Josef didn't know why she trusted him. She had no reason to except that he had taken a firm hand with her, perhaps the first truly dominant hand she had ever seen. Blair was accustomed to getting her own way. She was used to tossing her hair and making demands and having men yield without question, in the faint hope that they would get something in return. But the news of what had transpired at the dorm had broken her, until there was only a faint shadow of the woman who so aggravated him left behind. Blair was utterly defeated.
Not another word was said between them as they drove the rest of the way to the house, Josef glancing frequently into the rear view mirror, as if expecting someone to mysteriously appear on the darkened stretch of road fading behind them. Blair she gave an audible sigh of relief when the iron gates whirred closed in their wake. There were lights on in the guardhouse. It meant his team was keeping an eye on things, as he had instructed in the brief phone call that alerted them to the situation. The long shadow of Tom, his head of security, could be seen in the shadows as the Porsche pulled up before the garage and Josef stepped out, tossing the keys to another of his men. Opening the passenger door, he didn't have to encourage her to step out, nor did he draw attention to the fact that her hand crept into his, even though it surprised him.
With Tom on their heels, they entered the house and Blair was dropped off in the kitchen as Josef slipped into his media room and with a flick of a button, turned on the high-definition television. It was all over the news, a brutal, seemingly senseless murder against a college student. The media had arrived shortly after they had left, the camera panning faces that craned for a better view as the black body bag on a stretcher was loaded into the back of the ambulance, the sirens off but the lights flashing, casting eerie patterns against those gathered around it.
"… police say there are no leads at this time, but are considering the possibility that this may not be an isolated event, rather, the next attack in a series of unexpected murders throughout the valley in recent months…"
Of course they suspected the incidents were related, because they were. Josef had known that all along. Mick had been working on it for six weeks, attempting to track down a vampire engaged in what appeared to be serial murders without common thread or instinct. His victims were all female and young, most of them attractive in some way or another, but that was where the similarities ended. They rarely worked in the same profession. They shared no common history. They did not even frequent the same beaches or beauty salons. Local authorities were mystified. Mick was mystified. Usually vampires had a pattern, a type they liked to feed on, but this one was random in his selection.
He watched the images without emotion, numbed to human suffering over the generations in which he had participated in it. "Maybe that's where Mick is," he reasoned. He hoped so, because otherwise the man's absence gave him an unsettling feeling, not quite of concern but something like it. Mick was not the type to go off for long periods of time. He was far less a solitary creature than he pretended to be. "Deborah should be up by now," he said as he turned to Tom. "Ask what she can find out." He said no more, because Blair was standing behind him in the open doorway, staring at the screen almost blindly, as if she could not comprehend what was happening. Josef did not seek to comfort or reassure her, for it was not in his nature and he knew she would sense that it was contrived. Instead, he allowed her to look, to internalize, to wrap her mind around it, as he stood there watching her, wondering what went on inside her mind.
Dropping his hand to the back of the sofa, he asked after a lengthy pause, "What can you tell me about Gina?"
"She was… normal. Spent her Saturday nights partying and the rest of the week studying." Blair shook her head, waves of auburn-brown hair sliding over her shoulders. Her skirt rustled as she came to sit on the couch, sideways to the television, as if she hoped to avoid it. Resting her face in her hands, she murmured, "I can't believe this happened. The last thing I remember, we were laughing, joking, trying to take our mind of midterms … and then this? Death?" She looked up at him, her face as pale as the whitewashed wall behind it. "Unexpected, but so horribly… permanent."
That was one thing he remembered, the human fear of death, of dying… humans went out of their way to try and cheat fate, to try and escape the inevitable. They spent millions of dollars on supplements and heart replacements, in pretending that they were not decaying with every hour, that their body was not slowing down. He remembered death, the action itself, so painful and all consuming, but an otherworldly, out of body experience, as if he were floating above his form and only returned to it when the transformation had taken place. He remembered the insatiable hunger… and the rage. Both of them went together, were so common in young vampires. They were uncontrollable. He had been uncontrollable. A part of him missed it, yearned for the days when death involved no conscience, in which they did not have to be careful, in which politeness was burning down the house after you had killed everyone in it, or simply closing the door after you.
