“It’s Tabitha’s little sister,” I said, handing her to Talbot. That was all I got out before Marilyn slapped me hard across the face. “She…” I let my voice trail off as she slapped me again.
“For heaven’s sake, what is the matter with you?” she yelled. The pain was nice. It was nice to receive any physical sensation from Marilyn. Not only had she refused to sleep with me since I’d become a vampire, she rarely touched me. A psychologist could have probably written volumes regarding what that said about my getting into trouble. They’d say I was like a child who did bad things to get my mama’s attention. Maybe they’d be right.
I caught Marilyn’s arm when she tried to slap me a third time. It was something I’d never done before. “The third slap is foreplay, M,” I said. It didn’t even sound like me. It was half growl, half scorn. “Unless you’re up for it, I suggest you leave it to the younger ones.” I let go of her arm. She winced.
Talbot stepped between us and inwardly I thanked some higher power for small favors. “Where’s Tabitha?” I asked.
“She’s in your bedroom,” Talbot answered. “She’s a late riser. Most vamps rise early on their first night and she didn’t get up until eight. She went to bed a full hour before sunrise. She’s looking at maybe eight or nine hours of wakefulness a night; more if she manages to break schedule.”
My short daytime sleep requirement often got me twenty hours or more out of a day-and-night cycle. Maybe I could put up with her for eight hours a night. Maybe not. I checked my watch. It was nine in the morning. I walked back toward the rear entrance and gestured with my head for Talbot to follow me. As we moved past Marilyn again, I could feel anger coming off of her in waves. No fear, though, just anger. When I knew she couldn’t see my face, I grinned. “That’s my girl,” I whispered.
“We’re going to spend the day over at the Pollux,” I told no one in particular. “Have someone bring Rachel orange juice and a big breakfast.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Talbot said gruffly. As he fell into step behind me, carrying Rachel, he mumbled something else under his breath. “In for a penny…”
No shit, I told myself. No shit.
If Tabitha was going to sleep until eight this evening then I had eleven hours to figure out what to do about Rachel, not to mention the damn werewolves. The notion that I was forgetting something rolled around in my head. Talbot helped me get Rachel back into the van and across to the Pollux without incident.
Of the two movie palaces that had once been in Void City, the Pollux was the only one still standing. The Freemont may have been a little more stylish, but it had been turned into a parking deck twenty years ago, so I guess the Pollux won. The projector still works and I own a large collection of old films.
I’d kept the original glass entryway, even the old-fashioned central ticket booth, but beyond that, the new doors were reinforced steel, well-decorated, but secure. Beyond the doors, the foyer was still brightly lit by the original crystal chandelier, its glow magnified by the mirrors lining both walls. Rachel took in my absence of reflection without comment, paying more attention to the chandelier.
I’d moved several of the couches and tables from the downstairs lounges to the lobby, creating a sitting area for guests. Rachel plopped down on a burgundy velvet sofa and stared up at the painted art nouveau ceiling. A grand marble stair led up to the mezzanine and my offices. There were more offices and some dressing rooms behind the stage, but I only used them for storage.
“You like it?” I asked.
She nodded. “It’s awesome. How do you afford it?”
“I get by,” I told her gruffly. “Guys like nudity and I don’t waste much money on groceries.” How long would it take Talbot to get breakfast? If he went to Jackie’s on the corner, he could be back in ten minutes. I didn’t want to be alone with Rachel for much longer than that.
“If you’re thirsty, the soda fountain still works. I only keep the Coke and the lemonade refilled, though. Everything else will get you water. I tried to put in a blood dispenser, but it clogs the machine.”
Rachel watched me with smug contentment. She had just opened her mouth to speak when my rescue arrived. I could smell the food before Talbot opened the door. He was early. I don’t pay him enough.
Muscling past the steel doors, Talbot backed into the foyer, carrying two covered breakfast plates. The scent pulled at my stomach. I craved breakfast only slightly less than pizza. One plate had scrambled eggs, crispy bacon, and a side of hash browns. The other had two fried eggs (sunny-side up), link sausage, and cheese grits.
