A different clotted, hot, numbing flow rushed into him. It filled Benedikte, blooming with the memory of true laughter, sadness, all the emotions he had forfeited upon drinking the blood of his own maker.
It was a soul, Benedikte knew, Sorin’s soul, and it darted around inside of him with the confused ferocity of a trapped animal, seeking a path out while leaving sparks of that sublime emotion he so wanted. Yet he did not wish for it to leave, did not wish for it to—
With an agonizing tear, it screamed out of him. Benedikte flailed, reaching for it, combing through the thick invisibility of air while his greatest dream fled.
“No!”
When his hand gripped nothing yet again, he smashed a fist to the ground. The wine bottle shook in the aftermath.
“There.” The vampire aimed a stare at the container. “You go there. A haven. Safety. Shelter.”
The soul wailed, lured and tricked, as it swished into the open wine bottle. Wildly, Benedikte grabbed the vessel, pressing his thumb over the opening. Capturing his new hope.
Life, he thought. What he had felt just now was finally life, not the mere existence he had been enduring.
Using a handkerchief to plug the bottle, Benedikte rushed to cut his misted wrist with a long nail, to force his blood into Sorin’s mouth in hasty exchange so he, too, would not attempt to escape.
Just as his son once had…his child, blue-skinned, lacking in breath…
The sorcerer gulped as if he were an infant at a breast, taking in the blood that would nurture him. Taking in his new life.
Twitching his mouth away from the wrist, Sorin moaned in agony, screeching and reaching out, fingers clawed as he attempted to grasp the silvered murkiness of Benedikte’s body.
Meanwhile, the old vampire hovered away, wisping back to his other, more human form. He watched, eyes tearing at the birth of his own line.
An eternity later, young Sorin shuddered to completion. Benedikte went to him, easing him into the cradle of his arms, stroking his child’s hair.
“Son,” he said, looking down upon the new, confused vampire as he leaned back his head, blood marking his gaping lips. “Finally…my own son.”
For the rest of the night as he rocked his child to rest, Benedikte smiled to himself, listening to the wolf howling and the fire dying.
EIGHT
THE BROOD
A FTER the interview, there’s a nice, plump cactus by the lobby where we can do pictures,” said Coral Tomlinson, Lee’s faintly inbred mother. “We been posing out in front of it all week.”
The afternoon following the Milton Crockett ambush found Dawn aiming a digital camera recorder at the fiftyish widow Tomlinson. She was sitting apart from the rest of her family, in a zebra-striped chair here at the Adventure Motel off Sunset, a relic from the days of plastic-beaded entryways and turquoise shag carpeting. Stale smoke seemed like it’d worked its way into the safari wallpaper, and the atmosphere wasn’t so much a throwback as an admission that the owner didn’t have enough money to redecorate.
As Dawn watched the camera’s flip-out monitor, she noted that Coral’s hair was that bright red you could only get from a dime-store bottle, her skin tanned to the point of accelerated age spotting. She wore one of those paisley-patterned blouses that probably came from the same store as the hair supplies, plus polyester slacks. Not that Dawn was some catwalk pro herself, but she could tell this was high fashion for Coral because of the way the woman tugged at the material, as if it didn’t fit—or didn’t belong on her. Generic pink terry-cloth sweats seemed more in Coral’s ballpark, to tell the truth.
But Dawn wasn’t complaining about the company; the team was damned lucky to be here, even if talking with the Tomlinsons was no substitute for seeing the accused murderer himself.
After the Crockett confrontation, Breisi had managed to secure an interview with the family, who was visiting from Florida in support of Lee. The Limpet team had needed to fudge their reasons for being here just a tad, telling the Tomlinsons they were journalists and carrying fake press badges The Voice had somehow procured. But if questioning these people would yield another lead, who cared about telling a few white lies?
Since Lee’s attorneys were monitoring his interviews, the team assumed the lawyers were doing the same with the Tomlinson family—thus the false identities. And because Kiko was too distinctive, he was waiting outside, guarded by a contingent of invisible Friends, just in case. His part of the interview would come after Breisi and Dawn asked basic questions.
If he could handle it.
Dawn tried not to think too hard about his difficulties, but yeah, color her worried. Kiko had been sullen ever since yesterday, after his failure to read Milton Crockett. Were his pills clouding his mind? Or, even worse, was he taking more medication than the rest of them were aware of?
Breisi, who had been fetching a notepad from her equipment bag, came to stand next to Dawn. “Are you all set up?”