He tried to shake these memories from his mind as he sat down opposite her, the sound of the news distant and quiet in the background, absorbed into the absolute silence between them. Blair continued to hide her face, occasionally running her fingers through her hair, pushing her knees together like a little girl in an uncomfortable position. There was a ring on her left hand, silver. It glinted in the lamplight. Blair looked up at the image of Gina that flashed across the screen, mute to the dialogue that accompanied the journalist's monologue. Her scratched fingers stood out vividly, almost as acutely as the look that crossed her face. "I want to find out who did this," she said softly. "I want to find out who did this, and make them pay." With the last words, she looked at him, and he realized then why there was something about her that allured him. Blair was a great deal like him. The same demanding self-importance, the same hidden insecurities, and the same bloodlust for anyone or anything that harmed those she loved. He had memories like that too, only in his case he had been able to watch the perpetrator squirm.
Never would he have imagined that her voice could be so cold, but it was firm as she spoke to him. "I know who you are. It has taken me several hours to figure it out, but I remember now. I saw you at some fundraiser in LA last year. I don't remember much about the evening, but I do remember you, with a black-haired beauty on your arm. You were charming. You were polite. But everyone knew you were dangerous. They said you were a man who could get things done. I was so innocent then. I thought it meant you were ambitious, but now I see the truth. It's power that you have. Whatever you want, you inevitably get. It's in your nature; it's the virtue of the empire you have built. I want you to find out who murdered Gina, who stole six hours of my life and all of hers. And I want you to make sure he never does this to anyone else. Can you do that for me?"
There were some impossible matters in life, but this was not one of them. Even vampires made mistakes. Josef hadn't cared about this case much before. The murders were discreet enough that no one would suspect what was behind them, but now as he looked into Blair's tearstained face, he realized there was more to it than that. They had to stop for another purpose, simply because she cared about the mere mortals that he would not have glanced at a second time. She had lost someone she cared about. He had too, once. Though he did not verbally answer, it was more than apparent in his eyes that he agreed.
Blair formed a small smile with her naturally pouty lips, and said, "Good. Maybe I won't report you after all." She twisted her hands together awkwardly and he asked without compulsion, "Care for a drink?"
Running her hands down her skirt in a gesture of pulling herself together, Blair replied, "Stiffest kind you got."
He got up and went to the sideboard to pour one for her, relieved to be away from the intensity of her eyes. They were so focused, so calculating, as if she were trying to work out what went on in his mind. The room became quiet behind him as she switched off the sound on the television and then, after some consideration, the picture as well. She was twisting the ring around her finger when he brought her a dry martini, placing it onto the coffee table in front of her. "I was just thinking I should call Brian and tell him I'm all right," she said, "but then I remembered we broke up." She gave what might have been a half-hysterical little laugh and took the goblet from him, her fingers brushing his. She did not seem to care that she might be in danger, nor could she know the reasons why. Her only thought was sorting through the madness of utter chaos.
Lifting the glass, she asked dryly, "You didn't put something in this, did you?"
"No, but it is my hope that it helps you sleep. There's nothing you can do but let my associates do their job." Josef waited until she finished her drink and then escorted her to the guest room, where she closed the door softly behind her. Moving swiftly into the security room, he ordered the multiple screens be turned to other news sources. One of them was an Internet feed from Buzzwire, the largest news source on the web. It did not take him long to recognize the blonde woman standing in front of the now-quiet dorm building, police tape rippling eerily in the wind behind her. "… the spot of so many academic hopes is now a gruesome crime scene where a college co-ed was found murdered, her body undiscovered for almost six hours…"
Beth. That was her name. Even though Mick tried to avoid talking about her, Josef had known immediately there was something between them these days. It went much further back than even she suspected. He knew all about little Beth and Mick, about the flames that had consumed the room where Mick had coldly staked the heart of the woman he had once loved and left her to die. That had been many years ago, and yet all this time, Mick had kept an eye on her. Now it seemed that she was keeping an eye on him.
