by Karen Chance
“Goddamn it, Marco!” I croaked. “That hurts!”
“You don’t hold still and it’s gonna scar, too.” The tone was harsh, but the large hand on my abused derriere was gentle.
“Just be careful, okay? That’s living flesh back there.” For the moment, anyway.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
I settled back onto my stomach and tugged at the sheet that was supposed to be protecting my modesty. It mostly wasn’t, but I was too tired and, I suspected, too stoned to care. I knew the table I was lying on was level, but it felt a lot like it was floating on the high seas, thanks to the pills someone had given me and the two drinks I’d washed them down with.
“Can you get seasick lying still?” I wondered.
“If you’re gonna hurl, you’re gonna tell me,” Marco said sternly.
“I’m not,” I said with what dignity I could muster. Since I was sprawled naked on a massage table while he dug glass out of my ass, it wasn’t much.
“Just so we’re clear. We got enough to clean up.”
This was true.
We were back in the suite, trashed as it was, because it had better wards than anywhere else in the hotel. Not that they’d done any good this time, but for the past month, they’d kept out most of the people who wanted my head on a stick. So livable or not, it was where I was sleeping tonight.
The vamps were trying to sort things out, but it was a hell of a task. I watched through the open door as a couple ran around, trying to catch the tattered curtains that were billowing in through the ruined living room window. At least, they were until one of the vampires muttered something vicious and snatched down the last remaining rod, bolts and all. He then tried to stuff it in a trash bag, but it didn’t fit. So he crumpled it into a metal ball and made it fit. His buddy just looked at him with crossed arms and slowly shook his head.
Another time, it would have been funny. None of the guards were less than third-level masters, which made them pretty much vamp nobility. They were most definitely not used to carrying bags of trash, sweeping floors and hauling out debris. But they wouldn’t let anyone else near the suite, including maid service, so there wasn’t a lot of choice. And, to their credit, not a single one had complained.
Of course, that might be because they hadn’t said anything at all. Most of them still looked a little paler than usual, and occasionally I caught one sneaking a glance at me as he passed. They were the kind of looks I might have given a dangerous animal in the zoo that was a little too close to the fence. Like they thought I might go for their jugular at any moment and just wanted to be careful.
“I think they’re scared of me,” I told Marco, as another one scurried past with the same little eye flick.
“Not of you,” Marco corrected, tossing a blood-spotted paper towel into the overflowing bin.
“What does that mean?”
“It means you attract enemies like rotten meat does flies.”
“That’s a nice image!”
“And they’re not normal enemies,” he complained. “Someone a guy can really pound. They’re ghosts or demons or a fucking god, and my boys are good, but they don’t know how to deal with that shit. It makes ’em feel helpless, and they hate that.”
I didn’t exactly love it, either, I didn’t say, because Marco was on a roll.
“And most of them thought this would be a vacation. Free trip to Vegas, stay in a luxury hotel, and all they gotta do is watch over the master’s girlfriend. I mean, most of the time that means carrying her shopping bags and being asked which color shoes goes best with her purse, you know?”
I frowned. No, I didn’t know. Their master and my significant other was pretty damn chary about his romantic past. I knew he wasn’t inexperienced—at five hundred years old, that would be kind of hard—but I didn’t have many details. In fact, I didn’t have any, just some strong suspicions, any or all of which might be wrong.
For some reason, it had never occurred to me to ask Marco.
It occurred to me now.
“You sound like they’ve done this before.”
“That wasn’t my point.”
“But have they? Have you?” It was unsettling to think that I might be just another in a long line of women Marco had babysat, at least until they grew too old to hold the attention of their perpetually thirtyish-looking boyfriend.
Really, really unsettling.
“I don’t usually do the bodyguard thing,” Marco evaded.
“But you’ve been around a while, right?”
“Yeah.”
“So just how many girlfriends has Mircea had?” I asked bluntly.
Marco sighed. “You don’t want to go there.”
“Yeah, actually, I think I do.”
“Then you want to go there with him,” he told me flatly.
“But he isn’t here and you are.” And the fact that Marco obviously didn’t want to discuss it made me wonder just what kind of numbers we were talking about. “I mean, how many can it have been?” I wondered aloud. “Five, ten?”
Marco didn’t say anything.
“Twenty?” I asked, a little shrilly.
“You know, I forget,” he replied. And then he stabbed me in the ass.
“Ow!”
“You want another drink?” he asked, as a vamp came in carrying a tray with a decanter on it.
“I want you to stop gouging me with that thing!”
He held something in front of my eyes. “See these? These are tweezers. They don’t gouge.”
“Tell that to my ass!”
“You want a drink or not?”
“I want some coffee,” I said resentfully, since I obviously wasn’t getting any answers. I clutched the sheet to my chest and tried to peer over my shoulder at my abused butt. And then I noticed the vamp looking, too. “Hey!”
“He don’t mean anything,” Marco said, as the man hurried out. “It’s just there, you know?”
“And?”
“And we’re guys. We look at women’s butts.”
“Are you looking at my butt?” I asked suspiciously.
“I gotta look or I can’t dig all the pieces out.”
