Chilled to the Bone

by Sindra van Yssel

  Charles looked around and gave the only answer he could give. He wouldn’t have thought about lying anyway, if it were not for the galling fact he couldn’t. “No.”

  Two vampires had moved next to Kent, clearly ready to take him down if he moved. Another couple had moved near Doreen, whose lips had tightened in anger. He couldn’t do a thing. Pemberton had moved into his mind, and he was just a bystander. He tried to push him out, and failed. He caught a glimpse of something in the process, though, and he probed Pemberton’s presence more gently, trying to bring it to clarity.

  Pemberton was telling the truth. He hadn’t sent Mickey for any reason other than to protect Doreen. Pemberton didn’t want to kill Doreen outright, but he was trying to see if he could goad her into attacking, because that would give him the right to if he had to. Pemberton was trying to decide if Charles was useful. And while he hid it from his fellow vampires, Pemberton would die rather than fail to protect his fellow vampires. And he had now noticed that Charles could read his mind across the connection as easily as Pemberton could read Charles’.

  Suddenly Pemberton drew back, and Charles mind was clear. The vampire lord laughed. “So, you have claws after all, Mr. Keller. Very interesting. I won’t be doing that again.”

  Charles wanted to ask him if he was sure and locked gazes with Pemberton again. But he’d become aware of something else; Pemberton’s position was not exactly secure. There were people in the room who would be happy to see him dead or deposed, and his rule depended to a small degree on the love of his subjects and, to a much larger degree, on their fear. He was pretty sure the vampires could have a worse leader, and challenging him in front of his people was not going to help matters. So he gave Doreen’s shoulder another squeeze.

  “It’s all right,” he murmured. He kept his gaze averted from the vampire lord.

  “So, Mr. Keller, is Miss Hammaker’s blood itself magical?”

  “Not inside her body it’s not.”

  Pemberton smiled. “Shall we take a little out and do another check?”

  Charles didn’t like the vampire’s smile one bit. “I don’t think that’s necessary.”

  “So, in your considered opinion, something has to be done to the blood to give it the power it possesses?”

  My opinion. I find out a day ago I can do a little magic given the right props, and now I’m an expert? But Mario had access to her blood over a long time, and he’d used it only once in Doreen’s memory. She couldn’t know about all the occasions he might have used his “blood of binding,” but Mario had gone to kill Kent with only three people. Couldn’t he have gotten an army? Two vampires had been turned to the other side in the last twenty-four hours. Mario would have gotten more force if he’d been able to. So Mario was probably dependent on someone else to change the blood for him. “Yes. Something magical.”

  “And is it something you can do, Charles?”

  All eyes were on him; he could feel the weight of the stares of a dozen vampires. His own gaze had risen naturally to Pemberton’s face again, and the lord of the vampires shook his head almost imperceptibly. He realized then if he said yes he was a dead man. Vampires wouldn’t want a mortal to have power over them.

  “No. I don’t know how, nor am I close to knowing how.”

  Pemberton smiled. “Well then, we can’t use that against them. But we do have something. From what my attacker told me once, he was subdued, and the blood they took isn’t going as far as they wanted it to. So they’ll want more.”

  That didn’t sound like good news to Charles at all.

  “This means we have one of the key elements to a good trap. We have bait.” Pemberton nodded at Doreen. “Lucky us.”

  “Yeah. Lucky,” replied Doreen.

  They spent the rest of the evening planning, and Charles wished they’d been able to come up with a better plan. They all agreed, that from what they knew about the original break-in to Doreen’s apartment, it was almost certainly the same mages who kidnapped her at Dark Xanadu. They hadn’t, as far as anyone knew, tracked her to Charles’ place, so if they were looking to pick up her trail, Dark Xanadu and Doreen’s apartment were the places to let them do it. By night, Pemberton could keep a slew of vampires nearby, but as it neared dawn, they all needed to go find shelter.

