He went downstairs and started a pot of coffee. Then, in the small bathroom, he stripped down and checked his leg. More of a deep gouge now. Already the edges were closed. By the time he’d finished showering, it was a long red weal. Wearing only a towel, he added his ruined jeans to the pile of clothes to be burned, poured the coffee into a thermos, and went back upstairs. He set the thermos on the bedside table – Chrysabelle seemed to be asleep – and turned to dress.
He was wrong.
‘Your marks,’ she whispered. ‘You really are Kubai Mata.’
He glanced over his shoulder. One finger lifted off the bed to point at his back. He’d already dropped the towel, so he stayed where he was. So what if she’d seen his marks? They weren’t sacred. Not exactly. Chances were good she wouldn’t remember anything after this fever was done with her anyway. ‘Go back to sleep. You’ve got a fever and you need to rest.’
‘Musta hurt,’ she whispered as she seemed to succumb to sleep again.
Like hell, he wanted to say, but she knew all about that, didn’t she? In fresh jeans and a clean T-shirt, he settled next to her on the bed, his back against the plywood-barricaded window that made up the side wall, his shirt sticking to his damp body. He was about to pour a cup of coffee when she started talking softly. He almost couldn’t hear her.
‘I don’t want to die.’
The words were so plaintive, so earnest they gave him a chill. He scrunched down beside her, brushed a few strands of hair from her face. Her skin burned beneath his fingertips. ‘You’re not going to die, I promise.’
She moaned and struggled to sit. He wrapped his arms around her to keep her immobile until she calmed. ‘No.’ She tensed. ‘I need to find my brother.’
‘Your brother is fine.’ He pulled back to see her face. Red flushed her cheeks, making her signum stand out like flames. The poison rode her hard. Her mind was suffering. Comarré didn’t have family, not in the true sense of the word. Perhaps she spoke of a comar she’d been close to.
She pulled against him, frantic. Despite her injury, she was incredibly strong. Pinpoints of blood leaked through the gauze. He swung his leg over hers to hold her down. Still, she persisted. ‘Where is he?’
‘He’s fine, he’s fine. Try to rest.’ He used the edge of the sheet to dab the sweat from her face.
She relaxed a little, but he kept his arms around her. ‘I need to find him.’
‘As soon as you’re better, I’ll help you look.’ For right now, he would just hold her to keep her from pulling those stitches out. Not because she felt damn good in his arms. Not because of that at all.
‘You will?’
The heat from her fevered body poured into his. He turned his face into her neck and whispered the words into her hair. ‘Of course.’ Any promise to keep her safe. That was part of his job. Just part of his job.
She exhaled, her body going limp. She moved a little, like she was snuggling against him. His body took notice. ‘You’re a good man.’
He half smiled and repositioned the sheet over her again. She had no idea.
She sighed, weakly patting his leg where her hand rested. ‘Even if you are a vampire.’
Chapter Eighteen
Tatiana prowled the halls, still amazed at how the effects of daysleep barely registered here in Dominic’s lair. At her best guess, the sun had been up for two or three hours. She’d rested for an hour in her appointed suite to regain some of the strength used by holding Mia’s and Katsumi’s images for so long, but now it was time to find Malkolm and get him to reveal the comarré’s location. Thanks to the charcoal-skinned fae, Tatiana knew just how to work Malkolm into telling her, too. The fae had told her to leave Malkolm alone, that now was not the time to make things right. Sounded to her like Malkolm and Katsumi had had some sort of lover’s quarrel. For Tatiana’s purposes, now was very much the time to make things right.
She laughed, almost woozy with power. Not in five hundred years had she forgotten what pleasures her husband enjoyed. Now she would once again use them to bend him to her will. Just as soon as she made sure Katsumi hadn’t been discovered.
If only there was a way to let Nasir know she was okay so he wouldn’t come looking for her and screw things up. But she would not risk blowing her cover trying to alert him.
The club was quieter at this hour but far from deserted. She kept her head down and the clipboard she’d found in front of her. So far, few employees or patrons had been willing to disturb the busy manager. She walked into Vanity, doing her best to look preoccupied, and headed for the private door that led to the storage room where she’d left Katsumi.
