“You’re very good,” Lawrence said.
“You’re in pain,” Christopher said to Lawrence. He looked angrily at the mortals staring at him. “Are you being held against your will?”
“Well, I never!” Aunt Cate rose indignantly to her feet.
Lawrence grabbed her arm. “It’s a valid question, love. If you’re a vampire.” He didn’t take his gaze from Christopher’s as he spoke. “All is well here,” he said. “I am exactly where I want to be.”
“What happened to you?”
“These mortals are my friends and allies. That’s all I intend to tell you. You weren’t invited here,” Lawrence reminded Christopher. “You are not the Enforcer of the City.”
Sanity at last! Christopher grinned at finally finding a proper strigoi who knew the established rules of vampire society. “May I ask your name and affiliation?”
“Are you going to tell me yours?” the one-armed vampire answered. “Since you entered my nest uninvited.”
“Christopher Bell. You wouldn’t know me.”
“Lawrence,” the other answered. “My lady, Caetlyn,” he introduced the witch. “Ivy, you already know.”
Christopher had gone directly from the park to the shop where he’d found Ivy a couple of nights before. He hadn’t had to trace her aura; he’d simply known where she was. He hadn’t been surprised to discover a crowd situation when he got there. The police were there as well. Somehow, he was not surprised to find Ivy and chaos within rock-tossing distance of each other. And from the glass he’d stepped on as he went to the door, some of that had been going on. He had not enjoyed the walk. Mortal fear scratched his senses, the stench of it burned. It teased at faint memories.
But all the ugliness faded from his mind when he closed the magic-shop door behind him. The wards—the protective spells shielding the interior from evil—were not completely in place, but the residue of earlier ones didn’t draw on anything but light magic for protection. This was not a house of dark magic, no matter what the fools outside were shouting. It was a wonder even the faint wards had let him enter. Perhaps they’d accommodated his entrance because he was here on righteous business.
Or perhaps it was his connection to Ivy, and the guards on the place were arranged to accept the bit of darkness in her. Whatever the reason, he’d had no trouble quietly ascending the stairs. About halfway up, he’d encountered the pain of one of his own kind. He’d almost rushed to the rescue, but restraint had won out. He now saw that the wards were used to having vampires around.
“Strigoi and witches and vampire hunters—”
“Oh my,” Ivy added.
“You’re an odd lot. Probably even odder than I imagine. What exactly are the Covenants?” he asked Lawrence.
It was Ivy who replied. “You can look them up on the Web site.”
“Where’s Ariel?” Once again he spoke to Lawrence.
“In Vegas,” the woman he’d felt come up behind him answered.
The others had all been aware of her approach but had controlled their physical and psychic reactions enough to bluff a normal strigoi. Which he was not, in so many ways.
Christopher stepped aside to let her pass. She was tall, with freckles and long red curls. There was vampire blood in her veins, but her energy was powerful enough on its own to rivet attention.
“The legendary Selena,” Christopher said.
She lifted an eyebrow sarcastically. “You never heard of me until a couple of nights ago. And I’d certainly never heard of you before a couple of days ago. What do you want with Ariel?” She glanced protectively at Ivy. “More importantly, what do you want with my cousin?”
How had he let himself get involved with this odd group of mortals? How had the strigoi of this territory gotten involved with them? These mortals shouldn’t know who Ariel was. They shouldn’t—
His attention went back to Ivy. “What do you mean, look them up on the Web site?”
Oh, bugger all! Never mind.
He grabbed Ivy and left. The mortals couldn’t stop him, and the vampire didn’t try.
chapter twenty-five
This is the third time you’ve abducted me, you know.”
“It grows tedious, I agree,” Christopher said. They’d stopped at a busy street corner waiting for a red light long enough to bicker. “And the first time wasn’t an abduction, it was a rescue.”
“So you say.”
