Blood Bound

I shook my head, fascinated.

"They all know about it. They're not going to put themselves at risk if they can help it. And if you screw it up all it does is piss ‘ em off more. Holy water's mostly out. You'd need a whole swimming pool full of holy water to kill one."

"So how would you kill a vampire permanently?"

She pursed her lips. "Fire's best. Stefan says they burn pretty well once they get started."

"Stefan told you all of this?" I tried to imagine the conversation.

She nodded. "Sure." She gave me a considering look. "Look, I don't know where he went, but I know he was keeping a sharp eye out on the local news and the papers. He had a map of the ‘Cities and he marked where there was violence. Yesterday he was pretty excited about something he'd noticed about the pattern."

"Do you have the map?" I asked.

"No. He took it with him. And he didn't show it to any of us."

I slid off the chair. "Thank you…"

"Rachel."

"Thank you, Rachel."

She nodded her head and then opened the fridge again, dismissing me. I walked to the front door slowly, but no one else appeared, so I let myself out.

Andre was waiting for me, sitting on the hood of his car. He jumped off and asked, "Did they know anything?"

I shrugged. "They didn't know where he was, but I found out how he decided where to look. Maybe it'll help."

I looked at Andre and wondered if Marsilia had left out the part about decapitating the staked vampire on purpose. It didn't take much thought for me to decide she had.

"How would you kill Littleton?" I asked him.

"Fire," he said promptly. "That's the easiest way. Staking works, but you have to decapitate them afterwards."

It didn't mean anything. From my question he'd have known I'd asked Stefan's people.

"That's not what Marsilia told me."

He gave me a faint smile. "If you just staked him, she could capture him, make him hers. There aren't a lot of vampires, Mercy, and it takes a long time to make them. If Daniel hadn't belonged to Stefan for so long, he'd have died permanently. Marsilia doesn't want to waste a vampire-especially not one who has all the powers of a demon at his touch. If he is hurt badly enough, there are ways of bringing him back under the control of a more powerful vampire, like Marsilia. He would make her position unassailable."

"So you intend to capture him?"

Andre shook his head. "I want the bastard dead. Permanently dead."

"Why is that?"

"I told you, Stefan and I, we have been friends for a very long time." He turned his face into the light that illuminated the driveway. "We have our differences, but it is… like family squabbling. I know this time Stefan was really angry, but he'd have gotten over it. Because of this sorcerer, I will never get the chance to make peace with him."

"You are so certain Stefan is gone?"

Stefan's VW Bus was parked off to the side of the garage, covered by a tarp to protect its unusual paint job. What kind of vampire drove an old bus painted like the Mystery Machine? Last Christmas I'd gotten him a life-sized Scooby Doo to ride in the passenger seat.

He must have heard the answer I wanted in my voice because he shook his head slowly at me. "Mercedes, it is difficult to keep a human captive. It is almost impossible to imprison a vampire. Stefan has ways… I don't think that he could be imprisoned-yet he has not come home. Yes, I think he is gone. I will do everything I can to see that this Littleton follows him."

They made too much sense, he and Adam. I had to believe that Stefan was gone-and Ben and the young vampire I'd only met the once were dead as well. If I wasn't going to cry in front of him, I had to leave really soon.

I glanced at my watch. "I have to be up in three hours." If I knew how long it was going to take us to find the sorcerer, I'd have had Zee take over the shop, but I couldn't afford to do that for more than a few days a month, not and keep up on the mortgage and food.

"Go home and go to bed." He took out a slim leather case and withdrew a card, handing it to me. "My cell number is on this. Call me tomorrow at dusk and we can discuss where to go from here."

I tucked the card in my back pocket. We'd stopped at the door to my car so I opened it and started to sit down when I thought of another question.

"Stefan said that Littleton was new. Does that mean there's another vampire controlling him?"

Andre inclined his head. "A new vampire is under the control of his maker." He gave me a smile that was faintly bitter. "It's not willing service. We all have to obey our maker."

"Even you?"

He gave a short, unhappy bow. "Even I. As we get older and accumulate power, though, the control diminishes. Or when our makers die."

"So Littleton is obeying another vampire?"

"If the vampire who made him isn't dead, he should have to obey him."

"Who was Stefan's maker?"

" Marsilia. But Stefan never had to play slave as the rest of us did." There was sheer envy in his voice as he said, "He was never a thrall. It happens sometimes, but such vampires are always killed upon their first rising. Any other vampire would have killed Stefan as soon as it was apparent that he wasn't under their control, but Marsilia was in love. He gave her an oath of obedience, though, and to my certain knowledge, he never broke it." He looked out at the night sky.

Abruptly, he shut my door. "Go home and go to sleep while you still can."

"Did Marsilia make you too?" I asked, turning the key in the ignition.

"Yes."

Damn it, I thought, this was so stupid. I didn't know anything about vampires and I was going to bring down one who had taken out two vampires and a pair of werewolves? I might as well shoot myself in the head right now. It would save time and effort.

"Good night, Andre," I told him and drove out of Stefan's driveway.

I was tired enough to sleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. I dreamed of Stefan's poor menagerie, doomed, if Rachel was to be believed, by Stefan's death. I dreamed of Stefan driving his bus with that silly stuffed Scooby Doo perched in the passenger seat. I dreamed he tried to tell me something but I couldn't hear it over the noise.

I rolled over and buried my head under the pillow but the noise continued. It wasn't my alarm. I could go back to sleep. I was tired enough that even dreaming of dead people was preferable to being awake. After all, Stefan was as dead and gone when I was awake as when I was sleeping.

It wasn't a really loud sound. If it had been less irregular, I think I could have ignored it.

Scritch. Scritch — scritch.

It was coming from my window near the bed. It sounded like the rosebush that had grown outside of the window of my mother's home in Portland. Sometimes it would brush against the house at night and scare me. I wasn't sixteen anymore. There was no one but me who could get up, go outside, and move whatever it was so I could go to sleep.

I pulled the pillow tighter over my ears. But there was no blocking the noise. Then I thought- Stefan?

In an instant I was fully awake. I threw the pillow on the floor, sat up in a rush, and turned to press my face up against the window and look out.

But there was someone's face already pressed up against the window. Someone who wasn't Stefan.

Gleaming iridescent eyes stared at me through the glass, not six inches from my own. I shrieked Samuel's name and jumped out of bed, away from the window. It wasn't until I was crouched and shaking in the center of my bedroom floor before I remembered that Samuel was still over at Adam's.

The face didn't move. He'd pressed so hard against the glass his nose and lips were distorted, though I had no trouble recognizing Littleton. He licked the glass, then tilted his head and made the sound that had drawn me from my sleep. His fang left a white mark as he scored the glass with it.