by Karen Chance
“It’s Dorina,” I yelled, because he can’t hear worth a damn.
“Who?”
“DORINA!”
“Well, there’s no need to shout.”
“Is Mircea there?”
“No, no. Everyone’s gone,” he said impatiently. “Middle of the night, isn’t it?”
“Do you expect him back soon?”
“Not for a few hours. Why?”
“No reason. I’m coming up.”
Louis-Cesare quirked an eyebrow as I replaced the phone. “I need a bath,” I said, before he could ask. He just looked at me. “What?”
“You are a dhampir on your way to a vampire cocktail party, and you are worried about your toilette?”
“No,” I said defensively, as he started to smile. “And you’re the one who wanted to park Ray somewhere.”
“Very true.” It was a genuine smile now, curving his lips, lighting his eyes, and I blinked. I hadn’t seen one too often from him, and it was ridiculously attractive.
“I don’t get why Elyas involved you in all this,” I said as the elevator doors opened. “If he wanted to talk to Ray, he could have gone himself or sent one of his men. It’s not like the guy was hard to find.”
“Lord Cheung is known as a competent duelist. Elyas . . . is not. The truce will only last as long as the war, and once it is lifted, Lord Cheung will be well within his rights to demand satisfaction for his loss and for the indignity perpetrated on his servant. Elyas preferred me to have to deal with that eventuality, rather than him.”
“But why didn’t he just buy it?” I asked, confused. “Cheung is a businessman. If Elyas offered him enough—”
“The winner of the auction was Ming- de,” Louis-Cesare said simply.
He didn’t need to say anything else. Ming-de was the powerful Chinese empress, their version of a consul. It would be a rare vampire who wanted to risk breaking a promise to her, and certainly not one who resided in her territory. She could crush him like a bug, and probably would, if he crossed her.
“So no reversing the sale.”
“The auction was yesterday, and Elyas spent most of the last twenty-four hours bombarding Lord Cheung with offers, pleas and threats. To no avail.”
We got out at Mircea’s floor, and I rang the doorbell. “If the auction was last night, why was Elyas pestering Cheung?” I asked. “Doesn’t Ming-de already have it?”
“The fey who owns it refused to bring it here until a sale was agreed upon. He was due to arrive last night, after the auction, at which time the evaluation would be made. If the rune was genuine, it would be delivered tonight and payment made. That is why Lord Cheung is here, I suspect. He no doubt planned to deliver the rune to the empress personally.”
“Only he can’t,” I realized. “He obviously doesn’t know where Ray put it, or he wouldn’t be chasing us all over the city.”
Louis-Cesare nodded. “The auction took place here, because most of the participants were already on hand for the races. But Lord Cheung’s business kept him in Hong Kong until today. He wasn’t here when the fey came through the portal, and therefore he doesn’t know where the rune is. As far as we can determine, only one person knows that.”
Well, no wonder Ray was a popular guy.
A tiny old vampire with a nose to rival Ray’s and tufts of silver-white hair finally answered the door. Unlike most vamps on the planet, Horatiu doesn’t actually hate me, maybe because he’s not entirely clear on what I am. The watery blue eyes don’t work right, and he hasn’t been able to see his hand in front of his face in centuries. Which might explain why he didn’t so much as flinch at the sight of a bloody dhampir and a headless guy on his doorstep.
“Who’s that with you then?” he demanded.
“This is Raymond.” I pushed him forward.
Horatiu squinted behind his glasses. “You’re a strange-looking one.”
Ray shot him the finger, but of course Horatiu didn’t see it, so that was all right.
“And this is Louis-Cesare,” I said.
“Ah, yes. The mumbler.”
“I refuse to shout every word I utter,” Louis-Cesare explained wryly.
“There he goes again,” Horatiu sniffed. He sniffed again, and this time made a face. “You need a bath, young lady,” he informed me.
“I know. So does Ray.”
