BloodAngel Page 3

  But Gabe was looking at her closely now.

  He spoke abruptly, surprising her. "I don't know anything about your life before New York. You never told me and I didn't ask."

  "You know the important parts."

  "I know your parents' plane fell out of the sky. I know your uncle put you in a psych ward. Where my pre-Prozac sister happened to be at the time. That's what I know." He set down his glass, cleared his throat. "And I know your home life was—"

  "No," she said.

  "Christ, Jessie. Kids don't run away from happy homes."

  "I mean," Jess said tiredly, "let's not go there. It's not worth talking about."

  "What if it is?"

  "Who are you, my goddamn shrink?"

  He rose. "I'm out of here."

  "I'm sorry. Don't go."

  He dropped back into his chair.

  "I'm really sorry. I am." She was smiling. "Still love me?"

  He looked away from her, across the room, to where people in black leather coats were pushing out through the doors. He looked back at her and grinned. "Sometimes. "

  She grinned back at him, lacing her fingers through his, touching her lips to his scarred knuckle. "So take me to bed."

  * * * *

  They made a sleepy, dreamy love, in the darkness of Gabe's Chinatown apartment, the sounds of night traffic grinding through the open windows. After, he kissed her shoulder and hugged her close.

  Jess was tired, but afraid to sleep, dream, wake up somewhere else with strange writing on her body: those messages sent up from her other, sleepwalking self.

  She suspected, at times, that she needed her angst, those tough painful parts of her that fueled her work. If those wounds healed, what if her talent closed over as well? Without that, she was nothing.

  She got out of bed. Gabe slept on.

  She found his Marlboro Lights on the windowsill, muttered, "Fuck it" and slipped one out of its pack. Standing naked beside the iron-guarded window, she smoked her first cigarette in two years, wincing at the taste but smoking it down to the filter, remembering the pleasure the act used to give her. She stubbed it out in the ashtray, dressed in the stiletto boots and black pantsuit she'd worn to the opening. She hovered over Gabe a full minute, her heart a swollen thing in its bone cage.

  She touched his cheek, then left.

  Chapter Six

  She stepped inside the loft, switched on the lights. Touched the bronze sculpture by the door for luck, tossed her keys in the Chinese bowl on the bookshelf.

  The air seemed wired with a strange, shadowy energy. Her gaze traveled over the reach of space, the books and dark corners and sparse furniture. The loft wasn't hers; she was house-sitting for a professor-sculptor friend in Europe for six months.

  Ash-taste of cigarette in her mouth. She passed through the loft, flipping on lights as she went—suddenly needing the place to be blazing with light—and stepped down into her work space. Darkness bunched against the windows, backdropped by the rise and fall of roofs, the cold scattered glow of city lights. Panes of mirror leaned against the far wall, waiting to be broken up, put to use in her work. She saw her reflection, stretched-out and made off-kilter by the angle of the glass.

  She saw herself.

  And the man who stood behind her.

  His height, his fine dark clothes, his blazing eyes.

  "Jessamy," he said quietly. His voice was low and hoarse. "Jessamy Shepard."

  She whirled, light blurring at the corners of her vision. He watched her with a calm expression, stepping down into her studio.

  Nicky, the other morning in the gallery: a god of a man.

  His face angular and high-boned; his eyes wide-set, almond-shaped, tilting up at the corners. They were a deep, glowing amber, the color of melted lava; nobody has eyes like that, Jess was thinking even as she backed away from him until her hip jammed against the edge of her worktable and a can toppled over. Water spilled along the newspapers, dripped onto the floor. Nobody could possibly have eyes like that—

  "I'm not here to hurt you," he said.

  "You were in the gallery," Jess said. "You were in the bar."

  "I know this must seem… uncivil." He lifted his hands, palms up. He had the skin of a youngish man, but something about the way he held himself, looked at her, something in his voice and eyes, suggested he was older.

  Much older.

  "I have stalked you," he said. A confession. "I had—I have—no choice. Otherwise I would have left you to your life." He tilted his head. "How are the dreams, Jessie? Are they just about the boy, or is there someone else in them as well?"

