Vampire Most Wanted
Page 6

“I have been up all night with her because of you,” Damian said resentfully, his voice moving away.
“Yes, and I am sorry for that,” Abaddon said, his voice growing fainter as the two men apparently headed out of the room. “But at least we know she is not in cahoots with them.”
“She is my mother, Abby. She would never act against me.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure. If she ever found out . . .”
Whatever came after that was too soft for Divine to hear. She instinctively opened her eyes and turned her head in an effort to be able to hear them again, but the instant she did, agony shot through her skull once more. This time it brought unconsciousness with it.
“Morning, Marco.”
Marcus glanced up from the Tilt-A-Whirl’s panel and offered a smile of greeting to Madge as she approached. He had gone to the Hoskinses’ trailer last night after finding Divine’s dark and quiet, but Divine hadn’t been there. Still, Bob and Madge had been up and he’d sat and talked with them for a good hour before returning to his SUV and heading to a nearby motel to catch some sleep before returning to the carnival today.
He liked the Hoskinses, and they obviously liked Divine. Not only had they flat-out said as much while talking to him, but he’d read it in their thoughts as well. The couple hadn’t been able to have children of their own and tended to unofficially adopt the younger members of their carnival. Divine was one of those they considered family. If they’d had a daughter, they would have been proud had she been like Divine.
While the couple had told him at least a hundred good deeds Divine had performed, and as many positive personality traits she possessed, Marcus hadn’t learned a thing about Divine’s past before coming to this carnival. She apparently didn’t share much of that, and they, like most carnies, didn’t pry. But what they knew of her from the last two years that she’d been with them had impressed them. She didn’t drink, didn’t do drugs, didn’t mess around. She was quiet, did her work, and was always available to help others.
According to the older couple’s thoughts, Divine might seem standoffish at first, but once you were around her for a while, it became clear she was thoughtful and kind. There was little for her to do in the way of setup for her fortune-telling gig, so she was always helping the others set up and tear down their own stalls or rides. She helped with the interviewing as he’d found out earlier, but she was also quick to help if labor was needed or something else, and she was handy as hell to have around. Bob didn’t think there was anything she couldn’t fix. “The gal was smart as a whip” by his reckoning. It was as if she had been in the business much longer than her years could possibly allow.
That thought had made Marcus smile. Divine might look twenty-five, but she was immortal, and while he didn’t know how old she was exactly, she might have been “in the business” from the time of the first carnival. That would explain the knowledge and skill that so surprised the mortals here.
“What on earth did you do to our poor Divine when you two were out last night?” Madge asked, snapping his attention back to the fact that the older woman had reached him and that while she was smiling, there was concern in her eyes as well.
“What do you mean?” he asked with surprise.
“Well, she’s usually up with the birds. I swear the girl doesn’t sleep more than a couple hours a night. But as far as I can tell she isn’t even up yet. We open in half an hour, but her RV’s closed up tight, her sign isn’t out, and I knocked and got no answer.”
Marcus frowned and glanced toward Divine’s RV.
“Maybe she’s already up and out or something,” Madge murmured, peering toward the RV too. “Although I don’t know where she’d have got to. Being allergic to the sun like you, she usually sticks close to the RV when she isn’t helping someone.” The thought apparently reminded her of a concern she’d had for him and she glanced to the awning that had been set up over the Tilt-A-Whirl’s controls and nodded with satisfaction. “I’m glad Chapman listened and set that up for you. Bob warned him he might lose you if he tried to make you work in the sun.”
“Thanks,” Marcus murmured. It had been a worry of his when Chapman had mentioned having him run the Tilt-A-Whirl. Well, okay, his head had been too wrapped up in thoughts of Divine to concern himself much with that last night, but it had definitely been on his mind when he’d walked out to the SUV that morning. Early as it was the sun had already been out and pounding its heat at the earth. He’d been glad to arrive and find Chapman had set up the awning for him.
“Have you seen her this morning?”
Drawn back to the issue at hand, Marcus shook his head slowly and then suggested, “Maybe she had to run into town for something.”
“That’s possible,” Madge said with a sigh. “It’s rare, but she sometimes goes into the town in search of herbs and stuff for those natural remedies of hers.”
Marcus hesitated. That was something else he’d learned last night. Divine was always offering natural remedies to the other carnies when they fell ill, which was much appreciated since most couldn’t afford proper health care. Sometimes, though, she even seemed to know they were sick before the individual did, and they had all learned to listen if she said they needed to do something for their health. Everyone in the carnie either liked, or at least respected, her for it.
“That’s probably where she is then,” Marcus said to soothe the woman’s worry.
“Yeah,” Madge agreed, relaxing a little. “She’ll probably come buzzing back on her motorcycle just before the gates open.”
Marcus merely nodded, his gaze shifting over the RV again.
“Speaking of that, I guess I’d best get to the gate and help the ticket girls get ready.” She turned away, adding, “You come on over after closing tonight and I’ll feed you. We need to keep your strength up. Bob swears you work harder than three men put together here.”
“Thanks,” Marcus murmured, but his gaze was still on the RV, and after she left, he stepped away from the Tilt-A-Whirl control panel and headed for the vehicle. He knocked once on reaching the door, waited for the count of ten, and when there was no sound of movement from inside, tried the handle. It wasn’t locked. Marcus hesitated, glanced around to be sure no one was paying attention, and then slid quickly inside.
“Hello?” he called as he waited for his eyes to adjust. With the curtains closed, there was no light in the room, but he had good night vision as all immortals did, and after a moment it kicked in and he glanced around the small consultation room Divine had set up. Everything was still and quiet and appeared in its place, so he moved to the curtain, tugged it aside, and looked around the lounge/kitchenette area as he started forward.
