“Griss and I will be under cover when we arrive at Perdition,” he said.
“Under cover?”
He tapped the bench seat. “These benches are hollow. They provide safety and relative comfort on long trips. The code to the apartment alarm is Z-E-N-I-T-H.”
“Zenith?” I fought to keep my eyes open. I wanted to stay awake. I wanted to ask Rune what the plan was once we returned to Venice Beach, but my energy was waning at an alarming rate. Something wasn’t right. I could usually pull enough energy out of my surroundings to stay awake even when I was dead tired.
Dead.
Vampire.
Rune.
My eyes flew open, but it took all my concentration to keep them propped up. Rune smiled and continued to stroke my hair. It was subtle, but I felt the energy drain from my head into his hand.
“Hey . . .” I said. My head floated back until it bumped against the wooden wall, and I lost the battle with my eyelids. With gentle hands, he eased me down to rest my head in his lap.
His voice hovered in the mist that obscured my brain. “You need rest,
Fotia
. I only wish to help.”
I wondered briefly who it was he was helping before the oblivion claimed me.
CHAPTER TEN
R
ETURN
TO
P
ERDITION
The clatter of a cargo door rolling up woke me. I lay on a nest of moving pads against the bench. In the faint afternoon light, Tony’s head appeared as a tousle-haired silhouette.
“Ms. Marlee,” he said. “We’re back at the club.”
I stood, stretched, and tried to coax my hair into lying flat enough so I could see past it.
“Hi, Tony.” I glanced back to the bench seat. “Are they still in there?”
Tony nodded. “Yes, ma’am. It’s quite comfortable from what they tell me. They’ll come out when the sun sets in a few minutes.”
I navigated between the two Harleys and jumped down from the truck.
“I thought we’d get back much earlier than this,” I said.
“We did, but the boss said to let you sleep until dusk.”
Tony opened the back door to the club.
“I’d feel better if you came indoors as soon as possible, Ms. Marlee. The boss said I was to keep you safe until he wakes.”
I went inside to the short hallway with Rune’s apartment door and office door just inside. The feeble light from the outside door trying to encroach on the darkness of the cavernous club at the other end of the hall created an eerie tunnel.
“Boss said you could go inside and freshen up while you wait.”
I keyed in the code on the security panel next to the door to Rune’s apartment and the steel panel inside scraped aside just before the door clicked open. Once inside, I closed the regular door and pressed the inner lock button. The metal door clanged closed with the finality of being shut into a vault.
Downstairs, I found clothing laid out on the bed, all of it in my size. I cringed when I noticed several empty Saks Fifth Avenue bags in the corner. Between the shopping crowds and my chronic lack of funds, I’d never been in a Saks, but I knew it was expensive. My stomach turned when I realized that each piece of clothing probably cost a week of my salary at the university. Faced with the alternative of staying in the filthy clothes I had on, I selected a pair of Burberry Brit flared-leg jeans, a white peasant top, a scarf to hold my hair back, and a La Peria bra and panty set and headed for the bathroom/palatial bathing retreat.
If I felt slightly guilty about the expensive clothes, I made up for it by thoroughly enjoying thirty minutes of bliss in Rune’s state-of-the-art shower. Jets sprayed and pulsed from a dozen nozzles placed strategically on the black marble enclosure. A wall-mounted digital control panel controlled the temperature of the water, twenty different spray patterns, music, and lighting. It was almost a religious experience. Only when my fingertips looked like they couldn’t wrinkle any more did I force myself to turn everything off and get out.
The undergarments fit perfectly and felt wonderful. The jeans softly hugged my hips to my knees before they flared out into wide bottoms, and the peasant top managed to be somehow innocent, sexy, and comfortable all at the same time. Someone definitely knew how to shop. They’d even bought hair products, lotions, and other toiletries, which I put to good use. To top it all off, I tied the purple, water-colored patterned silk scarf around my head like a bandana. Another half hour later, I almost felt what I imagined a normal person would feel like when I exited the bathroom.
Then I caught sight of the two vampires lounging on the couch. They booth sat up a little straighter and looked me over like a filet mignon in a meat counter. So much for normal.
Rune stood and strode toward me.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
He pushed a strand of my hair out of my face, and as much as I tried not to, I flinched. He withdrew his hand, and although nothing showed in his expression, a muscle in his jaw twitched. I retreated to the kitchen for some Gatorade.
“I’m much better. Thanks for the clothes, although they’re way too extravagant. There’s no way I’ll be able to reimburse you for—”
“There will be no reimbursement. They are my gift to you.”
