“Monster,” Aliena said under her breath.
We had been sure, and this confirmed that the spirits he had sent to attack me were Sherri Barlow and Jessica Patterson. I stared at Kanga’s image with growing abhorrence.
He screwed the cap onto his bottle, set it aside, and leaned forward.
“I may have been too hasty in deciding to eliminate you. It is possible you could serve another purpose. For one thing, I simply must hear how you have managed to keep your longevity confidential all this time. And how long has it been, by the way?”
Marcus and Aliena watched me. My face remained impassive, but inside, my guts churned. I guard my secrets jealously—it’s one reason they are still mine alone. Now my greatest secret was in the hands of an enemy.
Perhaps thirteen really was unlucky. So far during this case, LAPD had recovered my blood at a crime scene, our killer had displayed powers that were undoubtedly magical, and this same murderer had discovered my immortal nature.
I thought about the fight between Mejia and Shepard at 49, the night Aliena came back from Iraq. The bout had been the Angel of Dread’s thirteenth death match. He had not survived it, ending up flat on his back with a skinny vampire attached to his throat. It was a good thing I was not superstitious.
This case had quickly become much more than a homicide investigation. There were too many loose ends that could eventually be tied to me, and now I was in danger of being blackmailed by a serial killer.
“We have much to discuss,” Kanga said. “When I decide what it is I want from you, Mr. Montero, you will hear from me again.”
The screen went black. I pushed the Eject button, and when the tray opened, I pocketed the DVD. I turned the TV off and set the remote down.
“So he is after you,” Aliena said.
“It would appear so.”
“But not to kill anymore,” Marcus said.
“No.” If Kanga had access to police files and learned about the peculiar nature of my blood, he might have a reason for wanting me alive. In fact, he probably did not even need the chem analysis since he knew I could withstand injuries that would kill another man. His grimoires likely already contained ancient concoctions that could use my plasma to potent effect.
Aliena led us back into the hallway after we had determined there was nothing else of interest in the room. “The man for whom you and all of LAPD search,” she said over her shoulder, “has told you he will contact you when he is ready.”
“I obviously made a strong impression on him,” I said, half jokingly, but Aliena’s sharp glance cut that short. “It is of no consequence. It’s merely his conceit. If he wants to come to me, let him come. I will kill him if he does.”
“If he attacks you during the day, we cannot help,” Marcus said.
“I know. And I have no idea where to find him tonight.” We stopped in the living room. I pulled my phone out and dialed Preston. It was nearly two, but he did not keep normal hours. He answered immediately.
“Yeah?”
“Mr. Preston, we were right about the address we have for Kanga. It’s empty now.”
“We still haven’t found another one,” he replied, and I could hear him munching on something. “I will contact you when we do.”
I did not have to repeat the conversation to Aliena and Marcus. They had heard everything easily.
“What do we do now?” Aliena asked.
“Unless you can think of a productive way to spend our time, we wait.”
“I don’t understand,” Marcus said, gesturing at the empty house. “Why keep this place? To have a quiet room so he could travel in the ether?”
“It was a front of some kind,” I said.
“Why? He was obviously planning on leaving and clearly knew exactly how long he could stay.”
“I don’t know.”
“Unless it was to prevent any chance of his being identified once the murders had begun,” Aliena said. “He probably did not use it for meditation and astral travel only. It could also have been for his job. He is very careful.” She watched me, her hair catching the meager light from the backyard and framing her shadowy face in a soft halo. “It sounds like you are high on his priority list.”
“I wonder what he wants from you,” Marcus said.
“I doubt it will be anything I’d be willing to give him.”
Aliena said, “It did not sound as if he planned to ask.”
Thirty-Four
Friday, December 24, 2:17 a.m.
We left Kanga’s house and split up.
“Call me if you learn anything else,” Marcus said.
“Of course,” Aliena told him.
He disappeared.
Aliena came with me. Since we could do nothing more about finding Kanga, I could only think of one imperative task.
“I have some new furnishings.” I reached behind my seat, grabbed the bag Bey had given me, dropped it in her lap. “We need to distribute them throughout my house.”
After executing an illegal U-turn, I headed for the freeway.
“What did you get?” She began rummaging through the contents. She pulled out the Christo Glass. “Beautiful. What does—now, that is strange.” She looked at the dashboard through the lens. “What is that?”
“It’s the car’s aura.”
“Its aura? You’re serious?”
“Yes. According to Bey, all things have some kind of aura, even rocks.”
“All of these came from Geoff?”
“Yes.”
“What is this?”
“A Christo Glass.”
“Why do you need it?”
“To kill spirits. The next time they come calling uninvited.”
“It was that bad?”
“Yes. That reminds me. Please wear that charm at all times. It will protect you from such an attack.”
She reached up and touched the black stone, rolling it between her thumb and forefinger as if trying to feel the power infused in the onyx. “I like it,” she said. “Thank you for giving one to Marcus.”
“My pleasure. Now if I could just get Hamilton to wear one.” I turned onto the freeway and headed toward Pacific Coast Highway.
