“Dennis is dead? I can’t believe it!” Sunni paced the length of the living room in the LaForge mansion, where Isabel was lying stretched out on a couch under a blanket. Her face looked ravaged, pale and blotchy, with patches of red scales. Tears ran unchecked down her face and neck into her diminished cleavage. Sunni’s face was dry, but her stability felt as fragile as eggshells.
“I know. I can’t believe it either.” Isabel said. Her voice had no affect. Her eyes were blank, staring at the cold fireplace.
“He had a heart attack, just like that? He was healthy as an ox!” Sunni circled the couch and walked back to the grand piano. Its strings echoed faintly from the tapping of her shoes on the uncarpeted floor. “You’re going to have an autopsy, right, Isabel?”
“Oh, Sunni, how could you ask that?” Isabel asked, reaching for the box of tissues at her right hand.
“Yes, Sunni, that’s a bit ghoulish, don’t you think?”
Richard’s voice was as cool as ever, with a faint hint of amusement that Sunni was sure only she could detect. She refused to look in his direction, where he was ensconced in a high-backed wing chair drawn up to the fireplace, looking every bit the lord of the manor.
She turned to the only other person in the room. Alastair Black, the family’s lawyer, stood behind the couch, dressed in a dark suit and red club tie, holding a large burgundy leather briefcase which no doubt contained papers he hoped to share with his client if she was ever in any state to pay attention. He gazed at Isabel with a mixture of sympathy and alarm. Sunni remembered from the days following Gloria LaForge’s funeral that Alastair was a genteel Englishman of the old school, much disturbed by open displays of emotion.
“Alastair,” Sunni said sharply, “don’t you think there should be an autopsy?”
“Well,” Alastair said, his voice pitched high, “I don’t quite see the purpose, Ms. Marquette.”
“To determine if there was any foul play.”
He fluttered his fingers in the air. “Foul play, oh dear, whatever do you mean?”
“Foul play?” Isabel turned toward her husband, her eyes widening, as a bit of comprehension sank in.
“Can’t you see you’re upsetting her?” Richard said. He had a small round table in front of him, with tea steeping in a china pot and a plate full of crustless sandwiches. “Would you like a cup of tea, Alastair?”
“Yes, indeed, a cup of tea would be just the thing. Don’t you think we should all take a cup of tea? And perhaps refrain from using such incendiary language?” Alastair walked toward the table, clutching his briefcase like a shield in front of his chest.
“Please, sit down.” Richard indicated the chair opposite him. “Sunni, why don’t you sit as well? You’re making Isabel anxious, and in her state of health this is not a good idea.”
“I prefer to stand. ”
“Very well.” Richard handed Alastair a teacup balanced on a delicate china saucer, which forced the lawyer to place his briefcase on the floor. “So, have you brought the will with you?”
“I have indeed. “ Alastair waved toward his briefcase. “Shall I read it? It concerns you all.”
“I can’t listen to this.” Isabel put her hands over her ears.
“I don’t think this is the right time, Alastair,” Sunni said.
“Very well.” Alastair blew on his tea and then took a sip. “I understand the delicacy of the situation, but Dennis wanted this dispatched as soon as possible.”
An alarm rang on Isabel’s watch. “I need my pills,” she said.
“I’ll go,” Sunni replied, happy to have an excuse to leave Richard’s presence.
She walked up the wide, curving staircase to the second floor, her mind racing. When she opened Isabel’s bedroom door she screamed.
Richard was sitting on the bed. He chuckled at Sunni’s shock. “Surely you’re not still surprised at vampiric abilities, my dear? I imagine you have prodigious powers yourself by now, thanks to Jacob Eddington. Although if a poorer teacher could be found anywhere on the continent, I’m not sure who it would be.” He flicked an invisible speck of dust off his trousers. “He was a failure as a man and he’s a failure as a vampire.”
“How could you have done it?” Sunni spoke through gritted teeth.
