As a singer, he could appreciate the singer’s chops. His own band, Bitter/Sweet, wasn’t currently playing gigs. The drummer had a coke habit (dude was mortal), the lead guitarist (a fellow vampire) had a faery dust habit (idiot), and the bass player (another vamp) had given up the guitar for goats, cheese, and a buxom redheaded shapeshifter all situated in some idyllic Swiss village. Go figure.
Johnny wasn’t worried about the void in his career. Lead singers were always in demand. He drifted from band to band, and would stay put when he finally found the perfect fit. He was young, a new singer on the Paris scene. While honing his chops, he planned to learn all he could about the profession and the music industry. He had dreams of a big stadium tour some day, but he was in no rush.
Immortality tended to grant a man a relaxed schedule and life goals were planned in terms of centuries as opposed to decades.
He and his tribe mates staked out the metal-studded black leather booths in club l’Enfer a few times a month. None of the Incroyables—as Damian, who hailed from the Enlightenment, called them—would claim the cheesy nightclub their scene, but each of them had their own reasons for hanging out in its gray and blood-silver shadows.
Dante d’Arcangelo had recently broken off a three-month liaison with a pretty vampiress. The dark-eyed Casanova with a penchant for frockcoats and lace was heartbroken, horny, and looking for a bite.
Brutus knew a fight could always be found when demons started mingling amongst vampires. Two demonesses gyrated below on the dance floor lighted to look like a flaming chasm opened to Beneath; they’d yet to give off aggressive vibes. Brutus could wait.
Tribe leader, Christian de Baureaux, former Comte d’Artois, nursed his third whiskey, his eyelids heavy, while a leanan sidhe sporting pink hair and a nose ring slid her tongue along his cheek and to his ear to whisper illicit promises.
Damian Desrues was not to be found tonight. The blond vamp with the Botticelli curls had lived in Paris since the eighteenth century. He’d once been mortal and had been bitten. He’d tried to fight the vampire taint and had gone mad—though had managed to make it to the full moon without transforming. Turns out he’d been bitten again after that fruitless struggle, and had become vampire anyway. Damian traveled the scale from sane to insanity like a monkey climbing for coconuts.
A few others in the tribe were not present. Johnny had been hoping Kindred would show tonight. The brains of the organization, Kindred LaRoque had been helping Johnny create a stock portfolio. Only a few years out from his parents’ household, Johnny knew he had to start investing if he were to survive the centuries looming before him. Because rock n’ roll certainly wasn’t going to pay the bills.
A spatter of vodka hit Johnny’s cheek. Brutus gulped down another shot then slammed the mug onto the table. The three mortal women clinging to his biceps knew he was vampire. Fang junkies. Rarely did an uninitiated mortal cross the portal into l’Enfer. The demonic doormen were meticulous. Their glowing red eyes could see mortal souls before their noses detected the foul mortal blood scent. If the club were to survive they didn’t need any trouble with the law, or the Council.
It was rumored the proprietor of l’Enfer was someone with whom no one should challenge, not even the toughest werewolf or most muscle-bound shapeshifter. Johnny assumed he was demon, or perhaps some ancient vampire who got his rocks off watching the young paranormals writhe in the crowded darkness of the club interior.
The band segued into a heart-thumping beat that suddenly paused—prompted by a single drumbeat, the singer sighed out a wanting breath that shivered through the air and permeated Johnny’s throat as if a lover’s release during climax. He whipped his head around, and heaving in anticipation, leaned over the wrought iron balcony.
The entire dance floor twisted their heads to admire the singer, poised before them, prepared to lead them into their darkest desires while she doled out her achingly seductive lyrics.
Gorgeous was an insufficient word to describe the goddess who mastered the black metal stage edged in red neon focus beams. A true mistress of the night. Make that the Dark’s mistress. Heh. He liked the band name, corny as it was. Tall, slender and poured into some crazy black latex number that hugged her curvy torso and ended high on her thighs, it seemed likely she was flashing the dancers below. Her arms were dipped in the same black latex; her fingers tipped in hematite talons.