“This is cute,” she said, holding up a red kabbalah bracelet.
“One of them is yours. Wear it on your left wrist.”
She put it on. “This is very sweet of you, Sebastian. Is it all because I kissed you?” She batted her eyelashes at me.
“If only it was that simple.”
“You’re truly worried that this man could harm a vampire?”
“You are supernatural beings, but do you have any special immunity to malevolent demons?” I had read many of the secret, scholarly writings by vampires, but none included an account of them interacting with the spirit world.
“I don’t know. I have never heard of it happening.”
“These were incredibly potent entities,” I told her, remembering the sheer strength of the creatures. “And since they have no physical form, your strength and speed might not matter, unless you can see them and avoid them altogether.”
“I am different from you in other ways,” she said.
“Yes.” During the attack, the demons had crushed my lungs, cutting off my air, and squashed my leg, impeding the flow of blood. Neither would affect a vampire. Normally, they would not permanently harm me, either. And that was why I worried over Aliena and Marcus. Vampires still have the souls of human beings. And these demons attacked the soul, I was sure of it.
I glanced at Aliena as she continued to rummage through the little leather bag, entranced as always by this unique being. A part of humanity, yet separate. Invulnerable predator, yet dependent. A terrible symbol of evil, yet possessing the shining soul of a human being. Vampires represented nature’s greatest paradox.
“I admit, I can’t imagine how they could hurt you, but why take the chance?”
“That is sensible,” she said, sniffing at one of the atomizers. “I will wear the amulet u
ntil we kill this man.”
“Thank you.”
Latigo Canyon was pitch under the slim moon’s shimmer, the Thunderbird’s lights bright as we shot up the road. I turned into my private drive and watched the security gates close behind us in the rearview mirror, thinking how different my place was compared to Hamilton’s. I could never hear my neighbors quarrel, unless they did so with automatic weapons. One commodity money could buy included distance from the rest of humanity.
I pulled the Thunder Chicken into the garage and noted that Hector had picked up the Maserati. Like my specialists at BioLaw, I paid my field staff—a small army run as a subsidiary company to BioLaw—exorbitant salaries. In return, I expected them to be available at all hours and to carry out their assignments as fast as possible unless instructed otherwise.
Once out of the car, I took the bag of jujus and dropped a couple of bones on the ground. Aliena placed her hand against the security pad. It glowed green, and the door popped open. She and Hector were the only other people keyed to the locks in my home.
As soon as we were inside, I set down Bey’s bag of talismans on the living room coffee table and began rummaging through it. I pulled out a handful of fetishized bones.
“Let’s take it from the top.”
Aliena followed me upstairs to the master bedroom. The first bone went in the bathroom, on the sill of a large arbor window above the bathtub, overlooking my garden and small orchard of apple, orange, and lemon trees.
“Smells nice in here,” Aliena said. She stuck her head in and looked around, picked up the soap and sniffed. “Mmmm.”
I leaned over and kissed her neck. “You need to wash your clothes.” Vampires do not sweat, and their skin is dry, but they still got dirty, and so did their clothes. Dust was appealing on Aliena, but so was the scent of shampoo in her hair.
She set the soap down. “May I shower in here?”
“You have your own room, remember?”
“Perhaps I would rather shower in yours.”
Always a tease. “You may bathe in the kitchen sink, if that is your wish.”
“Good.”
We returned to the bedroom, where I placed bones on the windowsills and inside the sliding glass doors leading to the balcony.
After I placed bones on the rest of the upstairs windows, we descended the stairs, returned to the foyer and turned down the short hallway that led to her bedroom. Although I knew Aliena followed right behind me the whole time, she made as much noise as a cat wearing cotton socks. It was like being shadowed by your shadow.
“He blessed all of these?” Her voice came from somewhere over my right shoulder.
“Uh-huh.”
We turned in at her door. I flipped on the light switch and crossed the room, pulled back the heavy drapes, and placed two bones on the sill.
“You don’t have a window in your bathroom, so that’s all for here. Your room is safe.”
She watched from the doorway. “Thank you.”
“Now for the room where it all happened.”
She turned and led the way back into the living room. I walked to the sliding doors, Aliena at my side.
“Is this the holly plant that saved you?” she asked, stroking the top of the bush.
“That’s the one.”
I eyed the dark deck warily through the glass, pressed the button. When the doors slid open, I darted outside, placed a bone on either side of the entrance, stepped back in, closed up.
“The charms are enough, Sebastian,” Aliena teased. “The doors don’t matter, not to a spirit.”
“I know. It’s cold tonight.”
“Oh.”
There were six juju guardian dolls left in the bag. One of the hideous talismans went above the lintel of the front door and another over the double doors leading to the patio. I placed bones on all the other windowsills, including the ones in the kitchen.
“That covers every portal in this house.”
“Then we’re safe from spirits for the night.”
“As long as we stay inside,” I said, walking to her.