“Why, Dennis tried to kill me, Sunrise, before the wedding. This was pure self-defense, I assure you.” Richard plumped one of Isabel’s pillows and leaned back.
“Self-defense? He was nowhere near you.”
He waved a dismissive hand. “You know what I mean. He tried to kill me by proxy.” He narrowed his eyes at her. “Did you have a hand in that, by the way?”
Sunni didn’t answer. She went into the bathroom and put Isabel’s pillbox in her pocket. When she came out Richard was lying comfortably on Isabel’s bed.
“By the way, why are you resorting to such weak alternatives when you have vampires at your disposal?”
Sunni tried not to betray any emotion, but at the mention of her missing lover’s name she felt her lower lip begin to quiver. She turned away, but not before Richard smiled triumphantly.
“He’s run away, hasn’t he?” He smacked his knee. “I always knew he was a coward.”
Sunni clenched her fists as white hot anger washed through her. “How dare you? He didn’t run away, he would never do that.” Her hand slowly slid to her mouth as she realized that she had said far too much.
Richard smiled with smug satisfaction at the success of his gambit. “So the Council has taken him away, have they? And you are all alone again.”
Gulping back tears, Sunni forced herself to meet Richard’s eyes. “Are you ready yet, Sunrise? To join me freely?” He smiled insinuatingly. “You see how Isabel looks. She doesn’t have a lot more time, I’m afraid. Maybe only long enough for me to move her money into some offshore accounts.”
Sunni’s knees felt weak. She clutched the door handle so as not to fall down.
Richard sat up. “Don’t think of it as a defeat. Think of what I could teach you, what I could do for you. Haven’t you always wanted to understand what you are?”
“Yes.” This question, at least, she was able to answer honestly.
“So come with me. And I will let Isabel live.”
Sunni forced herself to walk over and sit down next to him. “All right,” she said. “You win. I just need a little time to get my affairs in order.”
“Twenty-four hours, that’s as long as I can wait. Let’s seal it with a kiss.”
He leaned closer. Sunni closed her eyes. His cold lips pressed against hers. The kiss was chaste, but it was a tribute to the power of the vampire that Sunni found herself responding. She despised Richard Lazarus more than any being she had ever encountered, and yet she kissed him back.
∗ ∗ ∗
Sunni had to wait until Monday morning to find a locksmith, but by nine A.M. she was standing outside the door of Jacob’s apartment with a man wearing coveralls and a utility belt. He inserted two long metal rods into the lock and jiggled them. Within a few seconds the door popped open and Sunni was looking into Jacob’s Spartan living room.
“Great,” Sunni said. “How much do I owe you?”
The locksmith raised an eyebrow. “I’ll need to see some ID to confirm that you live here.”
Sunni felt the sweat bead up along her hairline. She reached into her purse, but as she did so she fixed the locksmith—a large, middle-aged man with a florid complexion—with a steely stare. She concentrated with all her might on his protuberant blue eyes.
“You don’t need to see any ID,” she said, trying to emulate the compelling voice Jacob had used when he attempted to glamour her.
The locksmith sneezed and then rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. “You might be right about that. A three hundred dollar ‘deposit’ would probably do the trick. ”
Sunni’s hands shook as she pulled out her wallet. Luckily she always carried at least five hundred dollars in cash, in case of earthquakes and other emergencies. The locksmith slipped the money into the breast pocket of his coveralls, winked at her, and ambled away down the hall.
She quickly closed the door behind her and leaned against it, breathing hard. Once her heartbeat had calmed down she continued into the living room. Everything was just as Jacob had left it, which didn’t surprise her. He certainly hadn’t been planning on leaving town, judging by the way the other men had hustled him out of the wedding. She looked around, taking in the empty galley kitchen, the black leather sofa, and the pile of books on the coffee table. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for, but there didn’t seem to be much to find.