  The problem was daytime. The mages themselves, especially if there was more than the one still alive, could do whatever they liked in the day. Carla had left Dark Xanadu after the raid on the house in Georgetown, so they had to assume they were dealing with Carla, if Carla was her real name, and “John”; whether Carla could do magic or was just a lackey, they didn’t know. Possibly they could get others. Did the blood of binding work on humans? Charles didn’t have any clue, and the vampire legends among them didn’t say. He supposed they had less exotic ways of making humans do their will.

  But Pemberton had connections. In the end, they’d agreed to have Doreen stay the night and day at his place, so they could make sure everything was set. The rest of the week she’d spend at her apartment, and if that didn’t entice an attack, she’d go to Dark Xanadu with Charles on Friday evening. By night, she would be watched by the vampires; during the day, four discreetly well-armed ex-Navy SEALs would be guarding her apartment. Charles, Kent, and “the wolf” as Pemberton called Brennan, could come and go as they wished during the day.

  “He doesn’t know who the wolf is,” Kent told him quietly at one point. “So don’t enlighten him.”

  Pemberton glanced over their way. Charles was pretty sure he could hear even what Kent whispered. So he nodded silently and made a mental note not to whisper secrets around vampires.

  “You okay, hon?” he asked Doreen once the vampires were safely away, watching the house from outside.

  Doreen nodded. “Seems like a lot of fuss over me. But I guess what he really wants is to catch the mages.”

  “Yep,” said Charles. “Gotta take out the bad guys before you can feel safe.”

  “I’ll never feel really safe, Charles. Not for long. It’s not because I’m a vampire now. It’s because I realize how dangerous it really is out there. And who are the bad guys, really? The vampires or those who want to kill them?”

  “Maybe a bit of both. But you’re worth saving, Doreen. And I don’t think the mage—John—wants to kill or control vampires out of the goodness of his heart. He’s after something bigger, and the vamps are in the way. Given the power in this city of the purely mortal variety, I don’t think we can let him get his way.”

  “They both think I’d be better off dead. Mickey wasn’t looking to capture me. He was trying to kill me.”

  Charles digested that. She hadn’t brought it up during the planning, and he could see why. If Pemberton thought the mages wanted to kill Doreen, rather than get more blood, he’d have been tempted to let them. But if the mages wanted her dead, then Doreen was some danger to them or their plans. The attack on Pemberton was sensible enough, as he was presumably the most powerful of the vampires, but Doreen, by rights, should have been one of the weakest. No, something special about Doreen made her a danger.

  There was a lot special about Doreen, actually. He smiled at the thought. He loved her curves and her submissive heart, but there was more. Her strength was part of it, too. There was a fine line between BDSM and abuse, and it all depended on the informed and sane consent of the submissive. He’d never had much taste for games where the sub yelled “no”, and because she didn’t use her safe word, the Dom was supposed to continue anyway. He’d seen Doms treat a safe word as the refuge of the weak-willed and mock subs for using it, and he’d always been careful not to.

  With Doreen, he’d always known she could throw him across the room if she needed to stop. Paradoxically, that made him relax when topping her to a degree he’d never quite managed with anyone else. Even though they were going to spend possibly the rest of the week on guard, worrying about being attacked, he still felt that deep contentment. When all this was over, he knew he’d want her aga
in. And again.

  Damn. I sound like I’m falling in love.

  Chapter Eight

  Friday night, Charles wasn’t there when she woke up. They hadn’t talked about the future. She didn’t want to hear him say no. The week she’d agreed to was over now. For all the chaos, Charles had been there resolutely by her side and was the one person who could distract her from the sense of foreboding she felt. Her body tingled at the thought of the way his lips had tugged at her nipples, how the flogger had felt on her back and ass, how he’d brought her to screaming orgasm with nothing but his fingers on her clit and a vibrating egg in her pussy. She wasn’t going to ever forget, since a moment later, all the vamps had piled into her tiny apartment trying to protect her. Too bad it had made so much sense to make sure her bodyguards had an open invitation. She couldn’t blame them for thinking something was wrong with the noise she made. She was definitely getting another apartment when this was done.

