I stared at him, but his face betrayed nothing. Only the echo of him inside my head told me I hadn't hallucinated it. There was no time to bitch about the fact that he'd invaded my head. Later; we could argue later.
"Janos." That one word reverberated through the room until it echoed up the soles of my feet like a deep bass drum.
Janos turned to look at Jean-Claude, his skeletal face set in a pleased expression. "You rang?"
"I challenge you." The three words were bland; they fell like off-key notes jangling along my nerves. If the tone bothered Janos, you couldn't tell it.
"You cannot prevail against me," Janos said.
"That remains to be seen, does it not?" Jean-Claude asked.
Janos smiled until the skin nearly snapped. "If by some miracle you best me, what do you want?"
"Safe passage for all my people." I cleared my throat. "And the two girls."
"And if I win," Janos said, "what do I get?"
"What do you want?"
"You know what we want."
"Say it," Jean-Claude said.
"You give up your safe passage. We get you, to do with as we like."
Jean-Claude gave a small nod. "So be it." He pointed at the rotting vampires. "Get them away from my wolf."
Janos smiled. "They will not hurt him, but if you fail... I'll make a gift of him to my two beauties."
A low sound like a swallowed scream crawled from Jason's throat. The brunette's hand started the crawl down his stomach to his privates. He screamed and pushed her away, but unless he resorted to violence he was trapped. And if we broke the truce first we were dead, but if they broke the truce... Jean-Claude and Janos had moved back to the center of the room. They stood a few yards apart. Jean-Claude stood with his feet spaced as if he was bracing for a fight. Janos stood with his feet together, easy, unconcerned.
"You will lose everything, Jean-Claude; what are you up to?"
Jean-Claude just shook his head. "Challenge has been offered and accepted; what are you waiting on, Janos? Are you afraid of me at long last?"
"Afraid of you? Never, Jean-Claude. Not a hundred years ago, not a moment ago."
"Enough talk, Janos." His voice had gone low and soft, yet it carried through the entire room, and crawled up the black walls to rain down in drops of sound that were dark and anger-filled.
Janos laughed, but the sound had none of the touchable qualities of Jean-Claude's voice. "Let us dance." Silence fell so abruptly on the room I thought I'd gone deaf. Then I realized I could still hear my own heartbeat, the blood rushing in my own head. Waves of something rose between the two master vampires like heat rising off summer pavement. What poured along my skin wasn't heat, it was... power.
A whirling, rushing storm of power. I'd felt Jean-Claude go up against other vampires, and I'd never felt anything like this. My hair streamed in a wind that was coming from the two.
Jean-Claude's face was thinning down, his white skin glowing like polished alabaster. His eyes were blue flames that bled sapphire fire down every vein under his skin. His bones glowed gold. His humanity was folding away, and it wouldn't be enough. He would lose.
Unless they broke the truce first.
Kissa stood by the door, still guarding it. Her dark face was impassive. She was no help to me. The two rotted things still crawled over Jason. Only Ivy and Bruce were still standing. Bruce looked scared, Ivy looked excited. She watched the two master vamps with half-parted lips, her lower lip drawn under with concentration or excitement.
I'd been able to meet her eyes, and that had bothered her—a lot.
I crossed the room behind Jean-Claude. When I passed him, the current of power lashed out and curled around me like an arm. I kept walking and it slipped away, but my skin shivered where it had touched me. The shit was going to hit the fan unless I could stop it.
Kissa watched me move past her with narrowed eyes. I ignored her. One master vampire at a time. I walked past Bruce and stopped in front of Ivy. She stared past me at the two masters, ignoring me.
I opened my mouth. As I spoke, the silence split apart and sound came back to me ears with a nearly painful clap like a tiny sonic boom.
"I challenge you."
Ivy blinked at me as if I'd just appeared. "What did you say?"
"I challenge you," I said. I kept my face blank and tried very hard not to think about what I was doing.
Ivy laughed. "You are mad. I am a master vampire. You cannot challenge me."
