"There is a three-bedroom safe house reserved for us in Oklahoma City," Gavin informed me; he was driving the van Winkler lent us. It could seat up to nine people with room in the back for luggage. Tony and René sat behind us, with Roff in the back row. He didn't seem to mind. Bill had flown into Oklahoma City several hours ahead of us to continue his investigation. Winkler would be joining us in two days; he had business to see to before following us to Oklahoma. Dalroy and Rhett were planning to come with him as added protection. My cell phone rang as Gavin drove.
"Lissa?" Charles was on the other end.
"Hi, Charles, what's up?" I asked. I was glad to hear from him; I hadn't brought my laptop since Gavin had his. I could use it to send email—if I could get past his frown whenever I asked to borrow it, that is. He and Wlodek both forbade the use of my cell phone as a means to do email, saying it was much easier to lose a cell and they didn't want my contacts handed over to someone who'd managed to get their hands on my phone. They'd also discouraged me from taking my laptop. Therefore, I was forced to use Gavin's laptop as a means of electronic communication.
"The Honored One has instructed Chris Townsend and Ken White to catch up with you in Oklahoma City tomorrow evening," Charles informed me. "They are bringing someone with them. Wlodek wants to know whether you detect a kinship between this person and anyone else you may know."
"Oh. Okay, I can do that," I agreed. "Can you tell me who it is?"
"No. Wlodek doesn't want you to know," he said. Gavin was listening to the conversation, as were Tony and René. "Chris will come for you and Gavin and take you to this person," Charles continued. "But Wlodek only wants the two of you to go. Understand?" Gavin was nodding, so I said that was fine. Charles had to go so we hung up.
"Wonder what that's all about," I muttered, putting my cell away.
"You will find out tomorrow," Gavin said and kept driving.
Chapter 5
"We have to find a grocery store and get something for Roff to eat at the safe house," I told Gavin when we reached the outskirts of Oklahoma City. "Where is the safe house?"
Gavin rattled off an address in the northwestern portion of the city. "There's a grocery store not far from there," I said. "I can take Roff after you guys get settled in."
"No!" Gavin, Tony and René all said at once. That's how four vampires and a comesula ended up in a grocery store that stayed open late, walking down aisles while Roff and I discussed what he wanted to cook. René hadn't been inside a grocery store ever, I think. There hadn't been a reason for him to go, so this was a new experience.
Tony was staring at a display of snacks, a look of longing on his face. I just went to him and rubbed his back a little. I knew that feeling. The memory of what the food tasted like was still fresh in his mind. I also knew that René hadn't had time for the food lesson, yet. Poor Tony. That was a difficult experience for me, when Merrill forced me to hold onto the food until I was in a safe place to get rid of it. Vampire bodies and solid food don't mix very well.
We only bought enough food for a few days, since we didn't know how long we were going to be at this particular safe house. Roff and I packed groceries away in the upper level of the house—it had a full kitchen, just as the basement did. Gavin, Tony and René unloaded suitcases and carried them downstairs. Roff's things were dropped in the upper level—he would sleep upstairs; he didn't have a problem with daylight as the others did.
"We're going to meet Bill at David Workman's residence," Gavin announced, once we got everything settled in. Bill was working late hours—it was two in the morning. Roff checked his watch and informed me of the time. We climbed back in the van and drove to Edmond, leaving Roff behind.
Don's brother, David, worked as an accountant for a large energy firm in Oklahoma City; Sara was a manager for a local restaurant chain. Both made good money and had a nice house in southeast Edmond. Bill arranged to meet us outside the house, along with two human agents, neither of whom I knew. Xenides' scent hit me the moment we walked through the front door. Well, Bill could hear my mindspeech; he just couldn't reciprocate.
