Cloud City (Anna Strong Vampire Chronicles) (3 page)

No reply. The conduit between us is shut.

So at six forty-five, I leave for The Matchless. Like everything else along the main drag, The Matchless is a throwback to the days when Leadville was a booming mining town. Brick front, dark, shuttered windows. When I push through the door, I’m greeted with the smell of grilling beef and a hundred years of cigar and cigarette smoke. Mementos, mining paraphernalia, and gilded photos of a couple named Tabor line the walls and the back of the bar. A glance at one of them and the origin of the bar’s name becomes clear. Evidently this couple had a mine in Leadville named The Matchless.

The bar stretches along one wall. The rest of the place is filled with a dozen tables and booths. All are occupied. I hope Prendergast made reservations.

I take a seat at the bar, one of only two left. The place buzzes with conversation and laughter. From what I pick up, this is a popular place with the locals.

The bartender is a grizzled, grey-haired guy of indeterminate age. He’s wearing overalls and a flannel shirt with sleeves rolled up to the elbows. He wanders down to my end of the bar and slaps a coaster in front of me. No smile, but he’s not glowering at me either.

“What’ll it be?”

I peruse the draft handles, surprised at the number of German brews available. I would have pegged this for a Millers or Budweiser kind of place. “Paulaner Oktoberfest.”

He does a quick about face and expertly fills a glass.

“Nice pour.”

His mouth twitches. A hint of blossoming good will? He moves away from me, to the middle of the bar, before I can be sure.

I’ve taken two appreciative swallows of my beer when the door swings open.

Sophie and Prendergast enter, pausing just inside the vestibule. Sophie looks around and then does the last thing I expect. She walks right up to me.

“Anna,” she says. “Please join us. I’ve told Steven all about you.”

CHAPTER FOUR

I’m sure I must have a deer in headlight expression on my face. Sophie pretends not to notice. When I try to reach Jonathan to find out what the hell is going on, I get nothing.

The bartender joins us. “You folks have a reservation?”

Prendergast nods. “Prendergast. I called this afternoon. For two.” A vague look in my direction. “Seems we now have three.”

“No problem. Right this way.”

I look around. I didn’t see any empty tables when I came in, but he leads us to a booth partly hidden behind a screen in the back. It’s a big, dark mahogany booth upholstered in burgundy leather and shaped like a horseshoe. I let Sophie slip into the middle and Prendergast and I take the ends, facing each other. He has yet to meet my gaze.

Prendergast looks to the bartender. “Menus?”

“Only serve one thing here. Steak. Any cut, cooked any way you like it except well-done. Cook refuses to burn a good steak. Comes with baked potato, salad, bread. What’s your pleasure, folks?”

Sophie orders a filet, medium rare. Jonathan must be delighted. One of the things he likes most about his strange predicament is that he no longer needs blood. He is able to enjoy food again through Sophie.

Who used to be a vegetarian.

I raise an eyebrow at her and she shrugs.

Prendergast orders the same and asks about wine. The bartender recites a list and he chooses a merlot.

Then the bartender looks at me. I raise my glass. “No dinner, thanks. Just beer.”

The brief moment of cordiality we shared at the bar is over. “You sure? Best steaks in Colorado.”

“Thanks, but I’m sure. I had a late lunch.”

He ambles off, clucking his tongue and mumbling something about damned vegetarians.

If he only knew.

Sophie looks at Prendergast, I look at Sophie. I send Jonathan a message asking just what did Sophie mean when she said she told the editor all about me? But he’s not responding. I don’t get even a glimmer of recognition. It’s as if Jonathan has been pushed deep into Sophie’s subconscious and she’s not letting him resurface.

A new trick she’s learned?

Sophie finally swivels in my direction. The steel hardness in her eyes makes a shiver of trepidation run up my spine. “Steven knows all about you, Anna,” she says.

I lean forward, frowning. “What does he know about me?”