He had his arm around her shoulders. Not just to keep control of her but because once again he’d dragged her off without her having enough layers of clothing for the Chicago weather.
“You know it was a rescue. I’m rescuing you from your dangerous family now.”
She didn’t argue with that statement. The light changed, and he rushed her forward.
“You have no idea where we’re going, do you?” she asked.
“No. But we’re going to have a long, honest talk wherever we end up. You know more than you think you know, as well as knowing more than you want to tell me.”
“You’re strigoi, a stranger in this territory.”
“Don’t talk like a vampire when you’re not one.”
“Don’t get involved with demon hunting when you know you can’t and don’t want to.”
Some honesty at last! Even though it meant she knew about the noninterference agreement between the strigoi and the extradimensional creatures. They’d fought wars with each other in the past. Now it just seemed prudent to leave each other alone.
Christopher stopped them and put his hands on Ivy’s shoulders. “You are not equipped to hunt demons.”
He was aware of her agreeing with him with every fiber of her being, but she had to say, “You don’t know me. You don’t know that.”
He gestured a taxi over and stuffed her into the backseat and climbed in beside her. She gave him a look of admiration when the cab stopped. She didn’t tell the driver she was being abducted or call for help. Christopher wouldn’t have allowed it had she tried, but she didn’t try, and that was very interesting.
That would be putting a civilian in danger, she thought at him. Loudly. She wasn’t used to deliberate mind-to-mind communication.
Inside voice, he whispered gently into her head. He told the driver the names of cross streets several blocks from Ariel’s home. Then he hustled Ivy the rest of the way once they were let off. The ride was in silence, interior and exterior.
Ivy broke the silence as soon the door to Ariel’s sitting room closed behind them. “Very nice,” she complimented the decor.
“A bit on the medieval side for me,” Christopher responded.
“More of a Pre-Raphaelite William Morris Burne-Jones thing going,” Ivy said as she walked around the living room off the entrance hall. She peered closely at a painting. “This is a Burne-Jones! For real. He was a Victorian artist,” she added.
“So am I. Not the artist part.”
Christopher put his hands on Ivy’s shoulders and looked past her at the painting. It showed a woman with thick dark hair and a nose nearly as long as his own. She wore red draperies and seemed to be pointing to a hilltop castle in the background.
“Some Arthurian symbolism nonsense?” he guessed.
“That’s what they were into back in the late-nineteenth century. You know, Tennyson and the Rosettis and pseudomedieval dresses from the Liberty store.”
“I missed out on the craze.”
“Why?”
“Royal Navy. I was out defending the Empire while all that chivalry revival was going on in the arts.”
“It wasn’t hugely popular at the time, either. They were the hippies of the Victorian era. Sex, drugs, Arthur and Guinevere.”
“Not exactly part of my social milieu, either. Apparently it was our host’s thing, from the evidence of the room. Well, he was an actor back in his day.”
He let her turn to face him, but he didn’t let Ivy go. “And our host is?” she questioned.
“You’ve never been to Ariel’s before?”<
br />
“Never met the man.”
“Selena hasn’t introduced you to her master?”
She laughed. “I’ve met Selena’s boyfriend, but he ain’t Ariel.”
Christopher did not like this surprise. “Damn it, woman, you’ve just shot a perfectly good theory to hell.”
She was still amused, but a smoke scent of anger curled through it. “You made the assumption that Selena has influence within Ariel’s territory because he backs her up. Understandable. Since it’s always about vampires being in control of companions and slaves with you guys. It doesn’t have to be that way.”
It did.
“Companions cannot survive without masters.” He stepped closer to her, backed her up against a wall, and held her there with his hands on her waist. He leaned close to whisper in her ear. “I’ll teach you.”
He was prepared for her to try to knee him in the groin, but her arms came around him. Her hands went under his shirt to the skin beneath. She scratched his back, nails dug in as far as she could manage. To no effect, but he appreciated the effort.