"But I can meet your eyes," I said. I let a small smile play along my lips. I tried to keep my mind blank, no thought to betray me, no fear to leak out, but of course once I thought of fear it was there curling in my stomach.
She laughed, high and tinkling like broken glass. It nearly cut skin just to hear it. What the hell was I doing?
The wind rushed against my back, nearly flinging me into her. I glanced back in time to see Jean-Claude stagger and a splash of blood spill from his hand. Janos hadn't broken a sweat yet.
Whatever I was doing, I'd better do it fast.
"After Jean-Claude loses, I'm going to ask Janos to make him fuck me. Your master is going to be everybody's meat, and so will you."
My eyes flicked to the rotted things clawing at Jason. Incentive enough. I turned back to Ivy and met her brown eyes. "You won't do shit. You can't even outstare one puny human being."
She glared at me. Her anger was instantaneous, like fire springing out of a match. I watched the brown of her irises spread across her eyes from a space of less than ten inches. Her eyes were shining pools of dark light. My pulse threatened to choke me, and a little voice in my head was screaming, "Run away, run away." I stood there and stared her down.
She was a master vampire but a young one. A hundred years from now she'd have eaten me for breakfast, but right now, tonight, maybe, just maybe, she wouldn't.
She hissed at me, flashing her fangs.
"Oh, that's impressive," I said. "Like a dog showing its teeth."
"This dog could tear your throat out." Her voice had gone low and evil crawling along my spine, until I spent most of my effort not to shiver.
I didn't trust my voice not to shake, so I spoke low, and soft, and very clear. "Try it; see how far you get."
She darted forward, but I saw her move, felt her come for me, I threw myself backwards away from her, but she grabbed my arm and lifted me off my feet with her elbow braced so that she could hold me aloft. Her strength was incredible. She could have crushed my arm and I couldn't have done a damn thing about it.
Kissa was suddenly there. "Put her down, now!"
Ivy put me down. She threw me across the room. Air rushed past me, the world blurring so quickly it was like being blind. The air stopped rushing, and down I came.
26
Falling does not cover the speed and abruptness of being thrown from less than ten feet high. I smacked into the wall and tried to slam my arms and hands against it to take some of the momentum before my head smacked into it. I slid down the wall, though slid implies something slow, and there was nothing slow about it. I collapsed at the base of the wall in a crumbled, breathless heap, blinking at bright jarring images that didn't quite make pictures yet.
The first image that came clear was a rotted face with a patch of long, dark hair dangling from its scalp. The vamp's tongue rolled behind broken teeth; something black and thicker than blood spilled with a plop out of her mouth.
I pushed to my knees and found skeletal arms wrapped around my shoulders. The blonde's dried, fang-filled mouth whispered in my ear. "Come to play." Something hard and stiff poked my ear. It was her tongue. I scrambled away, but claws caught in my jacket. Hands that should have been weak as dried sticks were like steel bands.
"They broke the truce, ma petite. I cannot hold him long."
I had a moment to glance up and find Jean-Claude on his knees with both hands extended towards Janos. Janos still stood, but he did nothing else. I had a few moments, nothing more.
I sto
pped trying to get free of the two vampires. They swarmed over me, and in the mess of arms and legs and body fluids, I drew the Browning. I fired it point-blank into the rotted one's chest. She staggered, but didn't go down. Fangs sank into my back, and I screamed.
A gun exploded from across the room, but there was no time to look. Jason was suddenly there, pulling the blonde off me. I fired into the rotting skull of the brunette. She finally collapsed onto the floor in a puddle of liquid and jerking limbs.
I turned back to Jean-Claude and found him nearly prone on the floor, a pool of blood in front of him. He had one arm still held outward towards Janos.
Janos made a small, flicking motion, and blood flew in an arc from Jean-Claude's body. He collapsed to the floor, and power rushed outward, blowing back my hair. The world suddenly stank of rotting corpses.
I gagged and pulled the trigger on that long black body.
Janos turned. It seemed like slow motion, as if I had all the time in the world to aim and fire again, but somehow he was facing me when I pulled the trigger the second time. The bullet took him squarely in the chest. He staggered, but didn't go down.
