Rampant, Volume 2

by Amy Lane

  “I was going to sing tonight,” I said disingenuously. “Would you like to hear me?”

  The guy laughed without breathing—and without laughing, really. It was a dry-gravel growl of a sound. “You might not live that long. You’re not in a Starbucks, sweetheart, and your pretty little girlfriend isn’t going to protect you either….”

  The guy put his hand on my arm, and Bracken said, “I’m not?” with a pleasant smile even as he grabbed the guy’s wrist with enough veiled granite-and-tree-root strength to break even a vampire’s bone.

  Well, shit. Toothless was wearing a sleeveless denim jacket and nothing else, and I could see that the guy had one of our marks—a tree on his chest that was half-oak and half-lime, bearing skulls as fruit. Nice, and we could use it to compel his actions—but if we did that, we’d be letting the entire world know exactly who we were, and it was still just a little too early for what we had planned. We were going to have to do this dirty and old-school. My heart was pumping in my throat, and I got a notch more buzzed as adrenaline flooded my senses.

  When the guy’s eyes swung to Bracken, I cleared my throat and touched his chin, and then stared into his eyes. He tried to spell me. Most vampires and all of the elves could do it, but this guy wasn’t very good at it. Green had been telling me for nearly two years that I was strong enough to resist him and Bracken, if I really wanted to.

  This night I learned that he was right.

  Toothless’s eyes whirled. I raised my eyebrows, still keeping it cute. “Jeepers, Mister—those are some really red eyes. Would you like some Visine for those?”

  Our guy scowled, and Bracken’s grip tightened, and a little bit of blood began to leak from Toothless Badass’s skin where Bracken called it—and for the first time, it registered that maybe we weren’t fuzzy plump little bunnies ready to be stew.

  Not a bright guy, really.

  “Tell you what’s gonna happen, Chuckles,” I simpered. “You’re going to go back in that corner and watch me perform, and you’re even going to clap when I do it. And if you try to raise a hand to me—or to anybody who wears my mark or who’s defenseless against you—your brains are going to gel, putrefy, and run out of your nose. Do we have a deal?”

  I put a lot of power in my voice, but it was subtle. People looked up from their drinks, the guy on the stage singing Kenny Rogers stuttered, and Walter our young vampire friend tripped behind the bar and thunked down on his knees—but nobody looked at me and Toothless Badass or my frightening sidhe lover who was sealing this power with vampire blood.

  The guy nodded, and Bracken released him. He moved backward into the shadows—behind, even, the shape-shifter table he’d so disdained earlier. Bracken wiped his hand on a bar napkin and carefully threw it behind the counter. There were enough couples in the shadows sharing a vampire snack that the blood didn’t attract too much attention, but it’s never a good idea to just be wandering around with blood on your hands. Brack grimaced and looked at his hand again, then jerked a thumb toward the men’s room. I nodded.

  I’d stay right here until either my name was called or he got back.

  As he disappeared behind the swinging door, a midsized, lean Hispanic vampire who had probably died in his early thirties rounded the hallway as though he was coming out of the back offices. He was dressed snappily in black jeans and a mandarin-collared red silk shirt—and he was looking around the room sniffing, probably for the preternatural power release I’d just engineered.

  I looked away before he could see me watching him, and at that moment, Nicky fought his way through the crowd. The guy doing Kenny Rogers was belting out the last lines of “Lucille,” and Nicky leaned in close to talk to me.

  “The paper had some sort of geas on it for a true name. I used ‘Corinne Kirk’—you think that’s okay?”

  I grinned. “Perfect.” Sometimes it helped to have six names.

  We sat in silence for a moment, and I scanned the crowd again for my guys. We’d done tricky things with gauntlets, Hawaiian shirts, and artistically ripped sleeves, so not everybody was wearing a sport coat like Max—which was good, because it would have looked like a mob uniform in the ninety-degree heat that still saturated the air. I risked a glance at Rafael and saw him still sniffing, trying to put a marker on the change that had rent the atmosphere.

  That he couldn’t was a score for us.

  Bracken came out of the bathroom, casually edging an inch or two away from the head vampire as he spotted me and walked over. He got to me and, without turning around, flickered his eyes. I shook my head silently. The glamour had held, and our guy hadn’t so much as blinked funny as my six-foot-eight-inch nonhuman lover came a cat’s whisker from running him over.

  It was a near thing. I stood between Bracken and Nicky, trying to look strong—so as not to alert the vampire predator radar—and yet unobtrusive, and I saw Rafael make note of the number of new people in the bar, many of them shape-shifters. But he hadn’t yet made me.

  Then there was a commotion outside, and I winced. Oh Goddess, Annette had found us. But she wasn’t screaming my name to try to get past the bouncers, she was screaming Nicky’s, and although the three of us couldn’t hide our winces—of distaste, of disgust, of sheer exasperation—Nicky was a common enough name. I could tell it was killing him not to respond, but he didn’t, and there was a sudden “eep” sound and then silence.

  A second later, Kyle walked in stoically. Although the deep-browed, sandy-haired vampire didn’t flash a single tell, I could tell he was resisting the impulse to look my way and nod his head.

  I took pity on him and initiated contact. “Is she totally gone?”

  “No.” The disgust in that one mental word could have smothered a cheeseburger in onions.

  “?” Now I had to resist the urge to wave my arms around—but at that moment, three things happened.

  The first was that my name was called for the next song, and I stepped forward with Bracken and Nicky in my wake as they moved into position.

