Lost Angeles

by Mantchev, Lisa

  “Where’s the fire?”

  “There are about a hundred of them, and I’m putting them out four or five at a time while you fuck-and-fang your way through the Gamma Delta chapter of I Eta Pi.” Reille raises an eyebrow and glares down at my hand, like she’s willing me to either turn her loose or spontaneously combust. “Those papers are from the legal department. They’ve managed to dig the club out of some serious shit, but only because they promised the senator and several people on the planning committee that you would look into a considerable security upgrade.”

  “Time to call in Big Brother.” Worst pun ever, because Asher Reece’s company was the one that installed the current system.

  “Do it yourself, or have one of your Happy Meals do it for you.” She’s still eying the place where I’m touching her. “Miss Chase’s contract is in there as well, in case you were wondering.”

  “I wasn’t.” Except that’s not entirely true, and judging by Reille’s expression, she knows it. “Why are you giving me that look?”

  “Because you’ve managed to keep me here, running around, catering to your every whim, talking and negotiating and bribing you out of trouble,” she blurts out, then tacks on an angry, “again.”

  “Pretty sure that means you’re good at your job.”

  She huffs out an impatient sigh. “I’ve been here for thirty-six hours straight, Xaine. I need a shower. I need to eat something that doesn’t come up from the kitchen or out of a vending machine. I need to get the hell out and get some fresh air.”

  “Sure you don’t wanna hang with me for a bit?” Almost enjoying myself, I jerk a thumb at the VIP room.

  Reille smiles sweetly, but there’s a whole lot of go to hell and don’t come back under that smile. “I don’t really do group sex.”

  “Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. Besides, like you said, they’re just food.”

  “I never really developed the palette for Playmates, but thanks for the generous offer.”

  There’s buzz at the door, someone accessing the VIP room with a key. “Xaine,” a voice greets me smoothly, then adds, “Miss Reece.”

  Reille turns on one pointy heel. “May I help you?”

  Uuuuuuuuuugh, Sebastian.

  Sebastian Winters pops in and out of the limelight, making mad grabs for whatever he can get before making himself scarce. Hard to take him seriously when he looks like one of those tall, blond, and sturdy guys who pack surfboards around Venice Beach, flexing their muscles. Tonight he’s rocking the European club-casual button-down, with enough of them popped to show off his tribal ink, which he did not get hammered into him on some island by a native, I can almost guarantee. The last time I clapped eyes on him was about a hundred years ago, when he was hellbent on trying to get in on the ground level of Cas’s steel manufacturing venture.

  Some vamps are like that. Late to the party, always just missing out on the next big thing, then scrambling to play catch-up. Matty’s a next-gen version of Sebastian, really, though I’m forced to reevaluate that opinion when Sebastian sticks out a hand and a fifty-thousand-dollar watch glints on his wrist.

  Must’ve finally found a well to pump.

  “Xaine,” he says. “You’ve done well for yourself.”

  “Yeah, I get by—”

  “The Scipio clan always did have devil’s own luck,” he interrupts, turning to eyeball Reille in a way that makes my hackles rise. “I’m afraid our host has forgotten his manners, Miss Reece. I’m Sebastian Winters. We have certain mutual friends back east.”

  Her eyes widen, so whatever “mutual friends” he’s referencing, they’re not anyone Reille actually likes. Her gaze flicks from Sebastian to the railing overlooking auditorium. She licks her lips, but is saved from answering by the assistant who sticks her head in the door a second later.

  “St. John’s in the banquet room. I don’t have him on the reservations list, but he’s setting up for something. There were torches involved… and paraphernalia.”

  Without excusing herself, Reille takes off at a half-run, her flame-colored hair tumbling down her back as she heads for the party spaces. She’ll have the resident shithead intercepted by security, unless I miss my guess. My ears catch the flat of her palm slapping against metal and the distant beep of her keycard. Hell, I even scent the last wisp of her perfume on the soft exhalation of the door closing behind her.

  Sorry, sweetheart, that fresh air is going to have to wait.