I sighted on that round, skeletal head. His white hand came up and slashed the air. And impossibly, I felt like some invisible claw had slashed my arm. I fired, but my aim was a little off. The bullet grazed the side of his face.
He slashed at me again, and I saw blood start to drip down my hands. Scare tactics. It didn't hurt that much, not nearly as much as it would hurt if he got his hands on me for real.
A second gun sounded, and Janos staggered as a bullet took him in the shoulder. Larry was behind him, gun out.
My vision faded, as if fog was rolling in behind my eyes. I lowered my aim to the larger target of his upper body and pulled the trigger again. I heard Larry's bullet go high and wide into the wall behind me.
A startled, "Hey!" let me know Jason was still back there.
I saw Janos go for the door, like watching slow motion through a fog so thick I could barely see. I fired twice more and knew I hit him at least once. When he was out of the room I fell forward onto all fours, and waited for my vision to clear. Hoped it would clear.
Through my ruined vision I saw Jean-Claude still lying motionless in a pool of his own blood. The question that came into my head was, Is he dead? A stupid question about a vampire, but it was still the first thing I thought of.
I glanced behind me and found Jason scattering bits of the two female vampires around the floor. He was tearing at them with his bare hands, cracking their bones and throwing them far away from each other, as if by sheer destruction he could wash away what they'd done to him.
Bruce lay on his back by the wall. Blood had soaked into his tuxedo. I couldn't tell for sure, but he looked dead. Ivy and Kissa were nowhere to be seen.
Larry was still standing across the room, gun extended, as if he didn't realize that Janos was gone. He was frowning. Everybody was up, everybody was moving except Jean-Claude. Shit.
I crawled towards him, not trusting myself to stand with my vision so spotty. It seemed to take a long time to reach him, as if more than my eyesight wasn't working quite right.
My vision was mostly clear by the time I got to him. I knelt in a thick pool of his blood and stared down at him. How do you tell if a vampire is dead? Sometimes he didn't have a pulse, or a heartbeat, or didn't breathe. Shit, again.
I holstered the Browning. There was nothing here right now to shoot, and I needed my hands. I bled on my shirt and looked at my hands for the first time. It looked like fingernails had scraped down both of them, a little deeper than normal, but they'd heal. Probably wouldn't even be a scar.
I touched Jean-Claude's shoulder and the flesh was soft, very human. I rolled him over onto his back. His hand flopped against the floor with a bonelessness that only the dead have. Some trick of the night had made his face beautiful again. The most human I'd ever seen it, except for the fact that no one was that pretty.
I checked for the big pulse in his neck. I held my fingers against his cooling skin, and felt nothing. Something like tears welled against my eyes, and my throat was tight. But I wouldn't cry, not yet. I wasn't even sure I wanted to.
When is dead, dead for a vampire? Is there such a thing as CPR for the undead? Hell, he breathed some of the time. He had a heart, and it beat most of the time. Not beating couldn't be a good thing.
I positioned his head, pinched his nose closed, and blew a breath into his mouth. His chest rose with it. I tried two more breaths, but he didn't breathe on his own. I unbuttoned his shirt and found the spot above his breastbone, and pressed, one, two, three, four, all the way to fifteen compressions. Two breaths.
Jason staggered over to me, then collapsed to his knees. "Is he gone?"
"I don't know." I pumped with everything I had in me, hard enough to break ribs on a human being, but he wasn't human. He lay there, his body moving only when I moved it, as loose and boneless as only the dead can be. His lips were half-parted, his closed eyes edged with the black lace of his thick eyelashes. His curling black hair still framed his pale face.
I'd pictured Jean-Claude dead. I'd even thought about killing him myself once or twice, but now that his death was a fact I didn't know how to feel. It didn't seem fair somehow. I'd brought him here. I'd asked him to come, and he came. And now he was dead, well and truly dead. And it was partially my fault, partially my doing. If I killed Jean-Claude, I wanted to actually pull the trigger and watch his eyes as he died. Not like this.