“Rachel, isn’t it? Do you like your eggs scrambled or fried?” Talbot asked.
“Which does he like?” She asked the question with purpose. To a vampire, that question is a signal, a sign that the woman he’s with knows a little about vampires. Talbot remained valiantly smirkless, but he noticed.
“You’ll want this plate.” Talbot sat the tray before her, poured some orange juice in a glass, and laid a straw across the top. “I think I’ll take my breakfast at the club,” he said, walking right back out the door with the other tray of food.Bon apéritif .
Bon apéritif.Happy before-dinner drink. Fucking Talbot. I pay him too much. I wanted to protest, but the words stuck in my throat. In the split second I’d been distracted by Talbot, Rachel had taken the lid off of her tray, picked up one of the sausage links and commenced licking the grease off of the underside. For lack of a better word, she nearly fellated it.
“Less sexual, more sensual,” I corrected. A rookie mistake most women make is equating eating to sex. For a living, breathing man, that would be correct, but for vampires it isn’t about sex, it’s about the food…about what we can’t have and watching someone else have it. In polite circles, they call it voyeuristic dining, but food porn is more honest.
Criticism made her nervous. Each bite came a bit too quickly and hermmmms andahs sounded forced. She had raw talent, though, and unlike Tabitha, she didn’t forget that I was watching her. She purposefully let little beads of egg yolk gather at the corner of her mouth, then asked me to wipe it away. When I did, she seized my wrist, sucking the egg yolk from my finger, peering up into my eyes for approval. Long after the yolk was gone, her tongue danced along the bottom of my index finger, the curious stud on her tongue providing an erotic counterpoint to the softness of her flesh. It felt strange and wonderful. I approved.
After breakfast, Talbot sauntered back in and cleared away the dishes. For me, the next quarter hour passed like time-lapse photography. I didn’t think there’d been cinnamon in any of the food, but I certainly smelled it. Maybe it was a breath mint or a new perfume. Talbot and Rachel blurred around me, politely avoiding each other in an elaborate dance, while I sat perfectly still, trying to remember whatever it was I’d forgotten. The image of Rachel sucking a little drop of golden egg yolk from my finger haunted my thoughts, making it harder than usual to think straight.
“I killed Brian,” I said suddenly.
“What?” Talbot and Rachel spoke in unison.
“Brian. You know; the guy Roger met through that real estate thing, the one who was always talking crap about the Void City Howlers, trying to start a fight. I don’t remember exactly what happened, but I think I ripped his head off.”
“Rage blackout, huh?” Rachel asked.
Talbot and I both looked at her funny. “How the hell do you know about my rage blackouts?” I asked.
She laughed and rolled her eyes. “Sorry. I guess everyone who knows anything about vampires in this city knows about your rage blackouts.” Her pulse quickened, but I couldn’t decide whether she was lying or nervous.
“She’s got you there.” Talbot walked over to the door. “I just want to know how you’re going to break it to Roger. He and Brian seemed pretty tight.”
“Yeah, well, Roger isn’t renowned for his choice of acquaintances,” I said, “present company included.”
“Depends on what you’re looking for in a friend,
” Talbot countered. “He certainly attracts the powerful, wealthy, and influential. Present company included.” He added that last bit with a mocking nod. Talbot had a smirk on his lips and he cut his eyes toward Rachel as he left. “I’ll be across the street. Call me if you need anything.”
Rachel squirmed under his gaze. As the door closed, she seemed comfortable again. Too comfortable. “What are you going to do about the werewolves?” She slunk toward me and the vibe was suddenly very different than it had been with Tabitha. This wasn’t about sex. I could smell that sex was an option, but this was something different. She was teasing me, flirting with me, manipulating me.
“So…you know about the rage blackouts and the werewolf fiasco. You’re pretty well informed.”