  “I thought she’d never leave.” Sebastian glances pointedly around the lounge, gaze skipping over the girls on the floor. A soft nudge from me gets the first one moving, then she hustles the other three up and out the door. In the meantime, Sebastian contents himself with ambling through the room, taking in all the sights with barely-disguised avarice. Once we’re alone, he stops strolling to add, “With the ginger and the bastard in residence, I assume Declan will be along shortly.”

  “Don’t hold your breath, Winters.” I pause to think it over before amending, “Actually, go right on ahead and hold it.”

  A quick flash of humor crosses his face. “You’d still be waiting an eternity for me to die, I’m afraid, and we both know you’re not a patient man.”

  He’s trying like hell to play it cool, but when you’ve spent a couple centuries around someone like Cas, you learn a thing or two about keeping your composure. Right now, Sebastian might be running his hands idly over every piece of furniture in the place, but he’s fairly vibrating with energy underneath the dapper duds and slick side-part.

  “There something I can do for you, Winters?” I ask. “Or did you pop by for a little witty repartee?”

  “Oh, there is most definitely something you can do for me.” He pauses to curl his fingers over the back of a chair. “And I believe you know exactly what it is.”

  “No, actually, I do not know exactly what it is.” Stonefaced, I stare him down. There’s the briefest flicker of annoyance on his face, but Sebastian schools it by the time I add, “Why don’t you enlighten me?”

  A muscle tics in his jaw, and his fingers clamp down. He’s holding onto that chair like some sort of lifeline, like he’s one second from falling off the edge of something, but he pulls himself together long enough to say, “I’m interested in resuming our relationship.”

  “Sorry, Bastian, I don’t do dudes.”

  “Ah, Xaine, you’re not really my type,” he says. “Your business, however, was quite perfect for our needs.”

  “Whose needs?”

  “If the money is good enough, does it really matter?” he asks.

  “It absolutely does.”

  “That’s disappointing.” And he actually makes a sound like a tsk. “You used to be an ask-no-questions sort of man, and I can’t see as your broken moral compass has ever led you astray.” He gestures around to the posh digs, the luxe backdrop to our little tableau. “I’ve never known you to turn down an opportunity to wallow in filthy lucre.”

  “Moral compass aside,” I say, “exactly how filthy is this lucre?”

  “Not so much filthy as foreign,” he says, taking a breath now that he’s got my attention. “The go-to banks are starting to turn on people. Switzerland, Luxembourg, Monaco are all bowing to international politics, blowing the whistle on age-old accounts, closing people out, handing them checks, turning those who do not comply over to the fiscal authorities.”

  “So the secret banks aren’t so secret anymore.”

  “Exactly, and there are a lot of people that would pay a lot of money to not pay a lot of money,” Sebastian tells me. “All they have to do is get their hands on their stash before the local government shuts down their account.”

  “So they take the cash to the nearest bar and what? Invest?”

  “You have an intercontinental business that shuffles billions into the United States economy. On top of that, you deal mostly in cash covers, yearly dues, and steep membership fees. You receive every possible tax break, including but not limited to foreign tax cred
its.” Sebastian pauses, leaning one elbow on the gleaming bar. “You are the new Swiss bank account. The money goes in dirty and comes out clean the other end. All it involves is falsifying a few records.”

  This is pushing too many buttons to be a coincidence. “So now that Matty’s gone, you’re actually going to take me out to dinner before you bend me over and screw me?” I don’t wait for him to answer; his expression is all the answer I need. “Fuck off, Winters, and take your business proposition with you.”

  “I don’t think you actually understand the proposition, Xaine,” he tells me. “Either you lift the embargo, so to speak, or we hit you in every soft spot you’ve got.”

  “What’re you going to do? Break my thumbs? Kill Matty?” A rude noise escapes me before I tack on, “Go right ahead. That shithead needs to learn a lesson or two. Also, I don’t have any soft spots, asshole, so you’re barking up the wrong tree.”

  “You might no longer be… seeing Miss Reece, but she still wears your mark, does she not?”

  No lie, the threat pisses me off, but one phone call will put more security on her than the Pope enjoys. “Yeah, and her brother is the kind of person who would blow up your version of civilization like it was a scene out of Die Hard.” I tilt my head back to eye the ceiling and fake a snore. “Next?”