  Charles had brought a cello over one evening. He claimed it was a loaner from a friend, but she suspected he’d rented it. The first few notes had been awkward and strained, but soon she coaxed the instrument to bring forth its beauty. He had listened to her with almost scary intensity. She had never thought she sounded her best as a soloist; the larger the orchestra, the better she felt. But he brought something special out in her, and she didn’t set the bow down again for hours.

  When at last she was done, he had simply told her, “I have to get you into my studio.”

  Maybe Charles would be at Dark Xanadu, maybe not, but the vamps expected her to be there. Could she really stand to watch him play with someone else? She wasn’t sure. In fact, she was pretty sure she’d want to rip the little minx’s throat out, if there was a little minx.

  Pemberton had sent a message, even if Charles hadn’t. Two of his vampires were missing. They’d started making a point of checking in at the church first thing in the evening, and Charles had done one surprise inspection, with more promised, since he’d been able to tell Mickey had been magicked. Rather than risk the inspection, apparently two had decided not to check in at all—unless they forgot, which wasn’t likely. In any case, the news didn’t make her feel any better. Still, two against the eight guarding her? She liked her odds.

  She was surprised not to see Charles as she scanned the floor at Dark Xanadu. Maybe he didn’t want to see her playing with someone else either—no, that was silly. For one thing, she wasn’t going to. For another, he didn’t strike her as the kind to run from anything.

  “Hello, miss.” A slender girl nearly as pale as she was stood in front of her, dressed in black skimpy bits of black leather, her hair a mix of black and blood red, her lips so dark a shade of red that at first Doreen thought it was black.

  “Hello.”

  “Looking for someone to play with?” asked the girl hopefully.

  “No. Sorry.”

  But the goth girl wasn’t giving up. “I can take a good beating, miss. You can go after me with all your strength, if you like.”

  She has no idea. “I’m not a Domme,” Doreen said. Why am I here again? Oh, right.

  “No problem,” said the goth girl easily. “I can switch. What’s your poison?”

  “Me,” said a voice behind her. Charles. She hadn’t been aware of how tense her shoulders had been until she felt them suddenly relax at his voice. Then he touched her, right over the left strap holding her dress on, and she felt a tension of a much more pleasant kind. “I’m her poison. Run along, Angelica.”

  Angelica’s eyes widened, and she curtsied. “Yes, sir. I didn’t realize she was with you, sir.” She took three steps backward, as if she wasn’t supposed to turn her back on him, almost backing into a Dom spanking his naked wife on the spanking horse. Then she turned and ran off.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Charles said. “Pemberton had me doing another one of those inspections.”

  “It’s so good to see you.” Doreen leaned back into Charles, and he wrapped his strong arms around her. Leather cuffs jingled from where they were attached to his belt. “But what did you do to frighten that poor girl?”

  “We played, once, when she was brand new, but I didn’t scare her. She has a flair for the over-dramatic. She knows a Dom likes to have made an impression, so she’s playing it up.”

  Doreen looked up at him, raising her eyebrows.

  “Really. A simple flogging, nothing very intense.”

  Jealousy rolled over her. She’d known he played with other women before her. Probably, since he didn’t like forming anything long-term, he’d played with half the women in the club. But Angelica was someone specific for her to focus those feelings on. “Like ‘em pale, do you? Did you have sex with her?”

  For a moment, she thought he was going to lose his temper. “I like them in all sorts of shapes and colors,” he said at last. “And no. I’m sorry for cutting in. It was presumptuous of me. I’ve no claim on you, at this point; your week is up.”

  “Just like that?”

  “A week has seven days in it, last I checked.”

  “Okay then.” How did the conversation go south so quickly?

  “All right.”

