Wlodek scanned the sheets. Charges for diapers. Charges for formula. A crib. Several other items that might be used for a baby and all charges made on Vilmos' card by his human companion. This was why he hadn't wanted to give her up. The Council had not received this information.
"Who was in charge of delivering the final warning to Vilmos?" Wlodek growled. He was about to drag a vampire in and have an interrogation. Charles cleared his throat again.
"Honored One, Radomir was sent to help Ian in Barcelona. Sebastian was the only one in the country so he took it."
"Did he bring a reply?"
"No, Honored One. He called and said the papers were delivered. We never received anything from Vilmos."
"How far back do these charges go?" Wlodek's eyes were beginning to go red.
"Nearly six months before, well," Charles hesitated, watching Wlodek. He didn't want to be present when Wlodek lost his temper. What Charles did know was that this had happened before. He'd done additional research, finding corresponding disappearances of children in nearly every city where Sebastian had been assigned for more than thirty days in the past ten years.
"Charles, I see you have other information," Wlodek growled and the growl was that of an animal. Charles handed the information over quickly and backed away. Wlodek's claws were a sight to behold as he sliced through a heavy oak bookcase as if it were tissue paper, flinging books and papers away from him as he did so. Several priceless volumes were ripped into halves or thirds with one sweep of his hand. Charles ran out of the study. Gavin sat still and watched as Wlodek destroyed nearly everything within reach.
* * *
Senator Duff and his two guards came in from a golf game at a nearby country club and checked in with the front desk for messages. "We have these," the young woman at the desk handed over several messages. "And a delivery service dropped off something for one of your party."
"Which one?" Senator Duff asked absently, leafing through his messages.
"Lissa Huston?" The desk clerk went over to peer at the label on the foam container. "It says perishable on the labels." Senator Duff's eyebrow lifted just a little. "The driver said to be sure and deliver it only to the recipient, but I was afraid it would ruin sitting down here and I didn't get any answer when I called her room."
"Oh, we'll take it," Senator Duff said casually. "I'll make sure she gets it." The girl lifted it; it was heavier than it looked. She hefted it onto the desk. One of the security guards picked it up and the three men walked toward the elevator. The Senator made sure there wasn't anyone around when he motioned for the guard to take the package into his own room before locking the door behind him. "Open it," he ordered and one of the guards drew a knife from his pocket and slit the security tape surrounding the container's lid.
* * *
Bill had gone with Tony for a late lunch down the street; there was an Italian place not far away and they stopped at the bookstore for a couple of magazines before making their way to the hotel. Tony and Bill were nearly silent as they walked down the carpeted hallway toward their room, interrupting Senator Duff as he was swiping a key card to get into Lissa's room. Duff's guards and an uncomfortable hotel employee stood behind him.
"What the fuck are you doing?" Tony growled. Bill had a hand on his gun, ready to take it from the shoulder holster.
"I'm just checking on Lissa; we couldn't get an answer when we called," Senator Duff backed up a little. "And I don't like that language."
"She's a night guard and sleeps during the day," Tony said, holding his hand out for the key card. Senator Duff refused to hand it over. One of the guards snickered and Tony turned to face him. "What's going on?" he demanded.
"I'm going to call the police," the hotel employee backed away when he saw Bill remove his gun from the holster.
"We outrank the police," Tony snarled. "Let's go back to your room, Senator. You're going to tell me what this is about."
"All right, but I think she's deceived you," the Senator huffed. "And after we talk about it, I'm sure you'll see things my way and we'll discuss what to do about the situation."
Tony was seething but had to deal with the hotel employee first. "You, what's your name and position!" he barked.
"Andrew Marshall and I'm an assistant manager," the man meekly replied.
"Well, Andrew Marshall, assistant manager, if you'll check your records—the ones your staff made when we checked in, it says under no circumstances should this guest be disturbed during the day. Now, would you care to tell me why you're trying to help the Senator break into her room?"
"I, uh, he said she might be in trouble, and I, uh," Andrew was babbling.
"Those same notes say to contact me first if there's any problem. Now, I've had my cell phone with me all day. Did you try to call?"
