“Black and Blonde” (Part 6)

Tess met him at the appointed place, pulling up to the curb in a white BMW that blended into traffic about as well as she had blended into the bar crowd two nights ago. The top was down; he had her put it up before he got into the passenger seat. “Couldn’t you have been a little less obvious with the wheels?” he grumbled, slamming the door.

“This is Travis’s car. Mine is in the shop. Where to?”

“Just drive where I tell you. Did you bring the books?”

She nodded, checking her blind spot before pulling into the street. “In the back seat. He had tons more, but those were the last.”

Black reached behind her seat and hauled a tote bag full of hardcover sketchbooks from the floor. He counted six spines with his fingers. “Go left here,” he said.

“Where are we going?”

“Nowhere. It’s harder to hit a moving target.”

She glanced at him, alarmed. “What does that mean?”

“You’ve been made, sugar. I might not be the fizziest beer in the two-four, but I’ve got friends who are. I visited one last night. He told me all about you. Well, not everything; just that you’ve been tailing me for some weeks and it’s a concern.”

“Am I in trouble?”

“Much as I hate to admit it, since any trouble you’re in is trouble for me. Turn right at the next street.”

She guided the car as directed. Black pulled out one of the sketchbooks and started flipping pages. The drawings were good, mostly of women in various stages of undress. The faces had been dashed out in the fewest strokes, yet he recognized Tess in more than a few racy positions. Travis had stayed true to her build as well; her curves were deeper and sexier than the contours of the others he had drawn.

“Did you tell your friend about the safe deposit box?”

“He’s a bright boy. He figured it out.”

She hit the brakes to avoid a tabby cat that streaked across the road. Black stuffed the book into the bag and pulled out another one, dated a month before Travis had died. Tess started the car rolling again.

“Why did you want to see the sketchbooks? Are you looking for someone?”

“Maybe.”

“A vampire?”

“Did he work with other models?”

“What do you mean ‘other’?”

Black tapped his forefinger on a sketch of Tess sleeping naked on a sofa. “He did these from memory?”

She flushed a luscious shade of pink. “He had a good memory,” she said, “and a better imagination.”

“He was good,” Black allowed.

“Yeah,” she breathed, “he was.”

Tess drove while Black went through the books. Melissa Etheridge played on the stereo and after a while, Tess asked if she could drop the top on the Beemer again. He agreed because they had gone beyond the city limits and were driving along the coast road. Traffic was light and heading in the opposite direction. His paranoia seemed excessive in such conditions.

“Did Travis make any money doing this?”

“Some. It was half and half between art and the band; sometimes he made more playing, other times he did better drawing.”

“I suppose his life insurance didn’t kick in since the report said it was suicide.”

“That’s not why I’m doing this, Black.”

“Did I say it was?”

“You still don’t believe me, do you? You’re just humouring me.”

“No, I think you might be on to something. That’s what scares me.”

“Why?”

“You can’t call the cops on a vampire. They already think you’re nuts. So what happens if I find the one who killed your boyfriend? What do you expect me to do?”

Her hands clenched on the steering wheel. “I expect you to kill him.”

“Now, wait a minute—”

“No,” she cut in, fiercely. “That’s the deal. You find and kill him, then I destroy the dossier I’ve got on you.”

He scowled at her profile, etched pale and stark against the night flowing past her window. “I can’t kill another vampire. It’s not allowed.”

She snorted. “Since when have any of your kind worried about what’s allowed and what isn’t? Killing humans isn’t allowed, either, pal.”

“You don’t think we’re human?”

“No, I don’t!” she cried. “You forfeit your humanity when you start drinking our blood. It’s a drug for you; the more you get, the more you want until someone finally dies for it. It’s what happened to Travis, I know it is. He got in over his head. He was dumb that way, too sweet and trusting for his own good. He was suckered into dying for one of you, and by God I’m going to see justice done for it!”

She was sobbing as she drove. Black laid a hand on hers where it clung to the leather-wrapped wheel and she flung him off with a sweep of her arm that caught him in the face and knocked his shades off his nose. He swore at her, making a grab for them before they got out the open window.

Too late.

“Fuck!”

She swerved onto the gravel shoulder and stopped the car in a biting cloud of dust. Black opened the door and rolled out with one hand shielding his eyes from the fine silt that sought to blind him. He scrambled alongside the car, scanning through his lashes for the black Ray Bans. Tess got out to look as well.

“Get back in the car!” he snapped.

She ignored him. “I think they landed back here.”

He gave up arguing and sank to his knees by the rear wheel, closing his eyes against the red glare from the tail lights. Stupid eyes; they were so damn sensitive to everything. Clare had laughed at him for keeping them shut while making love, but he couldn’t stand the onslaught of his perfected sight.