For all her sensual gyrations and head-banging under the intense red stage lights, she should be a sweaty mess. Yet she was pristine, a tattered angel dredged up from the depths, exquisite in her darkness. Not to mention seductively deadly. Johnny ogled the way the latex hugged her ridiculous curves, gliding over hips and clenching her waist, wrapping up and around generous breasts. He had the sudden urge to bury his face in those plump breasts for a lick—and then a bite.
Thick, curling and lush, her hair was a life form unto itself. The obsidian tresses billowed about her arms as if a cloud and down her back where they dusted her hips. He wanted to bury his face in that hair, too. He wanted to fuck that hair.
The horns at her temples, jutting a foot into the air, were crisscrossed with red ribbons. Part of the costume, he assumed. She wasn’t demon. Or maybe so? Demons didn’t bother him. He’d dated one once, but would never bite. Black demon blood was thick and acrid. He preferred vampires because sharing blood was an experience he liked to engage as often as he could. Consuming mortal blood made him stronger and sustained his life. Quaffing down vampire blood did the same, but also super-charged his libido like some kind of vampire Viagra. There was nothing like having sex and biting at the same time. Nothing.
The tempo slowed and the singer crawled to the edge of the stage where she perched on her knees to croon about her poisonous lover. She dragged a talon down her slender white neck. No matter how cruelly her lover’s touch burned her skin she accepted the inescapable. Her voice was edged with a sadness so real Johnny suspected she was singing from experience. What an amazing performance, to connect with such harrowing emotion.
Over the murky depths of the club, the singer suddenly arrowed in on him, forging an instant, undeniable connection. The sounds of the dancing crowd muffled and Johnny’s heartbeats rose above the din. The singer’s angst-ridden voice permeated his pores and most certainly spoke only to him. And what she said detailed her heart; it had grown heavy with darkness.
She needed to escape. She needed him.
She teased out a taloned finger and crooked it, signaling to him to come a little bit closer. She’d whisper her dark desires to him.
Johnny’s smile hit eleven like that. Yeah? What chick didn’t want him? If Dante was the lover of the tribe, Johnny Santiago was the charmer. A wink was all it took. And he’d been told he had a killer smile that slashed right to a female’s heart.
Soaked in latex, crooning about dangerous and desperate love, the Dark’s Mistress gripped him by the throat and French kissed him with a deep need for connection. She begged him to push harder, to feel what she wanted him to know, the danger, the darkness, perhaps even, the kill.
He’d sink his fangs into her lush veins and show her what pleasures he could offer. And then he’d strip away the skin-hugging latex and lick every inch of her body. Up, down, inside and out. He wouldn’t stop until she had learned to sing a new note in worship of his skills.
He would have her.
Bumped roughly by one of Brutus’s giggling junkies, Johnny was jarred out of the unholy communion between himself and the singer. “What the hell?”
“Hey, man, you want to come along?” Brutus asked.
The burly blond bruiser wasn’t as wasted as his slurred words made him out to be. It took a lot to intoxicate a vampire; mortal blood laced with vodka worked best for Johnny. The blood drooling out the corner of Brutus’s mouth could be the cause of his inebriation. Johnny was never so messy.
“I’m good,” Johnny said. “Think I’ll hang around a while. Probably wander backstage.”
Brutus win
ked and gave him the thumbs up as he followed his mortal entourage toward the stairs.
“Backstage?” Christian clinked his whiskey glass against Johnny’s untouched wine bottle.
“The singer. She’s gorgeous, yes?”
The wise vampire who had once been a musketeer under Louis XIII in the seventeenth century didn’t glance to the stage. “That is one vampiress you don’t want to get involved with, my young friend.”
“So she is vampire? Good to know.”
Rising onto his knees in the booth and hooking his elbows on the iron balcony railing Johnny thought he heard Christian say something like, “She’s not something to touch” but he ignored the old man. At times, Christian was like a father to their tribe, at other times he was the angry old longtooth who’d lived through so many regrets he could but wallow in his whiskey.
“Not to touch?” Johnny muttered as he watched the singer vamp it up for the crowd. Stretching out a hand, she pleaded to the dancers, who responded by grasping for the just-out-of-reach chanteuse. They all wanted her. But none could touch the forbidden she promised.
