To Kill a Sorcerer Page 6

  “I always knew humans were the real monsters.”

  “Yes.”

  She turned back to the screen.

  I wandered onto the patio, the Pacific a soft roar in the distance.

  She was a twenty-year-old woman living in Paris when a vacationing vampire, Claudius, had been smitten by her extraordinary beauty. He had taken her into the coven of darkness that same night. Claudius was the most ancient vampire, with powers none of the others possessed. Though Aliena was young for a vampire at just over three centuries old, no one would dare harm her knowing Claudius to be her sire.

  That part of her history sounded storybook (like a dark princess) and attractive. Her unapproachable manner, however, did not have the same appeal. She had beguiled me for over a century, but I had learned at an early stage to maintain a certain degree of emotional distance. It proved difficult. Aliena had more than beauty and brains. She was immortal, a trait that held an obvious allure for me.

  It had been centuries since I had allowed my romantic self to even peek at a woman. Love was not a prudent emotion for me, particularly with a mortal. And with Aliena? I had tried to visualize my future with her and could not.

  The cab ride home tonight had been excruciatingly pleasurable. She had not been her usual aloof self all night. Upset over the pictures she had “found” of me, she had held my arm in front of Marcus, had left 49 with me, and had pressed against me on the backseat of a car, confessing that she had never had a lover.

  Aliena had played coy in the past, including stripping in front of me so she could use my shower, but it was bawdy stuff, not romantic—and not an invitation.

  However, even in the most clinical setting, watching her strip intoxicated the senses. Aliena is all womanly curves, breathtaking in the nude. You might think that after seven hundred years I had seen enough female bodies to be immune to such a simple thing.

  Not a bit of it.

  I went back inside. Aliena had finished the reports. She set the computer on the table and straightened up.

  “Did your police friends say anything about her lack of defensive wounds?”

  “Only that they didn’t know why she didn’t fight him,” I said.

  “That’s unusual. Unless these wounds are postmortem?”

  “No, the coroner confirmed she was alive when the first cut was made.”

  She gazed at the computer screen. “With the herbs and the removal of the heart, pointing her head toward the ground . . . what he did to her obviously goes beyond a simple murder. Oh, Sebastian . . . she looks terrified.”

  I clenched my hands, remembering. “What do you think about our killer?”

  “He’s a mature man with good emotional control. He took his time, so he has self-confidence. The way he tied her to the ceiling demonstrates he is fit and strong. For a mortal. As for the cuts, I agree with you. This has the earmarks of something ritualistic.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Based on the dearth of evidence collected at the scene, he plans well and is a perfectionist. If he continues, he will be difficult to catch. He is unlikely to make mistakes.”

  So far, nothing but bad news. “All the more reason . . .” I said, half to myself, forgetting that Aliena could have heard me even if she was on the roof.

  “Is this one of your special cases?”

  “If you mean do I intend to kill this murderer rather than turn him over to the police, I think so.”

  Although LAPD had me officially listed as nine of twelve, my unofficial success rate was 100 percent. That’s because I had killed the three men I had not helped the police catch. In my estimation, those three represented a continuous danger to unarmed citizens and always would. There was no point in the city of Los Angeles putting them through the system to prosecute them. They were not worth the world’s time, money, or attention.

  So I disposed of them, making their last moments on earth as agonizing as possible.

  “You do not think it would be better for people to know this murderer has been captured and is no longer a threat?”

  “Better for them how?” I asked. “He no longer will be a threat, and that is all that matters. And he will never tell his story so that deranged people can imitate him. Hollywood can’t make a movie. No one but I will know who the killer was.”

  “And I. May I kill him this time?”

  “Yes, very well. Must you crush them while you drain them?”

  “It is the same as squeezing the last bit of toothpaste from a tube.”

  “So you’ve told me,” I said, revolted.

  She laughed at my expression. She rose from the couch and walked past me to the open patio doors.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “Did you see the tox panel?”

  “Yes. It was in the coroner’s report. She was apparently clean.”

  “That is strange. Sebastian, I would like to consult with Marcus on this case.”

  “Marcus? Why?” In all the cases Aliena and I had worked in the past, she had never, to my knowledge, discussed them with anyone else. Vampires did not concern themselves with human affairs.

  “I think he may be interested in it.”

  “Again, why?”

  She walked back to the coffee table, turned the laptop around, and moved the mouse so the screensaver cleared and we were looking at a long shot of Sherri’s hanging body. “I do not know. It is a feeling. She was also a virgin?”

  “Yes, the rape kit proved that.”

  “We’ve worked murder cases before, but this one has a different feel. I would like to apprise Marcus of the details. May I?”

  She wasn’t going to give me any more. I suppressed a surge of jealousy at the idea of her discussing the case with the handsome vampire. However, there was no gracious way to forbid it.

  “Of course.”

  She turned and looked at the angel atop the Christmas tree.

  “Do you like it?” I asked.

  “Very pretty.”

  She left at six thirty, lifting from my patio into the paling sky. For the last few months, she had been spending the daylight hours somewhere in the San Bernardino Mountains. Exactly where she slept was a secret she shared with no one.