"Uh, no, sir. But since it's the Senator and all, well," Andrew ran out of words and excuses.
""Mr. Marshall, I know this is Senator Duff, but I am Anthony Hancock, Director of the Joint NSA and Homeland Security Office. I answer directly to the President and the Vice President and I can make the rest of your life a living hell. Is that what you want?" Andrew was backing up a little farther.
"No, sir." Andrew shook his head.
"Then get the hell back to your desk downstairs. I'll be talking to your manager later."
"Yessir." Andrew almost ran toward the elevator.
Tony ripped the key card from Duff's hand. "Bill," Tony nodded toward Duff and the security guards. Bill waved his nine millimeter a little and all three took off toward Senator Duff's room.
Tony wanted to tear Duff's head from his shoulders when he saw the open container on Duff's desk inside his suite. Bagged blood had been lifted out and scattered across the desk. Some of the bags were empty; the Senator had apparently flushed the contents before taking matters into his own hands.
"And just what were you planning to do?" Tony stared at Duff. Duff looked at one of his guards, who drew a stake from his inside jacket pocket and rushed Tony.
* * *
Lissa, are you awake? Tony was sending mindspeech the moment I took my first breath of the evening, and it took a moment to force my brain to function.
Tony, what do you want? I rolled over and moaned. I'm not really pleasant when I first wake.
Lissa, you need to come down to 714 right now. Don't take time to change or do anything else. Come now. Tony's mindspeech was terse.
All right, hold your horses, I rolled off the bed and rubbed my eyes, trying to get them to work. Grabbing my key card off the nightstand, I left the room and went down the hall to 714. I knew it was Duff's; I could smell him before I knocked on the door.
Bill let me in and the worst sight imaginable met my eyes. Tony had Duff and both his goons in chairs against the wall, threatening them with a gun. A roughly made wooden stake was on the bed and my foam container of blood was open with bags—full and empty—scattered everywhere.
"What the fuck did you do?" I glared at Duff accusingly.
"Lissa, he decided to take matters into his own hands," Tony scowled at Duff. "I hope you have a way to take care of all this."
"Fuck," I muttered and then narrowed my eyes at Duff. "Who did you tell?" I demanded, putting as much strength into the compulsion as I could. His mind was like dandelion fluff—his eyes went blank immediately.
"I c-called Admiral Hafer," he mumbled.
"Is that the only one?" I demanded, placing more compulsion.
"Y-yes." His teeth were chattering, I swear. Tony was the one to curse this time.
"So, you were just going to have your two goons here kill me—is that it?" I was eyeing the wooden stake on the bed. My eyes were probably red by that time; my fangs were certainly threatening to slip out.
"Yes," he nodded his head like a bobble-head doll. "You're the devil's spawn. We have a duty to destroy you."
"That's just perfect," I muttered, hugging myself. For a moment, I was at a loss as to what to do. Waking up to this sort of fias
co didn't sit well with my sluggish vampire brain. Eventually I realized we had to get rid of the evidence. Sighing, I finally spoke again to Duff and his guards. "Well, I think you three are going to sit there like good boys while we clean this mess up, aren't you?" They were all nodding at me, now.
The blood was warm and I almost wept over having to dump it. Bill had a knife, so we punctured the bags and let them drain into the commode before flushing it all. Tony got on the phone and called Ken White and Chris Townsend in D.C., asking them to track Admiral Hafer down and find out if he'd told anyone else. They knew what to do and promised to call Tony back as soon as they knew whether Hafer had passed the information along. When we had all the empty bags gathered up and stuffed inside the foam container, Bill took it to his room and left it so we could dispose of it later. I turned to the three idiots.
"You're going to forget what I am," I commanded. "You think I'm a nice girl and a good agent. You never saw any blood or picked up my package, do you hear?" They all nodded eagerly. Honestly, at that moment I just wanted to toss them through the large window in Duff's room and listen to their screams as they fell to the ground. As satisfying as that sounded, killing was always more complicated than that. And it would cause too much fuss. "You've been watching television all evening, haven't you?" I added. More nodding followed that statement.
