The Damned

by L. A. Banks

  “I cannot be with him for the same reasons you can’t be with a human. The last time … I almost killed him. You know that.”

  Yonnie’s eyes shone with quiet, repressed desperation. “Then maybe I should have let you go see him a long time ago. But then you’d still mourn him.”

  “I’ll always mourn him,” Tara said with a sigh. “But at least—”

  “I’ll consider it. Now drop it,” Yonnie said as a petite Asian hostess appeared at the door.

  The young woman smiled, her upper and lower canines prominent and glistening. She wore a cocky air of confidence and a skimpy silk kimono that was a mere profusion of red and gold swirls amid patches of mink fur. “Is Madame expecting you, sir?”

  Yonnie smiled and pulled Tara closer to his side. “Always.”

  The young woman nodded, offered him a slight bow, and motioned for him and Tara to follow her. The door creaked shut behind them with no aid of hands evident. On the way to the parlor, they passed an elaborate foyer covered in period tapestry, marble flooring, with a brightly burning crystal chandelier.

  Tara’s gaze took in the sumptuous space. Red velvet was everywhere, cushioning dark cherry mahogany love seats, chaise longues, and Queen Anne chairs all expertly arranged in gallery seating by a fire.

  She sat on the edge of the sofa next to Yonnie, her back a little too rigid for the environment, which seemed to make the young female werewolf smile wider.

  “Sir, let me be sure to go over our policies of the house, since your lady friend is obviously new to our establishment here,” the hostess said in a demure, silky voice that flowed over the faux couple. “Accept my apologies in advance for what I’m about to say. However, we’ve recently had some unfortunate results from passion nicks delivered by much lower-level vampires than you and your lady … which I’m sure you can understand. But as a precaution—”

  Yonnie held up his hand and gave the hostess a sly smile, showing just a hint of fang. “I brought my own,” he said, motioning to Tara with his chin. “She knows to only do me.”

  The hostess smiled. “Very good, sir. I will go fetch the Madame to welcome you for the evening, and so that you may select from our varied offerings.”

  Tara peered around, more intrigued than offended. She watched a tall, voluptuous female with shoulder-length blond hair walk through the wall. But her fangs were a little over the top, just like her melon-size breasts. She also had the unmistakable glow of recognition on her face. Yonnie stood. Tara’s gaze went from one to the other as they gently embraced.

  “Love, when Madame said you’d be here, I had to briefly leave a client to personally welcome you to the house.” The entity smiled at Tara, sweeping up her hand and kissing the back of it, then transforming into a man. The towering Swedish blond male looked at Yonnie. “She’s gorgeous. Beautiful, dark, smoky eyes; delectable, cinnamon skin; hair like black velvet; and her body carved from a goddess statue of old. Sir, you have indeed outdone yourself.” The entity’s gaze raked Tara in a lusty, open invitation. “What is your name?” His patient gaze held Tara’s as he transformed back into the long-stemmed female beauty he’d once been.

  “Her name is Tara,” Yonnie said with pride. “Five feet nothing worth of fine, ain’t she?”

  Tara smiled and looked at the entity. “Incubus or succubus?”

  The entity kissed Tara’s cheek. “Does it matter, as long as I can take a throat bite?” It glanced at Yonnie. “As soon as I finish up, which shouldn’t be long—he’s just a warlock, I could join the two of you? You know, we original Lilim are the only ones left that can take a passion nick without dire consequences, unless you prefer we fetch a human for a little bite-to-ash bondage? However, that is becoming an extremely expensive sport these days, and Madame has issues with the practice in her establishments. She feels it’s bad for business, long-term … you understand, love.”

  “No, baby. I’m not going there,” Yonnie murmured, stroking her flaxen hair, and eyeing Tara from his peripheral vision. So what if he’d lied. The brothels were still somewhat viable, and she hadn’t been treating him right. “It’s such a waste of natural resources,” he added, returning his full attention to the blonde.

  She sighed, shook her head, and straightened the thin strap of her short red negligee. “I’m glad you understand, love. The whole business is so sordid. What has become of the realms whereby one has to utilize excess energy to protect oneself from a simple nick? We truly miss our VIP vampire clientele.” She breathed out, tracing his jugular with one finger. “You all were simply the best, and all of the girls are so glad there’s at least one master still around.” She brushed Yonnie’s mouth with hers. “That’s why when you visit we spoil you so.”

