Chosen (20 page)

“Good to see you looking so well,” the pilot says to me, extending a hand. “Mr. Turner said he was bringing you here to recuperate from an illness. Obviously, you have.”

He’s young, early thirties, oily—his hair, his obsequious smile, his voice.

I smile back, though it feels more like a grimace. The lie is hard to swallow. What I want to do is beat my chest and ask how he could have been so stupid. Did I look like I was ill? Or did I look like I was drugged and being kidnapped?

Maybe that’s not fair. Maybe he couldn’t have known. Somehow, though, I think it more likely the money he was paid for the charter smoothed away any misgivings he may have harbored about the way I was brought on board.

He leaves for the cockpit. The copilot takes care of the door. He’s a little older, forty maybe, and when he’s through latching and securing, he joins me in the main cabin.

“Flying time is thirteen hours, Ms. Strong. We will put down once in Bangor, Maine, to refuel. We should be on the ground in San Diego about one o’clock, Pacific daylight time.”

He doesn’t smile. He doesn’t display any of the sycophantic toadying of his coworker. He doesn’t even look particularly happy to be here.

I like him.

 

I’M ASLEEP BEFORE THE PLANE GAINS CRUISING ALTITUDE. One moment I’m gazing out at the Basque countryside as we rocket down the runway.

The next, I’m not.

 

I WAKE UP TO THE WHIR AND PNEUMATIC CLICK OF the landing gear engaging. I stretch and yawn and check my watch. This must be the refueling stop.

The telephone on the console beside my seat buzzes. When I pick it up, the copilot’s voice tells me I have a call. He disconnects and a familiar voice booms in my ear.

“My god, Anna. Where have you been?”

“Nice to hear your voice, too, Frey. What’s the matter?”

“Everything. Williams’ wife went crazy at Culebra’s and killed a host. David is missing. Your new partner Tracey has been calling all over the place trying to locate you. She got halfway through the Fs before she found my number in your office Rolodex. I wouldn’t have known to try the plane if Lance hadn’t called. Where are you?”

His words are disjointed and rambling, launched at me through the phone with the speed of light in a burst of pent-up emotion that renders them almost incomprehensible.

Almost.

It takes me only a second to sort through the tirade and zero in on the one salient point in his rant.

“What do you mean David is missing?”

B
EFORE CONTINUING, FREY SUCKS IN A NOISY breath, as if the outburst forced all the air from his lungs. “Tracey said David was supposed to meet her at the office on Friday. In fact, she said
you
were supposed to meet her at the office on Friday, too. When neither of you showed up, she waited. While she was there, the phone rang. It was David’s girlfriend. She wanted to know if you were all right. David got a call Thursday evening saying you had been in an accident. He left her in San Francisco and came right back. No one’s seen him or heard from him since.”

He runs out of air again, stopping abruptly to inhale. “Was there an accident? Are you all right?”

A click over the line and the pilot’s voice interrupts. “Ms. Strong, we’ll be on the ground about forty-five minutes. Bangor has cleared us for takeoff after fueling at oh six hundred hours. ETA for San Diego is thirteen hundred Pacific daylight time. Do you want to deplane at the fueling station?”

I press the intercom button. “No. I’ll stay on board. Get us off the ground as soon as possible.”

Frey cuts in as the pilot clicks off. “Bangor? As in Maine? What are you doing in Maine?”

I rub a hand across my eyes. “You don’t want to know. I’ll fill you in later. Right now, I’m more concerned about David. Christ, I don’t even know what questions to ask. This could be a skip we turned in. Or a supernatural. Someone out to get me because of Williams.” I sit up straight in the seat. “What did you say about Mrs. Williams? She killed a host?”

I can almost see him nodding as he says, “Drained her. Culebra was there, but she lost control. Swatted him away as if he were a fly on the wall. Knocked him cold. She’s incredibly strong for a new vamp. Culebra should have been able to stop her.”