‘Katsumi. I didn’t expect to see you this shift.’ The remnant bartender smiled as he set drinks in front of his customers. His eyes held a hint of wolfen blue, and his hands carried an extra digit. Canine-shifter and fae. Wonderful.
‘I’m not really working – just had to check some things in inventory.’ That sounded right. She kept going, hoping he’d get the hint and leave her alone.
He didn’t. ‘While I have you, could we go over next week’s schedule? I can’t work the Wednesday shift because—’
‘Fine. I’ll get someone else to do it.’ If that didn’t work, she’d promise him a raise to shut up. Or drag him into the back room and kill him. Unfortunately, her powers of persuasion didn’t work against fae or varcolai, or when she used the mimicry power.
His brows rose. ‘You will? Great. Thanks!’
She made it to the exit and slipped through to the maze of behind-the-scenes passages used by employees. She could barely remember how to get to the door she’d first entered, let alone this storage room. Coming back through Vanity had been the best shot.
Using Katsumi’s thumbprint, she unlocked the door and cautiously entered. The stacks of chairs she’d dumped the woman behind were moved, and Katsumi had wriggled about half the length of her lower body out. Other than that, the room was undisturbed.
Tatiana locked the door and dropped her illusion. A few more minutes of rest couldn’t hurt. She tugged Katsumi back into place and repositioned the chairs to hide her.
‘Don’t worry, fringe. I’m almost done with you.’
Katsumi squirmed and said something that sounded like a curse but was too muffled by duct tape to be understood.
Tatiana patted her on the head. ‘There, there. You’re being very helpful. I might let you live.’ Not bloody likely.
Back out into the club, she once again used the clipboard and an air of busyness to keep the peons away. Soon she was several levels lower and back in the suites section. Hers was at the end of the main corridor. Although Dominic had referred to the rooms by name, none of the doors were marked. She counted until she came to the fifth door. She opened it. Yes, this was hers. The Dante suite. Would the Donatello be close by? Dante was a writer, Donatello a sculptor. If Dominic considered them both artists, they might be near each other. If not … There was no way to tell if his method was based in some sort of reasoning or if he was just another capricious noble.
With no other option she could see, she clung tightly to her guise as Katsumi and started opening doors.
Soft, familiar hands glided over Mal’s body, tugging him gently from the grip of daysleep. Swirls of gold and remembrances of silken skin flashed through his fogged brain. The voices buzzed with worry, but they were as distant as the moon. He turned into the warm honeyed scent of woman, slipping his hands around a slim waist, and drew the form against him.
The dream caressed him and kissed his neck, murmuring words of smoky promise. Satiny strands of hair teased his skin. Sunlight danced behind his lids. Hungry sounds left his throat, and the desire for sleep waned as pleasure pulled him to the surface. Something sharp nicked him. His body tightened with desire. Then revulsion.
Fangs.
The coma of daysleep vanished.
He jarred awake to the voices’ metallic whine, the sick-sweet scent of jasmine, and the prickle of an unwelcome evil. Every grain
of his being stirred with the knowledge that something was very wrong. Wake up!
He leaped away from the bed and the body filling the space next to him and flicked on the light.
Sprawled across his bed was the last woman he would have ever imagined and certainly not one he had ever hoped would end up there on purpose.
‘What the hell are you doing, Katsumi?’ The delicious feeling that had filled him when the woman in his dream had been someone else fled at the sight of Katsumi’s naked, tattooed body. Destroy her, the voices begged. How he’d like to.
Her laugh was soft, seductive, and completely unwelcome. ‘I am trying to atone for all that has gone on between us. I don’t want us to fight anymore, Malkolm.’ She fluttered her lashes and offered a coy smile. As if she could ever be considered coy.
‘You and I will never have that kind of relationship. You need to leave.’ He started toward a chair near the bed to get his shirt, remembering too late that his beast and the battle with the Nothos had destroyed it. That thought led him directly to Chrysabelle. Again. He hated not knowing if she was safe. ‘Get your clothes and go.’