  I returned to the couch, opened the “Hamilton III” document, added several notes from my conversation with Aliena (including her claim on the kill), then sat back. The nascent beams of the sun crept slowly toward me across the carpet. Blowing smoke rings at the ceiling, I thought about the man who had killed thirty-seven hours ago and wondered if he was ready to kill again.

  Twelve

  Wednesday, December 22, 8:50 a.m.

  After ten cigarettes, I removed my jacket, tie, and shoes, stretched out full-length on the couch, and closed my eyes. Taking slow, deep breaths, I relaxed my muscles. The faint rumble of traffic on the Pacific Coast Highway drifted through the windows.

  I do not sleep the way mortals sleep. Instead I remember, and the memories play out in my mind like dreams. It is not something I always control. The subconscious mind is a recalcitrant junk collector, retaining memories the conscious mind would rather not. And because the unconscious makes unpredictable, illogical connections, my dream may be an experience I had hoped to forget.

  How I longed to close my eyes, remember my families as they were when we were happiest, clasp those images to my soul, and never again experience the darkness that fills my past.

  For although love is one of the constants of history, so is death.

  Even at a very young age, I knew there was something unusual about me.

  I was born Sebastian Laurence Montero in July of 1274 near the castle town of Arundel in West Sussex, the oldest of three children. My family were free people working the land of Earl William Fitzhugh.

  My father was tall and black-haired, with kind brown eyes and a big nose, built like a stone cathedral. My mother was a hardy, broad-shouldered, wide-hipped woman with fair hair and green eyes.

  By the time I was six
years old, I worked the fields with my father. By the time I was seven, I noticed one difference between the rest of my family and me: I did not need to eat.

  Meals were rituals in which I participated out of habit. I had never felt hunger. Good food smelled and tasted delicious, so eating was a pleasure, but it did not occur to me until much later that everyone else felt a physical compulsion to consume food, a pang born of survival—an instinctive impulse I did not share.

  I understood what starvation was. We had seen the funeral procession for a young boy from our village who had died from lack of food. During the service, I noted his parents were also skeletally thin. Most of the congregation was the same, as was my family. Leanness was normal.

  Lying on the straw rushes the night of the funeral, I thought about it. If I did not need to eat, then I could not starve, could I? What did that mean? Did it mean I could not die? How was that possible? I thought about Marguerite and James, sleeping next to me. They needed food. They could die of starvation and so could my parents.

  The realization that I was different from them in such a fundamental way frightened me so badly, I refused to acknowledge it. It was too big for my child’s mind to cope with.

  My parents knew there was something different about me. They hadn’t questioned me about it directly. I believed that was because they didn’t know what it meant, so weren’t sure what to ask.

  I definitely never brought it up.

  But my dearest Marguerite. Some nights, when our parents let us keep the rushlights lit, she would watch me before we went to sleep, and her drowsy gaze told me she knew the truth.

  My younger brother and sister had always viewed me with skeptical awe. It didn’t help that we all slept together. Our house had two rooms: one for the five of us and one for our oxen and chickens. We kids slept on the ground, matted straw beneath us. Mother and Father slept in a raised bed on the other side of the room.

  One October night when I was eleven, with a fierce storm shaking our house, James and Marguerite pestered me with questions late into the night. James was the youngest at six, and Margie a wise old nine. Marguerite and I were dark-haired and green-eyed like Father. James was fair like Mother.

  Wind gusted outside, and the rain was an intermittent patter on the thatched roof. The room was cold, but Father had decided it was not chilly enough to burn our precious firewood.

  “Father said you fell right out of that tree picking apples and that you broke your leg,” James said. He was on his back on the hard-packed earth floor, in between Marguerite and me, the rushes underneath his shoulders crackling. He pulled his cloak tightly around his thin body as a draft ran along the floor.

  “It didn’t break. It just looked that way to him. I was fine when we got back, wasn’t I?” I was on my left side, my head supported by my hand, looking over James at Marguerite. Though I was always aware of the temperature and humidity of my surroundings, they never affected me. As soon as my body found any condition uncomfortable, it compensated. However, I had learned it was wise to complain about the weather.

  “He told us he heard it break,” Marguerite said, shivering. “You always tell us stories.”

  “That’s right,” James said.

  “There’s something unusual about you.”

  “Don’t say that, Margie. I told you, I don’t like it.” I reached over James and twisted her hair. She squealed and slapped my hand.

  “Stop it!”

  “You kids keep it quiet!” My father boomed at us, and thunder rumbled after, as if he were Zeus shouting down from Olympus. The timber crucks holding up our roof creaked in the new wind.

  “She’s right,” James said. His voice throbbed with excitement. He loved being between Marguerite and me when we argued. “You always tell us stories. I saw that time you cut your thumb when you were fixing Father’s boots. You almost sliced it off. There was blood everywhere. And after you were holding it in your other hand for a while, it was healed.”

  “I did not almost slice it off, King James,” I said, tickling his side. “You’re the one telling stories.”