“Then maybe we should call for a doctor.”
Marco patted my shoulder. “It’s okay. You aren’t my type.”
“What is your type?”
“Someone who gets in less trouble,” he said, as a sliver of glass rang in the ashtray he was using as a receptacle. “I decided I was wrong. I don’t like the wild side. I ain’t got the master’s stamina.”
“I don’t require stamina.”
“Babe, you require a freaking tank.”
I didn’t know what that meant, but it didn’t sound complimentary. But before I could ask, Pritkin came in with a mug that smelled like heaven. He handed it to me, and I braced myself for his usual caffeine hammer to the brain. This batch didn’t disappoint; after two sips I could already feel my heart racing.
“It wasn’t demon,” he told me, without preamble.
“The hell it wasn’t.” Marco tossed another little sliver into the ashtray, more forcefully than necessary. “The guys said it was like The Exorcist in here.”
“Amityville,” I muttered, but no one was listening.
“They were wrong,” Pritkin said shortly. He looked at me and frowned, then reached over and brushed my curls out of my eyes. I smiled at him blearily, which got a bigger frown for some reason. “You are certain it wasn’t a ghost?”
I nodded. It was about the only thing I was sure about.
“Can you describe it?”
“Didn’t you see it?”
He shook his head. “A dark cloud, nothing more.”
“I didn’t see much more than that.”
“Tell me what you can. Anything would help at this point.”
I tried to think back, but my head really hurt and the room was still swimmy and there just wasn’t that much to remember. “It was dark colored,” I said slowly. “Black or gray. Or r
eally dark blue. And it had feathers—I think.” I racked my brain, but I wasn’t getting anything else. “It was big?”
“What about your servant? Did he see anything?”
It took me a second to realize that he meant Billy Joe. Pritkin had this weird idea that Billy was for me what an enslaved demon was for a mage—a capable, obedient servant who stayed unruffled in the face of adversity. When the truth was pretty much exactly the opposite. As soon as the crisis was over, Billy had fled into his necklace and I hadn’t seen him since.
I gave him a little poke, just for the hell of it, and got back the metaphysical version of the finger. “Billy doesn’t know anything,” I translated.
“Are you certain?”
Tell him to suck my balls!
“Pretty certain.”
Pritkin ran a hand through his hair. It was sweaty, and although he’d put on a pair of old jeans, they didn’t cover the marks from being hurled through a wall. He looked about as beat up as I felt.
A particularly livid bruise trailed up his rib cage and wrapped around his back—where he’d hit the wall, I assumed. He was standing close enough that I could reach out and touch it, so I did. It was hot under my fingertips—Pritkin was always a little warmer than human standard—for the instant before he moved away.
I let my hand drop. “You should get that seen to. You might have broken a rib.”
“It’s fine,” he said curtly, as another vamp came in carrying a phone.
“For you,” the man told me, his eyes already sliding south.
“Is there anyone in this apartment who hasn’t seen me naked?” I demanded, grabbing the sheet and the phone.
“I genuinely hope so, Cassandra.”
I sighed and let my head thunk down against the padded surface of the table. I could always tell how Mircea was feeling based on what version of my name he chose to use. When he was in a good mood, it was dulceață, the Romanian endearment that colloquially translated as “sweetheart” or “dear one.” When he was less happy, it was plain old Cassie. And when he was royally pissed but not showing it because he was Prince Mircea Basarab, member of the powerful North American Vampire Senate and allaround cool guy, it was Cassandra.
“Cassandra” was never good.
But this time, it wasn’t my fault.
“This time, it isn’t my fault,” I told him, wincing as Marco found another heretofore untortured cut.
“I am not calling to assign blame.”
“Then why the ‘Cassandra’?”
“You frightened me. For a few moments, I could not feel you.”
I frowned at the phone. “You’re in New York. How are you supposed to feel me?”
“Through the bond.”
“We have a bond?”
A sigh. “Of course we have a bond, dulceață. You are my wife.”
By vampire standards, I didn’t say, because that always got a Cassandra. The ceremony, if you could call it that, had been over before I fully knew what was happening. But that didn’t matter, because little things like the bride’s consent aren’t required in vampire marriages.
Except, that is, by me.
That was why Mircea and I were dating—or, at least, that’s why I was doing it, to figure out whether this whole relationship thing was something I could handle. He was doing it to humor me, when he remembered, although he clearly thought the whole thing was ridiculous. Mircea had been born in an era when men took what they wanted and kept it, as long as they were strong enough. And strength had never been one of his problems.
Listening, on the other hand . . .
“I listen,” a velvet voice murmured in my ear.
I bent my head and let my hair fall over the phone. It wasn’t much as privacy went, but around here, it was as good as it got. “Uh-huh.”
“And what does that mean?” he asked, sounding amused.
“It means ‘that’s bullshit,’ but I’m too high to think of a good comeback right now,” I said honestly.
“High?”
“Blitzed, baked, stoned . . .”
“I understood the term,” Mircea said, his voice sharpening. “My question was why?”
I hesitated. The truth was, I’d been pretty near hysterical when I woke up. I was getting better in crises, mainly because I’d had a lot of practice lately. But afterward . . .