She made her way into the apartment’s lone bedroom. It was completely empty, with dust bunnies gathering in the corners of the wood floor. She pulled open the closet door. Inside was a mattress, covered neatly with a single blanket. There was adhesive weather-stripping attached around the doorframe. She stepped onto the mattress, pulled the door closed and was plunged into complete darkness. Jacob had told her that he didn’t need to sleep, and she knew that sunshine didn’t affect him, so why did he have a light-protected sleeping chamber?
She lay down on the mattress and curled into the fetal position. The room was a sensory deprivation tank. Suddenly she understood why he had created it. If she were going to live for an indefinite period of time with no hiatus, no relief from the constant assaults of everyday life, she would probably have made such a space for herself. Even in the few minutes that she lay there she found herself growing calmer, a little more detached from the desperate clamor that had been raging inside her since Richard turned her life upside down.
With her nose pressed against the blanket she smelled the delicate pine and snow fragrance that was Jacob’s unique signature. It was so faint it would be undetectable to anyone with normal senses, but it overwhelmed her. She closed her eyes and breathed in until her olfactory glands became exhausted. Then she opened her eyes and found that she could now see in the darkness. In the corner was a business card, which she snatched up and read. It bore a single name, Scipio, and a phone number with an international prefix. Sunni jumped up and ran to get her purse.
Reasoning that it would be quicker to walk than to try to find a parking space in North Beach, Sunni plunged out onto the street to make the approximately one and a half mile walk to Caffe Rosso, where the man named Scipio had said that he would meet her. She crossed Market Street, checking the time on the Ferry Building clock and dodging the crowds of office workers to emerge onto Stockton Street. Her route took her through the heart of Chinatown, so she deliberately stopped at the Golden Dragon to see if the CLOSED sign was still on the door. Unfortunately, it was.
The buffer zone between Chinatown and North Beach was the red light district on Broadway, relatively empty on a Monday morning, but for taxis and men washing the sidewalk with power hoses. She passed City Lights bookstore, not even pausing to look in the window, although normally she would never pass the city landmark without going in and buying something. North Beach was a tidy, compact neighborhood, full of cafés, restaurants, and small apartment buildings. Sunni easily found Café Rosso on the corner of Columbus and Green Street, a glass-enclosed box with a smoking porch out front and no fewer than three Italian flags fluttering in the soft breeze.
She stepped inside. The air was filled with opera and the hissing sound of the espresso machines. Three of the dozen round tables in the café were occupied, all by pairs of men, which would have made it more difficult to ascertain which of them was her quarry, but for the fact that one of the men was Enzo Rizzoli, the vampire who had dealt her the beating of her life. He smiled cheerily and waved a be-ringed hand.
Sunni approached the table. The other man was in his fifties, or had been when he became a vampire. He had a round, intelligent face framed by short gray hair and eyes that were damaged in some strange way that made them both hard to look at and difficult to ignore. He stood up and kissed Sunni’s hand with practiced grace and Sunni immediately sensed that she had found the man who had taken Jacob. One chance, one business card in Jacob’s apartment, and she’d hit the bull’s-eye. Enzo reached for her hand after Scipio released it, but she ignored him.
“It is indeed a pleasure to meet you after all these years, Ms. Marquette,” Scipio said. He snapped his fingers at the teenager behind the huge espresso machine. “May I offer you an espresso, perhaps a cappuccino?”
Sunni decided that her favorite espresso beverage, the caramel macchiato, was probably not on the menu at such a venerable establishment, indeed such an order might get her kicked out if she wasn’t sitting with two Italian men who were obviously very familiar with the café.
“I’ll have a cappuccino.”
The teenager behind the counter nodded and began toweling off the milk-steaming tube. Scipio sat back down and crossed his legs. He smiled at Sunni politely. Despite the film over his eyes it was obvious that he could see perfectly.
“I’ll get right to the point, Mr. Scipio,” she began.
“Scipio, just Scipio. Like Socrates and Herodotus.”