Prendergast’s tone is as cold as Sophie’s eyes. “I know you’re a vampire,” he says. “And I know Sophie’s story is really your own.”

Once again, I’m knocked off balance. I lock onto Sophie’s face with a steely gaze of my own. “What are you doing?”

She raises her shoulders. “Getting my life back.”

The bartender arrives with the wine and our conversation comes to a halt. I try to reach Jonathan. Once again I’m met with an impenetrable curtain of silence. Sophie has a half-smile on her face, as if she knows exactly what I’m doing.

I don’t know what game she’s playing, but the vampire is quickly tiring of it.

When the bartender leaves us, I grab Sophie’s arm. “Where’s Jonathan?”

“Who?” she asks.

My grip tightens and she flinches away. Prendergast reaches for my hand but he quickly finds he can’t dislodge my fingers. Vampire shows her face and he shrinks against the seat. Still holding Sophie’s arm, I growl at him.

“What did Sophie tell you?”

Prendergast looks at Sophie with wide eyes. “She told me she got the story from you. She knows all about your connection to my family. That you were the vampire that turned my great-grandmother. She admitted the book was all your idea and it was just a crazy coincidence that it landed on my desk.”

“And you believe her?”

“Why shouldn’t I? She’s not a vampire. She couldn’t have known so much about my great-grandmother without hearing it from someone who was there.”

“What made you so sure Sophie wasn’t a vampire?”

He gives me a look that’s half astonishment I’d ask such a simple-minded question and half amusement. “We ate lunch together.” He waves a hand in my direction. “She ordered more than beer.”

I close my eyes for a minute to swallow down the irritation rising like bile because this jerk had to point out something that should have been so obvious to me. Then, “So you followed her to Denver and tried to kill her. What was the point of that?”

“That was rash, I admit.” Prendergast sinks down in his chair. “I was angry. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I thought if I scared her badly enough, she’d do what she just did. Tell me about you. I’ve been searching for proof that vampires were real since I was old enough to read the family journals. This book was the proof I needed.”

“Proof of what?”

“That the family legend was true. That a vampire ruined my family’s life. Stole our fortune. When I saw how Sophie lived, when I researched her background, it all fell into place. She inherited her fortune from an ‘uncle’ who lived a mysterious life and died even more mysteriously by burning to death. One of the ways a vampire can be killed. When she told me it was your story, I figured you were somehow connected to her uncle. I don’t know how but the fact remains the same. One way or the other, you owe me.”

“And what do you think now?”

“When I got Sophie’s message that she was coming here, that she wanted to make things right, I knew she was ready to tell me the truth. Ready to make things right.”

“The truth?” I shoot Sophie a look. She averts her eyes but says nothing. I turn again to Prendergast. “And what do you intend to do with this truth? Besides extort money that doesn’t belong to you? Do you intend to make me your next target?” I lean forward, smile at him the way a cougar smiles at a rabbit. “I may not be so easy to kill.”

It’s clear from the slouch of Prendergast’s shoulders that he hadn’t thought it through completely. Taking pot shots at a young woman from a safe distance is one thing, facing a vampire is something else.

Sophie has been sitting quietly, not fighting against my restraining hand. I can’t fathom why she spun the tale, but I plan to find out. I stand up, dragging Sophie with me.

“She’ll have to take a rain check on dinner.”

Prendergast opens his mouth to object, but one look into my face—into vampire’s face—and he cowers away.

Sophie and I are almost at the door when we pass the bartender on his way to our table, plates in hand. He looks at Sophie in confusion but when he looks at me, confusion is replaced by something else. He backs out of the way and lets us pass without a word. 

CHAPTER FIVE

We’re in the hotel, in Sophie’s room. She’s sitting on the edge of the bed. I’m pacing, trying to quell the rising storm of anger brewing in my gut. Finally, I stop in front of her. It takes a great deal of effort to force myself to speak calmly and still, my voice sounds strained.

