Blood Bound

I started the car again and headed for Stefan's menagerie.

CHAPTER 11

There was a gleaming red Harley-Davidson motorcycle in the driveway that hadn't been there last night. I pulled in behind it and stopped my car. The poor old Rabbit looked out of place in such an upscale neighborhood.

I rang the doorbell and waited a long time. My mother had taught me to be polite and part of me felt guilty for disturbing them during a time when they were probably used to sleeping. Guilt didn't keep me from ringing the doorbell again.

It was Rachel who opened the door-and like me, she looked like she'd had a hard night. She wore a thin, bright yellow T-shirt that left a four inch gap between its hem and the top of her low-rise jeans. Her navel was pierced and the sapphire-colored stone in the ring twinkled when she moved. It drew my eye and I had to force myself to look at her face-which was sporting several blue bruises along her jaw that hadn't been there last night. Her upper arm bore a purple handprint where someone had grabbed her.

She didn't say anything, just let me look my fill as she did the same to me. Doubtless she saw the puffy skin and dark circles that showed my lack of sleep.

"I need more information," I told her.

She nodded and backed away from the door so I could come inside. As soon as I was in the house I could hear someone crying: a man. He sounded young and hopeless.

"What happened here?" I asked following her into the kitchen, the source of the sobs.

Naomi was sitting at the butcher-block counter, looking ten years older than she had last night. She was wearing the same conservative clothes-and they looked the worse for wear. She looked up briefly as we walked in, but then turned her attention back to the mug of coffee she was sipping with deliberate calm.

Neither she, nor Rachel, paid any attention to the young man curled up in the corner of the room, next to the sink. I couldn't see his face because he had his back to all of us. He was rocking, the rhythm of the motion interrupted by the infrequent sobs that made his shoulders jerk forward. He was muttering something just under his breath, and even my ears couldn't catch exactly what he said.

"Coffee?" asked Rachel, ignoring my question.

"No." The food I'd eaten was sitting like a lump in my stomach as it was. If I added coffee to it, I wasn't sure it would stay down.

She got down a mug for herself and poured some coffee out of an industrial-sized coffeemaker on the counter. It smelled good, French vanilla, I thought. The scent was soothing, better than the taste would have been. I pulled up a chair next to Naomi, the same one I'd used last night, and, glancing again at the man curled up in the corner I asked again, "What happened to you?"

Naomi looked at me and sneered. "Vampires. What happened to you?"

"Vampires," I replied. Naomi's sneer sat oddly on her face, and seemed out of character-but I didn't know her enough to be sure.

Rachel tugged a chair around so she was opposite Naomi and me. "Don't take it out on her. She's Stefan's friend, remember. Not one of them."

Naomi looked back at her cup and I realized that she wasn't calm at all, she was in that place beyond fear where nothing you do matters because the worst has already happened and there's nothing you can do about it. I recognized that look. It's an expression I see a lot around the werewolves.

It was Rachel who told me what had happened.

"When Stefan didn't come back yesterday morning, Joey-that's short for Josephine-decided to leave while she could." Rachel didn't drink her coffee, just turned her cup this way and that. "After you left, though, I heard her motorcycle in the driveway. Can't mistake the sound of Joey's hog." She moved her hands away from the mug and wiped them on her thighs. "I was stupid. I know better-especially after Daniel. But it was Joey…"

"Joey has been here the longest," Naomi said, when it became obvious Rachel was finished speaking. "She was bound to Stefan already."

She saw my puzzlement because she explained, "That means she's almost one of them already. Everything except the actual changeover. The longer they stay bound before they die, the better the chance they'll rise again. Stefan is patient, his people almost always rise because he waits for years longer than most vampires."

She was telling me all this so she wouldn't have to go on with the story.

"Daniel?"

She nodded. "He was bound, just barely. It doesn't happen to all of us-but Daniel was still too new for the changeover to be certain. It was a miracle he survived. Stefan was so angry." She took a sip of coffee and grimaced. "I hate cold coffee." She took another sip anyway. "Andre did it on purpose, you know. One of those stupid one-upmanship games. He was terribly jealous of Stefan because Marsilia favored him-and at the same time he loved Stefan like a brother. So when he was angry he attacked one of us instead. Vampires don't usually care too much about the sheep in

"What happened to Joey?" I asked.

"She's dead," Naomi told her coffee cup.

"Permanently dead," Rachel said. "I thought it was her on the motorcycle. She was wearing a helmet, and she doesn't let anyone, not even Stefan, touch the hog. When I finally realized the rider wasn't tall enough to be her, I tried to run back to the house."

"She grabbed your arm?" I suggested. It wasn't a difficult guess, with the armband of bruises she wore.

Rachel nodded. "And covered my mouth so I couldn't scream. About then, a car drove up-one of the seethe cars."

Like the one Andre had driven last night. I worked on them from time to time in lieu of making a cash payment to the seethe. All the businesses in the greater Tri-Cities who weren't affiliated with more powerful groups paid protection money to the vampires. That's how I first met Stefan. He had helped me negotiate my payment from cash (which I couldn't afford) to work-mostly on his van, as it turned out, though I did the upkeep on the seethe's cars as well. They were Mercedes and BMWs, big, black sedans with dark, dark windows-just what you'd expect a bunch of vampires to drive.

"They popped open the trunk-and I thought they were going to shove me in, but it was worse than that. They already had Joey in there." She jumped up abruptly and ran from the room. I heard her throwing up.

"They killed Joey, cut off her head so she wouldn't ever become one of them." Naomi spoke evenly, but had to set down her coffee so she wouldn't spill it. "They told Rachel that we were to stay inside this house until they decided what to do with us. They didn't have to kill Joey to deliver that message. They could just have brought her back here-or one of them could have brought her over, the way Andre brought over Daniel."

"Rachel said ‘she'. Was it Marsilia?" I asked.

Naomi shook her head. "It was the Teacher. Marsilia … Stefan was a favorite of hers. I don't think she'd have killed one of us."

"The Teacher?" I asked.

"Her real name is Estelle-she reminds me of an evil Mary Poppins."

I knew the one she meant.

"They all have names among themselves," she explained. "Stefan was the Soldier, Andre is the Courtier. Stefan said it had to do with an old suspicion that if you spoke evil's name, you drew its attention. Stefan didn't believe in it, but some of the older vampires won't use real names when they talk of others."

"So Estelle," I said her name deliberately, "went against Marsilia's wishes?"

"No. Well, probably, but not against her orders."

"I'm trying to understand how the seethe works," I told her. "That's why I came here."

Rachel came back in the room looking even more pale than she had before. "I thought you were looking for Stefan?"