Without moving his gaze from the screen, the instant her live feet went offline, Josef ordered someone to dial her cell number. It rang once and was answered, transferred to speakerphone. She sounded tired. It was after midnight. Beth was not one of them. She wasn't used to such long night hours. Or at least, she hadn't been before meeting Mick.
"Hello?" Dear God, that journalistic voice made him want to kill himself. It was too damned … human.
Leaning over the desk, his eyes fixed on the images flickering on the screens before him, the sound now monitored to a low level, Josef said, "This is Josef Konstantin, one of Mick's associates. No doubt he has mentioned me."
There was a delicate pause, followed by a mildly insulting response of, "No, I don't think so."
He shouldn't have been surprised. Mick tried to deny what he was rather than accept it, and would never have confided their friendship to Beth. Still, Josef had thought his name would at least come up in passing. This is what he got for being a mentor for eighty years? The incredulousness of his expression never made it into his voice, as he replied, "Well, apparently he's had more important things on his mind. I was wondering if you knew how to reach him. I haven't gotten an answer at his flat or on his cell for the last twenty-four hours."
"Mick said he would be out of town for a couple of days, something to do with this case. Why?" There it was, the reason he hadn't wanted to involve her: the fact that she was a journalist, and could sense he was trying to hide something. "Do you know something?"
Just as he expected, there was a hint of excitement in that question. Josef hung up. He knew it wouldn't buy him much time. It would take her a half an hour tops to find out who he was and either call him back or camp out in front of his gate and demand to see him. He paced the floor, wondering what Mick had found out, how much the police knew. They couldn't know of course that they were tracking the impossible, a vampire so methodical and precise that it would take them years to find him, and if they did, it would be a wrongful arrest, someone else blamed for his series of crimes. It was not the first time something like this had happened. He remembered the incidents of Whitehall vividly, when another rogue vampire had gone on the rampage and left a half dozen prostitutes in Whitehall dismembered to cover his tracks. The fact that the news of these incidents had interrupted the opera had been a damned annoying waste of an evening.
Leaving his men to do their job, Josef wandered through the house, gazing at his paintings, exquisite, priceless works of art he had collected from the beginning. Some of the works of art in the mightiest museums in the world were forgeries. The real ones hung on his walls. They normally brought him a sense of peace, but tonight felt empty of emotion and devoid of meaning, no more than displayed notions of the fancies of long-dead artists. He realized then what was wrong, that the house felt peculiar. Carmilla should have been there with him, hers the only heartbeat thumping away in his ears. This heartbeat was different, faint but growing stronger, faster, mingling with the short breaths that accompanied nightmares.
It was completely dark in her room, dark and cold, perfect for him but a bitter shock to anyone mortal. Blair was moaning in her sleep, attempting to escape from something, but as much as she tried, she could not avoid it. There was a glint of sweat on her skin, the sheets perceptively damp around her. Sheer force of will brought her out of it and upright, drawing in her breath in what might have manifested into a scream if she hadn't been instantly aware of her surroundings. He appeared at her side and she latched onto him, attempting to steady her nerves as her fingers closed around the expensive fabric of his shirt. Her scent was unusual, traces of fear still lingering as she became calm.
"You're safe." He was not even sure why he said it, but it comforted her. Blair's face was so near his that he might have reached out and kissed her, her breath warm against his lips. It took a moment for her to recover her senses, but when she could speak, it was in a whisper, as if the walls had ears and she did not wish them to overhear.
"I think I remember something."