  She bolted, then, hurling herself past him and up the steps. She got to the door, fumbled with the dead bolts. Her hands on the doorknob, twisting, pulling, almost enough space to slip out into the hallway, almost enough breath in her lungs to scream—

  When the door ripped from her hands and slammed itself shut with such ferocity that the very wall seemed to rattle. She grasped at the knob but the door would not move. "No," she muttered, but when she turned around the man was still standing there, watching her, and no matter how many times she said no she knew she couldn't change it. Any of it. Not the dreams, not the boy, and especially not this man—

  "Jess. I'm sorry, but I can't let you go."

  And she saw her life as she'd known it slipping away.

  He stood in front of her, and he eclipsed everything.

  "You were in the library," Jess whispered, acknowledging it now, truly, for the first time. "The library of the hotel. In Cape Town. The day they fished my parents' bodies from the water."

  "Yes," he said.

  "Jesus Christ."

  "Hardly." He tilted his head. "We've been mistaken for vampires in the past. Do you believe in vampires, Jessamy?"

  She shook her head. Although in that moment he could have told her he was a vampire, an alien, anything, and she was prepared to believe him.

  She didn't answer. She couldn't find breath to speak. He stepped closer. He was very close now. She pressed back against the door that would not open. There was nowhere for her to go. His eyes moved across her face as if studying, memorizing, comparing it to something in his mind. His gaze lowered to her body, assessing it in a way too abstract to be sexual. He was close enough so that she could breathe in his scent, which reminded her of burnt matches. As if he's just walked through fire, she thought wildly. As if he's just come from hell.

  He said, "Do you believe in demons?"

  "Is that what you think you are?"

  "No. But I do know a few. My name is Kai Youngblood. You might remember me, if you think back a few years."

  "You'll have to refresh my memory."

  "The balcony scene," Kai said, and the words were like an electric jolt going through her. She knew at once what he meant.

  "The balcony scene," Kai said. "The vision of the old desert city, the Labyrinth. I gave that to you, when you were a child, to help you through your grieving."

  She wasn't sure she'd heard correctly. "What—"

  "You thought that was just something you'd dreamed up on your own?"

  "I thought I saw it in a movie, or a storybook." She was stammering. "A picture I saw when I was little. I thought—"

  "It was a memory."

  Kai tapped his temple. His fingers, she noticed, were long and tapered; the nails had a metallic sheen.

  "My memory," he said. Then added, as an afterthought, "The lizard was a boyhood pet. His name was Tapaku. He lived a very long time, for a lizard."

  Jess was shaking her head. "There is no city like that," she said evenly, "anywhere in the world." She knew she was right. The place—even though she had only gotten a sliver of a glimpse—had felt like too much of a dream, too far outside of ordinary life.

  "Not anymore."

  He turned away from her and walked into the kitchen. Her hand slipped behind her back, grasped at the doorknob. It did not move. It seemed frozen in place.

  "It's a very easy cast
ing," Kai said casually, as he opened the refrigerator. Cold light washed out from the interior. "You mind if I help myself?"

  "A casting," Jess echoed.

  "The door you're so quietly trying to open. A casting. A spell."

  "You're saying you're some kind of—of magician?"

  "Magician," he mused. He drank down a swallow of beer. "Now that's a quaint little English word. You mean the kind that entertains at children's parties, pulls bunnies out of hats?"

  He was coming towards her again. A wry smile was twisting his mouth, but the amber eyes reflected something else: a fatigue, Jess thought. A grief.

  "Or the kind that puts on big shows in Vegas," he continued, "with costumes and tigers and pretty girls?"

  The slanted amber eyes, the silvery nails, the height and strength of him. The faint, burnt-match scent that rose off his skin. She stepped away from him, suddenly afraid that he might try to touch her.

  "Tell me about the boy, Jess. How long has he been in your dreams?"

  She said, "Maybe a year."

  "Have you dreamed of anyone else? A female, perhaps, green-eyed?"

  A thought nagged at her, was gone. "No."

  "The boy is real, you know. As real as you are."