Xenides was here, I sent to him. He nodded to acknowledge the sending. Another vampire was with him—a sibling to two others I met recently, I added. It had to be Dominic—the same scent surrounded Thaddeus and Lorenzo. Bill didn't blink at my revelation. I then sent the same information to Tony, Gavin and René—I didn't want Bill's two agents to get the information. Better that they didn't know anything at all about us. I walked through Sara's kitchen and got a whiff of the scents there. "Sara's dead," I blurted, beginning to shake. I smelled her death. I wasn't sure it had been violent; there wasn't any scent of blood. However, a heart attack or a broken neck could also be the cause. I wondered how her health had been before the vampires came to call.
"You're sure?" Bill stepped across the tiled floor, stopping beside me. The other two agents stared at me, wondering how I'd come to that conclusion.
"She's sure," Tony walked up beside me. Send your agents to the car, I sent to Bill. Bill ordered the two men out of the house.
"I don't smell her blood, I just smell her death," I said after the two agents had gone out to Bill's car in the driveway. "Has the backyard been checked?"
"We looked it over but we didn't bring any dogs—we didn't want to confuse the scents," Bill said. At least he'd known to do that much.
Let's go out, then." Bill led us through the house and out the patio door.
The scent that hit me when we walked into the backyard was overwhelming in its stench—wild animal mixed with Saxom's taint and Dark Elemaiya. I grabbed Bill's arm and barely had time to toss him inside the house, slamming the French doors in his face before they were on us.
Our three attackers resembled grizzly bears with the heads of giant cats—all had huge canines, reminding me of drawings I'd seen of saber tooth tigers. One was doing his best to savage Tony; he'd been closest to the creatures and they'd jumped him first. René wanted to help Tony, but had a creature of his own to battle. I misted after Tony's attacker, coming up behind him as he clawed Tony to the ground, preparing to bite him in half. The growls and screams from those creatures were deafening as they leapt at their intended prey, tearing up huge clumps of earth with enormous, clawed feet. If David had still been alive, he'd have had an aneurysm. He'd been rabidly meticulous about his lawn.
Since I'd turned to mist as soon as we were attacked, I allowed my hands and claws to materialize, severing the thick spine at the neck of Tony's monster. The animal roared in agony before falling over and turning to ash. The noise of battle had brought Bill's agents rushing into the backyard. Both began firing at the animal Gavin was fighting. Neither Gavin nor his opponent was making any headway; it looked to be a standoff between them.
"Stop shooting!" Bill shouted as he forced his way past the jammed French door—I'd slammed it pretty hard. René was having the same luck that Gavin was having; he'd gotten a slash down his arm but the creature hadn't been able to do better than that against him. One of the agents got in a final shot as I removed the head of René's attacker, and the bullet managed to lodge in my exposed forearm. I shrieked mentally as the bullet slammed into my flesh; I think everyone there heard it.
There wasn’t time to deal with the injury, however. I went to help Gavin, who still hadn't been touched. That battle was like a tornado, with both of them attacking and retreating so swiftly I had difficulty getting in to kill Gavin's monster. When I finally got his attacker down and flaking, I rematerialized, causing both human agents to jump. Tony was right there, injured as he was, placing compulsion. René was beside him, helping in seconds. Gavin gripped my arm and began to examine my bullet wound.
"Hold still, cara, I can see it," he said, and forming a claw on an index finger, he carefully dug inside the wound, flipping the bullet out in no time while I clenched my teeth to keep from whimpering.
"What the hell were those things?" Bill had waited patiently for Gavin to finish performing minor surg
ery before demanding answers. I let my head droop against Gavin's chest. I knew what they were and hoped there weren't any more of them.
"Vampire shapeshifters," I mumbled against Gavin's shirt. Gavin drew in a sharp breath. So did Director Bill Jennings.
We were sitting inside the house later; it was too late to contact Wlodek so I left a message for him on Charles's cell before calling Merrill and doing the same for him. I carefully explained as best I could what we'd fought. Xenides was probably hoping to take out my guards so he could either take me or track me. I'm sure one of the shapeshifters would have been happy to grab me if he could and haul me off to Xenides. How they planned to do that, however, was a mystery. Even Xenides knew how fast I could go to mist; he'd seen it himself. They must have been relying on compulsion to do the job.
