Laws of the Blood 2: Partners by Susan Sizemore Read Free Book Online

should be no residue of them left in the condo at the top of a Capitol Hill street. She knew that there would be nothing familiar but the shape of the rooms, the view from the tiny balcony, the surrounding buildings.
    “The sky, the earth, the sea, and my memory of thee,” she quoted, but Char didn’t know what fool romantic poem or song she quoted from.
    Jimmy liked poetry and music. Loud music, sexy music, rhythm-section-driven guitar-hero rock and roll music. She’d tried to get him interested in classical music, but Jimmy said he’d been there when it was invented and it wasn’t classical to him. He also said Seattle stopped being fun when grunge caught on outside the local clubs, and he should have moved on when Pearl Jam got a big recording contract.
    Char knew that Seattle stopped being fun when Jimmy was no longer there. “But that’s all right. I’m not here for fun.” She had a job to do.
    The car pulled into the three-stall parking lot behind the old mansion that had been subdivided into a trio of condominiums without her feeling like she had any control over where the machine went. It was like it knew its way home even after so many years.
    Char turned off the engine and wiped her eyes. She knew she would not let herself cry anymore. She would run in out of the rain, go into the place that no longer had Jimmy’s magic attached to it, and she would unpack.
    “There’s no magic here,” she said. “Just a job.”
    After a good day’s sleep, she would start looking for Daniel. How hard could it be to sense the presence of a vampire in a town where no vampires were supposed to live?
    She got out of the car and looked down the hillside and up at the building, letting the rain and fierce wind pour and pound over her. She glanced up at the storm-split sky. Lots of lightning tonight.
    The cold and the wet and the lightning didn’t bother her. The weather was a strong, powerful thing, but it was natural and right. The storm was a part of the city. The magic all around, though . . .
    She’d been wrong about there not being any magic.
    Char felt the dark surge of it beneath the power of the storm. Not Jimmy’s kind of magic, oh no. Evil. Dark. Vicious and barely controlled. Someone somewhere was conjuring, preparing to channel—
    Char stepped out into the center of the alley behind the building. There was a low fence on one side of the alley overlooking a hillside garden. She looked over the fence and down toward the center of the city. It was so very dark in the heart of town. She was cold, but not from the weather. Her nerves strung out tautly, her mind and heart ached, but not with her own old, well-known pain. A new sorrow filled Char, and a fear that was beyond bearing but not her own rose to a pitch that nearly made her scream.
    She tried to tell herself that what she experienced was the residue of recent events in Seattle. That she was feeling the deaths of the strigoi Istvan had executed. ButChar knew what she sensed had nothing to do with her own kind. Or so she hoped, prayed. She hugged herself close and couldn’t help but mutter an old prayer learned in mortal childhood.
    It didn’t comfort her one little bit when the fear and agony rose up all around, exploded through her, and crashed down like all the water in Elliot Bay coming down like a tidal wave.
    Char clutched at the fence to keep from falling, but her hands slipped, and she went to her knees. It was not the blinding flash of nearby lightning or the crack of thunder immediately overhead that sent the worst shock through her. It was the sound of the woman crying out, “Help me!” as she died that sent Char over the edge into darkness, falling face first into the icy stream of water running down the alley.

Chapter 5
     
    “ M Y MOTHER ALWAYS said I’d end up in the gutter,” Char said when she came back to her senses and found herself lying on the ground in a freezing stream of water. Her mother had never actually said any such