“I’m just lucky.” She moved close to me. I couldn’t help but notice that her breasts were nearly touching my chest. “I heard some of your employees talking about it.” She closed the gap between us. “That’s okay, isn’t it?”
It was more than okay, but more because of how she was touching me than the answers she was giving. She could read me better than Tabitha ever could and we’d known each other less than a day. She was extremely dangerous, a very good liar. She hadn’t heard my employees talking about the werewolves; she couldn’t have. I reminded myself to be careful.
“You’re standing a little closer than I think your sister would approve.” I took a step back, mentally applauding my fortitude.
She put a hand on my chest and I found myself staring down her tank top.
“You like it,” she said, following my gaze.
“She wouldn’t.” I pushed her hand away.
“No, Tab would be mortified. If she even knows what mortified means,” Rachel said.
“Look, what’s going on between me and your sister is complicated and I’m not sure I want to complicate it any further than it—”
“I know,” she said, “you’re trying to be a good boy, but if you want a girl who really gets the whole vampire thing, who can give a vampire everything he wants and make him go all weak and kitteny…”
“That would be you?”
She nodded again.
“Not interested.” Now I was lying. I decided to give Rachel the benefit of the doubt. We all lie sometimes. Maybe if I were a eunuch, I mused, things would be easier.
I left the seating area, passing the old refreshment stand as I crossed the lobby. At the top of the stairs, to the left of the mezzanine access, a long hall led to a row of offices. She followed me to the stairs. I held out a hand behind me to stop her. “No one comes up to my offices uninvited.”
“Can I send somebody home to get my clothes?” Rachel asked. “Do you have any movies?”
“Why don’t I just get Talbot to take you home, period?” That was my first good idea of the night. “Won’t your parents be looking for you?”
She laughed. “Not likely.”
I turned to face her. “If I were your dad, I’d be worried sick.”
Rachel moved in close, too close, and kissed me. “Don’t stress over it.” I wasn’t supposed to be kissing her back, but I was. Maybe it was the perfume she was wearing. Something about the cinnamon smell made me want to keep her around. Sure that was it. It was the cinnamon. It had nothing to do with my desire to throw her on the ground and tear her clothes off.
“Let me worry about my parents,” she said, pulling away briefly and rubbing at her thigh where I’d bitten her. “I’m still kind of sore. You should at least let me hang out for the rest of the day.”
“Fine,” I said. “Get one of the girls to take you shopping. Tell Talbot I said it was okay. I don’t care what you spend. I just don’t want one of my employees having to explain to your dad why they need to pick up a change of clothes.”
She squealed; I turned into a bat and flew up the stairs. I was showing off for her. It was not a good sign.
9
ERIC:
DAMAGE REPORT
Sitting at my desk with a small stack of notes, I looked at the bricked-up windows and shook my head. The first two notes were from Talbot. One said that Carl needed to know what to do about the Mustang. He hadn’t done a complete assessment yet, but most of the interior looked salvageable. The rest of the car was a mess and Carl’s best guess was that repairing it wasn’t worth the effort or the money. Talbot noted that he’d told Carl to protect the interior of the car, and to start looking for replacement parts, but to do nothing further without calling first.
His second note was attached to a clipping from that morning’sVoid City Echo . The headline read “Local News Anchor Found Dead in Sewer.” Iwould have had to drop my victim down a drain someone was going to start working on in the morning. Her name had been Evelyn Courtney-Barnes. Lots of people were going to miss her, blah blah blah.
The third note was from Roger telling me that he’d given Veruca the night off again and asking me to get Tabitha to cover. Veruca. Veruca. It took me a moment to recognize the name, because I always called her Froggy. She was Roger’s girlfriend. She could only transform into one creature: a frog. Her other vampire powers were fine, but it seemed to piss her off that all she could change into was an amphibian. According to Roger’s note, she might need the next several nights off. I wondered if this was some kind of payback for me having turned Tabitha…making my vampire girlfriend work so his wouldn’t have to.
