Sins of the Blood: A Vampire Novel

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

"She's pregnant." Ben yanked the woman beside him, as if he were afraid that Van would seduce her.

  Mikos tilted his head. "Yours?"

  "I wouldn't bring her here if it weren't."

  Van ran her hand over the woman's stomach. It was slightly mounded, but firm. The woman moaned at the touch. Van felt a faint stirring. It had been a long time since she took an innocent. "How do you know the child is yours?"

  "She told me."

  Van smiled. "Naive boy. She was yours when you disappeared. She probably just wanted you back."

  "Her body's different. She's pregnant." He had an eagerness that she didn't like. Mikos had explained the importance of children, then. She sighed. Ben responded too well to Mikos' power madness.

  Mikos was staring at Van with an intensity she hadn't seen in years. She turned away, keeping her hand on the woman's firm belly.

  "Yes," Van said. "The girl is pregnant. But there is no guarantee that it is yours."

  Ben's posture grew more rigid. He pulled the woman so close that she ran her hand along his ribs until he caught it with one of his own. "But there is. She's the reason I left home. I nearly killed her that night, and showed up here days later. When I first saw her in the bar two days ago, she didn't want to get near me. The memory was not pleasant, and it was not something she wanted to repeat."

  Van closed her eyes. Perfect candidate for a drug reaction. The woman would not hold on long. At some point her loathing would break through. "You almost drained her in the last twenty four hours."

  "I won't do it again." Ben clasped his hands together. His eyes were too bright. He obviously wanted this. "I've never had to be restrained before. I will be now."

  "Perhaps," Van said. "But that may not help. She may need to be drained to remain in her stupor. You do not know all the rules for hosts. Some never take to the experience. Some fight. She has the earmarks of a fighter, or she would not have been repulsed by you in the bar."

  Mikos approached the woman and took her away from Ben. He examined her eyes, then squeezed both of her breasts before taking off her shirt.

  "Hey," Ben said. "She's mine."

  Mikos ignored him. He examined her bite marks, the expanded veins on her breast, and the now-obvious roundness to her stomach.

  "Hey!" Ben said, reaching for Mikos. "Stop that."

  Van grabbed Ben's wrist. "You forget," she said. "We share."

  "She's pregnant," Ben said. Jealousy. It would harm the nest. The boy had no idea what he was playing with.

  "Yes. The sperm is lodged. Mikos will not change that." Van could not keep the contempt from her voice.

  Mikos touched the woman's breasts, then leaned over and licked the wounds on her neck without breaking the skin. The woman moaned and arched toward him.

  "She doesn't act like someone who'll break out," Ben said.

  "Shut up," Mikos said. He hefted a breast like it was a melon and weighed it in his hand. "She's breeding, and it's a hereditary, child of a hereditary. Such power we could have, Van."

  His movements were titillating. A pregnant woman's blood had a potency that no other being had. Van swallowed the saliva building in her mouth. "She cannot stay here," Van said. "It is too dangerous."

  "She'll need to be guarded by everyone. We need to hang on to this child," Ben said.

  "Aren't you strong enough to hold her?" Mikos asked. He stopped touching the woman. She grabbed his hand and tried to put it back on her body, but he shook away. "We will find you both a place."

  "No," Ben said. "I want her here."

  Van smiled. The young vampire wasn't as in control as he thought he was. He was trembling. "Are you afraid that you will drain her, virgin?"

  "I'm not a virgin," Ben said.

  "Anyone who cannot control himself is a virgin," Van said.

  "We will find you a place," Mikos repeated. "She is too new to stay here, and too precious to lose. Someone could drain her by accident, and then where would we be? By tomorrow night you will have a home of your own."

  Mikos circled around the table. Ben started to call after him, but Van tightened her grip on his arm.

  "He has made a decision, and it is best for the rest of us. Do not fight him," Van said, "or I will make sure that you get tossed out of here with nowhere to go at all. We do not need you. We now have a child we can raise to our own specifications."

  Ben shook himself free. Mikos had left the room. "The child is mine," Ben said. "Not ours, not the nest's. Mine." He grabbed Van's face. His fingers had a strength she didn't expect. Still, she didn't move. The bruises would disappear with her first feeding. "I will not forget this, Van. Someday, you will understand what an awful mistake you made."