“Use the master’s room,” Horatiu ordered. “The guest ones are all taken. I’ll take this . . . person . . . to mine.” He ushered Ray’s body off, and Louis-Cesare and I headed through the understated opulence of Mircea’s digs.
He’d only acquired the apartment recently, so he wouldn’t have to do anything so gauche as stay at a hotel when he was in town. As a result, it was still primarily the way it had been when he bought it, in quiet shades of camel and sand with little personal stamp over the designer blandness. The only exceptions were a few bright postmodernist paintings spotting the walls. They were new, and they gave the place an energy it had sorely lacked the last time I was here.
Louis-Cesare stopped in the living room to make another call, and I made a detour by the kitchen. I’d skipped dinner and my stomach was protesting, and no way was I getting anything to eat upstairs. At vampire parties, the snacks serve themselves.
The kitchen turned out to be bright and functional, all honey-colored wood and matching striated marble, and looked like no one had ever used it. Which, considering who lived here, may well have been the case. I pulled open the fridge and, as I suspected, the food on offer was minimal. But somebody up there loved me because there was beer. I pulled one out, drank half of it and then just stood there for a minute, soaking up the cold air.
My head hurt. Come to think of it, so did my neck, my left shoulder, the right side of my rib cage, my ankle and my right hand. In contrast, my ass felt fine, except for a slight tingle from where a certain someone’s hands had rested.
And then those same hands were sliding under the T-shirt, next to my skin, and my whole body started to tingle. “I thought we were in a hurry,” I said, gripping the fridge door tightly. The combination of heat behind me and cool, cool air in front was a little dizzying.
“Elyas is not expecting us for an hour.”
“An hour, huh?” I could do a lot with an hour.
Apparently, Louis-Cesare could, too, although it wasn’t quite what I’d expected. He pulled me away from the fridge, bent me over the marble-topped island and dug his fingers into the tense muscles of my back. I groaned.
He started at the base of my spine, teasing out the knots as skillfully as if he’d done it a dozen times before. My body recognized the coarseness of familiar calluses, and a heavy warmth spread through me. He paused to tug the T-shirt off over my head, and I didn’t resist.
When he reached my shoulders, which had been tight long before tonight, he leaned more of his weight into it, spreading his palms flat and moving them in slow circles along the lines of the muscle. When they were roughly the consistency of jelly, he moved on to my neck. I leaned into the strokes involuntarily, head rolling back as he kneaded away at the tension knotted around the base of my skull.
By the time he finished, the pain was gone, although it was possible that I’d fallen madly, irreversibly in love with Louis-Cesare’s hands. I might have said something to the effect, because he chuckled and brushed his lips over the back of my neck, meltingly warm. “Get dressed.”
“Thinking about it.” I wasn’t actually sure I could move.
He let his fingers, soft and featherlight, comb through the short ends of my hair. “Get dressed before I call Elyas and tell him we will see him tomorrow.”
Sounded like a plan to me.
“And before I take that pose as an invitation.”
I turned my head and found him right there, his breath on my face, and his lashes almost brushing my cheek. There was no conscious decision. I put a hand behind his neck, and pulled up to meet him, my lips finding his as easily, as naturally, as if we did it every day. He
tasted spicy and musky and mouthwateringly sweet, like butterscotch candy right before it melts on the tongue.
A bone-deep shudder tore through him, and he gripped the back of my neck and returned the kiss, deep and hungry. His skin was hot to the touch; his mouth even hotter, wet and suddenly iron-edged with blood. The tenderness was gone, but I didn’t miss it. This was better; this was perfect, sensation spiraling out of control into blatant need.
My hands spidered up to tangle in the thick mass of his hair, and my leg wrapped around him. His hand clenched on my ass, pulling me against him, and he was already half hard behind the thin material of his trousers. One of us groaned—I wasn’t sure which—and his lips moved to my ear.
“Please get dressed,” he said hoarsely.
It took a second to register, and then I jerked away, snatching up the T-shirt.