Tony picked up the stake and shook it at Duff. "Where did that come from?" I asked pleasantly.
"A chair in my room," one of the goons answered.
"You accidentally broke it so you're going to tell the hotel staff about that and pay for it when you check out, aren't you?" I asked. He nodded. "Good," I said. "When we close the door behind us, you'll never remember we were here. Oh, and Senator Duff," I said with as much false congeniality as I could muster, "I'll be sure and tell Satan you said hello the next time I see him." Tony and I left, shutting the hotel room door and wiping the memory of our visit from the three men inside it.
"Fuckers," I said, walking angrily down the hall toward my room. I had two bags of blood left. That would cover three meals, provided I didn't need anything extra. We waited to call Merrill. I wanted to hear about Hafer first so I could give my surrogate sire the entire story. I should have had a headache over the whole thing, but it was my stomach that was clenching, telling me I needed to eat. Tony's cell rang; I listened in.
"The idiot went straight to the President," Ken White said over the phone. I held my head in my hands. The president knew now that vampires existed. I wanted to cry. "We caught him on his way out and the President is the only one he spoke with. Hafer apparently was demanding Lissa's services. Didn't seem to care what she was, he just wanted to use her. We disabused him of that notion. He thinks he had a pleasant chat with the Commander in Chief and then went home."
"Thanks, Ken." Tony heaved a sigh of relief and closed his phone. I was frowning at him and dressing at the same time.
"Lissa, don't get your panties in a bunch," Tony held out a hand while I buttoned my blouse. "The President had to approve the special unit to begin with. He knows." Tony looked a little rumpled himself—as if he'd tossed at least one of Duff's security goons into a wall or something.
"Fuck," I said for probably the tenth time that night. I went to the cooler, pulled out a bag of blood and drank, putting the rest back in and locking it before calling Merrill. I got his voicemail. I told him as much as I could before hanging up. Right then I wanted to huddle in a corner and feel sorry for myself. If Tony hadn't caught Senator Doofus in the act, I'd be a pile of ash. "Thanks for coming along at the right time," I muttered ungratefully to Tony. "I think I would like to be alone for a little while. Can I borrow a car?"
Tony has such nice gray eyes and they were assessing me and making some sort of decision before he pulled keys to the rental from his pocket and handed them over. "Don't get into trouble," was all he said as I walked out the door.
The cashier at the twenty-four hour grocery looked at me oddly when I purchased nine bunches of cellophane-wrapped roses in different colors, along with several other mixed bouquets. I'd pretty much cleaned out their little cooler of fresh flowers. There was only one sad little bunch of roses left and they looked a little wilted to me. I suppose spending over four hundred dollars at a grocery store for flowers wasn't something that happened every day. The cashier didn't say much, though. She just rang up my flowers and took the cash I handed her.
The trip out to Rose Hill Cemetery came next and I hoped the police wouldn't come by as I scattered flowers over Don's grave. "I really miss you, honey," I said and sat down heavily, the scent of roses thick in every breath I took. I did miss him. He'd been gone a little over fifteen months. He wasn't the handsomest man or the most romantic or the tallest or most well-built, but he'd been mine. Don never hit me, told me he loved me from time to time and was always there when I needed him. He'd worked as an accountant for a hospital; that's how we met. When the man who'd insisted he wasn't my father nearly killed me after he killed my mother, Don had volunteered to come to my hospital room. I'd gotten out of ICU after five weeks so Don talked to me about the insurance a little and suggested I get a lawyer, since my dad was in jail and I needed to settle things over my mother's expenses and everything. He even helped me look through the phone book and dialed the number of the attorney I'd picked out.
Don was a nice man. I know lots of women like the bad boys or the ones that are a little dangerous, but I'd had my fill of both. Don loved me, almost from the beginning when I still had purple bruises and facial fractures. Three months after I got out of the hospital, he called and asked if I'd like to go to dinner with him and I said yes. He was there the whole time I sat through Howard Graham's trial; that was the name listed as my father on my birth certificate, anyway. He'd never gotten out on bond; he had no close relatives willing to post it and I sure as hell wasn't going to do it. Howard Graham never asked to see me and I could still detect the blame in his eyes when he sat on the witness stand, trying to defend himself against the murder and attempted murder charges. If my mother did have an affair, I couldn't fault her. Howard Graham was an awful man, a drunk and a murderer too, when all was said and done.