I stared down at him. I thought about no more Jean-Claude. This beautiful body rotting at last in the grave it so richly deserved. I shook my head. I couldn't let that happen, not if I could save him. I only knew one thing that all dead respected, craved. Blood. I tried to breathe life into him one more time, with one difference. I smeared my blood on his mouth first. My lips touched his, and I tasted the sweet, metallic taste of my own blood.
Nothing.
Larry knelt beside us. "Where did Janos go?"
He hadn't been able to see through the fog, but I didn't have time to explain. "Watch the door; shoot anything that comes through."
"Can I let the girls go?"
"Sure." I'd forgotten about the girls. I'd forgotten about Jeff Quinlan. I'd have traded them all for Jean-Claude to blink his eyes at me. Not if the choice had been offered to me as an either-or, but just now they were strangers. He wasn't.
"More blood, maybe," Jason said softly.
I looked at him. "You offering?"
"Neither of us can feed him back to full strength without dying, but I'll help," he said.
"You fed him once tonight already. Can you donate twice?"
"I'm a werewolf. I heal quick. Besides, my blood has more kick to it than a human's, more power."
I really looked at him then. He was covered in slime. A big black smear covered most of one cheek. His blue eyes didn't look wolfish; they looked haunted, hurt. There are things that harm a lot more than physically.
I took a deep breath and slid one of my knives out of its sheath. I sliced my left wrist. The pain was sharp and immediate. I placed the wound against Jean-Claude's lips. Blood welled into his mouth. Blood filled his mouth like wine pouring into a cup. It seeped out the corner of his mouth and slid down his cheek. I stroked his throat to make him swallow the blood.
How he'd laugh to know I'd finally opened a vein for him. More blood spilled from his unresponsive lips. Dammit.
I breathed into his mouth and got a taste of my own blood. I made his chest rise, breathing in my own blood. I thought one word at him: Live, live, live.
A shudder ran through the body. The throat convulsed, swallowed. I pulled back from him. He caught my wrist as I moved it back from his chin. His grip hurt. I could feel that unnatural strength that could break bone. His eyes were still closed; only the grip on my wrist let me know we were making progress.
I put a hand on his chest. He wasn't breathing on his own yet. No heartbeat. Was that bad? Go
od? Indifferent? Hell, I didn't know.
"Jean-Claude, can you hear me? It's Anita."
He raised up in a small motion and pressed my bleeding wrist to his mouth. He bit me, and I gasped. He used both hands to press my wrist to his mouth and sucked me. In the middle of sex it might have felt good; now it just hurt.
"Damn," I said.
"What's wrong?" Larry asked.
"It hurts," I said.
"I thought it was supposed to feel good," the blonde girl said.
I shook my head. "Not unless you're under hypnotic control."
"How long will this take?" Larry asked.
"As long as it takes," I said. "Watch the door."
"Which one?"
"Oh, hell, just shoot anything that comes through it." I was feeling lightheaded. How much had he drunk?
"Jason, I'm getting a little woozy here." I tried to pull my wrist free, but his hands were like iron forged to my skin. "I can't get him off."
Jason pulled at the pale hands, but couldn't budge them. "I could tear the fingers off one at a time and get you loose, but..."
"Yeah, Jean-Claude would be pissed." Dizziness was coming in waves, nausea starting to build in the pit of my stomach. I had to get him off me.
"Let go of me, Jean-Claude. Let go of me, dammit!"
His eyes were still closed, his face blank. He fed like a baby with single-minded determination, but this baby was draining my life away. I could feel it going down my arm. My heart was beginning to pound in my ears as if I'd been running, pumping the blood faster. Feeding him faster. Killing me faster.
Spots were dancing in front of my eyes. The darkness beginning to eat the light. I drew the Browning.
"What are you doing?" Jason asked.
"He's going to kill me."
"He doesn't know what he's doing."
"I'll still be dead."
"Something's moving around at the head of the stairs," Larry called.
Great. "Jean-Claude, let go of me, now!"
I pressed the barrel of the gun to the flawless skin of his forehead. Darkness was eating my vision in great moving bites. Nausea burned up my throat.
Bloody Bones ab-5 Page 25