  He chuckled as his hands trailed down her back. “Yes, I must admit … you ladies do know how to show a brother some love.”

  “Oh, Yolando,” she whispered. “I remember sooooo long ago, it seems, when a love bite wouldn’t exterminate and the human girls could add a bit of color to our love games. What do they propose, a dental dam?”

  “Yeah, I remember those days, too, baby,” Yonnie said, chuckling as he swept the entity’s cheek with a brief kiss. “But I’m just here tonight for a divination. Then I’m gonna call it an evening.”

  The entity pouted. “Oh, poo … wait till I tell the girls on the third floor. They have been positively writhing for one of your extended visits.”

  “Give Zaire my best regards when you tell them,” Yonnie said with a wink. “Better get back to the warlock. Curses can be a nasty thing to have to shake in the morning, especially with all this crazy energy floating around.”

  The entity nodded and waved over her shoulder as she walked through the wall. “Toodles,” she called out, momentarily leaving behind her wriggling fingers and a visible red kiss hovering on them before blowing it to land on Yonnie’s cheek through the wood.

  Yonnie laughed, rubbed his cheek where the sensation landed, and sat down. “T, the folks in here are cool.”

  “Like I said, no problem,” Tara replied, swallowing away any traces of jealousy that tugged at her. But she lifted her feet up from the floor quickly and hissed, alighting on the sofa like a cat, as a thick-bodied black adder slithered toward Yonnie’s shoes and went up his leather pant leg.

  “Oh, stop, girl,” Yonnie crooned, laughing and struggling with his zipper to let the snake out. “I told y’all, I wasn’t coming up to the third floor tonight. I’m with my lady.”

  Tara leaped back and dug her nails into the wall panel above the fireplace, hanging from it like a treed feline that had seen something to arch its back.

  In a slow, sultry, serpentine sway, the adder drew itself out of Yonnie’s pants, the head and torso of the entity transforming while her gleaming, black-scaled body remained partially submerged and pulsing beneath the leather.

  A dark-skinned black beauty sat on Yonnie’s lap, hypnotically swaying from side to side, her long microbraids moving like a thousand miniserpents over her muscular back. Her green eyes sparkled like emeralds beneath the chandelier, and she closed her smoky, charcoal-colored lids down to slits, hissing a hot breath of air against Yonnie’s neck.

  “Baby, pleasssse, tell me you are going to come sssseee Zaire a little later? It’sssss been soooo long,” she murmured, every s holding a snakelike sibilance as she fussed with Yonnie, but never left his lap. “I missssss your anaconda … how issss he?”

  “Baby, right through here, I can’t do Amanthras. You know that’s my weakness,” he said in a playful tone. “As fine as you are, I’d have to bite you for real without an energy barrier, then you’d be ash before morning. C’mon, girl, stop.”

  The entity on his lap sighed and drew the lower half of her snake form out of his pants and stood. She caressed his cheek and glared at Tara, who remained on the wall, perched upside down and hissing.

  “She needs to chill and learn to respect a little diversity,” the shapely Amanthra said, covering her naked form with a thin s
heath of transparent snakeskin. She put one hand on her hip, and flipped her middle finger toward Tara with the other hand, as Tara came off the wall. Her body continued to sway in slow, predatory motion as she flashed Tara a pair of huge, venom-dripping viper fangs. “Any day, bitch. I can take a bite as good as give one—so back up off the master when in Gabrielle’s house.”

  “Don’t you have a client to service?” Tara said, not retracting her fangs.

  The Amanthra put up her hand in Tara’s face, then looked around it, blew Yonnie a kiss, and slid out the door.

  “T, didn’t I ask you to be cool?”

  “No, you told me to,” Tara said, folding her arms and staring at the door.

  Yonnie smiled. He liked her anger. He wasn’t sure what it was that had set Tara off, but it was very flattering. Did something nice to her skin tone, made those dark Native American eyes of hers glisten and almost glow red. “If you treated me nicer, with a little more regularity,” Yonnie murmured, “I’d have no reason to come here.”