“Make up your damn mind!” I told him, pulling it on. “One minute you strip me; the next you tell me to get dressed. One minute your tongue is down my throat, and the next you’re glowering at me. Do you even know what you want?”
“There are things we want, and things we may have,” he said tightly. “Sanity lies in knowing the difference.”
“Okay, you want to translate that for me?” I waited, but he didn’t say anything else, and his posture was as closed and uninviting as a statue.
Or like a guy who’s just remembered his mistress is waiting upstairs.
Screw this, I thought bitterly. It was exactly like last time, only then I hadn’t stepped back. I’d let him take my face in his hands, let myself lean into his touch, just enough to fall and keep on falling. Only to have him leave, without a word, to chase after his mistress.
It was the same woman he was going to redeem tonight. And then this would be over and he would be gone, and I couldn’t wait. I snagged my abandoned bottle and the duffel bag off the floor and headed for the bedroom without another word, frustration lingering like a sour taste in my mouth.
It’s the beer, I told myself firmly.
Mircea’s bedroom was the same gray expanse of boredom I remembered. Like the rest of the apartment, it was ultramodern, sleek and minimalist, like something transplanted from one of the glass- and-steel high-rises. It didn’t fit well in this old-world charmer any more than the blinding white bathroom did.
Some things just weren’t meant to go together, I thought viciously, and stepped into the shower. I turned it on high, refusing to think about anything except the pounding water and the enveloping steam. It didn’t work. That shouldn’t have surprised me. It hadn’t worked any better all month.
He was a vampire. I was a dhampir, born to detect the monster within the pretty package. And until now, I’d had a flawless record. But breeding, training, and experience all failed me in his case. When I looked at Louis-Cesare, I didn’t see a monster.
Part of the problem was his unique talent for appearing human. I’d never met another vampire who got all the little things right so effortlessly, who breathed as though he really needed to, whose heart rate went up when I came in the room, who flushed in passion. If it hadn’t been for the frisson that went up my spine whenever we met, he might have fooled even me.
But it wasn’t the appearance that had me so confused. A lot of vamps looked pretty damn human, but they didn’t act it. From the newly changed babies to the age-old consuls, every damn one of them evidenced the same focused self-interest, cold-blooded practicality and utter ruthlessness.
Everyone except for Louis-bloody-Cesare.
He didn’t live by the vamp code; he had his own. It was classist and had a heavy overtone of noblesse oblige, and it frequently made me want to smack him, but it was a code nonetheless. He didn’t always act in ways that would benefit himself, the mess with Alejandro being a prime example.
Every other vamp I knew would have either sacrificed Christine, if Tomas was considered too much of a threat, or have killed him and taken her back. Some of them would have made Alejandro pay for the insult later, but none would have so much as considered any other options. They probably wouldn’t have even seen any.
Vampires were emancipated when they reached the level of their master, and sometimes before, because the more powerful they became the harder it was to control them. Eventually, the problems in keeping them outweighed the benefits. I could just see Mircea’s face if someone suggested that he divert a huge amount of his personal power for more than a century to hold a vampire in thrall who could be of absolutely no use to him. Yet Louis-Cesare had done exactly that.
First-level masters varied in power, and obviously, Louis-Cesare had been stronger than Tomas. But even so, the cost must have been enormous, a constant, ongoing drain with no end in sight. And for what? The benefit of a vampire he didn’t even know? It was the sort of behavior that made my brain hurt because it challenged everything I knew about the self-serving breed.
Not that it mattered. Whatever he looked like, whatever he acted like, Louis-Cesare was a vampire. I needed to remember that.
I also needed to figure out what the hell I was going to wear. I didn’t intend to try to compete—vampire parties are all about outshining, outdazzling and outdoing everybody else, and my wardrobe wouldn’t have been up to the challenge even if I’d had access to it. But I also wasn’t wearing a smelly old T-shirt that wasn’t even mine.
