High Bloods by John Farris Read Free Book Online Page B

steal your husband. I don’t think she slept with him either. They did go off together on an expedition. He admired—”
    “
Admired?
Worshipped her, you mean. He was utterly spellbound by her fame. As for the sexual relationship you deny—my husband may have been a weak man, but he was damned attractive.”
    “I think he just wanted to accomplish something worthwhile in his life.”
    “Pitiful,” she sneered. “Off on a jaunt, cavorting through jungles, hoping to discover—himself. I told him more than once. Only in relentless self-appraisal can one fashion character strong in purpose, touched by grace.”
    “On the other hand,” I said, “you just may drive yourself to drink.”
    She studied me, something heavy in each of her dark eyes, like unshed tears lethal as mercury. I had been momentarily pissed at Ida, but I relented.
    A fly buzzing near her unfinished painting distracted Ida. She swiped at it with her right hand, then began searching through a tall jar of brushes on her worktable.
    “I suppose the real hell of life is that everyone has his reasons,” she said. Quoting Jean Renoir.
    Before she could decide I wasn’t worth any more of her time I said to Ida, “Where’s Elena?” My pulses were racing.
    Her back was to me as she selected the brush she wanted. I couldn’t tell by her reflection in one of the tall orangerie windows if there was a change of expression. But she might already have had a premonition of why I’d come calling, and had prepared herself for the question.
    “How should I know? I suppose if she cared to see either of us she would have, years ago.”
    “Bullshit, Ida. Elena was here. Around sunrise. Maybe she called you first. You know I can find out. But she also came tosee me. I wasn’t home. She gave my houseguest a good scare. Elena’s spoor was all over my bedroom, in the garden, right up to the wall between our properties.”
    Ida turned to glare at me.
    “Sorry,” I said.” ‘Spoor’ is Wolfer talk. I should’ve used a different terminology. Still, what Elena left behind was as obvious to me as my own face in the mirror. Her specific energy pattern. Vibes. You know.”
    “More of your vaunted ‘Sixth Sense’?” she said, with an attempt at a sneer.
    “It’s nothing that all other human beings don’t have. I’m just better able to tune in to the electrical fields connecting living minds. Or dead ones, in some cases. The newly dead.”
    Having selected the brush she wanted, Ida changed her mind about going back to work and put down her palette.
    “There are seven gateways into Beverly Hills,” I reminded her. “They’re all monitored. Profilers, Snitch readers. Even though Lenie’s not a registered Lycan, I won’t have to go to any trouble to learn where she came in and what name she’s using. So stop stalling me.”
    Ida crossed bare arms over her fin de siècle painter’s smock, as if in response to an inner Arctic chill.
    “I hadn’t seen her for many months. She always—she shows up unannounced. Fugitive. A little frightened.”
    She
was
a fugitive. As are all rogue werewolves. But I didn’t press the point with Ida, because I’d seen a moment of anguish spark in her desolate eyes, grief for a once-beloved child.
    “Elena was alone?”
    “No. She came with two—friends, I presume. On motorcycles. Bikers, is that what they’re called? They wore identical jackets, a lot of silver around their necks, piled on their wrists.”
    “Were they Diamondbackers?”
    “I wouldn’t know. The dogs didn’t like them. They kept their distance while Elena and I—Diamondbacker?”
    “For the snakeskin tats they all have on their backs.”
    “Is that a club, or something more sinister?”
    “They’re the worst. Since all drugs were legalized they’ve made their livings by snatching celebrity Lycans for ransom. Or else they’re werewolf killers, claiming the fat bounties some High Bloods are willing to post.”
    “I wouldn’t know about