  He pushed as he let go, probably hoping to make Van stumble backwards. She held her ground.

  "Come along, Candyce," he said. The woman followed, leaving her shirt on the floor where Mikos had tossed it. Her heavy breasts bobbed. Hereditary, child of an hereditary. They were powerful, out of control, and dangerous. Mikos may think one valuable, but Van didn't.

  She could stop this nonsense tonight, if she planned carefully enough.

  Chapter Twenty

  Cammie got lost as she drove into the south hills after dark. The winding roads followed no logical pattern and the houses were hidden by shrubbery. The darkness made her inability to judge spatial relationships even more acute. She turned on the wrong street time and time again. When she finally found the Sadlers' road, she was nearly fifteen minutes late.

  It had been a frustrating evening. Candyce's mother had no information, other than Candyce's word that she had reached Ben, and that they were going to meet. Candyce had been gone over twenty-four hours, and the police were not yet involved.

  Cammie didn't like the coincidence. Had the couple seen something that night? Had Candyce refused to discuss what happened? Or was she telling the truth? Had Ben hurt her and then disappeared? Why would someone whose life seemed so good go through the changes Ben had?

  Cammie had advised Mrs. Holloway to go to the police. Since Ben was missing, the police might take Candyce's case more seriously. Mrs. Holloway promised she would. Cammie agreed to meet her the next day.

  She still had the meeting with Ben's adopted father to get through. She had to circle once for a parking space—apparently this part of Eugene was very nine-to-five. Parking places that had seemed plentiful in the morning were non-existent now. Finally, she parked on the curbless hill half a block away.

  She got out of the car, and locked it. Her purse and briefcase seemed heavy as she walked up the slight incline. She had put her heels back on, but now she wished she hadn't. They would slow her down if she had to run. She didn't like walking in the dark—it made her feel vulnerable and wide open. But the neighborhood was silent, except for the blaring television coming from the house near her car, and had the illusion of safety.

  Two cars were parked in the Sadlers' driveway, sedans with different license plates that were, on inspection, both issued by the state of Oregon. The garage doors were closed. The porch light was on and the front door stood open. Only the screen door prevented unwanted visitors from just walking in.

  Voices floated across the lawn as Cammie approached. She knocked on the screen door. Its banging rattle stopped the conversation. Then she saw Mrs. Sadler. Her hair was brushed back and she had changed into dress slacks and a white blouse.

  "Sorry I'm late," Cammie said through the door. "I got lost."

  Mrs. Sadler smiled. "It happens a lot around here." She pulled open the screen door. "We're on the back porch."

  Even though the weather was warmer here than it was in the Midwest, it was still too cool, in Cammie's opinion, to sit outside. She followed Mrs. Sadler down the wide hallway decorated with pictures of Ben at various ages. Cammie longed for the chance to gaze at them. The old ones were the Ben she remembered, all pudgy cheeks and round eyes. The new ones only had glimpses of the little boy, mostly in the wide-eyed look that had faded by the time he posed for hi
s high school graduation photo.

  The hallway opened into a sitting/dining/kitchen area. The kitchen was spacious and modern, with a stove-top island and gleaming copper pots hanging above it. Mrs. Sadler led her through it to a room surrounded on three sides by floor-to-ceiling windows. The back porch.

  The furniture here was wicker, with blue and green flowered cushions. Four middle-aged men wearing jeans and dress shirts sat around the wicker table. A woman in a flowered caftan was sitting on the wooden slatted swing couch, and another woman wearing shorts and a tie-dye shirt sat in an overstuffed lounge. The third woman, whose jeans and striped dress shirt matched one of the men's outfits, stood with her back to Cammie, staring out the window.

  Cammie's entire body stiffened. She had come to interview Mr. Sadler, not greet a crowd.

  Mrs. Sadler noticed the change in the tension in Cammie. "I'm sorry, dear," Mrs. Sadler said. "A few of the others wanted to speak with you."