Marcus was perhaps halfway across the room when he noted the blood on the wall beside the door to the bedroom. Following the streaks down, he saw that they ended in an alarmingly large puddle on the floor. Hurrying forward now, he knelt and touched the puddle. The blood was drying, but the puddle was deep enough it was still wet in the middle. By his guess whatever had happened had happened hours ago . . . and it was immortal blood. He could tell that at once.
Cursing, he straightened and moved back outside to check the side panel where the motorcycle was kept. He’d been watching Divine the night before when she’d punched in the code to open it, and copied her actions now. When the panel slid open, it was empty. No motorcycle and no helmet. Marcus closed the panel and returned inside to search the RV.
Five
The rustle of clothing stirred Divine and then she blinked her eyes open with surprise when a cold cloth was laid across her forehead. She found herself peering up into her son’s thin face. It was half obscured by strands of his long hair, making his expression inscrutable.
“You’re awake. How do you feel?” Damian asked, sitting on the edge of the mattress she lay on.
Divine stared at him blankly, confusion rife in her thoughts. “Damian? What are you doing here?”
“You don’t remember?”
Divine glanced past her son at that question, her eyes settling with dislike on the dark-haired man who had spoken. She couldn’t prevent the scowl that claimed her lips. “Abaddon.”
“Basha,” he greeted with a condescending smile, and anger whipped up through her like a snake.
“I don’t answer to that name, Abaddon, and well you know it. My name is Divine and has been for a good century. You should be used to it by now.”
“You can call yourself what you like, but in your heart you will always be Basha,” Abaddon said with a shrug.
That just made her furious, perhaps because in her heart she knew it was true. She could give herself any name she wished, but would always be Basha, daughter of Felix and Tisiphone, granddaughter of Alexandria and Ramses, and niece of the great and powerful Lucian Argeneau, a man she used to adore but had learned to fear. In her heart, she was still Basha, but she was trying hard not to be, and loathed that the young woman she’d been so long ago still clung to the woman she’d become.
Knowing he could and probably was reading her thoughts, Divine shifted her attention to the room she was in to clear her thoughts. She noted the torn, old-fashioned wallpaper and scarred hardwood floors. There were holes in the walls and a large one in the floor as well, telling her where she was—the derelict building on the edge of town that her son had settled in for his brief stay in California.
“I don’t know why you choose to live in such horrible places, Damian,” she said unhappily.
“Where should he live?” Abaddon asked dryly. “Should he run away? Join the carnival like you?”
“I didn’t run away,” she snapped.
“Basha, my sweet, you’ve been running from yourself since—”
“Get out of here, Abby,” Damian interrupted. “You’re just upsetting her.”
Abaddon hesitated, but then nodded obsequiously. “As you wish.”
“I don’t know why you allow him in your life,” Divine growled as she watched the man leave.
“He has his uses,” Damian said mildly.
“He’s an animal like his master was before him,” Divine snapped, and then turned to her son and said with frustration, “It took me ten years to get us away from that man and remove his influence from your life, and then when you turned eighteen and set out on your own, you just welcomed him back in like a long-lost uncle.”
“Do you really want to argue about this again? Now?” Damian asked.
Sighing, Divine shook her head and closed her eyes briefly. She’d given up arguing about Abaddon two and a half millennia ago . . . after more than two hundred years of useless attempts to get Damian away from the man, she’d acknowledged that it was his life, he could do what he wanted with it, and have who he wanted in it. That was also when she’d started spending less time around her son, leading her own life and leaving him to lead his.
“I don’t want to argue, Damian,” she said finally, “But he—”
“Saved your life,” he interrupted, and then added chidingly, “Again. Surely you can cut him some slack?”
“He saved my life?” Divine asked with a frown, now trying to sort through her memories to find how she’d got here. She remembered coming back from town, dropping off Marco by the bunkhouses, returning to her RV intending to put the motorcycle away and . . . she’d heard a noise from inside the RV, Divine recalled. She’d gone in to investigate and— She raised a hand to feel her head as she recalled the pain crashing through it.
“Abby was concerned about this business of Lucian sending out spies to look for you.”
Divine blinked her memories away and peered at her son when he said that. She’d found that out on her last visit here, the day before. Divine had been surprised to learn on arriving in town with the carnival that Damian was in the area. Even more surprising was that he’d wanted to see her. While they’d been close when he was a boy, he’d grown distant as he aged and she rarely saw him anymore . . . unless he needed something. This time he’d wanted to see her to warn her. Damian had got wind that her uncle Lucian wasn’t only looking for him, he had sent spies out to look for her as well. It seemed he’d somehow learned that she lived. Their guess was that Damian’s son Ernie had revealed it when he was caught and dragged up in front of the Council.
The little fool, Divine thought on a sigh. She’d raised Ernie for Damian, at least for the first five years. The immortal boy had been a sweet child, but somehow had grown into a weak and sometimes foolish adult. He’d always seemed to be trying to prove something to his father, and had apparently gone north to Canada with some harebrained scheme of performing some “derring-do” to earn his father’s respect.
The little idiot had gone about it all wrong though. He’d kidnapped someone connected to the Argeneau family, Lord knew for what purpose, and then he’d got himself caught and executed for his efforts. If anything, Ernie had only made matters worse. Lucian had begun searching for her son in earnest then . . . as well as for her. Knowing that, Divine had suspected Marco might be a spy, but hadn’t had a chance to find out for certain or do anything about it.
“Abby was worried about you all alone at the carnival, so he sent a couple of the boys to check on you and make sure you were okay,” Damian continued, capturing her attention again. “They found you unconscious in your RV, with a head wound, and brought you back here. You’re at the house.”