  Her knees were threatening to buckle beneath her; she had to focus on standing upright.

  "We don't know his name," Kai continued. "We don't know where he is. We only know that he is out there. But he can't hide from you, although I'm sure he'll try."

  "No," she said. "He's just a painting. A dream. I don't know anything—"

  "The boy doesn't know what he is, the entity he carries inside him. We need him, and he needs you. You think you can allow yourself to walk away from that?"

  "You're not making any sense to me."

  In two swift strides he had closed the distance between them. He grabbed her face, his fingertips pressing in beneath her cheekbones. She was too stunned to react. "I see," he said quietly, more to himself than to her; and let go.

  "Get out," she said. "Get out."

  "Don't you want to know yourself, Jessamy? Don't you want to know what you can truly do?"

  He held out his hand, long fingers opening like petals unfurling. Two objects lay on his palm. One was a purple box of matches with an address printed on it in black type; the other was a disk of hammered dark metal about the size of a silver dollar. Two images were etched into the metal, facing each other: a serpent on one side, a bird on the other.

  "Take them," Kai said quietly, and she did. The disk was thin and cold. The address on the matchbox was in the meatpacking district, not too far from the Taylor-Taylor gallery.

  He said, "The floating Masquerade. Come see for yourself. And then, I think, you'll be ready to believe."

  She looked up, into the man's amber eyes. He touched her face, and now she did not flinch or back away.

  "Meet me tomorrow night," he said. "Bring the crest. Show it to the pretty ones at the door. They'll play you a little, but they'll let you through."

  "And if I don't?"

  "The boy dies horribly, and the whole world goes to hell. Many hells, actually." His eyes flashed in the half-light. He turned away. "Good night, Jess."

  Her own voice sounded strange to her, as if echoing down from a very great distance. "Sweet dreams," she said.

  He laughed, briefly, and was gone.

  Chapter Seven

  I remember you.

  He had never forgotten her.

  That first encounter in the Cape Town hotel, Table Mountain throwing its shadow over all of them. He had been following her bloodline for the past five centuries, through all its permutations: the ones who lived long and the ones who died early and the ones who carried the Binding deep inside them, always unknowing, passing it on to the next generation like a latent disease.

  So as soon as Jessamy Shepard, six years old and newly orphaned, had stepped into the sunlit hotel library, as soon as he saw the fair skin and black hair and blue eyes, something thudded home inside him. In the far corner, an elderly gentleman in a white linen suit dropped his tea, china breaking on carpet, the man in the hotel uniform quickly putting a hand on the old man's arm, then stooping down to pick up the pieces.

  The little girl didn't seem to notice. She came into the library, eyes wide and glassy, wiping her hands along her shorts as if desperate to rub something off them.

  Kai was sitting in an armchair in the shadow of the bookcase, windows casting bright squares of sunlight to either side.

  He called, "Jessamy."

  She didn't seem to hear.

  "Jessamy."

  The girl looked over, puzzled, then came to him. She was tall for her age, lanky, in denim cutoffs and a red T-shirt emblazoned with a cartoon lizard.

  "Oh," she said. "It's you."

  Kai leaned forward in the chair, elbows on knees, trying not to startle or scare her. He wore a white cotton shirt, khaki slacks, tinted glasses that concealed the peculiar color of his eyes: just another affluent European. He smiled and said, "I've been in your dreams. Haven't I?"

  The girl nodded. He wondered how much longer before the blood-truths, so natural to her now, would seem like nothing more than fancy: the play of a talented child. Jessamy's mother had buried the Binding deep within her at a very young age, bent her life around a definition of "logical" and "normal" that precluded such truths. Kai had not found the mother very interesting, of course, but she had been spared the nightmares and paranoia and bizarre, unseemly "incidents" that had ruined so many of those who'd come before her: those who had been tortured, burned at the stake, locked up and lost in asylums or prisons.

  Now he looked at this little girl, wondering how she would grow. She had an athletic quality to her, a proud way of holding her head. A bit of the warrior in this one, or maybe that was wishful thinking. If he ever had to come for her—which was unlikely—he would need a warrior.