  Except Sebastian knows he’s got nothing that could entice me to cooperate. My moral compass might be as broken as Reille’s vibrator, but there’s still not a force on this earth that can make me do something I don’t want to do, and he knows it. Glancing down at the stage, he takes in the sight of Lore still singing her heart out, and there’s a flicker of something that I really do not care for on his face before he turns and smiles at me.

  “Everyone has a weakness, Xaine, even you,” Sebastian says. “It might take us some time to find it, but find it we will.”

  “I know you’re not into kitty, but if you’re going go all Bond villain, you really need a pussy to stroke when you say shit like that,” I tell him. “Why don’t you try St. John? His moral compass points pretty much due south all the time, and he has to be proficient at money laundering by now.”

  The answering look of frustration on Sebastian’s face is pretty satisfying, and it tells me one more thing about this whole cocked-up scenario.

  “You’ve already asked him,” I say. “Well, now that I know I was your second choice, I’m really not doing it.”

  “Mr. St. John is none of your concern.”

  “Damn straight,” I tell him, “but that’s just one more person you’re not planning to kill. Pretty sure he doesn’t have any soft spots either, so good luck sucking your own dick, Winters, because you won’t be getting any head from the Scipio corner.”

  The door opens again, and one of the stage jockeys pokes his head in.

  “Xaine, you’re on in fifteen.”

  I swear I’ve been hearing those same words on repeat for the last four hundred years. Well, the last hundred anyway. Things were a little more Old World before that. Exhaling hard through my nose, I give the headphoned techie a nod before turning back toward Sebastian. “As fun as this has been, I’ve got work to do.”

  “Think about what I said,” he tells me. “One way or another, we’ll find our way in.”

  “Yeah, well, how about you find your way out first?”

  And I leave him in my proverbial dust, making my way backstage to amp myself up for another show. Normally, this is my favorite part: just before I go onstage, standing behind the curtains, adrenaline pumping through my veins, heart beating in my chest. These are the few and far between moments when I almost remember what it’s like to be alive.

  Almost.

  Sebastian fucked it up for me, because all I can think about is his shitty foreign smuggling operation and the way Matty got me tangled up in it. Not that I think anyone’s going to actually be able to hurt me without hurting the operation itself, but it’s one more thing in a long list of shit I have to worry about. I guess it could be worse. At least I’m stationed at the home base for the moment, between records and between tours. It’ll be another six months before anything new drops, but in this business you’ve got to keep yourself fresh in people’s minds, got to keep yourself around even if you’re not playing to sold-out, thirty-thousand-head crowds in Leeds and Sydney and Rio.

  I’m still ticking through the cities when I spot Lore headed toward me. It’s dark, but I can see her Lite Brite strands of hair bouncing off the guy who’s got his arm flung over her shoulder. Dude’s leaning in close, whispering in her ear, but then I catch the wet glint of his tongue in the low light. My lip curls in disgust, but it’s none of my business, right? Hell, I’ve done worse. Lots worse.

  Lore hunches her shoulders when the muscled-up mannequin licks her jawline like it’s an ice cream cone. Her laugh is low and sultry, and she smiles brightly at the walking pair of pectorals at her side. Muscles McGee doesn’t waste a second, sliding a hand into the low-cut neck of her shirt and shoving his tongue down her pretty, white throat.

  Hard to say what possesses me really. Harder to say why it does, but as the two of them stumble and laugh their way down the hall, I cut close enough to the Fuzzy Bunny’s burly friend to catch his shoulder with mine. Hard. He stumbles back and comes up pissed, hands curled into fists, face contorted with the sort of unreasonable rage you see on madmen. My attention goes immediately to Lore, who’s staring at me wide-eyed and a little confused. Like she’s drunk, except I know for a fact the styling team’s kept her busy enough today that she hasn’t had time to piss, much less booze it up.

  “Sorry, sweets,” I say, offering her a smirk.

  “S’okay.” She hits me with an adorable half-smile that’s all at once shy and sly. “No harm, no foul, but next time it’ll cost you a dollar.”

  Her companion is a lot less gracious about the whole thing. “Why don’t you watch where you’re going, asshole?”