I still had problems with afterward.
“Marco thought it best,” I finally said.
Mircea didn’t seem to like that answer. “I will speak with Marco,” he said grimly. “But for the present, I am more concerned about the attack this evening. I have heard my men’s report, such as it was. I would like to have yours.”
It was my turn to sigh. “I don’t know. It wasn’t a ghost; that much I’m sure of. And Pritkin swears it wasn’t a demon.”
“There are thousands of types of demons, Cassie. He cannot possibly be certain—”
“He’s pretty certain,” I said drily.
“—and you have recently had problems with several of them. A demon is the most likely culprit.”
“I think we should trust Pritkin’s judgment on this one,” I said, because I couldn’t say anything else. That Pritkin was half demon himself wasn’t exactly universally known, but what type he was wasn’t known to anyone but me.
I intended to keep it that way.
“I am not so certain,” Mircea said, sounding sour. “But I would speak with the man. Can you put him on?”
I really didn’t think that was a great idea, considering that Pritkin and Mircea mixed like oil and water, only not as well. But I passed the phone over, anyway. I didn’t get much of the resulting conversation, both because it was pretty terse on Pritkin’s end, and because Marco had started the extraction process again.
“There can’t possibly be that many pieces of glass in my ass,” I gritted out, after a couple of agonizing minutes.
“Babe, it’s like you rolled in it.”
“It was all over the floor!”
“And when that’s the case, it’s best to avoid the floor,” he said drily, digging what felt like an inch into my tender rear.
“I’ll keep it in mind the next time I get possessed by an evil entity!”
“Demon,” Marco said, sounding final.
“It wasn’t a demon,” Pritkin argued, but I couldn’t tell if he was talking to Marco or Mircea. “Yes, I’m bloody well sure!”
Mircea.
“Okay, this is going to sting a little,” Marco told me, right before he set my butt on fire.
“Shit, shit, shit!”
“Gotta disinfect it,” he said imperturbably. “You’re not a vamp. You could get an infection.”
“In what? You just burnt my ass off!”
“He wants to talk to you,” Pritkin said, looking grim.
I took the phone back. “What?”
“Cassie?”
Mircea wasn’t accustomed to getting that tone from women, but I was too sore—in several ways—to care. “If Pritkin says it wasn’t a demon, then it wasn’t a demon. Goddamnit, Mircea! He ought to know!”
“And why is that, dulceață?” Mircea asked smoothly. And, okay, maybe I was going to have to revise that list. Because sometimes Mircea also used my pet name when he was being sneaky.
“He’s a demon hunter,” I said, forcing myself to calm down before I said anything stupid. Well, anything stupider, anyway. “It’s his job to know.”
“I will have my people check into all possibilities,” Mircea said, and I really hoped he was talking about the entity. “In the meantime, I need your promise that you will not leave the hotel.”
“Mircea, I was attacked at the hotel. How is staying here going to—”
“The guards will be doubled.”
“You could have tripled them—you could have had a guard per square foot—and it wouldn’t have made a difference! No one could have predicted—”
“We should have predicted it,” he said harshly. “We knew ther
e would be an attack. I simply did not expect it so early. The coronation isn’t for another ten days.”
“But why wait until the last second?”
Mircea didn’t say anything, but the very pregnant pause made it clear that he didn’t think that was funny.
Of course, he didn’t find too much funny these days. He was currently trying to negotiate the first worldwide alliance of vampire senates. It was what he’d been working on all month, what he was doing in New York, where a lot of the senators had gathered for some kind of meeting prior to the coronation. But as formidable as his diplomatic skills were, there was no doubt that he was up against it. The senates had had centuries to plot and scheme and piss one another off, and they’d apparently done a pretty good job of it.
And nobody holds a grudge like a master vamp.
Add to that the ongoing war and now the coronation that was scheduled to be held at his estate, and it would have been enough to give anyone a headache. I didn’t want to add to his problems. And what he asked was easy enough.
It wasn’t like I’d be safer anyplace else.
“I’ll stay put,” I promised.
“Good. Then I shall see you tomorrow night.”
“Tomorrow? I thought you wouldn’t be back for a week.”
“That was my intention, but . . . I have obtained the information you requested.” For a moment, it didn’t register, because I couldn’t recall asking Mircea about anything. Except—
I suddenly sat up.
And just as suddenly regretted it. I gasped and Marco cursed. “Hold still!” he told me, pushing me back down. That was okay, because it gave me a chance to get my face under control.
“About our date,” Mircea’s voice clarified unnecessarily.
“Oh. Right.” My voice sounded normal enough, but I felt my palm start to sweat where I clutched the phone. Because what I’d asked him for wasn’t the usual dinner and a movie. I hadn’t really thought he’d be able to pull it off—or that he’d be willing, for that matter. But Mircea never ceased to surprise.
I wanted details, wanted specifics, but I couldn’t ask for them. Not with Pritkin’s eyes on me from across the room. If he knew what I planned, I had no doubt at all that he’d try to stop me. And while that would probably be the smart thing, it wasn’t the right thing. Not this time.