Gavin helped Tony with his wounds while I made my calls; Tony wasn't thrilled to have his slashes washed out thoroughly with soap and water, but Gavin was giving him a lesson on the fact that anything caught inside the cuts and not washed out would heal right over, trapping the debris inside. Tony had three deep rakes across his chest where he'd been clawed, along with a slash down his left arm when he'd held it up to protect his face. Gavin and René cleaned out all of Tony's wounds.
René submitted to his subsequent cleaning with stoic acceptance, grunting his thanks to Gavin when it was done. Bill, of course, was watching everything with fascination. He'd sent the two human agents back to the car, but only after Gavin checked the yard and surrounding area—it looked as if we'd gotten what was there to attack us.
* * *
"My lord, our three bears are dead." Angelo hid the smile behind his sly joke. He was a shapeshifter, just as the others were, but his shape was that of a bird—a blackbird, actually. If any of the vampires had been able to hear over the noise of the growls and the heat of battle, they might have heard the rush of his wings as he'd taken flight, making slow circles overhead as he watched the last of the three shapeshifters go down. They'd all died at the hands of the little female; he'd seen her claws form to take heads. Xenides truly would love to have her, he knew, but the task of taking her seemed quite difficult.
Xenides cursed angrily before asking Angelo for details. Angelo gave them. Xenides had new respect for his little princess, now. He couldn't wait to have her under his command.
* * *
Roff waited up for us and he shouldn't have. He fretted over the wounds we'd gotten, although they were already closing. The healing sleep would finish them up for us. Gavin was feeling gun shy, I think; he insisted that Roff sleep downstairs. Roff hauled a pillow and blanket down and slept on the sofa in the underground living area.
"Tell us about these shapeshifters," René asked as we helped ourselves to a unit of blood in the safe house kitchen. Gavin finished mine after drinking a full unit himself.
"I don't know much; Kifirin told me that some of the Elemaiya have the gift of shapeshifting." I sat down at the small kitchen table with a sigh. "The other gifts include mindspeech, misting, foresight, that sort of thing," I said. "Saxom was able to tell who had what gift, maybe. He could sure sort out the Dark Elemaiya. I wonder if he wasn't of that race himself, at least in part."
"No way to tell unless your true sire is more forthcoming," Gavin grumbled. I'd been doing some thinking about my true sire. And about Merrill's statement that he couldn't lie and that everything he'd told me was the truth. The first part of his statement was bothering me more and more. His words were, I knew the vampire and werewolf races were dying on this world. And that statement was followed by You are the answer to so many things that were troubling me. I had to go Looking for your mother. He knew the vampire and werewolf races were in trouble. I was the answer. He'd had to search for my mother. I'd been created as the solution to a problem. Yeah, it bothered me. I wasn't a love child conceived in some fling my mother had; it was calculated. And if I were the answer to the problem he saw—the problem of the vampire and werewolf races that were dying, then I would have to belong to one race or the other.
My parents hadn't been werewolves, so that had been out of the question. Griffin had known I'd become vampire eventually. He'd known. If he hadn't planned it, he'd seen it. He admitted that one of his talents was foresight. I didn't know at the moment how I truly felt about my mother's part in this. Griffin said that her ability to mindspeak with him encouraged her to come to him and have a child with him. Did she regret that after Howard Graham started beating her?
"Fuck," I muttered, rubbing my forehead with shaky fingers. "I want to go out for a while, Gavin." He frowned at me—was about to tell me no, but something in my expression must have stopped him. He shrugged and said nothing as I misted away.
There aren't many tall buildings in downtown Oklahoma City, and most of the lights are turned off during this portion of the night. I looked out over the downtown skyline anyway. Dawn was close, but hadn't I gotten up during daylight before? It wouldn't kill me if I chose to sleep on the roof of the safe house. I hugged myself tightly, my knees drawn up to my chest. What did my father want from me? I wasn't naïve enough to think it was love.
* * *
"My baby has already discovered the flaw in the tapestry," Griffin sighed. Amara sat at the kitchen island in the guesthouse, sipping a cup of tea in the early afternoon light shining across the English countryside.