The last note was an invitation to a hockey game, though, also from Roger. For the last decade or so Roger and I hadn’t exactly been bosom buddies. We didn’t hang out much anymore, and when we did, he almost always brought some new friend or other along. Lately, it’d been Brian.
Our business relationship hadn’t been much better. Roger had been big in real estate when he was alive. Now that he had more time, I think he aspired to be an undead Donald Trump. Roger always picked what stocks we would buy and how much of each we needed. He’d made us both rich men. He had also been the one who’d figured out how to transfer our wealth back to ourselves once we’d officially died.
But time changes things, and it had certainly changed Roger. I knew he didn’t like the way I was running the club, though I’d noticed it didn’t stop him from taking payouts from the register whenever he needed petty cash. My guess was that the whole operation made him look bad to his high society buddies. I kind of missed the way things had been between us. Maybe he did, too. On the other hand, I’d just whacked his buddy Brian…and it was probably Brian’s ticket to the hockey game that Roger was offering me.
Stacking the notes to one side of my desk, I looked around my office. Except for the modern conveniences, it looked like it had jumped fully formed out ofThe Maltese Falcon . The door in the outer office had my name stenciled on it in nice black letters. The secretary’s desk was vacant. Sometimes when I was working I’d have Tabitha come up and sit at that desk. I’d have her run errands for me to and from the Demon Heart. I could have used the telephone, or even e-mail, but I liked the illusion that it created. For a time it let me pretend that the world was still the same place where I’d once walked in sunshine, a world in which area codes were new and there were some numbers that you just couldn’t dial without operator assistance.
“What the hell am I going to do?” I asked the room. I put my head down on my desk like I was a little boy in school and the teacher was mad at me. I wasted an hour or more that way before I noticed the burning sensation in my pocket and remembered the bullet.
“Son of a bitch.” I picked up the phone and the number for the Demon Heart went right out of my head. I could remember the first three digits, but the last four…well, I knew it had a six in it. One quick flip through the phone book later, I called over to the Demon Heart.
Roger answered, but I wasn’t in the mood to talk to him. Having ripped his friend’s head off and lied to him about it made me a little uncomfortable.
“Get Marilyn on the phone,” I said brusquely.
“She’s kinda busy, Eric,” Roger snapped. Why was he b
eing so bitchy lately? Was all this really over the damn Froggy crack? Was this my fault? Maybe I should go to the hockey game after all.
“Look, just get her on the phone,” I answered.
“She’s not here because you broke her arm, tough guy.” He sounded so smug about it that if he hadn’t just invited me to a hockey game, I’d have walked across the street and wiped the accompanying look off of his face. “She’s old and fragile. You can’t just push her around like that. She didn’t want you to know, but she’s gone to the emergency room.”
Cursing, I hung up on Roger. Sometimes it seemed like Roger was closer to Marilyn than I was. Then again, maybe that was a good thing. Why did she even stay around a guy like me? Couldn’t she see I was dangerous? I told myself that what happened was her fault, that she shouldn’t have slapped me. I was lying to myself again. I wondered if I’d ever get any better at it.
If I concentrated, I could hear Rachel talking to Sally downstairs, their words vibrating along the air ducts and the building’s central vacuum system. I went downstairs and found them in one of the dressing rooms behind the stage.
Tabitha had a tendency to dress like a sex doll. Her sister had better taste. She was wearing a floor-length backless evening gown. The green set off her eyes beautifully. Her hair was up and she’d replaced her nose ring with a small silver stud that was barely noticeable. Even her makeup was right. Have I mentioned how dangerous I thought she was? I had no idea where she had gotten the dress, but it was beautiful. She was beautiful.
“Goldman’s opens at ten and it’s not that far from here,” she explained. “Sally went down with me and we picked up a few options.” Rachel twirled and the dress rose off the floor a little, enough for me to see her matching shoes and a glimpse of ankle. Sally looked proud of herself. I was proud of her, too.
“We spent almost five thousand dollars,” Sally told me.
“Why the hell did you buy a prom dress?”
Urban Fantasy Collection - Vampires Page 44