“The way you look in them,” Griss said, “they’re more of a present for us than you anyway.”
Rune shot Griss a look and returned to his seat on the couch. Griss laughed with enviable abandon. He swiped his long blond hair from his face, showing a long, bubbly looking white patch rimmed in angry red welts down his forearm. The white center portion looked like the fried pork rinds my grandmother and I used to eat with salsa.
“What happened to your arm?” I asked.
He twisted his arm to look at the spot. When he rubbed it, flakes of tissue crisped off and floated to his lap. I scratched pork rinds off my grocery list—indefinitely.
“It’s just a little singe,” he said.
Rune brushed a few errant flakes from the couch cushion.
“That is the consequence of stepping outside before the sun is fully set,” Rune said.
Griss grinned up at me. “It’ll be right as rain by sundown tomorrow. I’ve had worse. Some so bad they took days to heal.”
“And yet he continues to repeat his mistake.” Rune turned on the couch, away from Griss, bringing me to his full attention. “We’ve decided on a plan.”
“We?” I lifted my eyebrows and drank half the glass of Glacier Freeze Gatorade. People deciding things about my life without my input was getting irritating, although I should have been used to it since my father had done it for twenty-six years. He probably still did it, but since I moved out, I was blissfully oblivious to it.
“Griss and I,” Rune said.
He either didn’t hear the irritation in my voice or was ignoring it. He propped one ankle on the opposite knee and laced his fingers behind his neck before he continued.
“We will research to find out all we can about this Doctor Sarkis while I train you to control your abilities.”
“Is that right?” I said.
The bottle of Gatorade vibrated against the granite countertop. Griss’s eyes widened.
“Yes,” Rune said. “You will stay here.”
“Ah. And what about my job and my life?”
Two pillows lifted and floated over the bed.
“All of that will have to be put on hold.”
The remaining four pillows now joined the other two above the bed.
“I see.”
Griss tapped Rune’s leg and his ragged red beard lifted as his grin widened. “I think you’re hitting a nerve, buddy.”
Rune finally noticed the pillows and dancing Gatorade. He sat up and glanced at his fish tank before focusing on me.
“What is it,
fotia
?”
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I was being ungrateful. Without him, I’d be dead by now or lying strapped on a table somewhere as Sarkis’s lab rat.
“Nothing,” I said.
“I don’t think she likes being told what to do,” Griss said.
“Is that it?” Rune asked.
“No. Yes.” I opened my eyes. The magazines on the coffee table, the Gatorade bottle, and several other items in the apartment now wobbled midair. “I don’t know.”
Rune stood, and the top of the fish tank lifted.
“Marlena,” he said. “Concentrate on calming your mind. Close your eyes and think of a place where you feel safe and at peace.”
I closed my eyes again and thought of my grandmother’s bedroom. The floral patterns and rich wood tones. The faint smell of cedar and Liz Claiborne perfume. The soft glow of the porcelain Victorian lady bedside lamp.
“Good,” Rune said. “Now reach out with your mind and feel the items under your control in the room.”
I had no idea how to do what he was asking. I tried to find that part of myself that could sense people. After a few failed attempts, I connected with something—a sensory input similar to touch but not attached to my skin. I lifted my arms, trying to project this newfound sense. Just when I was about to give up and open my eyes, the room came alive in my mind. The things in the room that my telekinesis had attached to glowed in a fuzzy three-dimensional picture. I gasped at the odd landscape around me.
Only one image didn’t make sense. A large blob, about six feet tall at the highest point and about six feet long, stood near the bookshelves. I cracked my eyes open just enough to see the area. No blob. I closed my eyes again and the blob reappeared. More defined now, the shape resembled a large horse. I peeked again. No horse, just bookshelves.
“Marlena, why are you peeking?” Rune said.
“I thought I saw a . . .”
Horse in his apartment? That would sound lovely.
“Never mind,” I said. “Eyes closed.”
I’d just ignore the large, equine-animal blob. Probably just left over energy playing Rorschach ink-blot games.
“Good,” Rune said. “Now, feel the items in the room and control them. Bend them to your will.”
