed using a steel horizontal bar mounted on the back of the panel. “How is it you’ve never invited me down here before?”

  Nial turned and started climbing down, forcing Rick to turn and descend, too. “We’re not often in the basement when there are visitors.”

  Rick read the subtext as if it were print. Nial hadn’t trusted him enough until now to show him the room. That made Rick even more curious about what was in it.

  The stairs ended and the walls enclosing them opened out to show a very large basement room, windowless, but lit with banks of the same daylight emitting halogens as on the stairs. The floor featured the same plain blue industrial carpet and the walls were white, providing more light from the reflected fluorescents.

  There was a very large table on the right of the stairs. Rick tilted his head to look at the feet, confirming what he had suspected. There was a billiard table holding up the extended tabletop, which looked like raw MDF. The billiard table had probably come with the house. The extended top looked rough-hewn and cobbled together and had probably been built by them.

  Sitting on the table in neat rows and columns was a range of equipment that Rick found himself cataloguing instinctively. Ropes, rappelling devices, carabiners, harnesses, more webbing, a pile of quick-draws. Climbing equipment. A large black duffel bag sat at the top of the array and there was more equipment visible between the open zipper, that had already been packed.

  On the other end of the table was arranged a small collection of weapons. Rick noticed immediately that all of them were personal weapons – hunting knife, butterfly knife, pistols, and a blackjack. There were no rifles or automatic guns.

  Winter and Sebastian stood on either side of the table, checking the equipment. Winter paused in the process of loading bullets into a high-capacity magazine, to glance at Rick. She wore black yoga pants with the band folded down so that her hip bones were visible. Her top looked like a black sports bra, or shortened camisole. Her hair, one of her better features, was piled on top of her head in a messy nest.

  Sebastian raised a brow. “Hello, Cyneric.” He went back to assembling the pistol that lay in pieces in front of him.

  Rick crossed to the table. “Are the pair of you coming out of retirement, then?”

  Silence. Obviously, the answer was considered beyond his need to know.

  He picked up the 19mm Sig Sauer Pro and checked the chamber, as Winter snapped the magazine she had filled into the Smith & Wesson .45 ACP auto with the flat of her hand. It was a good gun for her – small enough to fit her hand, but with real stopping power.

  Sebastian was absorbed in checking the barrel of his weapon.

  Winter flipped her gun over and checked the safety was on, then put it back on the table, all without looking at him.

  “I like a woman with a gun on her hip,” Rick said.

  Sebastian’s head snapped up. His glare was hot enough to make light bulbs glow.

  Rick shrugged and put the Sig down once more. “Relax, I prefer my women brunette.”

  “There’s a surprise,” Sebastian said dryly.

  Rick smiled. “What is wrong with brunettes?”

  Sebastian’s gaze was steady, his expression completely without humor. “I’m surprised you like anything at all. I thought you had sloughed off all your emotions along with your humanity.”

  “Sebastian…” Nial spoke softly.

  Sebastian shook his head and went back to building the handgun.

  “Rick, come and look at this,” Nial directed. He was sitting on a sectional sofa arranged in a deep curve around a circular coffee table made of glass and steel, on the other side of the room. He was holding a tablet PC out toward Rick.

  Rick settled on the end of the dark green suede covered seat and took the tablet.

  “Nothing from the League?” Nial asked.

  Rick shook his head, reading the news item. The League for Humanity had been utterly silent for weeks.

  “If we don’t deal with the League and the Pro Libertatus soon, if they don’t do something so we can trace them, it will delay our coming out.”

  Rick looked up from the tablet. “So? The grand finale of your big plan will be delayed. I rather doubt the world will come to an end.”

  Nial raised his brow, his expression impassive.

  Rick knew that expression. He knew that Nial was containing himself. Containing his emotions. He hadn’t liked his answer.

  He balanced the tablet on his knees and took the time to smooth over Nial’s hackles. “I have never hidden the fact that I think this scheme to reveal vampires is utterly useless. It verges on insanity. Humans won’t accept us and you are courting the condemnation of your own kind. Where then will you turn, Nial Aquila? Your allies will be whisker-thin on the ground.”

  Nial smiled and it was the smile of a predator. “I think you’re underestimating our power to change things.”

  “It’s a primary computation,” Rick explained. “The odds are stacked against you in staggering proportions. I didn’t need to estimate at all. Frankly, I could care less what happens, whether it happens in the next week or the next millennium.”

  There was a tiny silence in the room. Winter and Sebastian had grown still.

  “Then,” Winter said, the first time she had spoken since he had arrived, “why are you helping us?”

  Rick looked at Nial. “You know why.”

  “Kurshid?” Nial asked. He considered Rick a moment longer, then pointed to the tablet on his knee. “I’d like your opinion on that. Does it mean anything?”

  He’d been let off the hook. He lifted the tablet and finished reading
the article. The body of an American male had been discovered in one of the poorest sections of Istanbul, dead of an apparent overdose from a cocaine and heroin cocktail. His name was Suresh Harris, of Pennsylvania.

  Rick sat back slowly, lowering the tablet to the seat next to his hip. Things were coupling up in his mind. There were holes there, holes he’d have to fill later, but here was Harris, dead, and then there was Nial and Winter being shot at last year. There was a connection there. It was subterranean right now. He’d have to dig it up, but he knew by the frisson of delight that curled up his spine that this was just the tip of something much bigger.

  “Rick,” Nial said flatly.

  Rick blinked and looked at him.

  “It means something, doesn’t it? Suresh Harris is a name I know, although I can’t pin it down.”

  “If you have met him at all, I would be surprised,” Rick said. “He went by the nickname ‘Sushi’.”

  Nial’s brow lifted. “Yes, that’s how I know the name. He is – was – Danich Wulfson’s companion.”

  “The head of the League,” Rick concluded. “He wasn’t Wulfson’s friend. He was Danich’s narish.”

  “What’s a narish?” Winter asked. She had slipped on to the other end of the curved sofa and now sat with one foot on the cushion, her knee cocked, and the other leg bent around it. “I’ve never heard that before. It’s a vampire thing?”

  Nial sighed. “It’s a very old vampire thing. There’s not too much of it happens anymore. A narish is a vampire’s….” He grimaced. “Food,” he said flatly. “Narishs are kept by vampires for fresh blood whenever they want it. The narish is usually offered some sort of compensation – to be turned later, or for money. Centuries ago, it was a way of escaping some of the horrors of human existence. A narish is protected, fed and clothed and enjoys a comfortable life while he serves. But as the quality of life improved for humans, the practice fell out of favor for vampires. I think they had difficulties finding volunteers. Of course, they couldn’t force anyone into it.”