Dead Certain (Eve Benson: Vampire Book 3) Page 6

  The Vampire in question was cute though. His face wasn’t particularly strong, being almost girlish, which shouldn’t have been possible on someone that lean. In a way he was nearly pretty, which wasn’t the kind of thing that men ever truly wanted to hear about themselves. Not even six hundred year old Vampire men, she was willing to bet.

  This fiasco, and Eve had no doubt that’s what was shaping up in front of her as they moved across the street toward the being she was supposed to be scouting at the moment, was all her fault. If she’d been more secure in herself, she might have traveled alone. Or waited for Bey, if she weren’t trying to seem so independent all the time. Leaving Nikki back in the States would have worked, too, no doubt.

  Or simply mentioning the name of the main target earlier, so that they could have had a conversation about the whole thing in the back of a yogurt shop, rather than running up like morons, about to die.

  Eve sighed, thinking about the whole thing, and realized that in part, at least one person was more deeply tied to what was about to happen here than she was.

  Lenore.

  It made sense, after a fashion, that they’d all know each other, as unlikely as that felt.

  It was odd to the point of strangeness to her, since she was used to living in a world of billions of people she would never know, but there were a lot fewer Vampires in the world. Probably around thirty or forty thousand, at a guess. The vast majority of them would be young, too, like her. If there were forty thousand such beings, which really was a guess, than something like ninety percent of them were under a hundred years dead.

  Bohdan here, a day walking six hundred plus year old, was probably one of less than a thousand such beings on the planet. Given how old Vampires could get to be, all the really good ones probably not only knew each other, but held grudges against, or had relationships with, almost everyone else of a certain age.

  That Nicole knew, or even liked Bohdan was probably not that big of a stretch then. Lenore however, would have known that. At least to the point that they’d dated and he was one of the men that her older sister had stolen from her in their long lives.

  That meant she might have mentioned it to them, back in Vancouver, didn’t it? What the fudge was Eve supposed to do now? Her initial impulse was to simply speed up, and start fighting this Bohdan without warning, so that he wouldn’t have time to figure the whole thing out. If Nikki started to run her mouth right off the bat, or warn him that Bey was coming, then the whole thing was going to end up being something that Eve didn’t really want to deal with.

  Worse, if it was a real set up, designed to get her sister killed, then Eve was going to have to find Lenore, and kill her. She had actual orders to do that, from Bey, himself.

  For the moment though, she plastered a smile on her face and sighed, wondering what the crap bucket of life had in store for her in the next few moments.

  For his part, after a few seconds of hard and skeptical looks, the pretty Vampire, with his pale skin and light, ice blue, eyes, smiled hugely.

  “Nicole! I hadn’t thought to see you for some time. My love, how are you?” He moved a few steps toward her, and picked her up into a very human looking embrace. They didn’t spin around, and broke off after a few moments, just looking into each other’s faces, both of them beaming like it was a freaking romance novel.

  Eve held back just a tiny bit, since she didn’t want to interrupt. Especially if it meant fighting Nikki and this unknown at the same time.

  Apparently that was the correct thing to do, since the Vampire didn’t notice her at first, distracted by the girl in front of him as he was. Finally he did look up however, and then stared for a bit.

  Then he glanced up into the sky above him, where the pain orb lived.

  “Come, friends, we should go indoors. I was going to a business I own in this area, to check on my Human employees. Is the sun too intense however? We could go in here, if you seek shelter for the day?” He actually sounded worried about it.

  That probably meant it was a set up then. That, or he knew Nikki that well, and realized what a wimp she was.

  Eve shook her head.

  “We’re fine, thank you.” She spoke in rather broken Russian, but the man seemed to understand her well enough, and turned back to Nicole, who was standing there, holding his smooth looking hands. It was endearing, which was the last thing Eve wanted to feel about the whole thing. After all, odds were, she personally would end up having to kill this guy.

  Probably in the next few minutes, once he worked out who they were, and why they were there.

  Instead he pulled Nikki along, down the street, and gestured for Eve to follow.

  “I could have a car brought around? The location isn’t far, but it’s a walk of a few kilometers. The sun will be bright this day.” He glanced up again, into the clear blue sky, seeming worried, and then looked at Nikki, who was still trying to look directly into his face.

  Almost like she were being compelled to. So attracted to the being that she just couldn’t help herself. Eve could kind of see that, based on how cute the guy was, but didn’t really feel it, herself. He was hot, sure, but being dead between her legs, that didn’t mean much to her. More, it really shouldn’t have to her companion, either.

  When Bohdan looked over at her again, she kind of understood it all though. He was compelling. Constantly, and in a general way, that probably made it seem like he was magnetic to most people. She looked at his face, but didn’t lock eyes with him, just in case he could capture her that way.

  If it bothered him it didn’t show at all.

  “Nicole is normally in her bed by now…” Again, the feeling behind it all sounded right, and not like he was paranoid, and suspecting that death had arrived for him.

  Eve felt like freezing, but then just did what she probably should have the whole time, and told the truth. The weak lied, because it was their only defense. She might not be the most powerful being ever, but she wasn’t going to keep acting like a baby either, if she could help it. Trying to spare her partner in this had already led to problems hadn’t it?