Culebra
should
have been able to stop her. Did she get her strength from being sired by a two-hundred-year-old vamp? Or is it something else?

Concentrate on the problem at hand.

“What happened then?”

“She took off. When Culebra came to, she was gone. Along with another human, according to the barkeep. Carried him off. Culebra is beside himself with worry. She’s behaving like a rogue, which puts the entire supernatural community in danger.”

God.

Frey hesitates, as if waiting for me to say something. I don’t know what to say. I’m trembling. For David. For the thoughts swirling around in my head.

If Mrs. Williams blames me for her husband’s death, what better way to exact revenge than by taking David?

“Anna? Are you there?”

I rouse myself out of the miasma. “Frey, do you know where Avery lived?”

“Avery?” He repeats the name in a voice reflecting bewilderment and surprise. “What does Avery have to do with anything?”

“Maybe nothing. But Warren Williams and Avery were friends for two hundred years. He blamed me for Avery’s death. Now Mrs. Williams blames me for her husband’s death. I think there’s a good chance she took David. And the logical place to take him would be where my connection to the three of them began.”

Frey is silent for a moment. When he speaks, his words are reflective and deliberate. “You may be right. Do you want me to go out there, take a look around?”

“Not in your human form. She’ll be looking for someone to come snooping. And she knows you’re my friend.”

“What about as panther?”

“During the day? How would you pull that off?”

I do the arithmetic. If we’re in San Diego about one p.m., I’ll have time to see Culebra and get back to meet Frey before dark. “Wait for me to call you. We can’t do anything before dark. She’s not going to hurt David until she makes sure I’m around to watch.”

He’s silent, and I know the idea of waiting for eight or nine hours is chafing. I know because I’m feeling the same thing.

“Don’t try to go on your own, Frey,” I warn. “Wait for me. You will wait for me, right?”

“Of course.”

Too quick. But Frey is not stupid. He won’t take unnecessary risks if David’s life is in jeopardy.

I’m ready to thank him and hang up when something else he said bubbles to the surface of my consciousness. “You said Lance called? When?”

“Two hours ago. Said you were on your way home. Could be reached on the plane if I needed to get in touch with you. He sounded strange, Anna. Gave no reason for calling except for that. Rang off before I could ask how he knew I was trying to get in touch with you. Is there something going on? Did you two have a fight?”

Fight? I feel the bloodlust stir in anticipation.

No. Not yet. But it’s certainly coming.

I thrust the vampire back into her box. “It’s not important.”

“Is that the reason you left town? Because you were fighting with Lance?”

“No. Let it go.”

“Then was it to be away for the anniversary of your becoming? Because if it was, there’s something else you should know.”

I don’t like the way that sounds. “What?”

A moment of silence, as if Frey is choosing his words carefully. “I’ve been doing some checking. We were wrong in thinking the anniversary date was the date you and Donaldson exchanged blood. It isn’t. It’s actually the first time you fed as a vampire. The ingesting of blood marked the conclusion of the physiological change. From that point on, you were no longer human but vampire. That is the true anniversary date of your becoming. And it is on that date that you will become what is destined to be.”

For a moment, he sounds so much like Julian Underwood spouting his goddess of the Sorginak garbage that I’m tempted to laugh.

But what they wanted to do to me in that cave wasn’t funny. What they
did
to me in that cave wasn’t funny.

Why should I assume this would be any better?

I thought it was over—the craziness about being the Chosen One. Now I’m not so sure.

If Mrs. Williams intends to carry the banner for her husband, I’m right back where I started. She seemed clueless about vampire ways, but she must have spent hours listening to her husband talk about how he might win me to the cause. He might have mentioned David and how I fought Avery to save him. She may see David as the key to fulfilling her husband’s mission.

I think back to the dark days of my becoming. I was attacked on a Friday night. I was in the hospital for what? One or two days. Then Avery came to my house and told me that I was no longer human. That I was vampire. Two days later, I fed from him. If what Frey says is true, four days after I was bitten would be Tuesday. When whatever is supposed to happen, will.