  Tara moved around the polished wood coffee table. “The Madame is on her way. Focus on whatever’s in her crystal ball, would be my suggestion.”

  Yonnie laughed, stood, and opened his arms for Gabrielle to fill them when she swept into the room.

  “Yonnie,” she said, careful not to spill her goblet of blood on him as she hugged him hard. She then held him away from her to allow her gaze to rake him. “I was with a client. Oh darling, don’t be offended. We’ve lost so many girls to ash recently that I’ve had to help out with some of the more aggressive VIPs.” She spun to greet Tara and gave her an air kiss. “Things are not what they were. People are literally possessed. Insane. What happened to the pleasure principle, I ask? It is driving costs skyward!”

  Tara gave Gabrielle a gentle hug and held her hand for a bit, but kept glancing at the goblet and the red stain on Gabrielle’s mouth. “Gabby, are there many weres in the house tonight? I know your girls are strictly business, but the client guys from Level Five …”

  “Oh,” Gabrielle scoffed and took a dip sip for her goblet. “All in caged rooms for the night with their female selection from the house. No worries. We haven’t seen any senators for a long while now, and those in here aren’t going to be of too much concern. Our bars and chains will hold. I reassure you, our bouncers all have silver bullets, should any of them get a little too rowdy.”

  “Good,” Yonnie said, nodding, and picking up Tara’s concern as he watched Gabrielle practically guzzle blood. “Like I said when I called, baby, there’s been some strange shit going on subterranean. I felt a power surge; so did Tara. Our main man is missing, and yet instinct was telling me he was nearby, but I couldn’t spot him.”

  Gabrielle had changed her hair, he noted. It had once been dyed black. Now she was heavier, thicker, more voluptuous. All of it was disconcerting.

  For the first time since they’d been in Gabrielle’s house, Tara drew close to Yonnie without having to be asked to do so. Gabrielle tightened the belt on her long, floor-length, black silk robe and flipped her auburn tresses over her shoulder. As she walked deeper into the parlor, feathers from her spiked ostrich-plumed mules gently shifted with the disturbance of air that her hem caused.

  Reaching up into the Louis XIV breakfront, she lifted down a large crystal ball and beckoned with a gentle sweep of her hand for Yonnie and Tara to join her at the small round Chippendale table in the private back room.

  “Baby,” Yonnie said carefully. “What’s with the blood? How you feelin’ lately?”

  “Oh, this,” Gabrielle replied in a distracted tone. “I don’t know. About a month ago, I started picking up some of my clients’ bad habits.” She chuckled and placed her hands flat on the table, staring into the crystal ball. “Nothing to worry about.”

  “Have you been having any bouts of rage … yearnings to eat human flesh?” Tara sat slowly and placed a gentle hand on Gabrielle’s shoulder.

  The two women stared at each other, and then Gabrielle glanced up at Yonnie.

  “I only have one body in the refrigerator,” Gabrielle said, not answering the question and becoming defensive. “He was a serial killer. We took him out of the general population before he hurt any more innocents, and his soul was damned anyway…. We keep food supplies on hand for our werewolves. It’s just business. Child molesters, murderers, I think we do a better job at ridding the planet than the human prison system. Don’t tell me you’ve gone—”

  “Gabby,” Yonnie said quietly, as he stood behind her, held her shoulders, and kissed her temple. “I want you to try to lay off the human food. There’s a really bad virus, or contagion, spreading up from the portals. That’s why we’re here.” He stroked her hair, took up one of her hands, and sat beside her. “No judgment, and I know you all just clean up the human scum as a public service … but, honey, one night you might cross the line and start going after normal civilians. Then Carlos and Damali, or even your sister, Marjorie, won’t be able to petition for you in any kinda way. Feel me? And, you do not want to close your eyes to this life and wake up in the realms where you’ve got a lot of enemies. All right? I can’t go subterranean to help you, if that happens … and I can’t bring you into my family by a turn to give you a way out.”

  Her eyes shone with quiet desperation. “You think I’m infected?”

  “Given the line of work you’re in, baby …” Yonnie squeezed her hand. “That’s why we’ve gotta find our boy, so we can close this shit up.”