Sunni suddenly had the feeling that she’d fallen headfirst into a Godfather film. She was in North Beach, the ancestral home of the creator of those movies, and she was sitting in an authentic Italian café with a patriarch and his elaborately dressed henchman, about to request the return of her lover, the man whom they had kidnapped. The only difference from the movies was that these men were all vampires. The thought would have been funny if it wasn’t so terrifying.
“I want to know what happened to Jacob Eddington,” she said, and then shook her head. “Actually, I just want him back.”
Scipio raised his eyebrows. Enzo lifted his hands in a questioning gesture. “We’re not sure we know what you’re talking about,” Enzo said.
Sunni smacked her hand on the table. “Cut the bullshit. I saw you take him at Isabel’s wedding.”
“I thought they were cloaked,” Scipio snapped.
“She’s a dhampir,” Enzo replied, “she can see through that.”
The teenager came around the counter and deposited the cappuccino in front of Sunni. It had a twist of lemon and an almond biscotti cookie on the saucer. As her mouth watered, Sunni realized she couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten anything. Despite the beautiful food at Isabel and Richard’s reception she’d been too upset to eat a single bite. She dipped the biscotti in the coffee and let the crumbly cookie dissolve on her tongue.
Scipio sighed. “All right, yes, we took him. Jacob Eddington is currently incarcerated.”
“Where is he? ”
“That is not for you to know, I’m afraid.”
“Is he hurt?”
The gray-haired vampire shook his head.
“When will you let him out?”
“Not for a long time, I’m afraid.” Scipio gazed out the window. Sunni followed his eyes, seeing only the usual crowds hurrying along the sidewalk. “He has broken some of our most fundamental laws.”
“You mean about me, right? Because he trained me?”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
Sunni looked at Enzo, her eyes blazing, and was rewarded when Enzo’s smug expression changed to a fearful one. So Enzo’s boss didn’t know he’d been with Sunni and Jacob at Fort Point, that for a while, at least, he’d participated in Sunni’s training. Before he’d decided to kill her, anyway. Sunni opened her mouth to say something and then realized that if both Enzo and Jacob were alive, then this handsome young vampire must have been somehow complicit in Jacob’s plans. She let her mouth drift closed and Enzo breathed a tiny sigh of relief.
“Why do you have such laws? They’re ridiculous, don’t you see?”
Scipio looked at her in confusion.
“You all seem to pride yourselves on having such a civilized society, bound by honor and morals and so on. And yet dhampirs are part of your community, aren’t they? Just as much as someone who’s half Asian and half Caucasian, for example, is part of this society? ”
Scipio toyed with his espresso cup. “Yes, but unlike your example, dhampirs are illegal in our society. ”
“That’s like miscegenation in America, when it was illegal for people of different races to marry. So in that case making half-breed humans was illegal. It’s so backward, Scipio, don’t you see that?”
Scipio was silent.
Sunni put both hands on the table and leaned closer to the two vampires. “What are you all really afraid of?”
Enzo chewed his lovely lower lip, staring at the table. Finally he looked up. “Dhampirs are more powerful than we are, in some ways.”
“Enzo, be quiet,” Scipio hissed.
The younger vampire shook his head. “It’s not illegal to tell her the truth, mio amico.” He turned back to Sunni. “We are afraid that if too many dhampirs are made they might band together and destroy us.”
“They will only destroy you if they feel they have no other choice. If you make them part of society, welcome them in, they will have no reason to hate you.” She paused and looked down at the table. “We will have no reason to hate you.”
The soprano on the café’s stereo system hit a glass-shattering high note and held it for an amazingly long time. Scipio waited until the note had died away before he nodded slowly. “I see your point, young lady.”
“How are dhampirs made, anyway?” Sunni asked. She blushed then, and rephrased her question. “I mean, can any vampire and any human make a dhampir?”