Fortunately, Mircea is a shade over six feet tall, while I am barely five two. That makes his shirts on the order of dresses for me, easily hitting midthigh or lower, and it wasn’t like he couldn’t spare one. He was the biggest clotheshorse I’d ever met; if he hadn’t had a steady stream of mistresses through the years, I’d wonder about him.
I’d settled on a big shirt and maybe a cummerbund for a belt by the time I stepped out of the shower—and saw a piece of black silk hanging from the hook behind the door. It was a dress, sort of. It was mostly straps on top, cleverly designed to reveal more than they covered, yet managing to stay on the right side of slutty. The skirt was more problematic, long and black and slit high enough that my lack of underwear was going to be a problem.
“There’s some panties and things on the counter,” Ray said, from inside the duffel.
I’d parked it on the floor beside the door. I picked it up and peered into the hole in the side. “Are you spying on me?”
“Hell, yeah. Get me out of here.”
“Why? So you can get a better view?”
“So we can talk while you get dressed.”
“I’m not getting dressed,” I told him, threw a towel around myself and went out into the bedroom. It was dark and empty, except for the wash of light from the bath, so I passed through to the living room. Louis-Cesare was on the couch with the lights off, staring out over the view of Central Park.
I held up the dress. “What is this?”
He looked up, his eyes dark in the dim light. “I had it sent over.”
“It’s one o’clock in the morning!”
“Concierge,” he said simply, like he’d picked up the phone and ordered a pizza.
“There are shoes.” I’d tripped over a pair of black satin heels on the way out of the bathroom.
“You wished to dress for the occasion—”
“I said I wanted a bath.”
“—and I thought to oblige you. And myself. I have never seen you in a gown.”
I crossed my arms and glared at him. “How did you know my size?”
He just looked at me. And yeah, okay, I could probably guess his pretty accurately, too, if it came down to it. Not that it mattered.
“I’m not wearing this.”
He regarded me in silence for a moment. “Do you wish to fight with me, Dorina?”
“Yes!” At the moment, that was exactly what I wanted.
“If it will help.” I blinked. He’d spoken in the toneless kind of voice new vamps used when they hadn’t yet learned to operate dead vocal cords. Except Louis-Cesare never made slips like that.
A passing car lit up his face for
an instant, and the strained blankness of his expression jolted me with an unpleasant shock. He looked like a vamp for the first time: the face beautiful, but pale and cold, like it was carved out of marble; the chest immobile, unbreathing; the eyes fixed and unblinking. I felt a chill run down my spine.
The man I knew was haughty, impatient, demanding, passionate. Not this blank. Not this thing.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I demanded.
“Nothing.” Toneless, flat, dead.
Yeah, that was convincing.
Chapter Sixteen
I walked over, the dress trailing on the floor behind me. I sat on the edge of the coffee table across from him because I was still dripping. “Try again,” I told him.
He didn’t say anything.
“I’d have thought you’d be pleased,” I pointed out. “You’re getting Christine back.”
“I am relieved,” he said, after a moment. “Elyas is a sadist, delighting in the pain of others. I did not like to think of her there.”
“You think he hurt her?”
“No. He assures me that she has not been harmed.”
“And you believe him?”
“Yes. He enjoys the fear of his victims more than their pain, and Christine . . . As she once said to me, after one has lost their soul, what else is there to fear?”
“She hasn’t lost her soul,” I said impatiently. “Hell, Mircea is more devout than I am.” I didn’t mind going to mass so much, but confession was damned annoying. Even the supernatural confessors the Vatican kept on call always got a little . . . distraught . . . when I showed up. And, really, there weren’t enough Hail Marys in the world.
“But she believes she has,” Louis-Cesare said simply. “Her family was very devout. It was thought for a time that she would become a religieuse.”
I raised my eyebrows. “How does someone get from prospective nun to vampire mistress?”
“Christine was one of those rare individuals born with magical ability without coming from a magical family. She was never given any training, and therefore did not know about her gift until it began to manifest as she came of age.”