  Gabrielle’s nervous gaze shot to Tara, and then she dropped Yonnie’s hand and stared into the crystal ball. “We all knew that since Lilith fled, things had been different. But we assumed after she and her husband patched up their rift, everything would go back to normal.”

  “So did we,” Tara said quietly, her gaze intent as she stared at Yonnie. “We thought the Chairman might even work his way back into his old position, so that things could … stabilize.”

  “He’s still not on his throne?” Gabrielle covered her heart with a flat palm. “He still exists, though?”

  Yonnie nodded. “I can’t locate my boy; Carlos, but I felt a power surge that gave me ridiculous wood,” Yonnie muttered. He glanced at Tara and then sent his gaze into the crystal globe. “It happened so hard and so fast … I haven’t felt like this since I got made. So, I’m hoping that this is a positive development. Like maybe the energy leaks are sealing up and the portals are closing, that’s why the power felt like it had concentrated.”

  Gabrielle nodded and caressed the crystal ball as her eyes slid shut. “My sight has been a little … off. But let me see what I can do.”

  Yonnie and Tara waited, their breathing becoming so shallow it was practically nonexistent. The ball filled with charcoal smoke as Gabrielle coaxed her divination tool to respond. Tara watched Yonnie as his gaze went out the window, the muscle in his jaw working hard.

  Every so often, he’d run his tongue over his teeth, and little by little his eyelids lowered by a fraction.

  “You got anything yet?” He finally said, standing abruptly to pace to the window.

  He stood with his hand at either side of the window frame, his back to the table, taking in slow breaths and releasing them with effort. His desire was palpable even from across the room.

  “The portals are wide open,” Gabrielle whispered, her gaze riveted to the ball. “I can’t see any activity below…. It’s like everything’s vacated.”

  “Can you pick up Carlos’s essence?” Tara’s voice had become strident.

  “No,” Gabrielle murmured, a frown of confusion crossing her face. “There’s no trace of him there. I felt it for a fleeting moment, but if he’d transported through Hell, I know his signature well enough to have felt it, even if he went in as a Neteru. Especially that, because I would have immediately seen silver tracer and human aura where it shouldn’t have been.” Gabrielle looked at Tara. “He would have stood out like a sore thumb.”

  “Go deeper,” Tara said, her breath
s becoming stilted as she spoke. “Go into the Chairman’s Chambers and see if you can get a glimpse of his throne. If he’s been reinstated, it should be intact, blood from the table flowing. Maybe that’s why, as vampires, we felt the surge … and its effects. Check his torture wall, any place that Carlos might have been dragged to and held hostage.”

  “If you go that deep,” Yonnie said in a low rumble without turning around, “then I’ma need a room for the night.”

  Tara and Gabrielle glanced up from the crystal ball and stared at his back.

  “I can arrange that,” Gabrielle said quietly, almost standing to go to him.

  “But can she?” Yonnie asked, referring to Tara. “This is more than an elevation rush I got here.”

  Tara nodded, and placed a hand over Gabrielle’s. “I’ll stay with him. Stock the suite bar. He’ll torch you or flatline me in this condition.”

  Yonnie turned away from the window slowly, his eyes glowing red as he appraised Tara, and simply nodded.

  “You all right, man?” Jose said quietly as he came onto the porch. He peered at Rider, whose jaw muscle kept working as though he were chewing tobacco. His gaze discreetly slid to the bottle of Jack Daniel’s and fresh pack of smokes that sat beside Rider, untouched.

  “Yeah,” Rider said. His voice was low and he never turned to look at Jose when he’d spoken. “Time for a change, partner.”

  Jose nodded and came down a step to plop down beside Rider. “Yeah.”

  They sat that way for a long time, staring out at the stars and saying nothing.

  “You taught me a lot of things along the way, man,” Jose said in a cautious tone. “I appreciate that.”

  “It was my job,” Rider said flatly.

  Jose smiled. “No it wasn’t. Not all the things you taught me since I was a kid. But it kept my head right.”

  Rider nodded and spit over the edge of the step. “Then I suppose I served my purpose.”

  “Things change, man,” Jose said, his tone gentle, probing lightly as he collected each word. “You taught me that. I had to accept things and move on.”