Scipio shook his head. “Any human can be made into a vampire, by sucking their blood to the point of death and introducing vampire blood into their system. This is the equivalent of injecting a virus into the human. But for a vampire and human to create a dhampir by sexual union, the human must have a specific gene, otherwise the sperm will not implant in the egg. The gene, as I understand from our scientists, is quite rare.”
“So this fear you have that we are going to overrun you is baseless, right?”
Scipio and Enzo looked at each other, and then back to Sunni. Neither of them seemed to know what to say.
Sunni drank her cappuccino in one gulp. It warmed her throat on the way down. “But let’s get back to why I’m here. How can I get Jacob back?”
Scipio pushed his chair back and stood up. He seemed finally tired of listening to Sunni’s rant. “You can’t.” He turned to Enzo. “Pay the bill. I’ll be in the car.”
Enzo watched his boss leave and then pulled out his wallet and began counting bills. Sunni put her hand on his arm. “Will you help me, Enzo?”
He pulled his arm away, shaking his head roughly. “I’ve already done too much.”
“You have the wrong person, don’t you see?” Two old men at a nearby table turned to stare at her and she realized she was shouting. She lowered her voice. “Richard Lazarus is the one who should be in jail, not Jacob. Richard killed my foster father, for God’s sake. He’s probably going to kill my best friend.”
Enzo’s face sagged. “I am sorry, bella dona. But killing humans is not illegal. What he has done is ill advised, but not illegal.” He touched her cheek lightly. “You are very strong, Sunni. If you can kill Richard, we would all be grateful, I assure you.”
His finger traced the line of her chin. Although Sunni tried to ignore it she felt a fluttering in her stomach. Damn these vampires and their sex appeal, she thought, as she stepped away.
“Grateful enough to let Jacob go?”
“That is not for me to say, but I have lived long enough to know that the future contains infinite possibilities.”
Sunni snorted. “Thanks. Philosophy is just what I need right now.”
∗ ∗ ∗
The twenty-four hours was up and Richard was sitting in her living room. Sunni tested the knives in her kitchen, sliding the blades across her fingertips until they were crisscrossed with ribbons of blood. None of them seemed sharp enough, nor did she know whether they would even be efficacious against a vampire, since she had pushed Jacob away before they’d gotten to the weapons portion of her training.
She had spent the rest of the time fruitlessly searching for Jacob, Sherman, and Delia. She searched Jacob’s apartment again, and wandered the area around Fort Point looking for clues. She’d Googled “vampires in San Francisco” and telephoned some of the people she discovered on the Web, only to find that they were clueless wannabes who had no idea what a real vampire was. She’d visited Sherman and Delia’s apartment both at night and during the day, always finding it dark and locked. At the Golden Dragon she’d found nothing but disappointed customers milling around on the sidewalk, amazed that a restaurant that had been open seven days a week since 1927 was taking a vacation. There was nothing else she could do but trust that the vampire lore about dhampirs was true, and that she had enough power to kill Richard herself. Sunni poured herself a glass of wine and went back into the living room without a weapon.
Richard looked as relaxed as ever, legs crossed, one arm tossed over the back of the couch. He was dressed in one of his usual tweed suits, but instead of a vest and tie, he wore a cashmere sweater and an open-collared shirt. He stood when she entered the room, giving her a formal little bow before sitting down again.
She took a big gulp of wine and then placed it on a side table. Now that he was here she had no idea what to do. The only example she had was from television shows, where vampire hunters suddenly start kung fu chopping their enemies, breaking windows and destroying every stick of furniture in the process.
“Are you ready? “ the vampire asked. “Have you packed your bags?”
“Yes, I’m ready. But not to go with you,” Sunni replied. She put down the glass and squeezed her hands into fists, trying to bring on the change that she had felt on the bridge, the rush of adrenaline that would give her the power she needed, but felt nothing but panic.
He peered at her suspiciously. “What are you doing?”
