Laws of the Blood 2: Partners Read Online Free PDF Page A

for a newly made vampire took anywhere from several months to a couple of years.
    “Daniel’s adjustment has been difficult?”
    Helene nodded. “He’s very disoriented. He’s restless. He’s wandered off before. No one died that time,” she added. “Thank the goddess for that.”
    “I see.” Char didn’t, but the words sounded both comforting and ominous, which seemed like a useful mixture for an Enforcer.
    Lucien abruptly took it into his furry head to jump off Char’s lap. The tomcat bounded across the coffee table, spilling a pile of books in his wake, and settled once more on Helene’s lap. This time the nest leader reacted to his presumption by rubbing his head.
    While the cat’s loud purring filled the silence, Char gathered up the disturbed books, set them on the floor, and glanced at the clock on the VCR across the room. Plenty of time before dawn, but the night seemed like an unusually long one. First the Haven assignment and now someone coming to her rather than Marguerite for help. It never rained but it poured, as her great-grandmother used to say.
    She wanted to ask why Helene had chosen her rather than Portland’s official Enforcer, but she could guess the main reason. Oh, Helene Bourbon would make some excuse about how Marguerite couldn’t be expected to leave the city or how a missing person’s case would be good experience for a young Nighthawk just getting her claws bloodied. Truth was, Helene thought that Char wouldn’t come down too hard on her for having lost a nestling. And she assumed Char was more likely toreturn the lost cub to her rather than kill him if he’d betrayed the Laws.
    Truth was, those suppositions Helene Bourbon wouldn’t voice were probably quite true. Char was a wimp, and she knew it; it didn’t even bother her unless someone tried to use her. Like now. And right now it didn’t bother her because hunting for a lost nestling was not only a very important duty, it was an excellent excuse to put off killing Jebel Haven for a while.
    She could let him do his work while she pursued justice and protection for her own kind. “Do you have any idea where I should start looking for your nestling?”
    Helene nodded. She picked up a leather bag she’d set beside her on the floor. She took a folder out of it and handed it to Char. “When Daniel disappeared the first time, he wandered north. I asked him where he was going when I caught up with him, but all he would say was, ‘The underground.’ ” Helene stopped petting Lucien for a moment and got a complaining yowl and her hand batted with a paw for her temporary neglect.
    “Which underground?”
    The strigoi had called so many places the underground over the millennia that Daniel could have been referring to almost any cave, cellar, basement, subbasement, crypt, vault, archaeological dig, or hidden room on the planet. Then there were the passageways, subway tunnels, and sewers, not to mention all the revolutionary groups, freedom fighters, criminals, and paramilitary types whose underground existence attracted vampire attention, usually as food sources. And, of course, therewere cemeteries. Vampires used to live in graveyards. In fact, all those huge, overdecorated marble and gilt Victorian mausoleums had been terribly popular dwellings until Stoker’s book attracted tourists and ruined real estate values. These days, urban graveyards attracted druggies, Goths, and television crews filming documentaries with titles like In Search of the Supernatural . These days, a cemetery was the last underground place a sane strigoi would head for.
    A young vampire that had recently been a sexually abused mortal teenager might not know any better. Or—
    “I think we both know which underground,” Helene said, interrupting Char’s thoughts.
    A tense knot formed in Char’s stomach. “Why would he return there? Because it’s all he remembers,” she answered herself. “Poor baby.” And if you know where he is, why don’t you