"What do you think she'll do, Brenten?"
"What she should; think she was born as a matter of convenience for others. It won't stop her from doing what's right, love. She'll just hate me while she's doing it."
"Her life has been filled with pitfalls," Amara sighed. Griffin shrugged. "Tell me you don't love your daughter," Amara gazed at Griffin.
"I can't tell you that," he said and folded space. Amara didn't know where he went; she only knew he'd be back. Eventually.
* * *
"Tony, you shouldn't be up here, dawn is coming." He'd used his newly acquired vampire strength to climb to the roof of the safe house and now settled lightly and noiselessly beside me. I looked at him for a moment, hoping the tear stains weren't showing on my face. That hope was short-lived.
"Lissy, why are you crying?" He put an arm around me. I wondered if René and Gavin knew he was here with me.
"Tony, if I tell you, then René will know. And then Gavin and Merrill and Wlodek and anybody else they choose to tell." I wiped my cheeks with fingers that trembled slightly. We'd be forced to go inside soon so Tony's skin wouldn't blister.
"Baby, you have to tell somebody, don't you?" He tightened his arm around me.
"I don't think so," I said, betraying myself by sniffling.
"It has to do with dead relatives. And your father. I heard his words, too, baby. It didn't sound like you were a love child. He said he went looking for your mother because the vampires and werewolves were in trouble." If Tony was putting two and two together, then the others probably were, too. Why didn't I just stand on a rooftop somewhere and blubber out my misery for the entire universe to hear? They were going to find out anyway.
"How did you manage to get away from Gavin and René?" I asked instead.
"They asked me to come," he said softly.
"Gavin's not afraid you'll jump me while we're alone together?"
"He was. That's why he asked René to place compulsion. I can hug and kiss you a little, Lissy. I can't go farther than that." The regret for that was thick in his voice.
"Compulsion," I muttered. "The most damning word in the vampire language."
"I'm happy to be vampire and I know you're not," Tony tucked my hair behind an ear. My strawberry blonde curls were long enough to do that, now.
"My husband's grave is that way," I pointed to my left, which was north of where we were. "Now I can't go there because the image of his brother's body lying on top of it will be in my mind. Dead because of me, Tony. Tell me how I'm supposed to live with that. Sara's dead too, whether they killed her or she died of a heart attack or whatever. Who else is goin
g to die because of what I am? My father made me because of what I would become. He knew I'd be turned, Tony. That was the plan, don't you think?"
"I think he might have wanted to save the world, that's what I think." Tony nuzzled my cheek gently.
"And that's supposed to make me feel better?" I rose abruptly. "How was your childhood, Tony?" I looked down at him; he was still sitting. I reached for his arm and pulled him up easily, turning us both to mist. My mental sigh was passed to him as we sank through the roof and then through the upper floor and down to the basement, minutes before the sun rose. René was waiting patiently and Tony was ushered into his bedroom by his sire. I was jealous of that, even.
"Lissa," Gavin's breath was cool on my neck as he placed a kiss. "Come, cara. We will speak of this later." I put my arms around his neck and sobbed once as he lifted me and carried me into our bedroom.
* * *
Ken White was there to pick us up at ten the following evening. Gavin and I rode in Agent White's rental car; Gavin in the passenger seat while I sat in the back. I'd slept later than the others before waking sluggishly, and Gavin hadn't forced me out of bed. Roff had been there waiting for me, patiently holding a bag of blood so I could feed. Gavin didn't interfere, either, when Roff crawled onto the bed and let me lean against him as I sipped my meal.
Now we were driving toward a hotel not far away; the person I was supposed to see was there with Agent Townsend. Ken parked the car and we climbed out to walk inside the hotel. Overhead, the sky was a dark, stormy blue and I worried we might get rain. Tall piles of cumulus clouds floated off to the west and I could see lightning. It didn't rain often during August in Oklahoma—usually it was dry and dusty. But if it did storm, it could be a good one.
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