“Where’s Jonathan?”

Sophie touches a hand to the center of her chest. “Here.”

“Why isn’t he communicating with me?”

“He’s asleep.”

“Asleep?”

She looks up at me then, a smile as brittle and transient as frost touching the corners of her mouth. “I learned how to make him go away. Not permanently yet. But maybe soon.”

There’s such emptiness in her eyes, so much hopelessness in the slump of her shoulders that my own senses ache with her desperation. But that empathy passes quickly.

“Sophie, what have you done?”

“Nothing.” She twists a strand of hair around her fingers. “I’ve been studying. Learning.”

I sink down on the bed beside her. “About what?”

“Possession. Exorcisms.”

Once more, a chill touches the nape of my neck. “Exorcisms? Jonathan isn’t a demon.”

“He’s a vampire.”

Her tone implies, “same thing.”

I can’t believe I’m hearing this from a woman who took three damaged vampires into her home to help them only a few months ago. A terrible thought strikes me. “How are the young women you took with you to Denver? Are they doing well?”

“I don’t know. Justin Turnbull took them. He thought it best they be with they’re own kind.”

Relief washes over me. Turnbull is a very old, very powerful vampire who lives in Denver, too. I’m glad they’re with him. Something is going on with Sophie and obviously Turnbull saw it. I wish he’d warned me.

“Why did you tell Prendergast Jonathan’s story was mine?”

She fires her answer at me like a bullet. “You can take care of yourself.”

“But you knew it was a lie. He’ll know it, too, when he starts asking questions I can’t answer.”

“Jonathan will help. He’ll be with us soon.”

Her tone implies she is sick at the thought. The lines of her face droop with weariness. I’m suddenly afraid to leave her alone. When Jonathan comes back, he’ll be angry. I need to talk to him before she banishes him again.

“I’m going to sleep in your room tonight,” I tell her. “We’ll need to decide what to do about Prendergast. He can’t be allowed to go on thinking I’m the vampire he’s been seeking. Only Jonathan will be able to help with that.”

“But I don’t want Jonathan to come back. I want to be myself again. I can’t stand what he’s doing to me. I can’t stand what I’m becoming.”

“Jonathan didn’t do this to you, Sophie,” I remind her quietly. “You did this to him.”

Her face is a blank slate, devoid of emotion, of comprehension, as if a switch had been thrown and her personality extinguished.

Jonathan returns with a roar.

What the fuck did she do to me?

Jonathan’s anger is like a laser flare burning so hot even I feel scorched by it.

Sophie is more desperate than you realized
, I tell him.
She wants to rid herself of you for good.

Impossible. If she gets rid of me, she goes, too. Doesn’t she realize that?

I press the palms of my hands against my eyes. How do I describe Sophie’s anguish?
I don’t think she cares. She’s suffering.

Suffering?
The anger flares again.
How the hell is she suffering? I’ve brought adventure into her life. I’ve opened doors for her. I’ve given her a home and a fortune. I’ve given her everything she wished for when she was an old, used up witch. What more does she want from me?

She wants her freedom.

The simple truth spoken in a whisper is met with silence. Jonathan’s rage dissipates. I feel the hollowness it leaves in his mind the same way I felt the heat of his rage moments before.

I’m not sure which is more disturbing.

CHAPTER SIX

Sophie stirs. “Jonathan is here, isn’t he?”

You bet your ass, sweet cheeks.
Jonathan’s bitterness is caustic as acid.
What did you do while I was under? Something stupid, I’ll bet. You want to tell me or should I ask Anna?

Sophie looks up at me and I think she’s asking me to tell the story but instead she says, “I told Prendergast the book was Anna’s idea. That it was her story.”

I expect an eruption. Instead, Jonathan’s reaction is uncharacteristically calm.
Why did you do that?

“Because I wanted Prendergast to go after someone else.”