Bound by the Vampire Queen (Vampire Queen #8)

Since then, she'd been able to exercise a little more control, but he liked seeing her indulge in such pleasures, like her penchant for coffee. Now he squeezed her hand, seeing the corner of her pretty mouth twitch at the memories he was giving her.

He took her down several smal er, less well -paved streets, until they were moving in dank, poorly lit all eys between buildings. There they found Dumpsters, more graffiti, the smel of garbage and unwashed humans. Several of them. Jacob stopped, listening again.

Lyssa realized they were being watched, but stayed silent, knowing he was aware of it as well.

“I'm not going to hurt anyone, I promise.” He raised his voice. “I need information. Whether you can help me or not, I'l pay you for your time and honesty.” Silence. Giving Lyssa's hand a squeeze, Jacob moved forward, nodding toward his target on the far side of the Dumpster. She answered with a shift of her body, showing she'd located the other two and had his back.

A tiny growl became a whimper, a dog struggling to make a noise against the hand clamped around the snout. Jacob dropped to a squat from his six-foot height, within a couple paces of the shadowed corner the Dumpster provided. He tented his fingers on the pavement, despite the questionable debris beneath them. “I won't hurt you, ma'am. all right? I'm looking for something, and if you've lived down here awhile, I think you'l know where it is. You probably see things a lot of people don't.”

There was the sound of newspaper being crumpled by movement, and Lyssa saw a shift in those shadows. However, she left that one to Jacob, turning to face the two men who stepped out of the gloom on the other side of the Dumpster. They appeared to be about Ingram's age. Both were dressed in worn, layered clothing of dul colors. Their unshaven, thin faces and unkempt hair beneath grimy bil caps, the watchful, not entirely stable expressions, were the signature of the career urban homeless. One held a metal pipe, the other a length of board with nails stuck through the end, a crude mace. “Leave Essie alone,” the one with the pipe said in a voice roughened by outdoor living and smoker's cough. “Don't no one ever come down here in the middle of the night who don't mean trouble.”

“Well, now someone has,” Lyssa said, holding him in her gaze. “We're seeking a tree. A very special tree.”

Whatever they'd been expecting, it was obviously not that. As they exchanged a look, she extended the coffee. “I've only taken a little. Would you like the rest?”

“I don't sleep when I drink coffee. Pete'l take it though. He drinks it like a fish.” Pipe Guy jerked his head at the other man.

Lyssa stepped closer, aware of Jacob's careful attention on them and Pete's tight hold on that lifted board. However, she stepped inside its range without fear. With or without vampire intuition, she had a pretty good grasp of human motives. She kept her gaze on Pete's, not in chal enge, but to show him her intentions. As he warily took the cup from her, she noted the cracked skin on his knuckles.

A creak of metal made her glance right. The woman Jacob had addressed was hobbling into the dim light with the help of a rusty shopping cart. She was much older than the men, perhaps in her seventies, or perhaps the elements were harsher on a woman's thinner skin. Whatever story had put the men on the streets, this woman was here due to mental disorder. It was in the furtive way she looked at them as she muttered to herself and the little dog.

Lyssa suspected schizophrenia that had dovetailed into dementia as she got older, exacerbated by poor nutrition. Fear emanated from her, but also a bel igerent streak of independence that had her clutching the smal mixed-breed dog and jutting her chin at Jacob.

“You won't make me tel you nothing. I know about your kind. What you want, what you see. You won't get into my head.”

Jacob had worn a light jacket over his T-shirt and jeans. It covered the nine-mil imeter and six-inch army knife he carried, along with a couple very well -

sharpened stakes. He was vampire, but he never stopped having the mind-set of a vampire hunter, and he went nowhere with Lyssa where he wasn't armed. But in this instance, he was carrying something more effective, something he'd picked up at the convenience store. Fishing them out of his pockets under Essie's suspicious stare, he extended the chocolate bar and pack of peanut butter crackers, one of his favorite personal combinations before he'd become a vampire. He'd probably intended to have a taste and then offer the rest to Lyssa.

Throughout the centuries, Lyssa had seen unimaginable poverty and deprivation. As awful as it was, homelessness in twenty-first-century Atlanta was nowhere as bad as it could get for a human being. But it stil stirred her pity, to see such shadowdwel ers, lost to the world through their own madness or other trauma and circumstances they couldn't or wouldn't resolve. The woman she was looking at had been on the streets for a long time.

Over that time, she'd probably been raped, beaten, her belongings stolen again and again.