  Still, she didn’t have to tell the man everything all at once, so started with the Nikki centric things first.

  “We’re traveling, in part so that I can learn the language here, and in part to keep Nicole awake during the day. It’s part of her new training. I’m Eve Benson.” She waited, in case the name meant something to the man, but there was nothing more than a polite expression on his face. It was nearly servile for a Russian, from what she’d seen of them so far.

  “I am most pleased to meet with you, Eve Benson. I am Bohdan Constantine. Among other things I run Moscow, and the surrounding area, for our kind. Currently we are having a dispute with the Council, over taxes. It is a bit of a petty thing, but I fear it has put us against them directly for a time, and we seek to remove ourselves from their oversight.” He was staring right at her, and there was a fine sense of buzzing in her head, which meant he was working to control her now, Eve suspected.

  It was easy enough to change the feeling though. To master it and shift her mind away. So either he wasn’t all that powerful, or he wasn’t trying to do it too hard yet. She needed to stay ready, just in case.

  “Oh? Over the new blood rules?” That was the thing most of the Vampires had a problem with, after all. It wasn’t exactly hard to see either. Most of the good blood products were in North America. These people had the hard rules, but no way to smooth that over with their own people, did they?

  There was a slow nod, as they continued walking, his voice mellow and relaxed. The man was holding Nikki’s hands as they did it, too. Like they’d never been apart, almost. That wasn’t a great sign, at least given the current situation.

  It wasn’t lost on her that this Bohdan had almost instantly introduced the topic at hand either. He was, without a doubt, trying to subtly influence her over to his side. More to the point, he was trying to compel her to do that, without being too obvious.
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br />   “Yes. It is that conflict directly. We have been placed under the boot of these new American rules, but have not the resources that they enjoy. We are ordered to make do with animals, but here, in the city, that is nearly impossible for most of our kind. Are we to lose all we have then? Abandon our businesses, and homes, to run to the countryside, in order to fulfill their wishes? For most of us here there is little else that can be done, I fear. So we prepare to fight, even knowing that death will come upon us at any moment.”

  She could see that, actually. It never paid to push people into a corner they felt they couldn’t get out of.

  Nikki, still smiling at the man, shook her head a bit. It was almost like she was trying to clear it from a fog, or a dose of drugs.

  “Bohdan… What if we could fix that? There’s a new animal blood product being sold in the states. It isn’t bad. Cow, of course, but it isn’t too expensive, or anything. If you had that here, would that make any difference?”

  Eve schooled her face, but didn’t say anything for the moment, waiting for the angry rationalization, for the man to growl about how unfair it was that they couldn’t eat people anymore. It was kind of the common line, after all. Even she’d heard it, while selling blood to people each night, and that was from the ones putting up with the rules.

  Instead there was a long pause, as they kept moving down the street. That surprised her a little bit, since there was a lot of bright colors there, and it wasn’t a drab or particularly dirty place really. No worse than Washington D.C. and the colors of the buildings were better here. They had bright reds and golds in places, along with blues and greens. Things were a bit more closely packed together here, where they were walking, but it wasn’t ugly really. Just old. Some of the buildings in the distance had cool round roofs, and were kind of like Christmas tree ornaments. The fancy kind that Darla put on her tree.

  The Vampire fellow looked at his friend, making it clear that the other two were closer than was safe for Eve, and finally smiled a bit.

  “Ah. It is, I fear, not so simple. We can get blood, there are farms and such here, like everywhere else, but we can’t keep it for any length of time. The anti-coagulant…” He said the word, but Eve just guessed that was what he meant, not recognizing it in the language they were speaking. “Is a secret, unknown to even the finest of chemists. We have not been allowed to know of it. No one in the world has. You either buy blood from the Americans, or you suck on dogs and cats in alleyways, hoping you are not seen doing it. We asked the Council to aid us in that, if they were to insist on these new hardships they call rules, but to no avail. I spoke to my own maker the other day, and was informed that we would be given no aid that way, being forced to live like animals, at the pleasure of the Council.” He wasn’t pleased by those words, apparently, since his eyes went red. No fangs popped out though, and he managed to clear the rest of it after a few seconds.

  Eve gave him a slightly skeptical look.

  “Hmmm. I doubt that, Bohdan. What did she really say? That doesn’t sound right at all.”

  The man glared for a bit, and then stared at her, hard.

  “You say that I lie? Why would I do that?”

  “I don’t know. But it sounds wrong, doesn’t it? The Council might want you under their control, I mean, I want you under my control, and imagine that it works the other way, too, but they have no reason to keep blood from you. Doing that with the new rules would just force you to break them, right? So, what was it she actually told you?”

  The man, for all he was probably going to die sooner rather than later, wasn’t a complete fool.

  “I didn’t say my maker was a woman, did I?”

  She shrugged, and glanced over at him.

  “Marissa, of the Council, isn’t strictly a woman, but she tends to wear dresses, so that’s what I go with. It’s the polite convention in the States. If a person wants to be seen a given way, you try to address them like that, so they won’t feel uncomfortable. We’re nice that way. Anyway, what exactly did she tell you? Please.” It never hurt to be polite, did it? Even if it did sound a little annoyed at the moment.

