Page 8 of Dawn Caravan
“He addressed it to you because you’re the one who responded to him in the first place.”
“Because Giovanni referred him to me.” Ben didn’t get headaches anymore, but if he did, he would name his headache Radu. The Romanian vampire had been trying to hire him for something like three years now to find a lost Russian icon.
But first they’d had to go to Puerto Rico to look for pirate treasure.
And then they’d had to go to the East China Sea to help out Tenzin’s sire.
And then… Well, life—or undeath—happened.
“I’ll deal with Radu,” Ben said. “I may just lay things out for him and tell him we’re not—”
“One thing you should know.” Chloe cut him off. “With his last letter, he sent a down payment.”
Okay, that was interesting. “How much of a down payment?”
“I’m not sure. But whatever the down payment is weighs about seven pounds and it makes Tenzin’s eyes light up.”
Both of Ben’s eyebrows went up. “Gold?”
“Gold.” Chloe cleared her throat. “I didn’t send that part. International postage is a bitch.”
“Right.” Ben tapped his fingers on his knee. Did the woman in Kashgar have anything to do with Radu? She could have been Eastern European. And if he’d sent roughly a hundred grand of gold with a letter and been kept waiting for an answer for as long as Radu had, he might want the recipient to “answer their fucking mail” too.
“Okay,” he said. “Radu first. Where’s his letter in the pile?”
“I went ahead put that one right on top.”
3
It took Ben a week to fly from Penglai to Los Angeles. He was still figuring out how to move efficiently through space, and he couldn’t fly as fast as Zhang or Tai. But even with slower speed, the feeling was exhilarating; moving through the air was effortless. He was cocooned in his element and often he nearly slipped into a trancelike state, especially when he was going long distances.
Moving only at night meant he often had to take the long way around to avoid large bodies of water, but he didn’t mind. Seeing the world from the air was awe inspiring.
As he flew from San Francisco to Los Angeles, he watched the lights below, dipping down to smell the familiar scents of salt water and kelp that were flung into the air with each crashing wave.
It was familiar and it wasn’t. Ben was seeing everything through an immortal lens, and while the night’s darkness was deep to humans, to Ben the reflection of the stars off the moon-pulled water was as bright as an early-morning sunrise. Nothing about the night was dark anymore. In fact, he often craved true darkness, which was much harder to achieve as a vampire.
As he flew south, the lights scattered and dimmed, twinkling sporadically through Central California until he reached Santa Barbara, where they grew brighter and denser.
As Ben approached the LA basin, the lights nearly blinded him. They lay like a thick blanket of stars covering the hills and valleys that made up the sprawling city of angels.
Home.
He spotted the pure white walls of the Getty Center and turned east, following the veins of light where cars sped through the city. He followed the foothill freeway and turned south in Pasadena, searching for a safe place to land.
There.
The familiar parking lot of the Huntington Library and Gardens caught his eye, and he was instantly oriented. There, the research library where his aunt had worked when she was still human. There, the alley of jacarandas that dropped lavender flowers on the asphalt where he’d ridden his bicycle as a boy, roaming the streets of San Marino and dreaming about the lives of the rich people who lived behind the walls and hedges of each compound.
Ben landed silently in the parking lot and walked toward the sprawling mansion a short distance from the library where his aunt and uncle kept their home. He passed the typical wildlife common in Los Angeles—possums hanging from trees; quick, striped skunks darting into bushes; clever cats slinking from one shadow to the next.
It was all familiar, yet nothing was the same.
When he reached the gate of the house, he rose and flew over it, triggering the silent alarm and switching on the video-recording equipment he’d set up after he graduated from high school. He waved at the cameras, then put a finger to his lips.
Shhhh.
Hopefully, whoever was guarding the place knew who he was, but it had been nearly three years since he’d been back in Los Angeles. He’d been gone long enough that security might not recognize him.
