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

and murder. The woman who had died could have been a vampire. Char had felt her strength as she died and knew what a waste thewoman’s murder was. It was a tragedy on several levels. For one, the poor woman would now never have any chance to explore all she could have been. For another there was a vampire out there who would never be able to take her as companion. The strigoi community was too tiny to sustain many losses like that. A predator population should remain small, but . . .
    Char shook her head. She was letting herself sink into the comfortable security blanket of layers and layers of facts and data and analyses when she should act!
    Act on what? Do what? Char ran her fingers though her hair and wondered just what she was supposed to do. A mortal had died. It had felt funny—wrong—evil.
    But had it felt like a vampire was involved? Had it been Daniel? Would even a young vampire kill someone so gifted? Wouldn’t instinct have prevented him from destroying one of his own kind? Vampires didn’t kill each other. They had mortals and Enforcers for that. But would an abused kid in need of sustenance recognize a potential companion when he didn’t yet have the ability to focus on one lover? Maybe he had good reason to hate vampires. Or maybe he had the gene or whatever it was that turned normal vampires into Nighthawks.
    Had Daniel just killed a mortal without permission? Never mind explanations of why. If Daniel had committed the murder, Char’s job was to deal with it. If it had been a mortal that had killed the mortal woman, well, she would like to deal with it if there was time, but finding Daniel came first.
    But what if what she had felt out in the storm was magic?
    It wasn’t an if, she just didn’t want to believe she’d gotten hit in the face with a really ugly conjuration the minute she arrived back in town. Not that it had been aimed at her . . .
    But maybe it had. She blinked at her reflection. “Don’t be paranoid,” Char said to the mirror. “No one knew you were coming.” Except Helene Bourbon . “I never told her I’d go to Seattle. I just said I’d look into it.”
    She finished toweling off and walked into the bedroom. She’d left her suitcase in the car and had no intention of going out to get it now that she was warm and dry. She’d slept naked in this house before, she thought with a bittersweet pang. Fortunately, neither the bed nor any of the bedroom furniture was the same. Jimmy had done quite a thorough job of redecorating. It crossed Char’s mind for the first time, as she settled into bed a few moments before dawn, that maybe the vampire who had made her had been as devastated by losing her to the Law as she had been.
    Or maybe he’d just been bored.
    Which was a hell of a depressing thought to fall asleep on.
     
    “Good morning.”
    “It damn well better not be morning,” Haven answered as he came out of the bathroom, voice rough with sleep, mood as bad as usual. Worse. “Hell of a dream,” he said and took the coffee Santini cautiously held toward him. Weak stuff made in the little coffeemaker that came with the room, but fresh and hot. Haven took alook at the digital clock on the nightstand. It was morning, all right, but edging close to noon.
    He’d turned off the light around three A . M ., after having had one drink too many while reading more information on Danny boy and serial killers than he ever wanted to know. He’d been in prison, he’d heard talk, but crazy mass murderers were kept out of the general prison population. They didn’t stay out of his head when he closed his eyes last night, though. The details of the murders occurring in the Seattle area turned his hardened stomach and freaked his brain into a rare nightmare.
    The dream had been very real. He distinctly remembered hearing her voice, jumping out of bed, and running into the rain. He remembered standing on the sidewalk, a cold stream of water rushing over his bare feet, and staring up