With the picture of my grandmother’s room in one part of my consciousness and the ghostly layout of the room around me in my mind’s eye, I concentrated on feeling the items in Rune’s apartment. One by one, their blurred glows came into sharper focus, and I felt their shapes as a resistance to my energy, sort of a ping back on my energy sonar. I willed the pillows to drop and almost cried when they lowered and disappeared from my mind’s view. I had just locked in on the magazines above the coffee table when a movement in my grandmother’s room distracted me. The man from the parking lot who’d shot me with the injection gun strode in and opened the dresser drawers. Tossing clothing aside, he pulled the drawers out, checked their bottoms and then threw each one to the ground.
“No,” I shouted. “Stop that.”
The man looked up and around the room. I lost my connection to Rune’s apartment and the items around me. A swooshing sound to my right snapped my eyes open, and I ducked as a magazine flew past my head. All the things I’d been linked to in the room hurtled in different directions, smashing into walls and furniture.
Rune appeared beside me and surrounded me with his arms, protecting me and draining energy at the same time. When all was quiet, I pushed away from him.
“I need a phone,” I said.
“What is wrong?”
He helped me stand, and I scanned the room for the secure phone I’d used a few days ago.
“I need a phone,” I repeated. “Someone is in my house, ransacking my grandmother’s room.”
He picked his way over the debris on the floor, pulled the phone out of a kitchen drawer, and tossed it to me. I dialed, and Mrs. Norris answered.
“Mrs. Norris, I think someone’s in my house. Please go to the window and check.”
“Marlee, what’s this about? Where are you? How do you know—”
“Mrs. N, please just do as I say. It’s an emergency.”
I heard her grumbling and shuffling across the room. After a few seconds of silence, she gasped.
“Marlee, there’s someone in your house! I see flashlight beams against the curtains. Burt!”
“No. Don’t send Mr. N. Don’t go outside. These are dangerous men. Hang up and call the police.”
“But, Burt can—”
“No. They’ll kill him. I’m hanging up. Call 9-1-1, now. Please.” I hung up and hid my face in my hands, trying to slow my breathing.
Cool hands pulled me to a broad chest, and Rune stroked my hair.
“Marlena, tell me what you saw.”
“My safe place. It’s my grandmother’s bedroom. It was in my mind along with this room, like picture-in-picture on a TV. A man walked into Grandma’s room and started ransacking it. I lost the connection and . . .”
I pulled back and looked around the apartment. Everything was a mess. Again. The fish were okay, but the tank lid was on the bed. All the items I’d levitated plus about a dozen more were scattered throughout the room.
“Oh, no. I’m so sorry.”
Rune cupped his hand below my chin and made me focus on him.
“The apartment can be cleaned. You are more important.”
His touch calmed me, but my mind still whirled. They were in her room. They’d invaded my favorite place in the world. When I tried to look away, Rune moved his head so he was still in my line of sight.
“I meant for you to remember your safe place,” he said. “Picture it. What you did, remote viewing, can be done by very few, and those few are very powerful.”
“What does that matter? My house—”
“You can do nothing for your home other than what you just did.” He glanced at Griss. “Griss, have our people in Santa Ana check what’s going on at Marlena’s home. And send Tony to straighten up down here.”
Griss pulled out his cell phone on his way up the stairs. By the time the outer door closed, he was talking to someone.
Rune took my hand and led me to the floor to ceiling bookcases along the far wall. He put his free hand on the center bookcase and closed his eyes for a moment. A soft click preceded the two center bookcases popping open and swinging outward, revealing a metal sliding door similar to the ones upstairs leading to his office. He put his hand on the metal slab and again closed his eyes. The grate of a lock opening was followed by the scraping of metal as the panel opened.
He guided me through the doorway. Automatic lights flicked on, illuminating a large, rectangular room lined with racks of weapons and two large, padded benches. A computer hutch sat against the far left wall. It housed surveillance monitors rotating video of Rune’s apartment, the hallway outside his apartment, the entire second floor office area, the club floor, outside near the main entrance, and out back.
“What is this place?” I asked.
“This is where we will train. This is where you will learn to control your power and defend yourself.”
“All this is useless if I have nothing to return to. My house, my job. I need to preserve my life.”
“I will take care of that.” He grabbed a long wooden pole from one of the racks. “You only need to worry about training.”
He threw the pole to me, and I caught it.
“While we train, I will get the information we need about Sarkis.”
“And then what?” I asked.
He grabbed another wooden pole and swung it in front of himself, the air whined as the pole cut through it.
“And then I destroy him.”
The pupils of his eyes widened, pushing his irises to thin lines of blue neon.
“You . . . destroy him?” I took an involuntary step back. It was so easy to forget that he was something other than human, yet sometimes it was impossible to overlook.