‘Now, now,’ she chided him. ‘Your body was perfectly willing to have that kind of relationship just a moment ago.’ She slid out of the bed and sashayed toward him. Her hair tumbled past her shoulders to brush the top of her hips. The only thing covering her bodysuit of ink was a tiny red silk thong. The tattoos were far more interesting.
She stopped in front of him and rested her hands on her hips. ‘You like to look? Go ahead.’
The dragon curling over her shoulder glared at him. He forced his gaze to her face. ‘I don’t want to look or touch. I just want you to leave.’ Get her out now.
‘You’re not even going to let me make up for … you know?’ Her eyes glimmered with petulant humor. He knew that look from somewhere, but it wasn’t Katsumi.
‘For poisoning me? For trying to get me killed?’ He laughed. ‘You think sex is going to make up for that? How cheap do you think I am? Don’t answer that.’ He shook his head and reached for his jeans. ‘Besides, you’re bloody mental if you think I have the slightest desire to swim in the same waters as Dominic and Ronan.’
‘Dominic?’ She looked genuinely stricken.
‘Did you think people didn’t know? Why else would he have made you manager?’ He stepped into his pants, turning away to zip up. The idea of sex with Katsumi made his long-lost soul shudder. The voices agreed.
‘You’re sleeping with her, aren’t you?’ The anger in Katsumi’s voice was unmistakable. And oddly familiar.
‘No,’ he answered, already knowing who Katsumi referenced. The blood whore.
She shrieked and the air shifted. He spun in time to catch her hand before it raked his back. ‘Of course you’re sleeping with her. You knew exactly who I was talking about. That filthy comarré whore—’
Anger shot through Mal and he backhanded her. ‘I told you never to speak of her that way again. I should cut your tongue out.’
A flicker of silver lit her eyes, gone so fast he wasn’t sure he’d seen it. He grabbed for her arm to get a better look, but she snatched her discarded clothes and ran for the door. ‘You’ll be dead before that happens.’
‘Good riddance.’
She slammed the door. Just as well. Daylight or not, he had to find Chrysabelle. He put his jacket on and left. Katsumi had already vanished from the hall. Maybe she’d stormed back to her room. Who cared, just so long as she was gone.
He knocked at Dominic’s office door, not sure where else to start.
Doc opened it.
Not the person he’d expected to see, but apparently there was a lot of that going around today. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I could ask you the same thing, bro.’
‘Chrysabelle and I went to investigate those fringe deaths. Ran into a pack of Nothos on the wrong side of midnight. This was the closest shelter. You?’
‘Long story. Where’s Chrysabelle?’
‘I’m not sure.’ But he had an idea, which was the problem. A Mohawked slayer kind of problem.
‘You think she went back to the freighter?’
‘No.’ Call it a hunch.
‘Then why didn’t she come with—’
‘Out of the way.’ Mortalis pushed past Mal, a bound female form in his arms. ‘Help me get her unwrapped.’ He laid her on one of the couches and began to peel a layer of duct tape from the woman’s head.
‘Who is it?’ Mal asked.
‘Not sure. No one’s been reported missing. I’ve been helping out with security since Ronan disappeared and heard thumping coming from the storage room by Vanity. Found her.’ Every layer of tape Mortalis pulled off revealed another one. ‘If she’s a breather, she can’t have much time left.’
‘Stand back,’ Doc said. He popped a sharp claw from one finger and scored the casing down the middle.
‘Careful,’ Mortalis said.
‘I’m always careful with the ladies.’ Doc stood back. ‘I’ll unwrap her head while you two finish the body.’
Mortalis worked his fingers under one edge. ‘Take the other side, Mal.’
‘Got it.’ The tape was melded to the woman’s clothing, but he dug his fingers between the sticky layers. Together, he and Mortalis worked the tape loose.
‘Mother Bast,’ Doc whispered.
Mal looked up the same time Mortalis did.
Beneath the cocoon of duct tape lay a frightened and shivering Katsumi. Tear tracks streaked her eye makeup down the sides of her face and into her hair.
Mal shook his head. ‘That’s impossible. Katsumi was just in my bed.’
‘What?’ Doc and Mortalis both whipped around to look at him.
‘Not what you think.’ Mal grimaced. ‘And obviously it wasn’t Katsumi.’