Howard Graham received life in prison for killing my mother, even though the District Attorney asked for the death penalty. He'd died in prison, too. Not because he got into a fight, or some other prisoner took offense because he'd beaten his wife to death, but from a stroke. I was thirty-seven when I received the call—Howard Graham was in the prison infirmary. The doctor said he wasn't going to last long and asked if I wanted to see him before he passed. I said no. They buried him in the cemetery at the prison because I didn't claim the body. Don stood with me through that, too.
I was weeping before I even realized I was—my amber, blood serum tears dripping onto my hands as I sat beside Don's grave. Is it too much to ask for a private moment ever? My cell phone rang. It was Gavin.
"Hello?" My voice was a little thick when I answered.
"Lissa, where the fuck are you?" He was growling. I choked back a sob.
"I'm at my husband's grave," I tried to sound as normal as I could, wiping tears off my face with a shaking hand. If Gavin had been about to go on a rant, I think the wind had just been taken out of his sails. I found out that Merrill was with Gavin then, because he came on the line.
"Lissa, sweetheart, we're just a little upset that you were nearly killed and your blood supply compromised," he said. "Have they taken steps to ensure that this will not happen again?"
"I hope so," I sniffled. "I didn't want to guard this man to begin with but I was told I had to be professional about it all. He's such a creep, Merrill." I did sob, then.
"So, you decided to visit your husband's grave. Lissa, sometimes we forget that you have that trauma in your background," he sighed. "Is anyone with you?"
I figured I was going to get into trouble when I told them. "No. I wanted to be by myself for a little while."
Gavin was on the phone again.
"Lissa, you shouldn't be alone, cara. I know you are capable of taking care of yourself but you are upset and may not be watching properly. Please go back to your hotel soon. I will come with you next time and will watch over you as long as you wish to stay. Your new shipment of blood will arrive tomorrow. I suggest you tell the management at the hotel that the package is to be delivered to you or to Mr. Hancock only." I got the idea he was holding himself back. There was suppressed anger in his voice. Anger aimed not solely at me, perhaps, but with the people who'd placed me in my current circumstances.
"All right." I stood and talked while I walked toward the car. "I'm going back now," I said, closing the door of the car. I'm sure Gavin heard while I fastened my seat belt and started the car, putting it in gear.
"Cara, I am sorry that I cannot protect you at all times as you deserve," Gavin told me as I drove away from the cemetery.
"Honey, none of us have any guarantees," I told him. "No matter how well we're protected sometimes. I love you. I know it's near dawn where you are. Go to bed, Gavin." I ended the call and concentrated on driving.
Tony was asleep when I got back—he'd left the connecting door between our bedrooms open so I checked on him quietly. The desk clerk had compulsion placed now, along with the night manager. I'd told them not to hand over any deliveries addressed to me to anyone except Tony or me. It was entered in the computer already but I wanted to reconfirm. The last thing I did before taking up guard duty was done on a malicious whim. I misted beneath Senator Duff's door and replaced the blood I'd cried out with a little of his. The schmuck had a climax. I was happy to mess up his black silk pajamas though, and licked the bite marks until they disappeared. I'd placed compulsion at the beginning, making him believe it was a dream. I should have instructed him to have a nightmare instead.
* * *
"Look, we'll be leaving as soon as," Tony's voice halted when I walked through our connecting door the following evening. We were scheduled to go with Senator Duff, who had a speech to deliver to the Oklahoma Legislature. "We'll be on our way to the airport in ten minutes," Tony said, terminating the call. It was Thursday, April twenty-ninth, I recalled as I stared at Tony. He stared back. "I have your blood," he pointed to the foam container in the floor near his feet. "Get packed up quick. We need to be at the airport in the next forty minutes."
Blood Sense (Blood Destiny #3) Page 16