new what I was."
"But he wasn't a vampire himself."
"No. He gave off the pulse of life. Then came the news that a hunting dog had found a shallow mass grave. When the villagers dug, they found the soldiers, all in a state of decomposition that suggested they'd died when they'd first disappeared. Local farmers began driving stakes through the soldiers' hearts before the officials could arrive. I managed to examine one corpse before it was impaled, and I can say with certainty that the man was dead. Yet the front of several soldiers' uniforms were caked with dried blood."
"As if they'd been feeding."
"That's what it looked like, though it was clear from the deterioration that they had not been vampires. I theorized that they'd been zombies raised by a necromancer and forced to behave in a vampirelike manner. The council report says that. But there was something that didn't make it into that report. A related incident. After the corpses were removed, I decided to remain in town a few days, to see if I could find the necromancer. I began to wonder if it was Leray and that's how he knew what I was."
Necromancers deal with the dead. A vampire is--however much Cass hates to admit it--dead, and necromancers can tell.
"Supporting that supposition was the fact that Guy Leray left town the morning the corpses were discovered. If he was responsible, then he would have been nervous when he realized another supernatural was investigating. When he couldn't stop me, he stopped his zombies, buried them, and left. The next night, though, I was awakened by the sensation of visitors in my room. Two people stood beside my bed, arguing over the best way to decapitate me."
"Nice," I said.
"I thought so. I kept my eyes shut and listened. I determined which carried the machete, disabled him with a bite, and took his weapon. His companion threw herself on the floor, begging for mercy. A second bite disabled her. I trussed them up, and waited until they woke.
"They said they'd come to the region following Gilles de Rais. Naturally, I knew who they meant. When I was young, our maids used to frighten each other with stories of de Rais. As a vampire, I'd heard the name many times, along with the rumors of his continued existence. As they described the man, I realized he was the one I'd known as Guy Leray. My two would-be attackers were French immortality questers--shamans--and they'd heard a rumor he was here, and had come to offer their services as apprentices."
"Groupies," I said.
"Yes. They'd heard that it was very difficult to win his favor. Then they spotted me. Like most questers, they were obsessed with vampire lore and knew the names and descriptions of many vampires."
"Including you."
"They decided I would make the perfect offering for their idol. I convinced them that they'd made a horrible mistake, and I'd actually been working with de Rais, who was in the forest, conducting an important ritual. If they wanted, I could take them to him. Sadly the man was not as gullible as I'd hoped, and as we walked into the deep woods, he attacked. His partner followed suit. I was forced to kill them both, which is why that part of my story is not in the council record."
While many supernatural bodies, like the werewolf Pack, have become more liberal-thinking in the twenty-first century, you could almost argue the reverse for the interracial council. Led by Coven witches, they'd historically taken a very nonviolent approach to conflict resolution--so nonviolent that they rarely resolved a conflict, and became little more than record-keepers. If Cassandra had killed two supernaturals, even in self-defense, they would have been afraid it would reflect badly on them, and the account would be stricken.
"The fact that it included an alleged sighting of Gilles de Rais by an actual council member made them even more reluctant to record it. That part, I didn't disagree with. I did not believe I'd actually met an immortal, much less the infamous de Rais. I thought perhaps he was a necromancer who'd killed the soldiers, then raised their zombies and instructed them to act like vampires, to further his reputation as Gilles de Rais conducting immortality experiments. I suspect now that what I stumbled upon was an immortality experiment in progress."
Cassandra's theory wasn't as wild a conjecture as it might seem. When questers think of immortality, they turn to the two examples of it in our world: vampires and zombies. Vampires get most of the attention--eternal youth is damned attractive, especially when the alternative is eternal decomposition.
But if de Rais was already immortal, why conduct experiments? Two explanations. One, he wasn't Gilles de Rais, but a supernatural who'd taken on his identity and had, after the soldier experiment, uncovered the secret to immortality. Two, he'd already been immortal, but had achieved it in a way he couldn't duplicate and sell to others, so he was modifying his method.
Now he'd partnered with Anita Barrington, who'd been presumed dead for five years. Did she know Giles was supposedly Gilles de Rais? Was he promising his followers immortality? More important, could he deliver?
I'd dug up an e-mail to the agency from a Los Angeles resident who claimed to have been approached by the group for recruitment. He might have met Anita or Giles. Even if he hadn't we could hope he'd asked more questions than Eloise and might have more answers.
I called and arranged to meet him at a steak house. It was almost nine and I was getting woozy from lack of food. We got there five minutes before the contact--Tim--was due to arrive. We waited fifteen minutes, then I ordered prime rib. Cass got soup and a glass of wine.
Our meals arrived. We ate. I had dessert. Still no sign of Tim. I'd called his cell phone twice and gotten voice mail.
"He's bailed," I said. "Decided he didn't want to get involved."
"So it would appear," she said. "I can't say I blame him."
thirty-one
We'd parked in a lot a couple of blocks from the steak house, and had walked about half the distance back when Cassandra murmured, "Someone's watching us."
I started to glance back, then stopped, took out my phone, and angled it to catch a reflection through the glass. All I could make out was a few people waiting to flag a cab.
"Not them," Cassandra said. "Someone else has been behind us since we left the steak house."
I turned before she could stop me. "There's no one else there."
"Yes, there is. I'm experienced enough at stalking to recognize when I'm the one being stalked. Now I would suggest--"