Johnny’s grin curled. “How can I resist the forbidden?”
He hopped up onto the balcony railing, swinging his legs out over the dance floor, and hooked his boot toes in the twisted iron railings. The band segued into a song he knew well. It was a wailer, a heavy-metal anthem, and he always shouted it in the shower or whenever he damn well felt like it. The singer launched into the chorus, and he pounded his fist to the beat and matched her wail.
And in that moment, she looked up at him, tilted her head in wonder, and clutched a hand over her heart.
Chapter Two
Johnny slipped through the crowd reeking of sweat, adrenaline, and sex and veered down the long, dark hallway he suspected led backstage. He passed the back control room and pushed through a heavy black curtain edged in frayed silver fringe. Smelled different back here. Deeper and…iced. It didn’t feel that cold, but he wouldn’t be surprised to see his breath fog before him.
A red glow tracing the door ahead beckoned to him like something from a horror movie the protagonist should never open. Not if he wanted to continue breathing.
Johnny smirked at his crazy thoughts. He’d grown up watching late-night horror moviethons with his paternal grandmother. Viviane Hawkes was officially crazy, and the family tiptoed around her condition, and never spoke above a whisper around the touched one. That was a bunch of crap. Johnny loved her for the wild and wise woman she was. Wasn’t Viviane’s fault she’d been buried alive for two centuries in a glass coffin, rendered immobile yet conscience and completely aware by a witch’s spell. Anyone would emerge from that gripping the crazy stick.
As he stepped toward the door to grasp the red glass doorknob an apparition apported before him. Startled, he shuffled backward, thrusting up his fists in defense. A chill traced his veins so quickly he actually shuddered and tightened his neck muscles at the weird sensation. No fog of breath, though.
“Dude, what the hell?”
Filmy white and floating, it looked like a ghost. Transparent enough that he could see the red doorknob through the apparition’s ribs. He’d not seen a lot of ghosts in his short lifetime. Once or twice in old castles he’d visited with his parents. But since when had ghosts biceps the size of small tree stumps and a growl that revealed gold-capped teeth? Seriously, gold caps on a ghost?
“Was going to head in to chat with…” He had no idea what the singer’s name was. “Uh…the mistress of the dark.”
“Booked for the evening,” the ghost said in a too-solid voice that walked its way down Johnny’s throat to clench his spine.
“That’s unfortunate.” He wasn’t sure if a ghost could take him on, but assumed he wouldn’t be a bouncer if he could not protect his asset. “Tell her Johnny Santiago stopped by. She’ll want to know that,” he added.
No, she wouldn’t. But it didn’t hurt to try.
The apparition disappeared. To tell the singer Johnny Santiago wanted to see her? He could get so lucky. He wasn’t anybody special. He liked to keep a low profile. Important, when one had vampire hunters stalking his ass. A hazard that his breed routinely dealt with, as a natural part of life.
Winking at the camera above the door, Johnny shoved his hands in the pockets of his leather pants and wandered down the hallway, drawn toward the raucous club noise. He didn’t notice the chill anymore. Place was weird. But still not as freaky as the Lizard Lounge. That club wasn’t in FaeryTown proper, but it catered to the winged and the unusual. And when it came to unusual, faeries put to it an otherworldly spin that made even Johnny cringe.
When the thug ghost suddenly appeared before him, Johnny cursed and thrust up his fists again. His balled fingers punched through something cold and sticky. He pulled away, shaking his hand, but nothing was on his fingers. Ectoplasm? Isn’t that what ghosts were made of? Didn’t see any on his skin.
“She’ll see you now,” the bodyguard announced.
“Is that so?”
The smile returned. Johnny thrust back his shoulders and resumed his confident stance. She must have gotten a good look at him on the security camera. Either that or his name carried cachet after all.
Behind him, the door opened and out wandered a thin blonde man clad in black leather. The blood trickling down his neck soaked into his tee-shirt that sported a heavy metal logo. Johnny didn’t care for the scent of blood once it left the human body. Metallic and dusty, stale. He preferred the pure, barely-there scent of it as it flowed within the body. The most tantalizing perfume the Big Guy had ever created—life.