  The man was also bright enough to get that going by his maker’s last name was kind of a giveaway as to who that might be, it seemed. So instead of taking her knowing that as a sign that she was there to kill him, and all his friends, he kept walking, not speaking for a good long while as they marched down the street.

  “I was told that we had to bow to the Council, or that we would be killed, and that the owner of the formulae we need would not part with it for us. I begged her to intervene for us, to allow this to be handled in a way that would provide survival for us here, even though the Vampire that owns the needed information is from America, but she does not think that will be allowed. Apparently the bitch that we need to deal with is under the thumb of your sister, Nicole. We have that bit of bad blood between us, so it is perhaps that, sending us to war? I should have handled Lenore differently, at the time. I was callus, perhaps, when I should have been more kind?”

  Eve kept herself from rolling her eyes. After a bit, she shrugged again, not really knowing if there was a bigger plan involved than not. On this side of things it seemed like there was an easy enough fix, wasn’t there? They could just open up some blood manufacturing farms in Russia. Even if they didn’t make any money from it, it wasn’t a horrible idea. Some things were more important than making cash. Almost everything was, really.

  After a bit, she spoke, her voice low, with Nikki just looking like a guilty child.

  “Ah. Okay then. Well, we need to fix some things then, if you don’t want to die anytime soon, that is. The Council won’t put up with this kind of thing for long, will they?” She glanced at the Vampire and had to fend off a strong wave of compulsion. It was so constant that she was starting to think he didn’t have complete control over it.

  “This is truth. What can be done however? My people here are sick of the taste of boot leather. Even if threatened with death, they will seek to fight, rather than slowly be ground down.”

  Nikki managed to shake herself enough to free her mind a bit it seemed, and she changed the topic suddenly, her face going a bit tense.

  “Have you been leading these people, Bohdan? The ones that have been robbing the Council embassies?”

  Her boyfriend, if that was the right word for that kind of relationship, stared at the brightly colored hair Nikki was sporting, and then shook his head slowly.

  It wasn’t exactly a denial though.

  “They are my people, but it is not all to my plan. Nearly a year ago some of the Vampires decided to take the battle to the Council, weakening them here, by denying them resources. It has been kept quiet however. How did you learn of it?” Now he was getting suspicious.

  Nikki either didn’t get that, or didn’t care at the moment, since she went on like it just made sense to run her mouth.

  “Three of them attacked the place we were staying last night. They threatened to rape the ambassador, and us, given that we happened to be there at the time. It’s not a great plan, trying to hit places like that.”

  The male Vampire, his smooth face pale and very bland, stopped dead and turned to look at Nikki, suddenly very angry seeming.

  Eve got ready to end his days, but his words were different than she would have suspected.

  “The fools! We can’t afford to add such insult. Do they seek to have The Lord brought down on us? You are not injured are you? Not abused as they threatened? I swear, they will not exist past this night! Can you tell me their names?”

  They really couldn’t, but the team’s description was enough. Bohdan knew who they were, after all, and winced.

  “I understand. You would have had no way to stop them... To rape the daughter of The Lord like that… We are all dead, aren’t we, then? I shall seek to bring them to me, and then submit myself to your father, Nicole. Perhaps he will show mercy, and kill only those that allowed this to happen, instead of each of us. Those f
ools!” This time the fangs popped out and the man really didn’t seem to care about hiding it. No one noticed though.

  As far as the people there knew, there were no Russian Vampires. That meant noticing them wasn’t high on the priority list, most likely.

  Nicole touched his coat sleeve and shook her head.

  “No. Those Vampires died, well before they could do anything. Eve destroyed them. She’s…” The other woman stopped then, even if she had given too much information.

  Bohdan seemed shocked though.

  “You… Killed Alexander, Ivan and Misha? By yourself? What weapon allowed you to do this? Is that why you have blood on your shirt?” He waved at the spots, which made her feel a bit embarrassed.

  He’d probably thought she was just a sloppy eater.

  “That’s right. If it was them, I mean. It sounds right.”

  They moved on then, and after a bit he started to nod.

  “I do not understand. Who are you then? I have never heard of the Vampire Eve before. You must be most elder. Perhaps you have a different name that I would know you by?”

  She winked, then shook her head.

  “No. I’m new, so you wouldn’t know me yet. Anyway, if I could get you the formula for the…” She slipped into English, but Nikki translated for her, using the same word that the man with them had before. “Yes, if I can get you the anti-coagulant, can you and your people here get the needed farms, transport trucks and all that? I want thirty percent of the profits, annually. We should keep the price down though. That’s only for animal blood, though. If you start doing Human you’ll need permission from The Mistress of Souls, and the Vampire Rebekah. It might be worth doing. Also, you need to stop robbing embassies and return all the money that was stolen. Some of your people will still probably die. Maybe you, too, but we can try to get around that. If they raped or abused Council people directly, that will be a hard sell. We’ll have to kill anyone that did that, at the very least.”