  The two of them stared at each other for a long moment. It would only take a moment of my power, and I could start this conversation over, and he wouldn’t remember it. It was so tempting.

  Then suddenly his lips were pressing against hers, and she opened her mouth to kiss him instinctively. Her tongue wrestled with his, her heart pounding against his chest. She could feel his heart pounding too. She wanted him, his blood, his everything.

  “I want you,” he said, out of breath.

  “I’m yours,” she told him.

  Then she let out a squeak as he picked her up. She might be the one with supernatural strength, but he was plenty strong enough to carry her wherever he wanted. “Nooooooo!” she yelled, even though she was happy to go wherever he took her.

  The mock protestation didn’t even slow him down. He carried her halfway across the room. She was aware of more than a few heads turning to watch them. He finally set her down in front of a wooden post a foot taller than she was, with a metal ring near the top of it.

  “What’s this?”

  “It’s a post.”

  “I can see that,” She grinned at him. Sometimes, she thought they could discuss almost anything, and the discussion would be fun. Besides, he had something evil in mind to have carted her all the way over here.

  “You’re happy submitting to me tonight? I usually like my consent to be pretty explicit, but when I saw you, I wasn’t in the mood to calmly negotiate.”

  She grinned wider. “I trust you. Besides, I can always say albatross.”

  “Indeed.” He looked pleased.

  “So how does this work?” she asked. It didn’t look too threatening. She assumed she was going to be attached to it somehow, and it didn’t really worry her. The business with the bondage frame last week had convinced her she could probably break anything made out of wood if she had to.

  “Well, first I cuff your hands together. Hands?” He put out his hand, and she placed her wrists in it, crossed together. His hand was strong and warm around her slender wrists, and the warmth seemed to spread all over her body. She bit her lower lip, stopping just short of piercing the skin with her sharp canine. Tonight, he had said. It was better than nothing, but not what she wanted. But maybe tonight the mage will come seeking my blood. Now might be all I have. Even if she was helpless in the daytime, she had not yet overcome her human distrust of the darkness.

  “Perfect,” Charles told her. He unclipped a cuff from around his belt, and wrapped it around one wrist., then switched which one was on top and did the same with the other. “Try not to break the post tonight, love. Brennan just built it, and while it’s not complicated, he’s a perfectionist.”

  “Is that why we’re playing on it? Because it’s the easiest to replace?” She couldn’t blame him, after the frame.

  “No. We�
�re playing on it because it’s new. Brennan has some notion of using it for slave auctions.“

  “For what?” She jerked her hands back, not sure she could believe her ears.

  “Relax, love.” Charles held up his hands. “Note I’m not involved. Also, no one’s really being sold. The money goes to charity, and the winner still has to negotiate with their prize like anyone else. And it’s not only subs being sold. Dominants auction themselves off too, although they won’t be tied to the post.”

  Her eyes narrowed, but her shoulders relaxed. “It’s a game.”

  “Yes. Some people find it’s a hot fantasy. Some people don’t. But it’s safe, sane, and completely consensual, like everything else we do here. Like everything you and I do here.”

  I used to be such a trusting person. And now I don’t even trust the man who risked his life for me. She realized she was frowning still from the concerned look in his eyes. “You can tie me up good and tight. With something even I can’t get out of. I trust you,” she told him.

  Charles smiled. “You could do worse.”

  “Don’t I know it?” Not that she ever trusted Mario. Or thought of him in any romantic way, but she had been somehow bound to him, anyway. By the blood of binding, and by her isolation and ignorance in her new life.

  He put out his hand again, and she put her wrists back in. He lifted them over her head, bringing them back towards the post, making her stretch. And then, to her surprise, he let her go. “I almost made a mistake I haven’t made in years.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s very hard to get clothes off a sub when she’s tied up. At least, if you want the clothes to be wearable afterward.”

  It took a moment for that to sink in. He wanted her clothes off. Here. Now. In front of everyone, although most of them had seen plenty of her the week before.