Jeanne Stein - Retribution

As soon as I find a window with the curtains parted enough for me to look inside, I know why I’m not getting any vibes from the place.

The living room is empty. So is the dining room beyond it. No couch. No tables and chairs. Nothing. An empty expanse of space that goes from one end of the house to the other.

Shit.

My handy-dandy lock picks let me in through the back door. I pause to see if there will be an intruder alert, but none sounds. Doesn ’t mean there isn’t a silent alarm going off somewhere, but by the time a response team gets here, I’ll be long gone.

I run through the house, just to assure myself it isn’t a case of Burke not taking the time to go shopping for her new digs. But there isn’t a piece of furniture anywhere in the place. Not a pot or pan in the kitchen. The closets are empty. I don’t find so much as a scrap of paper. If she had been living here, she isn’t now.

A dead end.

Fatigue washes over me. Fatigue and guilt. Culebra is still near death and Burke has eluded me once again.

I slip back outside, call Culebra’s cell. Sandra answers. Frey is asleep. There has been no change in Culebra’s condition. I can’t bring myself to tell Sandra that I’m not any closer to helping them than I was this morning.

So, I lie. Tell her that I’ll have news tomorrow. That I’m close to finding Burke. If the despair I’m feeling is mirrored in my voice, Sandra doesn’t let on. She may be as good a liar as I am.

When I’m back in the car, I call Ortiz. Tell him what I found, that is to say, what I didn’t find. I also tell him I’m too tired to do anything else tonight. Tomorrow I’ll go back to the warehouse and start all over again. I’ll grill that receptionist. She must be in contact with her boss. Either the human Anna or the vampire will get the information out of her.

But now, I’m going home.

He offers to call Williams. I quickly take him up on the offer and we say good night.

AS SOON AS I WALK THROUGH THE COTTAGE DOOR, I sense it.

Subtle as the drop in pressure before a summer storm.

Someone is here.

I pause, tasting the air, letting supernatural acuity take over from the human. It’s female, human, and she’s upstairs. In my bedroom.

The vampire reacts without prompting. I slip back out the door, position myself under the balcony that leads from my bedroom and leap up. I land on all fours, silently, weightlessly, and look inside.

A woman is on my bed. She’s gagged, bound hand and foot. In the quiet, I hear her labored breathing. I hear her heartbeat, frantic as she struggles against her constraints. I smell her fear, acrid and harsh as bitter almond. I smell something else.

I smell her blood.

THE SLIDER HAS BEEN UNLATCHED AND LEFT OPEN. I slip inside, so quietly she doesn’t realize I’m there in the room with her.

She’s bleeding from a dozen shallow cuts on her arms and legs. It drips from the rope binding her, pools under her on the bed.

The call of it beckons. I take a step toward her.

She’s naked, hands tied above her head, face pointed away from me, toward the bedroom door. She either detects movement, or some instinct sounds the alarm. She turns her head. The gag covers her mouth and chin. I don ’t recognize her. When she sees me, her eyes widen. Her breath comes in gasps, the thudding of her heart turns thunderous, sending the blood rushing through her veins. The cuts weep more freely.

I have to fight an overwhelming urge to lick at those bloody cuts. I fed from a human two weeks ago but still, I ’m hungry . Now. And here’s a feast of blood.

The vampire starts to rationalize. Why shouldn’t I? She’s in my house, in my bed for god’s sake. I won’t kill her. Just take what I need. I can make it pleasurable for her. It would be so easy.

The human Anna inserts herself.

You’re not going to feed from this woman. She’s been dumped here. She’s not a host. She’s scared. Take fucking hold of yourself and untie her.

It’s like a dash of ice water. The head clears, the lust recedes from raging need to dull ache. My features must lose the animal fierceness because the woman’s body relaxes a little, her pulse slows. But the eyes still hold terror.

I approach the bed with hands outstretched. “Don’t be afraid. I won’t hurt you. This is my house.”

She tries to wriggle away but one ankle is tied to the foot of the bed. She kicks toward me with her free leg. My words may be soothing now, but she has the memory of the vampire’s face. It will take more than words to overcome that image.

I stand still and wait until she stops thrashing. “Will you let me take the gag out of your mouth?”

A moment’s hesitation, then a jerky nod.

Slowly, carefully, I lean down and untie the ends of a scarf. When I pull it free, there ’s an instant when she looks up at me and I think she’s going to be all right. I smile at her, reach to untie the ropes binding her hands.

She starts to scream. A loud, high-pitched, penetrating scream.

Startled, I jerk back.

My first thought is not for her welfare. It’s for mine. I have neighbors on both sides.

I’ve got to quiet her.

Once more I reach out, making what I hope is a reassuring shushing noise, trying to calm her.

She screams louder.

Jesus.

I slam the slider shut behind me.

She’s going to wake the entire block if I don’t do something.

There’s a crash of splintering wood. Somebody is breaking in my front door.

Too late.

At the sound, the woman turns up the volume.

Feet thunder up the stairs. Cops appear at the door, one shoves me away from the woman and one pushes me down onto the floor.

The instinct to fight is squelched because of a voice in my head.

Anna, it’s me. Relax. Don’t say anything.

It’s Ortiz, back in uniform, with two of San Diego’s finest.

Ortiz takes over. He gets the cop off my back and allows me to stand up. He tells him that he knows me.

The second cop is untying the woman. He throws a sheet over her and when she sits up, she starts to babble. She tells the cops how I appeared in the room from the deck and not the inside door and how I looked at her with an animal’s face and yellow eyes.

They look at each other and at me. I put on as normal a face as I can and shrug.

Ortiz tells one of the cops to take me downstairs while he questions her. It’s not until they’ve taken her away in an ambulance and the CSI team has come and gone (with a set of my best Egyptian cotton sheets) that he joins me at the kitchen table. He sends my cop custodian away, too.

“It was Burke,” he says.

I hand him a cup of coffee. Dawn is breaking outside and it’s obvious I’m not going to get any sleep. Neither is he.

“Burke.” Not really surprising. Another part of her little game?

He takes a long pull at the coffee. “The woman says she was picked up leaving a downtown bar about midnight. Two men grabbed her.

The last thing she remembers before getting stuck with a needle is a voice saying the name Belinda Burke.”

“Not very subtle, is she? But what does dumping her here accomplish?”

“Maybe she thought you’d lose it when you smelled the blood. We got an anonymous call that someone saw you carrying a bound and gagged woman into your house. Came in ten minutes before we got here. Before you got here, evidently.”

“How’d you catch the call? When I left you, you were still with Williams.”

Ortiz smiles. “Police scanner. When your address was broadcast, I beat it over here. Changed in the car. The uniforms assumed I was on duty.”

I sip at my coffee, processing what Burke could hope to accomplish with such a stunt. I let Ortiz accompany me as I sort possibilities.