Most of my kind burn out early, either by overtasking their systems or—far more often—by dying in a fight. I know of only one other dhampir as old as me, a batty Indian fakir who lives in the desert of Rajasthan, as far away from human habitation as he can get. It took me more than two months to find him the only time I’d bothered, and he didn’t have much useful advice to impart. He manages to keep a lid on things by meditating the centuries away, controlling his true nature by simply denying it any contact with possible prey. That really isn’t my style. I prefer the traditional method of letting my second nature out occasionally to hunt, providing that it kills only the undead. Or demons, or the occasional were, or pretty much anything that isn’t human. It’s messy, but it works, and it even led to my current job.
I soaped up my greasy hair and wondered if that was why I’d been tracked down. It seemed unlikely. If the Senate wanted someone dead, they sure as hell didn’t need to hire me to do it. They had plenty of their own muscle and an intelligence department second to none. One cut-rate assassin they could do without.
There was also the little matter that I had a habit of refusing assignments unless I knew the circumstances involved—all of them. I had promised myself to limit my sprees to those who, as the saying goes, needed killing. I figured that since it was my hand on the ax—or the stake or the rifle or whatever—it was up to me to be certain I didn’t take out someone who had merely irritated a local loan shark. But that nosiness, as the Senate would view it, would have put me off their list of hired talent even if the accident of my birth hadn’t already made me persona non grata in a big way. So my skills at the hunt were probably not what was needed here.
I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what else it could be, though. Occasionally I earned a few bucks checking the supernatural underground for people with problems that the human authorities couldn’t manage or even understand. But again, there was nothing I could offer that the Senate couldn’t do itself and probably far better. All things considered, I was stumped. Not that it mattered anyway. As soon as I got a few answers out of buffet boy, I was off hunting Michael. Whatever the Senate wanted, it could damn well come up with some other way to get it. And as for my host, he could drop dead. Again.
Chapter Two
“This is Louis-Cesare. I would appreciate it if you refrained from attacking him while under my roof.”
I had slipped back into the living room unannounced, but of course I’d been heard. I was relieved that at least they hadn’t smelled me coming—or not as easily as before—since I was clean for the first time in days. I was also wearing one of my host’s pristine white dress shirts over my blood-spattered jeans, which he refrained from commenting on, although he did tighten his lips somewhat. I grinned. It had probably cost as much as my rent for the month and it hung down to my knees, but I hadn’t had a great selection to choose from. The closet in his room had been almost bare, another good sign, since the guy is a clotheshorse. If he’d been near the New York shops for more than a few days, the place would’ve looked like an Armani boutique.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I told him, sauntering over to the bar and mixing myself a double. With my metabolism, alcohol burns off too fast for me to get drunk—one of the few perks of my condition. “Where’s the kid?”
“I’ve arranged for his care. He was taken away a few moments ago.”
I tightened my grip on the bottle and counted to ten. It wasn’t a record—he’d managed to get under my skin faster on previous occasions—but it was close. “I needed to talk to him,” I said carefully, turning around. “He was the only lead I had. You had no right to—”
“He retains his memories, for the moment,” I was told. “You can speak to him later if you must. For now, there are more important matters.”
I looked down at a crunching sound to see that I’d cracked the bottle. I set it carefully on the bar and ignored the single malt draining away over the dark wood. Five centuries of fighting for control, and it was all I could do not to smash the thing the rest of the way against his head. How did he do it? No one else caused me to reach boiling point this fast, at least not anymore. “I’d prefer to speak to him tonight,” I said evenly. “I’m in something of a hurry.”
I noticed that the redhead had closed in a little, as if he thought his buddy might need backup. I repressed a smile. At least I had his attention now.
“He has been heavily medicated, Dorina. He won’t be able to tell you anything for approximately eight hours. If you wished it otherwise, you might have mentioned the fact.”