  "I heard about your parents," he said.

  "My parents are dead."

  "I know that. I'm very sorry."

  Her voice had a flat, numbed quality that matched the expression in her eyes. "I'm my uncle's child now. That's what he told me."

  "You are your own child," he said.

  She looked at him and nodded. He didn't know if she was placating a grown-up or if his words resonated.

  "I want to give you something," Kai said. "Can you come a little closer?"

  She eyed him warily.

  Kai said, "Am I such a stranger, Jessamy?"

  She considered this, hooking a finger over her lip. Kai spread his hands in the air, smiled a little, waiting. The man in the hotel uniform was watching them from his corner, not quite sure what he was seeing. Kai shut him out, focused on the girl. "Jessamy," he said, and took off his glasses. The color of his eyes shifted with his mood; he felt peaceful now and knew they'd be a deep, mellow color, the shade of a setting sun.

  She met his eyes with her own and smiled, clapped her hands once, and came forward.

  "It is you," she said. "It is you."

  "I've been in your dreams."

  She nodded, touched his hair experimentally.

  She smelled like butter and coconut. She had a sunburn on her shoulders, the skin just starting to peel. His reaction to her surprised him; he was no longer an affectionate man, and he had never been a sentimental one. Children in general had little effect on him. But he had the inexplicable urge to pick up this little girl, promise her the father's love and protection now denied her.

  She said, "I don't mind." Hunching up her shoulders. "You can share my dreams if you want. There's space."

  Kai was genuinely touched by this. "But you'll grow up," he said. "And I'm not supposed to be a part of your life. I'm not even supposed to be talking to you now."

  "Who says?" A glint of steel in her eyes; a hint of the rebel her mother never was. Warrior, Kai thought again. Maybe not wishful thinking after all.

  Kai said, "It's best that way. I'm very different from you. I ju
st need to check in on you now and again."

  "Why?"

  "It's complicated."

  She plucked at her lip, unconvinced.

  "Here," Kai whispered, and touched the tip of his thumb to her forehead as if baptizing her. The transfer of memory took only seconds; he wasn't as out of practice as he thought. Her eyes widened as the single memory vaulted inside her, braided itself into her own net of imagery.

  "The lizard's cute," she whispered.

  He touched the lizard applique on her shirt. "I thought you'd like it."

  The man in the corner was watching them more closely now.

  "When you feel scared," Kai said, "when you feel sad, that's the place in your mind you can go. It's a little trick you can do to make yourself feel better. Okay?"

  She nodded.

  "Go back to your uncle. He'll be looking for you."

  "No," Jessamy said, and shook her head. "He doesn't care."

  "You'd better go," Kai said gently.

  She looked at him, beseeching. He didn't change his expression. She blew out air and spun on her heel and walked away from him. For a moment—just a moment—he thought about taking her with him. A simple invocation, a brief focus of energy, and no one in the hotel would remember that he, or the girl, even existed. He would say, Come with me, take her hand, lead her into a different mode of existence.

  But if he was going to share a stretch of time with anyone, it would be under different circumstances. He had no wish to play father.

  Jessamy turned and hit him with one last, blue-eyed look, as if to reprimand him for the decision that had whistled through his mind in less than a second. "My parents are dead," she said, as if hoping he would tell her that her uncle was wrong, her parents were sitting in a restaurant somewhere, sipping martinis, laughing, oblivious to the sea-soaked grief and wreckage of Trans-Unity Air Flight 242.

  "Yes," Kai said to her. "They're dead."

  She lifted her chin, then turned and ran out of the library. Kai reached out his mind a little and traced her presence through the hotel.

  Yes, she'd gone back to the suite.

  He stood up and stretched and slipped on the tinted glasses—the room shading fractions darker—then walked to the tea table in the corner and poured himself a cup. The man in the uniform handed him the sugar, looked as if he wanted to say something but didn't. As Kai took the sugar he brushed the young man's hand with the tips of his fingers: something had happened to the man's little sister, Kai sensed, something that had twisted and darkened this man's entire family. He could have probed further but didn't. Best to respect a person's privacy.