Sunni launched herself at him. In the second that she was aloft Sunni felt the change, so when Richard moved toward her she was ready. She could see every molecule of Richard’s being. Time slowed so that she could prepare for the impact of their bodies in the air. As he met her she grabbed his lapels, holding him inches from her as they both hit the ground.
He grabbed her hair and smashed her head against the floor. Blood welled up in her mouth from her bitten tongue, but she felt no pain. She freed one leg and kicked him in the stomach, knocking him off her and to the side. She leaped up and grabbed a lamp, intending to crush his skull with it, but while her arms were raised he tackled her. She fell again, this time into the glass coffee table. It shattered against her back and she fell into a curtain of razor-sharp shards. She tried to sit up but he was already on her, grinding her back and head into the glass. This time she felt pain, a great deal of it.
“I’m very disappointed in you,” Richard grunted, his face against her neck. “You are not living up to your potential, not at all. I’m afraid I shall have to kill you now. ”
She closed her eyes, trying to find her way back to her place of power, when she felt his jaw clamp onto her neck with the force of a hammer blow. She felt both fangs as they descended, sharp as needles. She screamed and thrashed, but she was pinned to the floor. Her blood rushed traitorously through her veins, offering itself to Richard, strengthening her enemy as it simultaneously weakened her. What came to her mind then, as her heartbeat faltered and her life began to ebb, was Jacob. A simple, unbearable thought, that they would never repair the rift that existed between them. It couldn’t end like that. She had to live. They had to see each other again, at least once, to make things right.
Jacob lay on the dirt floor of his cell, one floor below the Council chamber and two floors below the Palace of Fine Arts. The only sounds were his breath, and the steady dripping of water from the pond far above him. There was no source of light. Jacob could have seen if he wanted to, but he had already ascertained that there was no way out. The bars were reinforced titanium, far too strong for one vampire to break. He could dig, but he was two stories underground. Whatever was going to happen between Sunni and Richard would be long done by the time his mole act could be completed.
He had already lost track of time. Many years ago, during the War, he had been imprisoned by the British, and he’d kept a rough track of the days by the length of his beard and fingernails. Unfortunately he no longer had those quotidian markers to go by. So he lay on his back and drifted, waiting for someone to come by and check on him, so that he could at least attempt to overpower them and escape. But no one had come since Enzo and Patrick had locked him in with murmured apologies.
Jacob heard a sound in the darkness, and it jerked him from the floor like a fish on a hook. Or perhaps he sensed it on some level that even he had never experienced before, because he knew this sound was too far away even for a vampire to hear it in the normal way. It was the sound of Sunni screaming.
His fangs dropped, his legs and arms tensed, every nerve stood at attention. Everything in the black room became as bright as midday. With a strangled cry he threw himself against the bars, pulling at them with a strength that he had never felt before. The metal creaked, groaned, and gave way. He squeezed out through the small space and raced down the dark tunnel, doubled over to avoid hitting his head on the low ceiling. He burst into the antechamber of the jail and ran for the door that he knew led to the surface, but by then the alarm had been sounded.
Enzo, Patrick, and three other vampire guards were on him, pulling him to the ground, one man on each of his limbs and Enzo holding his head. He was desperate; he was enraged. His mind was empty but for the single imperative of getting to Sunni. He sunk his fangs into Enzo’s neck and ripped through the flesh, half severing his friend’s head. Then he turned back to finish the job, but the other vampires had already dragged him away. They tossed him into a nearby cell, where he lay on the ground, his energy entirely exhausted, knowing he wouldn’t be able to break out again.
Just beyond the bars he could see his friend, surrounded by the other vampires. Enzo’s breath came in slow, ragged gasps. He turned to the side and gazed at Jacob with no rancor, just infinite sadness. Jacob rammed his forehead into the ground and stayed there, the cold earth scraping his skin. He wished more fervently for death now than he ever had, even when he was standing outside the house containing his wife and children and knowing he could never enter it again. He felt wetness on his face. When he touched his cheek his hand came away red, stained with his own blood tears.