As much as it stirred her heart, the man handing the chocolate to Essie had a chivalrous streak a mile wide. Leaving the woman here, in these circumstances, would go against everything Jacob believed was right, but he would do it, because she knew he saw the same thing Lyssa did. This was the only place Essie would live, the only life her madness would let her embrace. This was all she had, the world she knew. But he could give her his respect, and the chance to feel valued.

“Have you seen the tree?” he asked. “It will stand out. It has a special magic, an unexpected beauty.” She'd let the dog down. Jacob stayed in his nonintimidating squat while the terrier mix sniffed suspiciously at his ankles. “Your dog probably enjoys the shade there in summer. It's a will ow tree. It looks like a beautiful slender woman, her hair rippling in the breeze.”

The woman opened the chocolate, sniffed it, then hid it in one of her pockets. She was continuing to mumble to herself unintel igibly.

“He crazy as Essie,” Pipe Guy said to his companion. That one nodded agreeably, propped on his spiked board, sipping the coffee. But Lyssa had seen the gaze they exchanged.

They know what you're talking about, Jacob.

“I saw her,” Essie said abruptly. Leaning forward, she seized Jacob by the lapel of his jacket, peering into his face. The two men tensed, but Jacob lifted open hands, showing he wouldn't react with violence.

“So long . . . younger then. More teeth.” She cackled, showing a mouth ful of decay. Lyssa detected the odor at this distance, and knew Jacob was getting a direct blast. But he didn't move, focused on Essie's expressive face. “She ran. Ran like bal erina, so pretty. So graceful. Dancing through all ey. Like girl with red shoes. Fairy tale. Tiny, delicate little butterfly wings, so she moved just over the ground, not very high. They were too smal . They couldn't carry her off and away, above their heads.

Bad men run after her.” She frowned then, her grip tightening. “Why you hurt her? What's wrong with you?”

“It wasn't me,” Jacob assured her. “If I was there, I would have helped. I would have protected her.”

“She protected herself,” Essie declared proudly, straightening. Her dog settled at her ankles, looking hopeful y at the peanut butter crackers she stil held in one fist. “She turns corner . . . boom, she gone.

She gone away. They don't know where she go. Only a tree left in that place. A tree . . . And sometimes I see her in it. She sways in the wind, like you say. A beautiful, beautiful dancer . . . but so sad.” She spread her arms and rocked back and forth on her feet, swaying like the tree. When she overbalanced and Jacob reached out to steady her, she petted his jacket, the way she'd pet her dog.

“Pretty, pretty. Bad men come and go. But the tree, she there . . .”

“Where? Essie?” Jacob touched her face lightly, bringing her eyes to his intent ones. “Can you show me where?”

Getting Essie going in the right direction took a little time, since she wouldn't go without her shopping cart, and she wouldn't go in a car. Her two companions also insisted on going, marching at Jacob and Lyssa's back, unlikely body guards for their eccentric friend. However, when Lyssa dropped back to join them, Jacob experienced his usual admiration for how easily his lady interacted with any strata of humanity. Though she had pointed out his intuitive gifts many times, her own natural perceptiveness was unparal eled. Males might respond to her beauty, but when she wished to do so, she could offer a warmth, a genuine interest, that disarmed them entirely.

In no time, Essie's companions were tel ing her stories of their lives, despite the fact that Pete, having a bad stutter, had let Pipe Guy do his talking up to now. When she placed her hands on their elbows, as if she was letting herself be escorted by them, they were hooked. Disjointed and unlikely as some of the tales they relayed sounded, there were obvious wretched truths interwoven into them. Time and hard living had made the truth more difficult to recal . . . or they wanted it that way, preferring their imaginations.

Meanwhile, Essie kept up a running prattle between herself, her dog, and sometimes threw things at Jacob that didn't seem to require response.

Which was good, because after her fairly lucid moment, her current commentary was as cryptic as Sanskrit. Their progress was slow, for sometimes she clung to his arm, then abruptly shoved him away and accused him of trying to take advantage of her.

After that, she might wander in circles around her cart for a few moments, shouting incomprehensibly and rummaging through her things. When she wound down, studying him with bewildered eyes, he would gently remind her of the tree, and she would resume their trek with a sense of purpose.

You are cutting it close to dawn, Sir Vagabond.

I'm all right. Though he could feel the sun's approach. In addition to the occasional attack of bloodlust, he stil had a fledgling's increased vulnerability to the approaching daylight. Whereas Lyssa had been able to step into shelter a moment's breath from dawn without any problem, it was near impossible for him to comfortably be above ground less than an hour before the sun's rising. However, he'd deal with some discomfort. They were too close.