She put her arms around my neck and kissed me. “As long as we’re safe from Kanga’s spirits, I think we can handle anything else.”
I pulled her close and kissed her long and hard, hoping she was right.
We built a huge fire with a combination of artificial logs from the store and dry tinder purchased locally, and now it blazed with heat and light, filling the room. Aliena stood in front of the flames, facing me, with her hands behind her back.
The patio doors were open, proving I trusted in Bey’s charms, and I stood near them now, chugging from a bottle of vodka.
“You said my clothes needed washing. How long would that take?”
“A little over an hour.”
“There’s enough time then.” She took off her jacket and tossed it over the back of the club chair. “I want to take a shower. Do you have the same soap in my bathroom as in yours?”
“No. Yours is a girl’s scent, more flowery than mine.”
“That will be nice.” She shucked off her boots, pulled her thick belt through the loops and tossed it on her jacket. She unsnapped her jeans, yanked the zipper down, wiggled her hips as she tugged, and slid them off, kicking them in front of her.
I took a swig as I drank in her long legs.
She tucked the amulet under her T-shirt, then pulled the shirt over her head, exposing her creamy white stomach and the sharp contrast between her waist and hips. She looked at me as she reached behind her back and unhooked her bra. It slid off her shoulders and down her arms, and she let it fall on the pile. She slipped off her panties.
I have been alive for more than seven centuries, but I have never seen a body like Aliena’s. She’s a tall girl, but not thin, with heavy, upturned breasts and wide hips generously proportioned around a perfectly sculpted stomach. Her shoulders and arms are softly rounded and deceptively girly. Wide thighs extend from that wicked set of hips, giving way to dimpled knees and succulent calves. Long, beautiful fingers.
She tried to beguile me with her nudity, and she was doing a good job, but I wasn’t going to let her know that. It excited me that she was so casual about her nakedness, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. It was, but she had not been born during a time when that was the common belief. That made her an exceptional personality.
She also knew the effect her body had on men.
“Don’t forget we have a drought in Southern California,” I said, deliberately looking her in the eyes to prove I could do it. “Don’t take too long in there. We need to conserve water.”
“Sebastian!” She put her hands on her hips and leaned on one leg, causing her breasts to sway with a heavy, hypnotic movement. “First you tell me no seals, and now no water!”
“My, I am a pain, aren’t I?”
“That is not the word I was going to use.”
“Take as long as you like in the shower.”
“I intend to,” she said, stepping over her clothes. I set my bottle of vodka on the table. I held out my arms as she approached, but she shook her head.
“Oh, no, Mr. Restrictions, I don’t think so.”
She blew me a kiss and sashayed past, her bulging, divinely shaped buttocks almost indecent in their raw sexuality as she cruised down the hallway and into her room. The spray of the shower began. I heard the glass door slide open and shut. The patter of the water grew softer as Aliena stepped under the stream, and I couldn’t help but picture the droplets coursing her gleaming body as she tilted her head back and ran wet hands through her golden mane.
I cursed in Thai, Burmese, Persian, and Swahili, my pent-up desire consuming me.
I gathered her clothes, walked to the garage, and popped them in the washer.
When I returned to the living room, I opened the “Hamilton III” file, added the attack of Kanga’s spirits, my visit to Bey’s place (I used an anonymous name for him), and the search Marcus, Aliena, and I had made of Ka
nga’s residence.
Aliena’s thick belt lay next to me on the couch. There was a picture etched into the buckle. A man atop a high-kicking bronco held on for dear life. Underneath that was the legend “Can you finish the ride?” That sounded like a challenge. I tossed the strap on top of her jacket.
The DVD recording Kanga had left for me was the last thing to save to my computer. Then I powered the machine down and shredded the disk.
I finished the bottle of vodka, took the empty into the kitchen, tossed it in the recycle can, and grabbed a bottle of orange juice. Tequila sounded good, but I knew if I wanted a good-night kiss, I’d better not have Cazadores Blanco on my tongue.
With that in mind, I stepped into the guest bathroom, washed my face and hands, and brushed my teeth.
The bell on the washer dinged. After putting her clothes and a fabric softener sheet in the dryer, I set the machine to the hottest setting. Watching her squirm back into her jeans after I had shrunk them as much as possible would be an entertaining show.
After I was back in front of the fireplace, poking the logs around to keep the flames high, Aliena emerged from the hallway. She wore a long white robe and thick white slippers, and she had a white towel around the top of her head.
She stood next to me, holding her hands out toward the fire. Her skin shone rosy from the heat, and she smelled of vanilla soap and minty shampoo. She pulled the towel off and began drying her hair, her head tilted to one side. At this angle, I noticed her features as if for the first time. Widely spaced brown eyes, huge and lustrous. Small nose. Full, pouty lips. The luscious mole. And that thick mane of golden honey hair.
“You smell as wonderful as you look,” I said.
“Did I really stink?”
“Of course not. You hardly smell like anything at all. I just wanted to see you strip.”
“Do I really look that good?”
“You know you do.”
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