  It had become automatic for me to deflect or deny any suggestion that I was different from them. I knew I was not doing a very good job of keeping my secret.

  Marguerite stared at me the way she sometimes did, her long brown hair spread out over the straw, her big eyes heavy with the fatigue of a long day’s work.

  “You can tell us the truth, Sebastian,” she said.

  Lightning flashed, a hot, close sizzle. For a moment, lines of fire sliced through the cracks in the shutters, throwing the left side of Marguerite’s face into ghostly, blazing relief.

  “There’s nothing to tell.”

  “I heard Momma and Papa talking the day you didn’t break your leg falling out of the apple tree.”

  “I told you—”

  “Yes, you told us he heard it wrong, and you didn’t really break your leg. And why shouldn’t we believe you? After all, how could you really break your leg, but be healed by the time Papa brought you home?”

  “You’ve answered your own question. It isn’t possible. Since my leg was not broken when we got back, it could not have been broken in the first place.”

  I could tell she did not believe a word of it.

  A steady icy draft wafted over us. James’s teeth chattered, and Marguerite shivered violently. My poor dears! What a terrible discomfort they endured.

  “Come on, then,” I said. I rolled over James and took the middle position. This put James on the side of the door, exposing him to the drafts. I swathed him in my long coat and pulled him against my side, draping my arm along his back. Marguerite scooted against me, pressed her head to my shoulder, and like James, wrapped her arm and leg around me.

  Though the strange engine inside me operated automatically, it responded to certain commands. I thought about raising my temperature. In moments, my skin blazed as if I were in the grip of fever, and my body became a coal against which my brother and sister could huddle.

  After a couple of minutes, their trembling ceased.

  “You know, it scared Momma and Papa when that happened,” Marguerite said softly, her breath on my cheek. “That’s what I remember most about listening to them talking that night. Papa was scared. I could hear it in his voice.”

  “But I was fine.”

  “That’s not what he was afraid of. He said that if you were different, really different, people might fear you and hate you.”

  “But if I am invincible,” I said, feeling James’s arm tighten around me, “why should that worry Mother and Father?”

  “Are you, Sebastian? Are you invincible?”

  “Oh, Margie!” I crushed them to me and kissed their foreheads. “These are all just stories. There’s nothing different about me.” I leaned up, made sure they were both well covered, then settled back and pulled them tightly to me. “Now keep still, both of you. We need to get some sleep. We have a lot of work tomorrow.” Rain began to tap the roof with a fat, heavy tattoo.

  Marguerite stared at me. I knew what she was thinking: she had never seen me tired. I pretended to be, but always sensed she could tell I was faking. She would never stop questioning me, and neither would James. Eventually, I would have to admit to certain truths.

  Because when I fell out of the apple tree that day, I had snapped my leg in half. The time I was fixing Father’s boots, I had almost sliced my thumb off.

  And both times, my body had miraculously healed itself.

  There were other things they didn’t know about, like swimming in the River Arun and keeping my head under water for an hour, or going one month without food and drink and feeling fine.

  And not sleeping. Though my mind required rest, my body did not, so I always remained conscious of everything around me.

  As I lay in the dark, feeling their chests rising and falling and listening to the waxing symphony of the storm, I thought about the time I watched Marguerite sleeping one morning when she was five.
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  When I saw her hands twitching, I became frightened and called her name softly. She didn’t seem to hear me. I leaned over and looked at her. For the first time, I understood that she was asleep, and dreaming—not just lying there quietly, thinking, as I always did.

  I had seen my parents in this otherworldly state, and it had upset me, but I assumed it was something that happened to you when you were older, or maybe when you had children. It gave me a nasty shock to see it happening to my little sister. That meant it didn’t have anything to do with being an adult or being married.

  I never dreamed, except for the memories. I never truly lost consciousness. Lying on the straw every night, I listened to the sounds in and around our house. I could remember doing so since I was three or four.

  Through the years I kept mum, at first from fear, and then from a feeling of separation. There seemed to be a great gulf between my family and me, and I was scared of it, baffled by my uniqueness.

  No kid wants to be different from everyone else.

  Other than these signs of my physical invulnerability, I am the same as mortals. I laugh and cry, experience joy and despair, and search for meaning in life. I crave companionship and long for the intimacy of romance.

  The first thing God says of human nature in the Bible is, “It is not good for a human being to be alone.” I can attest to this.

  I have had two wives, and by them two daughters and four sons. If I have an immortal gene to give, so far I have not passed it on to any of my children. Long ago I realized I have never known pain or the fear of death the way all of my friends and family have known them.

  I only know what they have told me it feels like.

  The buzz of my cell phone brought me out of my reverie.

  “Montero.”

  “Hamilton. We have another one.”

  Thirteen

  Wednesday, December 22, 2:40 p.m.

  By the time I arrived at 14724 Greenleaf Street in Sherman Oaks, yellow bands of crime scene tape surrounded the residence. A Channel 5 news team had a van parked across the street. I stopped half a block away and pulled to the curb, parking in the shade of a broad maple tree.