“Hey, Marge,” the man yelled over his shoulder. “You remember a renter named Alberto?”
“Alfonso,” Rejavik said quietly. Idiot.
“Why does the pizza guy want to know?” she yelled from the other room.
“Oh for Chr—” Brice clamped a hand over his mouth and hiccupped through his fingers. “Sorry, Father. A few years ago?”
Rejavik nodded.
“I haven’t lived here that long but I know Marge had a long-term renter for a while. Maybe he’s your guy.”
“Let me speak with her.”
“Hey, Marge!” No answer. The television laugh track, prompting the desired proletarian response, blared from the other room. “Marge!”
Enough of this. Rejavik placed his palm on the man’s shoulder. “Take me to her.”
The man jerked away and eyed him warily. “What the hell was that? It felt like an electric shock or something.”
Not quite the intoxicated simpleton I’d assumed. “I’m terribly sorry. With the cooler air, I sometimes conduct a little more electrostatic energy this time of year. There—” he touched the doorjamb “—it’s dissipated. Forgive me.” He held out his hand to the man and gave him a benign smile.
Tired of these pathetic niceties, he silently counted to three, at which point he’d spill this fool’s blood and get the answers from Marge himself. Either way, it didn’t really matter, although he just picked up this suit from the cleaners and didn’t want to get it soiled again so soon. He was hungry, but not desperate.
Thick, sausagelike fingers gripped his hand and the human’s energy flowed into his body like an open spigot. Ah, yes, very good. Palm-on-palm was much more effective than contact through clothing anyway, making thought suggestions harder to resist. Although palm-to-forehead was best, he didn’t think he could bear touching the man’s sweat-stained face.
“Take me to Marge, then lie down and go to sleep.”
Within a few minutes, the man was sleeping on a ratty couch, the television was turned down and Marge’s hands were clasped between his.
“He has eyes like Paul Newman,” she said, “and he’s tall. Had to duck under the attic beams and couldn’t stand up all the way. He pays in cash, six months in advance, but like I said, I haven’t seen him in a long time. Don’t remember his name being Alfonso, though. Do you think he could be the same guy?”
“He stayed in your attic room?”
“No, he didn’t like it there. Said he needed to come and go at weird hours and didn’t want to disturb us, so he rents the outbuilding at the back of our property. Not sure why ‘cause he’s hardly ever there, but, hey, I’m not complaining. Don’t think he’s into drugs or nothing.”
“When was the last time he was here?”
She shrugged. “Six months. A year, maybe more. Like I said, I don’t keep track. Pays like clockwork though.”
Wedged against the rocky hillside a half acre from the rear of the house, the wooden shed looked largely forgotten. Tumbleweeds lay among the rusted-out garden tools, empty paint buckets and other assorted junk that leaned against the outside walls. Some idiot—probably the one who’d answered the door—had parked a dented blue car, now up on jacks, so close to the shed that it blocked the small door. The woman unlocked it and stepped aside to let him pass.
The interior should’ve smelled stale and dusty, a perfect environment for black widow spiders and scorpions, but it didn’t. It had obviously been cleaned more recently than the house, but then, that wasn’t saying much.
She pulled the cord of a light fixture near the door, and the bare bulb swung from the ceiling, casting moving shadows over the room. Pushed up against the far wall was a cot with a floral comforter tucked in at the edges and a small nightstand.
What kind of man would stay in a place like this? he wondered as he looked around the neat and tidy surroundings. Maybe the lead he was following up was wrong. Surely someone with Serrano’s means and lineage would never surround himself with such flea market squalor, even if it was simply used as an occasional hideout.
He opened the nightstand drawer with his handkerchief and found a flashlight, an unscented candle, a book of matches and a well-worn bible. He grabbed it, flipped through the pages, and when a guitar pick fell out, he couldn’t help smiling. Serrano took his guitar everywhere.
This was promising after all.
When he picked up a pillow and drew in a deep breath through his nostrils, something lingered in the back of his scent memory and almost—
“How can you tell if your guy is my renter?” The woman’s voice broke his concentration and his shoulders stiffened. “I mean, we really shouldn’t be in here without his permission. It ain’t right.”
“Wait for me outside near the blue car.”
“Why—”
He leveled a hard stare at her and noticed the loose skin of her jowls hung in parallel cords from her chin to the base of her neck. The soft tissue would tear easily, he thought as the tips of his fangs poked through his gums.
“I’ll be right out there if you need me,” she said, suddenly wising up.
Good. He didn’t want to flood his system with her blood right now anyway. It would dilute his senses too much and he needed them keen at the moment.
As his fangs receded, he turned back to the cot. With a fingernail, he lifted the lid of the prayer box and held it to his nose.
He recalled the Oath of Loyalty ceremony when the item had been placed in his possession centuries ago. In the dimly lit caverns beneath the city of Madrid, he had watched as the Overlord drew a blade over the palms of each of the inductees. They were to dip a square of muslin in their own blood, place it inside a prayer box and present it to their assigned blood assassin as a sign of their undying loyalty to the Overlord and the Darkblood Alliance.
Something about Serrano’s demeanor had nagged at him that day, and he’d checked inside the tiny golden box before placing it into the vault. Maybe it was the way Serrano had looked at him, almost glaring at the Overlord, eyes full of defiance, with no trace of the reverence visible on all the others’ faces. It was, after all, an honor to be asked to join the inner circle.
Maybe it was the slight sheen of sweat he’d noticed on Serrano’s upper lip. Rejavik couldn’t be sure what it was that hadn’t seemed right, but it was a good thing he’d checked—the tiny box had been empty. The blood-soaked piece of cloth had somehow fallen to the dirt floor.
Serrano had acted surprised, as if he thought he’d placed it inside the box, but Rejavik wasn’t so sure it hadn’t been intentional.
When he’d learned Serrano had been identified as the insider responsible for the death of their great leader, that he’d been feeding intelligence to the Governing Council’s Guardian unit for years, Rejavik hadn’t been surprised. He doubted Serrano had ever been loyal to their cause. It would be his pleasure and honor to kill the traitor.
A quick death would be too kind. No, he’d make sure to draw it out as long and as painfully as possible. And if there was anyone special in Serrano’s life, anyone he cared enough about to share blood, Rejavik would find her and make her suffer as well.
He inhaled deeply and held his breath, the remnants of Serrano’s blood inside the box reactivating his scent memory. He visualized the defiance in Serrano’s eyes, which shone brightly beneath his hooded robe,