Then she tried to knee him in the groin.
He was still ready for it. Christopher held Ivy still and kissed her. Gently, invitingly. Gradually, she moved against him. The hands on his back tensed, moved, but to caress rather than to scratch.
This wasn’t getting him anywhere as far as learning anything from her. But Christopher liked it.
Somewhere in the house a clock chimed the hour. Brass bubbles popped around his ears.
“The night is getting on,” he said, stepping back from her.
Ivy snarled. “Teasing bastard,” she complained.
He wanted to taste her. He wanted her blood. “This is hard on me, too.”
Ivy ran her fingers through her blond hair and shook it out around her shoulders, unaware of how sensual he found the gesture.
He had to keep her or kill her, and he wasn’t sure killing was an option. He suspected it hadn’t been an option from the moment they’d met. It was odd, really, how quickly the connection between master and companion was made. Or not, as it was sparks of telepathy that arced between a couple. Or so he’d been told.
Ivy was his first.
He’d had many lovers whose blood he’d tasted, and sent away. He’d had a slave in Mr. Morse, but their relationship had been secretarial, not sexual. Christopher couldn’t see his relationship with Ivy as anything else.
“Have a seat,” he told her, fighting instinct. “Let’s talk.”
They sat across from each other in matching tapestry wing chairs near a fireplace. Ivy switched on a gas fire in the grate. All cozy and civilized. Except when their gazes met, and sexual energy thrummed between them.
“We should ring for tea,” Christopher said.
“So, this is Ariel’s place,” Ivy said. “Did he leave you a key?”
“No.”
She folded her hands in her lap. “You know, I still have no idea who you are. And considering what we’ve—”
“Been through together.”
“Gotten up to, including handcuffs and mind mating, perhaps we should have a Q&A. I’ll go first. When are you leaving town?”
He steepled his fingers. “When my work here is finished. Do you have a passport?” was his turn at a question.
She bit her bottom lip. He wished he was the one doing it. Her whole attitude said she had no intention of going anywhere but was tempted anyway. Her nerves sounded like shredding paper.
When a minute passed without any answer from her, he said, “Tell me about the Covenants.”
Ivy seized on this subject as though he’d thrown her a lifeline. “There really is a Web site you can look them up on. If there’s a computer somewhere in this Victorian pile I can—”
“Strigoi online? You never cease to appall me. Tell me.”
“Just because some of your kind refuse to use electricity and central heating doesn’t mean that all of you hide from reality.”
“Reality can be manipulated.”
She nodded. “You’d know that better than anyone, since synesthesia affects—”
“Don’t try to get me angry enough to forget the subject by mentioning my condition.”
A peacock tail of honest indignation flared around her. He couldn’t help grinning, which calmed Ivy down.
She said, “The active magic users in the area have made a treaty with the strigoi, and the werewolves, too, but werewolves generally don’t pay much attention to mortals.”
He sneered. Vampires and werewolves didn’t pay much attention to each other, either. Except when trying to kill each other.
“Those are the Covenants mortals and vampires sign,” Ivy said. “The gist of the Covenants is that vampires don’t kidnap and rape psychic mortals, and psychic mortals don’t kill vampires. We acknowledge each other’s right to exist without preying on each other.”
Vampires needed to prey on mortals! It was their life. It was part of the Curse! It was emasculating even hearing talk like this.
“How is this—agreement—possible? Why would any strigoi put up with it?”
She didn’t notice his justified fury as she explained, “Selena and some other companions saved the local vampires’ asses a few years back. That resulted in the local vamps deciding it might be safer for the species if they tried to drag those asses into the twenty-first century.”
“Local. This is a localized phenomena? A sort of civil rights movement instigated by companions?”
Impossible. Disgusting. Fatally dangerous for his people if allowed to spread.
Ivy nodded. “As far as I know. I don’t get out of town much.”
