"He picked me up when I was running in coyote form, so he brought me clothes."
Samuel moved with the speed of a bora predator and put his hand behind my neck. I stood very still when he put his nose under my ear. I couldn't help but smell him also. How could his scent have as powerful an effect on me as Adam's smile? It was wrong.
"When you go with him," he growled, his body trembling with readiness or pain-I couldn't tell which because I could smell both, "I want you to remember this."
He kissed me. It was utterly serious, beautiful-and, given the rage in his eyes when he started, surprisingly gentle.
He backed away and gave me a small, pleased smile. "Don't look so worried, Mercy love."
"I'm not a broodmare," I told him, trying not to hyperventilate.
"No," he agreed. "I won't lie to you about how I feel. The thought of having children who won't die before they are born is powerful. But you should know that the wolf in me doesn't care about such things. He only wants you."
He left while I was still trying to come up with a reply. Not to his room, but all the way out of the house. I heard his car start up and purr away.
I sat down on the couch and hugged one of the pillows. I was trying so hard not to think about Samuel or Adam, that I had to think about something else. Something like hunting down Andre.
Marsilia told me that the reason vampires feared walkers was that we were resistant to vampire magics and could talk to ghosts.
But as Darryl had reminded me, ghosts avoid evil-like vampires. I might not be susceptible to some vampire magics, but evidently the magic that kept me from sniffing their lairs out worked just fine. Maybe the other walkers had been more powerful than me.
Medea jumped on the couch beside me.
Marsilia couldn't have meant something like the way I'd used Mrs. Hanna to find Littleton. That was a special case. Most ghosts aren't capable of communication.
There aren't many ghosts in the Tri- Cities, it is too newly settled for that. There weren't very many people here until WWII, when the efforts to develop a nuclear bomb spawned the Hanford Project. Despite, or maybe because of, the military cause of the cities' growth, the Tri-Cities didn't have a lot of violence in its past-and violent, senseless death was the main cause of ghosts.
Violent, senseless deaths happened at a vampire's menagerie.
I set the pillow down and Medea climbed into my lap.
I wasn't the only person who could see ghosts. There are lots of haunted places in Portland where I'd gone to high school-and normal, everyday people see them. Of course, most humans don't see them as well as I do, and then usually only at night. I never understood that. Ghosts are around in daytime as often as at night, though there are a lot of things that cannot bear the light of day.
Like vampires.
It couldn't be that easy.
The next day, after work, I went out looking for Andre on two feet instead of four. I wasn't sure that looking for ghosts would work. In the first place, ghosts aren't all that common. A thousand people could die in a battle and there might be no ghosts at all. And even if there were ghosts, there was no guarantee I'd see them-or figure out they were ghosts if I did. Some of the dead, like Mrs. Hanna, appeared as they had in life.
I was looking for a needle in a haystack, so I could kill Andre.
I understood it wouldn't be like killing Littleton — and that had been bad enough. Andre would be asleep and defenseless. Even if I managed to find him, I didn't know that I could actually execute him.
And if I did kill him, Marsilia's seethe would come after me.
At least then I wouldn't have to make a choice between Adam and Samuel. Every cloud has its silver lining.
I hunted every afternoon and returned just before dark. Samuel was making himself scarce, but he'd started leaving meals in the fridge for me. Sometimes take-out, but usually something he'd cooked. When he was home, he acted as if he'd never kissed me, never told me that he was still interested. I didn't know if that was reassuring or frightening. Samuel was a very patient hunter.
I took Adam to the movies on Saturday. He was very well behaved. Afterwards we drove out to the Hanford Reservation and ran as wolf and coyote through the open terrain. He didn't have Samuel's ability to throw off all his humanity and revel in the joy of being a wild thing. Instead, he played with the same intensity he used for everything else. Which meant that when I chased him, I wasn't really sure I wanted to catch him-and when he chased me, I felt like a rabbit.
We were both tired out when I dropped him off at his home before dinner. He didn't kiss me, but he gave me a look that was almost as good.
I didn't want to go home to Samuel after that look. So I drove back into Kennewick and just cruised around. Watching Adam play tamed beast had been… heart wrenching. Adam wasn't like Bran, who enjoyed role-playing. I didn't like myself very much for making Adam do it. Playing in the Reservation had been better, he hadn't subdued the wolf as well there.
I stopped at a stop sign in one of the plethora of new housing developments that had sprung up over the past few years, and there it was. Hollow eyed and sad, the middle-aged man stood on the porch of a respectable-looking house and stared at me.
I pulled the Rabbit over and parked it, and returned his stare. As I sat there, another one appeared beside him, this one an old woman. When the third ghost appeared, I got out of the car. The house was only a couple of years old: three people were a bit much for a normal household to lose in a couple of years-especially three people who had become ghosts rather than going on to the other side as most dead people do.
I took the backpack that held Zee's vampire-hunting kit and walked across the street. It was only as I started up the porch that I realized he'd have some people here, too. For some reason, I'd forgotten that I'd have to deal with the vampire's menagerie before I killed the vampire.
I rang the doorbell and did my best not to look at the ghosts, of which there were now significantly more than three: I could smell them even if I couldn't see them.
No one answered the door, though I could hear them inside. There was no smell of fear or anger, just unwashed bodies. When I turned the door knob, the door opened.
Inside the smell was bad. If vampires have almost as good a sense of smell as I do, I don't know how any vampire could have stayed here. But then vampires don't have to breathe.
I tried to use my nose to tell me whose house I was in. His scent was partially masked by the sour smell of sweat and death, so I couldn't be certain I had the right vampire, just that he was male.
The ghosts followed me. I could feel them brush up against me, pushing me onward as if they knew what I was here for and were determined to help. They pushed and pulled until I came to a doorway next to the bathroom on the main floor. It was narrower than the other doors, obviously built to be a linen closet. But, at the urging of my guides, I opened the door and was unsurprised to see a set of winding stairs that led down into a dark hole.
I have never been afraid of the dark. Even when I can't see, my nose and ears work pretty well to guide me. I'm not claustrophobic. Still, climbing down that hole was one of the hardest things I've ever done, because, even knowing he would be inactive during the day, the thought of trying to kill a vampire scared me silly.
I hadn't brought a flashlight. Hadn't expected to need one: it was daylight after all. There was a little light from the stairway. I could see that the room wasn't very big, just a little bigger than the average bathroom. And there was something, a bed or couch, stretched across the far side of the room.
I closed my eyes and counted a full minute, when I opened my eyes again, I could see a little better. It was a bed and the vampire on it wasn't Andre. His hair was lighter. The only blond male in the seethe who had his own menagerie was Wulfe, the Wizard. I had no quarrel with him.