Unless I can stop it.

I ask Frey to do one more thing before we ring off. Well, two things actually. The first is to call David’s girlfriend and tell her something—anything—to keep her from reporting David missing. Police involvement we don’t need. The second is to call Tracey and do the same. Make up a story that David and I went out of town on a job. Assure them both the accident thing was a false alarm. That we’ll be in touch with them by the end of the week.

In touch, I think ironically, or dead.

Either way, it won’t matter.

After hanging up, I cross the cabin, head directly for the bar. Pour two drinks. Scotch, neat. One I down in a single gulp standing up at the teak counter, enjoying the burn as it scalds a trail down my throat and bursts with the impact of a fireball in my gut.

The other I take back with me to nurse in my seat.

The thing I have to figure out now is what Mrs. Williams is up to. She has David. There’s not even a glimmer of doubt in my head about that.
Why
she has David is the question. Is it simply a way to get back at me for her husband’s death? Or is there something more?

Warren Williams was adamant and vocal about my destiny. I’m sure he shared those feelings with his wife. As a mortal, she probably listened with bored indifference to his rants about me. How ignorant I was, how ineffectual as a vampire, how uninterested I was in learning the ways. She knows more about what being the “Chosen One” means than I do. Hell, I don’t know anything about what it means and I seriously wish now I had taken the time to learn. My gut, however, says that power goes along with that title. It has to. Williams and Avery were all about power—having it, controlling it, hoarding it.

And that may be the problem.

As I see it, there are two possibilities. Either Mrs. Williams means to see that I fulfill that mysterious destiny and assume the crown as a tribute to her husband.

Or she means to wear that crown herself.

I
T’S A LITTLE BEFORE TWO WHEN WE LAND IN SAN Diego. Disconcerting since we left France at nine this morning and have been en route for thirteen hours. If what’s happening isn’t bad enough, the time difference will make this day hellishly long.

The pilot taxis from the runway to Jimsair, the private terminal. I wonder first how he would know to do that and then I realize how stupid that question is.

Of course he would know. It’s where he picked me up, unconscious and with Lance as my companion.

When I deplane, a Jimsair employee is waiting. He and the pilot have a brief conversation before he turns to me.

“The same arrangements as always, Ms. Strong?”

Since I have no idea what that means, I just nod. Williams took care of the details before. When I went to France to visit my folks, I simply called the pilot I’d used before and told him when I wanted to leave. He took care of the rest. I suppose now I’d better take more interest.

That will be first thing on my to-do list after getting David back safely and killing Lance.

But right now . . . “I need to call a taxi. Can I do that inside?”

The guy nods and gestures toward the lounge. “Georgia at the desk will help you.”

I thank him. I’ll go straight home. Change out of this ridiculous outfit and go to Beso de la Muerte. There are questions I have for Culebra and, I imagine, questions he has for me.

 

 

I PUSH THROUGH THE OLD-FASHIONED DOUBLE swinging doors.

Culebra looks up, frowns and his greeting is a curt, “I’ve been wondering when you’d show up.”

He’s standing behind the bar, polishing glasses with a towel. He could be a Hispanic Clint Eastwood stand-in. Weather-beaten, tanned-leather face, slightly stoop-shouldered skinny frame, jeans and long-sleeved shirt faded from too much exposure to sun and soap.

Usually, you’d peg him as one of the good guys.

Today, however, his mood is black and dangerous. Today his shape-shifter name fits him. Rattlesnake.

I look around.

The bar is deserted.

Unusual for a Saturday afternoon.

He’s in my head.
What did you expect? I lost two hosts. That crazy bitch killed one outright and took off with the other. His body was found yesterday in the desert. I thought Williams was a menace. His wife is worse.

The Revengers are a powerful human group sworn to exterminate the vampire race. They have been around since the time of the Crusades when vampires and heretics were hunted with the same fervor. There has been no activity lately to attract their unwanted and dangerous attention. My intention was to keep it that way.