The bitten one cast Johnny a drunken grin and staggered past, unmindful of the ghostly bodyguard.
Johnny glanced at the open door. An unfathomable blackness filled the open doorway. The ghost had disappeared, as had the—no doubt—fang junkie.
Horror movie rule number one: When the door opened to darkness, the protagonist always ventured in.
Grin growing to bring-it-on-and-don’t-hold-back level, Johnny strolled through the doorway. His eyes adjusted to the dim interior. Pale red light highlighted an exotic boudoir. Mica glittered in black marble walls and floors. The sound of running water directed his attention to the side, where a Zen fountain trickled. The air smelled clean and vast, as if he stood in a meadow.
Like that blue police box on one of his favorite television shows, it turned out to be much bigger inside than outside. Disconcerting, but also, intriguing.
Beyond where he stood, sheer black curtains spangled with silver threading were drawn back to reveal a bed set upon a platform. Clothing hung on a rack at the wall. Accoutrements to the singer’s stage costume, including the demon horns she’d worn, were strewn at the end of the bed. A black wrought iron chandelier hung from the ceiling whose height he could not remark for the darkness. The flames topping the wax candles glinted red, as had all the lights in the club.
“Going with a theme, apparently,” he muttered. “Morticia Adamms would be pleased.” His grandmother had introduced him to that classic TV show.
Johnny walked forward and glided his fingers down the sheer black curtain. It wasn’t so dark he couldn’t make out another person. Where was she?
A hush of cool air teased his neck. Johnny spun around. She sat…stretched like an exotic cat upon a black velvet couch he hadn’t noticed because everything was black. Too far away to have brushed close to him.
Should he have brought something? A gift or offering? Black roses perhaps, for her to decapitate?
“Hey.” Johnny struggled to maintain his cool.
She was a stage act, and yet, suddenly it seemed as though he were standing before some grand high mistress of the darkest desires he could possibly imagine. Perhaps he should bow?
Get it together, man.
*
The moment he entered her dressing room, the air had shivered and then lightened. A subtle change. She’d lifted her head and closed her eyes, scenting the new arrival. Smoke,
whiskey, and wine cloyed about his aura. And there was something else. An indescribable something. Something so appealingly dangerous she wanted to crush it against her soul and hope the collision singed her.
He was clad in a black denim vest and tattered leather jeans that dusted equally shabby boots. His dark, shoulder-length hair was tousled off to one side to reveal he shaved his scalp above the ears. Smudged black guyliner surrounded bright blue eyes. A silver cross dangled from one ear. A fuck-you to those who believed religious symbols could harm bloodborn vampires. Nice.
The heavy-metal rocker look always knocked her off her stilettos. Dangerous and unkempt. Alluring, yet with a softness gracing his face that screamed for the angels to lift their heads in curiosity.
When their eyes had locked over the dancing, shouting, pulsating crowd, Kam had gasped. Perched high in the balcony, signing along with her and pumping his fist, she’d initially thought him another fan following the frenetic vibe of the club. But he was different. How, she wasn’t sure yet.
Perhaps it was because he’d made her a promise he didn’t know he’d spoken back in the main room. And she wanted to see if he was bold enough to learn that promise—and then fulfill it.
“Your show was fantastic,” he offered through the darkness, which wasn’t so dark now that Kam had commanded the lights up to soften the shadows with red.
“And you thought you’d come backstage to see if you could get some from the lead singer?”
“Huh? No.”
Liar. The thought had crossed his mind. At least, she hoped it had.
“I wanted to meet you.”
Oh. She suppressed a sigh. “And now you have.”
Kam flicked a glance toward the door. Her lips were still painted glossy black and she pursed them as she took in the man who stood there so boldly. So unwitting of the dangers that lurked deeper than the shadows.
Tall and lithe, a strong frame held his shoulders back and his pose was ready, not the hunched lanky, relaxed stance most rockers assumed. She’d been crushing on rock stars all her life, watching them prance through videos while they fisted the sky in defiance and screamed, yowled and wailed all in the name of rock n’ roll. This man epitomized it all.
Love's First Bite: Bad Boys and Alpha Vampires Boxed Set (6 book bundle) Page 32