  “Likewise,” I tell him. “Maybe if you weren’t so busy trying to tongue-fuck the girl’s tonsils, you could walk without dragging those knuckles of yours.”

  “Whatever man,” he shoots back. “C’mon, Lo, let’s get outta here.”

  Lore hesitates then, teetering a little on her heels, wavering between the command and some other idea. She’s got those big blue eyes fixed on my face, her lip clamped between two rows of blunt, human teeth. After a moment she turns toward the jockstrap and says, “I want to watch the show.”

  “You can see him later.” He throws his arm over her shoulder again, guiding her casually away from me.

  Peering backwards, trying to get one more glimpse of me before he drags her away, Lore gives a little wave. “Bye, Xaine. Break a leg!”

  “Yeah, break both of them,” Muscles mutters.

  That’s when I catch it, that whiff of something that I was trying like hell to describe to Roman. It’s light but unmistakable, even under the metric shit-ton of cologne that this guy is wearing. Sweet, syrupy, with a hint of decay—

  Sonuvabitch.

  I launch myself forward, reaching out to snag the date rapist murderer before he has the chance to get away. “Hey!”

  That’s all I get out, because the second my hand clamps down on his arm, his fist plows into my face, cutting off anything else I might have said. The guy hits with the strength of ten men, or one immortal man, just not a vamp. I’d smell a vamp a million miles away. Nope, this guy is most definitely something else, and I keep that in mind when I grasp hold of his douchebag Abercrombie sweater-jacket and slam him into the nearest wall. His head ricochets off the cinder block, but it might as well be the side of a bouncy house for all the attention he pays it.

  Shit.

  His eyes glint silver from corner to corner, iris and pupil completely gone.

  Lore’s hands close over my bicep, delicate fingers curling over bare skin. “Xaine, wait!”

  “Get back,” I growl at her. “He’s a fucking murderer.”

  “Please let him go,” sh
e pleads with me, her voice sweet and echoing with honest sentiment. “Don’t touch him. He’ll hurt you.”

  “Your lack of faith in me is disappointing,” I mutter, “but I think I can handle one juiced-up gym rat.”

  She shakes her head and blinks, dabbing tentative fingertips to her temple as the high color drains from her cheeks. Her beefed-up friend reaches past me to lay a hand on her, but I grasp hold of his collar and slam him against the wall again to emphasize the stupidity of that attempt.

  “Hands off, asshole.” It’s a warning, but when I speak again, the low rumble is gone and I’m addressing the Fuzzy Bunny instead. “Lore, you got a phone?”

  She coughs up a very small, “Yeah.”

  “Do me a favor and call 9-1-1,” I say, my eyes on the piece of scum I’ve got clamped between my fists. “Tell them I’ve got the guy who killed the girl at Scion.”

  “While you’re at it, Lo,” he tosses in, “tell them I’ve got the guy who killed Elizabeth Declan.”

  The words kick me right in the gut. No splitting my attention between him and her, not now, not with that name tumbling from his asshole mouth.

  “The fuck did you say?” I lift him up until his chest is against his chin. Instead of backing down, Muscles reaches out and catches hold of my elbow. The second his skin meets mine, everything goes sideways, my entire world tilting a little to the left.

  “That’s right, Xaine,” he says, sliding that hand down the taut muscle of my forearm, his voice fading to a soft monotone by the time he reaches my wrist. “I’m not the only murderer here, am I? But it doesn’t count if you don’t mean to do it, right? Because sometimes they just slip away, and there’s nothing you can do to bring ’em back.”

  Don’t touch him. He’ll hurt you.

  Lore’s warning echoes in my head, but I register it far too late. The next breath, and I’m two hundred years in the past, reliving that fucking love song one more time. Gas lamps and horses’ hooves and the smell of fetid flesh. Everything is dark, streaked with soot stains, the air tinged with coal dust. Dickens knew this world. He wrote about it, did his best to capture it. So did Anne Rice, but neither of them got it quite right. There were only a few of us in those days, and we weren’t exactly giving interviews. We roamed wild, the absolute top of the food chain, and everything was ours for the taking.