Christopher was thankful for that answer, but he knew he had a great deal more investigating to do. “What about demons?” he asked. “Do you have a treaty with demons?”
She grew more uncomfortable every time he spoke the word. Christopher was half tempted to shout, Demon, demon, demon, to see how Ivy would react.
“Mortals can’t trust them to keep a bargain. Everybody knows that. Everyone knows vampires leave them alone to do whatever they want, and they don’t bother vampires. Sweet deal for both of your kinds.”
“I’ve never met any demons,” he said. Demon, demon, demon. “They aren’t demons in the creatures from hell sense, are they? I believed in hell once, but demons don’t live in hell any more than vampires are the undead. Demons are more like beings that slip through rare cracks in universes? Isn’t that so?” Demon, demon, demon. “There’s nothing human about demons.”
“Some are humanish,” she answered, very uncomfortably.
“And demons aren’t very intelligent, are they?”
“I thought you wanted to know about the Covenants?”
“A treaty, you tell me. Ariel authorized this treaty?”
Of course he must have. And he enforced it. Why hadn’t he informed the Strigoi Council? Why hadn’t he called for help? Christopher sincerely hoped the Enforcer of this city was under duress in all this. He didn’t want to have to kill a brother in blood.
Ivy asked, “Why do you want to know? You’re a tourist in town, right? You’re just passing through to somewhere where vampires are old-fashioned and evil.”
“Perhaps I plan on moving to Chicago.” He looked her over, a hard, hot look that set her blushing. Desire rippled around her like an aurora borealis. “There might be something to keep me here.”
Ivy thrust violently up out of her chair. Fighting her need, fighting fear and hopelessness as well.
She confused and fascinated him. He should have been irritated at the reactions she brought out in him. He wanted to protect her, discover her every strength and weakness.
“You wouldn’t like it here,” she told him. “You’d hate the weather. The traffic is terrible.”
“Sit.”
He didn’t show his surprise when she obeyed his quietly spoken command. All this talk of demons had her more frazzled than she knew. And, she wanted to be with him and wa
s certain it wasn’t possible. Her inner turmoil gave them both a headache.
“No one volunteers to be become a vampire,” he told her. “I understand your ambivalence.”
She laughed. The hysteria in it held a tint of purple to him.
He kept going back to the you, me, we, and us part of the conversation. He’d been amused watching other strigoi forming attachments to companions. There was nothing amusing about this. It was important. It was a time of distraction, a time of excessive hormonal and psychic excitement. And once in it, he couldn’t find anything amusing.
It wasn’t normally considered dangerous, not when the protection of the nest was there to back up the lust-hungry fool picking a mate. But Christopher was alone in territory that seemed more dangerous by the moment. And he was on assignment to dig out and destroy any danger he found. Maybe there was no good time to fall in love, whether one was mortal or beyond mortality. Trying to be philosophical didn’t stop it from being a hellishly bad time.
Speaking of hell, there were demons in the mix of all this madness. Ivy knew far more than she’d so far told him.
“Back to the Q&A, yes?” Christopher suggested.
She relaxed a little, leaning back in her chair. Firelight and shadows played across her fair skin and bright hair. He noticed how lovely and lush her lips were, a touch of sensuousness spicing up her wholesome features.
He could go off on a reverie about the taste and texture of those lips. He chose to say, “Tell me why you are your familia’s chosen demon hunter?”
Her eyes widened in surprise, but he knew it was at his use of the name an Irish Traveler clan used among themselves. None of the Bailey familia he’d met looked Roma, but doubtless there was some gypsy mixed in their blood since these magic users had taken up traveling ways.
“Family history later, demons now,” he added.
“Family history and demons go together,” Ivy said. “We’ve had more encounters with them than with vampires, in the last several generations, anyway.”
She pressed her lips tightly together and gathered her mental shields tightly around her. She was getting better at it. He’d consider that he’d had a good influence on her if he didn’t want to know everything about her.
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