  The other couples were introduced as the Ellises, the Steins, and the Caldicotts. Katie Ellis was the woman standing in the window. She turned for the introduction. Her hair, once black, was now silver, although her face appeared young. She had a figure that Cammie associated with a mother—curved and rounded, not athletic and anxious like Mrs Sadler's.

  Cammie waited until the greetings were done. She made polite responses, and then turned to the only unidentified male in the room. "Mr. Sadler?"

  To her surprise, he stood. He was long and lean with a sun-weathered face and faded blue eyes. "Gary," he said. His voice had a twang that sounded half Texan and half Hollywood's idea of the Ozarks.

  "May I speak with you alone?"

  "Certainly." He picked up a stained and chipped mug that read WORLD'S GREATEST DAD, and followed her into the living room.

  He had to flick on a light switch from the hallway. In the light of two soft incandescents, the room lost its formal look. It actually felt like a place to grab a book, lie back and read until dawn.

  Cammie took the spot she had had in the morning, across from the love seat. Gary sat in the easy chair in front of the cold fireplace.

  "Did your wife describe our conversation this morning?" Cammie asked.

  "Yes," he said. His accent bothered her. She wished she could place it. "She said you took the letters."

  The couple seemed very concerned with solving the group's problems. Cammie found that odd as well. "What do you think happened to Ben?"

  Gary pulled a pipe from his pocket—surprising Cammie because the house did not smell of tobacco—and set it in his mouth. "I think he got himself in trouble." Gary's voice was low, as if he didn't want his wife to hear. He shook his head. "I just don't understand why he didn't come to me."

  "What kind of trouble?" Cammie asked.

  Gary pulled the pipe from his mouth. He made no motion to light it. "I don't know. I've always been a little worried about him." He glanced down the hall, then looked back at Cammie, apparently satisfied that no one was there. "He was always a bit off, you know? His mother never really knew. I made sure I always handled it."

  Cammie swallowed. "What kind of things?"

  "Fights in school. All boys do that, but not usually quite so violently. And he had girlfriend troubles. He played a little rough. More than once he and I talked about the way he should treat women." Gary half smiled, even though he did not appear to be amused. "It was sex. Something about sex triggered that response. Until then, he was the model of politeness. He and I had so many talks. He was as uncomfortable with it as I was."

  Cammie nodded. She didn't want to interrupt the flow.

  Gary ran a hand across his face. "I blamed it on the way he grew up. The adoption counselors told me what he went through, and they warned me that he might have difficulties."

  Cammie's entire body had turned cold. "What had he gone through?"

  "His father was a monster. They think he murdered the wife, beat the kids regularly—Ben was a mass of scars and bruises when we got him. I guess it got real bad one night, and the oldest girl killed the father rather messily, and in front of Ben. He used to have horrible nightmares. I would go in and turn on the light, and he would scream at me to turn it off, that it might wake Daddy, and so I got to the point where when he screamed, I would just go in and hold him." He pulled a pouch of tobacco out of his other pocket, filled the pipe and tapped it on the table. "I never told Donna any of this. She didn't need to know."

  Cammie was motionless. The shock of hearing her own past from someone else's lips made her feel weak. "What else didn't you tell your wife?"

  Gary put the pipe back in his mouth. He gazed out the window. Cammie followed his look. All she could see was their reflections in the glass. "When he was a little boy," Gary said, "he would get cut a lot, and lick the blood away. It worried me. His father was a vampire—that's how the Westrina Center got involved in the first place—and I was so afraid Ben would go down that road."

  —bloody finger in the baby's mouth. "He's mine now."

  Cammie closed her eyes against the memory. When she felt calm, she opened them again. "Did he?"

  Gary shook his head. "By the time he got into junior high, he seemed okay. Good grades, lots of friends. Even his raging tempers had faded. He had trouble with the girls for a while, but that faded in high school. College changed him, but it changes every kid. That extra measure of responsibility makes it tough for them. Then this thing with Candyce." Gary's voice trailed off. He got up, and went to the window, his back to Cammie. "I keep seeing her battered face over and over in my mind, and I remember waking up in the middle of the night, going to Ben when he screamed, and he would flail and kick and hit, and I wonder if it was just something innocent, like they fell asleep together and he had a bad dream, and hurt her before he woke up." He leaned his head against the glass. "I even asked her, but she said nothing. Nothing at all."