She shook her head, forehead wrinkling in distress.
‘Then who? And why?’ Mortalis finished unwrapping the trembling fringe and helped her sit.
She clung to him, gripping his arm until her knuckles whitened. She swallowed and tried to speak, but nothing came out. Her hand went to her throat.
‘Raw from screaming?’ Mortalis asked.
She nodded.
‘I’ll get you some tea.’ He looked at Mal. ‘Who was in your room?’
With a burning cold certainty, Mal knew how the woman in his bed had known just how to touch him to get the response she had, and how she had understood what the tease of fangs would do to him. Why he’d seen a flicker of silver in her eyes.
The name bit the tip of his tongue with a serpent’s venom, so he spat it out.
‘Tatiana.’
Chapter Nineteen
Weak knocking roused Dominic. He’d been half awake anyway. He glanced at the clock. Six hours of daysleep. Hardly enough, but these days one took what one could get. He slipped out of bed, pulled a cashmere robe over his silk pajamas, and walked out to the sitting room. ‘Si.’
His manservant, Vertuccio, entered and bowed. ‘My lord, Ms. Tanaka is here to see you.’
‘Si, si. Send her in.’ Too bad Katsumi needed to be questioned. He was definitely arrapato – in the mood – but curse his libido, he had to find out about the letter sent to Chrysabelle and where the blood thusly attained had gone. If Katsumi was guilty, she’d have to be dealt with.
She walked in and all desire drained from his body. ‘Porca vacca, what has happened to you?’
A wreck of a woman stood before him. Katsumi’s makeup was tear-streaked. Her hair, always so sleekly bound, fell to her waist in a disheveled mess. And oddly enough, her skin and clothes bore a random pattern of thin lines of some kind of sticky residue. ‘What has happened? Are you all right?’
‘No.’ Her voice was terribly hoarse. He could have sworn she sniffed. Or perhaps that sound was a sob. Out of Katsumi?
He called Vertuccio back. ‘Bring tea and one of the better comars. Ask Jacqueline if you’re not sure.’
‘Very good, sir.’ Vertuccio went off t
o do as Dominic had commanded, shutting the sitting room door behind him.
Dominic took the large wingback chair across from the electric fireplace. He missed the smell and sound of a real fire, but for a vampire, real fire could also mean death. He contented himself with the artificial smoke smell and synthesized crackling. ‘So. Explain what has occurred.’
She relayed how she’d been overpowered, bound and gagged with duct tape, and left in the storage room. About the strange metallic limb that had transformed into a noose. How she’d screamed until she’d tasted her own blood. How she’d been sure of her death until Mortalis had found her. She wept softly and Dominic couldn’t remember a time when he’d seen Katsumi cry. Ever.
He nodded as she continued, going on to describe her captor. ‘Malkolm believes it was Tatiana.’
‘As do I.’ In fact, he’d expected it. Tatiana hadn’t seemed like the type to forgive and forget. ‘Chrysabelle sliced Tatiana’s hand off during the battle in Corvinestri, but she must have found someone from St. Germain to build her a new one. An adaptable metal hand such as you described could only be the work of an alchemist.’ But to have Maris’s killer here, in his club, in his home … The thought of Tatiana’s presence eroded his nerves until they felt raw and exposed. The killing urge rose up in him, as did a new understanding of what Katsumi had been through. She was fortunate to be alive. ‘I am deeply sorry you were subjected to this.’
A knock on the door interrupted them.
‘Enter.’
Vertuccio came in bearing a tea service on an antique sterling tray. Behind Vertuccio followed one of Seven’s best comars. Vertuccio set the exquisite tray down on the center table and gave a short bow. ‘Anything else, sir?’
‘Yes. I assume Mortalis is already searching the premises for Tatiana. I want a report from him as soon as possible.’
‘Very good, sir.’ Vertuccio backed out, closing the door as he went.
Dominic gestured to the comar. ‘You, sit beside Katsumi.’ Then he waved his hand from Katsumi to the comar. ‘Go on. Feed. You must fortify yourself. Regain your strength.’
Flesh And Blood: House of Comarre: Book Two (House of Comarre 2) Page 17