“Here you go.”

Squinting, he raised his head. Tess stood before him, holding out his shades. The lenses were tinted so dark they looked opaque. He reached for them; she jerked them away.

“For Christ’s sake, lady—”

“Look up,” she said.

He ducked his head and counted to ten.

“Do you want them or not?”

He muttered a vehement curse under his breath. “Just give me the damn glasses.”

“Come and get them.”

Peering through his lashes, he saw her figure painted in shades of blood. Her hair was a corona of fire, her blue eyes tinted lilac. She wore jeans and a sweatshirt, but he saw the curves Travis had depicted so accurately beneath her clothes. She was small but powerful. She’d have made a good vampire.

Now there was a thought.

He shook it from his head and got slowly to his feet. “I don’t like you,” he growled.

“I don’t like you, either,” she said. “What’s wrong with your eyes?”

“Nothing. It’s what was wrong with them. Give me the glasses.”

She handed them over in silence.

He replaced them on the bridge of his nose and inhaled a shaky breath. “Now take me home.”

* * *

He meant her home, not his. The books in the tote bag had revealed nothing save a promising talent and a love of the female form—one in particular. Not the one he was looking for. The books were too recent. He had to go further back to be sure.

He hoped he was wrong. He doubted that he was.

Tess dropped him off a few blocks from her house and continued home alone. He walked slowly along the sidewalk, spreading his senses outward in search of another’s presence. If any of Raymond’s spies were handy, he wanted to know about it. It was an odd feeling, dropping the shields he had constructed so carefully. The mortal world was noisy and crowded; he had been forced to devise a means of locking out the mayhem before he lost his mind. Timing had been critical and nearly missed. Becoming a vampire had not been easy. Without Clare, he might not have made it.

He was supposed to meet her at the Four Seasons before dawn. She wanted to show him a slice of the life that awaited if he agreed to go with her, and he was tempted to try. If he could find a place where blood ran rich and thick, if he could fool the elite into believing he belonged among them, he could leave the waterfront. He could quit bargaining for blood with poison, quit stealing cash from corpses. Clare could help him find his way, teach him the trick of living in society. He wasn’t dumb. He could fake it. And if he went with her, it would be harder for her to leave him.

But he had to finish with Tess, first.

She had done as he said and parked in the driveway, waiting in the car until he signed it was safe to get out. The house was a cute little character cottage nestled on the property of a main house. A good place for vampires, he thought, noting the lush foliage and thick, droopy trees. Tess led him to the front door and handed him the key.

“Will the neighbours talk?” he asked.

“At this hour, they’re all asleep.”

The deadbolt clicked and Black opened the door. He was met by an aromatic gust of spice-scented air. Gingerbread had been baked that afternoon. “You cook?” he asked, over his shoulder.

She pushed him inside. “I’ll take you to the studio.”

A sun porch had been built onto the back of the house, behind the kitchen. They had converted it to an art studio. Paints and canvases were everywhere; the work in progress on an easel in the corner was a portrait of Travis. He had been a handsome man made irresistible to women by the sweetness Tess had mentioned. She had captured it in his eyes, giving life to a work that was not near finished. “That’s very good,” Black remarked.

“I started it eight months ago,” Tess told him. “I haven’t touched it since.”

He suddenly regretted being so hard on her over the sunglasses.

“The books are over there.” She pointed to a low set of bookshelves against the far wall, crammed with more of the hardcover sketchbooks. They were labelled and arranged in date order; Black found the year he was looking for and pulled the book free.

“When did you meet him?”

“Last spring.”

The book in Black’s hands was dated Jan­­–Mar/99. Before Tess. She wouldn’t have been at Raymond’s New Year’s party. Travis wouldn’t have been clean then, either. He might have been trying, but he hadn’t succeeded yet.

“Have you looked through the older books, Tess?”

“There are too many.”

Black didn’t want to open the book in his hands. There wasn’t much point. But he opened it anyway, hoping for negation and finding confirmation. He recognized the long, limber form sketched in bold strokes on page after page, in pose after erotic pose, unabashedly nude or playing peek-a-boo in slinky designer gowns. Her hair was long and straight, burnished even in black and white, but the siren’s eyes were the same.

He sat cross-legged on the floor, his back to Tess while she clattered around in the kitchen. If he asked to borrow the book, she would be suspicious and he didn’t want that. He would have to manage without the sketches. Then he remembered the photo in his pocket.

He replaced the book on the shelf and took a stool at the breakfast bar. Tess gave him an inquiring glance.

“Let’s talk money,” he said.

to be continued ...