  He blocked his own reflection. Cammie saw hers, her face too pale, eyebrows creased into a frown. "She's missing, you know."

  Gary whirled. The movement was so sudden that Cammie leaned back in the couch as if she were expecting a blow. He was too far away to hit her. "Candyce?"

  Cammie nodded. "Her mother said she was going to meet Ben yesterday and she never came back."

  "Going to meet Ben—?" he repeated the words as if he didn't believe them. "Donna! Donna!"

  Mrs. Sadler came running into the room. She hadn't been that far away after all.

  "You got Candyce's mother's phone number?" he asked. "Candyce is missing."

  She shot Cammie a glance as if it were all her fault, then disappeared into the other room.

  Gary approached her, his tread heavy on the thick carpet. "Why didn't you say anything? This could be important."

  Cammie refused to shrink farther into the couch. "I thought you probably knew. Besides, Mrs. Holloway has already called the police."

  "The police." He set his pipe on the table. "The police aren't doing anything."

  "I've dialed!" Mrs. Sadler yelled from the other room. "Pick up."

  He went to the phone on the small writing desk and picked up. "Lita? Gary Sadler. I understand your daughter heard from Ben.…Yes, she's right here.…No, we haven't heard anything.…Where did she go meet him?…You're sure it was him?…She called him? How?…Steve. I had forgotten about Steve….No, you're right. When was she due back?…Well, maybe she and Ben just ran off together…" He held the phone away from his ear. Cammie could hear a shrill voice berating him. When it ceased, he put the phone back. "I know. But strange things happen. I mean, she called him…Oh." He put a hand over his face and sat down on the narrow desk chair. It bowed beneath his weight. "I had no idea. Why didn't you come to us?" He sighed. "Listen, we have some detectives we've hired. We can put them on this. We'll find them, whatever it takes." His entire body hunched over. Cammie gripped the side of the sofa. He was obviously getting more information than she had. "Look, Lita, I'm sorry all this happened. Let's hope there's a reasonable explanation.…Me t
oo. I'll be in touch soon."

  He hung up and didn't move. His wife's voice spoke lowly in the other room. She must have been listening on the extension. Cammie stood and walked over to the desk, leaning on the wall beside it. "All I learned was that she planned to meet Ben, and now she's missing. But Mrs. Holloway told you more, didn't she?"

  For a moment, Gary didn't move. When he did, his body was shaking. "She's pregnant," he said, his face ashen. "Candy's pregnant."

  Cammie closed her eyes, glad for the wall's support. The news made her feel hollow, light-headed, and she didn't know why. She took a deep breath to banish the light feeling. Then she opened her eyes. Gary was staring at the backs of his hands as if he had never seen them before.

  "She also told you how Cammie found Ben."

  He nodded. "Ben had a friend who moved to Portland during their last year of high school. He was the only one we never thought of, the only one we never mentioned to the detectives. Steve Henderson. I guess he knew where Ben was all along."

  "He's still in Portland?"

  "I guess so." Gary stood up. "I've got to call the detectives. Please, could you give me a minute?"

  Cammie nodded. She needed a moment to think herself. If she went back to the hotel now, she might be able to track Henderson. She picked up her briefcase just as Mrs. Sadler walked into the room.

  "You're not leaving yet, are you?" she asked. "We have a lot to discuss."

  No one else had come down the hall. Gary picked up the phone and shot an exasperated glance at his wife. Cammie felt the need to move as much as he did. She wanted to find Henderson before the detectives.

  "I've already contacted the Westrina Center about the letters," she said. "I hope to hear in a day or so. Then I'll meet with your friends."

  She hadn't planned to talk with them at all, but it might not hurt. Something was going on there too, and she didn't like it.

  "Ms. Timms—" Mrs. Sadler started.

  "Let her go," Gary said as he dialed. "She wants to find Ben as much as we do. Let her do her job."

  Even though his words were kind, Cammie felt that his desire to be rid of her was something more. She was an unknown quantity, someone who appeared from an organization that had given them no help in the past. He wanted to work with the detectives, whom he trusted, in private.