  The second was that Marcus and Phillip entered, a furious and chastened Annette between them. Her nice updo was down around her shoulders, her black stockings had a run in them, and one of her false eyelashes was starting to come off, and I had to try really hard not to glare furiously at Phillip as I ran by them and pretended we didn’t know each other for just five more minutes.

  “What in the hell?” I asked while grinning and weaving through the tables.

  “She threatened to scream your name loud enough to make ashes stir up and become a vampire. Your geas won’t let us spell her for her own damned good or ours.”

  “When this is over, stuff her in someone’s trunk,” I ordered harshly—because the third thing was happening at that moment, and I needed to get up on stage.

  Rafael scented the air as soon as Marcus and Phillip entered. As I conversed with Phillip, I saw Marcus make eye contact with him. One quick glance behind me as I dodged a table and made it to the steps to the stage showed him mouthing “Corinne Kirk… Corinne Kirk…” to himself, even as his eyes widened with recognition of the two vampires walking in. Their marks were still hidden, but they were well known to be Adrian’s vampires.

  I got up on stage, grabbed the wireless mike, and stood there, trying not to pant, as the spotlight found me and the opening riff of the song began.

  I’ve always had this theory about what it takes to get people to pay attention to you when you get up on stage. It comes down to a bone-deep belief that what you have to say, do, or perform is so pure, so perfect, and so necessary to human existence that people have to listen.

  This is why a lot of crazy people get lemmings to follow them off cliffs and into the abyss of human evil—if a speaker believes what he’s saying/doing/performing with that much passion, it must be true, right?

  Now, personally, I know I can sing okay, and I can hit the notes, and my voice is all right—but I’m not Jimmy Hendrix or that lovely woman who blew everybody’s socks off on the British
talent show. I’m ordinary, and I’d never make it pro. But there was a rogue pedophile making child monsters, and a real chance for all-out war. I was new, I was mortal, and I had to show that I knew what I was doing, that I had power and people and I could get a room to follow me. There was a real chance of looking ridiculous here, and a real good reason why that couldn’t happen. Goddammit, I had to make an entrance here, I had to get the crowd on my side, in a very necessary, “what I am doing is for the greater fucking good, so listen, dammit!” sort of way.

  It’s probably the only time or place in my life when I have had the confidence to pull off the throaty-voiced slinkfest that followed.

  Rafael’s eyes grew “oh, shit” big, and he met Marcus’s smug look with an “oh, you gotta be shitting me” eye roll, and I launched into “Black Velvet” like I was possessed with the spirit of Alannah Myles even while she lived.

  It went pretty damned good, if I say so myself.

  We’d blocked it loosely so I could compensate for distance and tempo, but essentially, as I belted out the sultry, seductive song, I moved from table to table, exposing my people for who they were.

  I yanked Teague’s gauntlet off first, and he flexed his oak and lime covered wrist. Then I daintily placed Katy’s tattooed ankle in his lap. For Jack, I simply walked my fingers up his shirt and looked suggestively into his sardonic blue eyes. He shook his head, and I gave him Katy’s hand and then moved on. I stripped Max’s sport jacket, showing his skin under the backless tank, and then Renny’s scarf, showing the inkscape of her lower back. After Mario and LaMark’s Hawaiian shirts came off, revealing wreaths around their upper arms and shoulders, I moved to Kyle—who got an old shirt ripped to expose his bicep. Phillip and Marcus lost their leather jackets and then linked hands to show the same continuing design. Lambent needed his tank ripped off his body so we could see the lime tree and oak tree twining on his chest and throat, and then I had the last slow verse left to get to Bracken and Nicky.

  Nicky was on the stage, and he dropped his Hawaiian shirt himself, then fell to one knee. I tugged Bracken’s gauntlet slowly, stretching it out with the “pleeeeeeeeeaaase” at the end of the song, and stood while Nicky flexed his bicep around my thigh and rested his cheek against my hip. When I was done, Bracken flashed his tat with a nod of his head and then undid the clasp at my neck. I angled my back to the audience and looked at them over my shoulder so I could see the same dawning realization that had flickered in individuals at the exposure of every mark ripple through the crowd as a whole.

  When my tattoo was there in the spotlight, distinctive and irrevocable, with Bracken’s tattooed wrist spanning my waist, the music died—and all of Rafael’s people who knew anything knew who I was.

  There was a stunned, uncomfortable silence, and then Rafael inclined his head regally toward me and began clapping. His people followed uncertainly, and when the applause reached its peak, he stopped, held his fist to his heart, and bowed.

  There was some iron in the backs of many of the vampires, and a lot of water in the spines of the shape-shifters, but to a one, all of his people followed his lead.

  I bowed back the same way, and to a one—and with a lot more enthusiasm—my people turned toward Rafael and followed my lead.

  “Thank you for your hospitality, Rafael,” I said into the microphone when we had straightened. “Who’s got next?”

  The young deejay—a brown-haired shape-shifter, at my guess—took the microphone from my hand and rolled his eyes. That was going to be a tough act to follow, and we all knew it.

  “I think we’ll put on some music and take a break now, Lady Cory,” he said gamely, and I smiled. Bracken took my hand and led me from the stage.

  Up close, Rafael had stand-out cheekbones, full lips, and killer green eyes. He was, in fact, a poster boy for South American loveliness—probably by way of Brazil—and even I was not immune as he took my extended hand and raised it to his lips. I rolled my eyes—show-off.

  “Thank you so much for the show, my lady,” he said smoothly. “I can see why Andres calls you ‘Little Goddess.’”

  I flushed and pulled back my hand, and Bracken laughed a little. “Cory’s fine,” I told him. “Thank you for the show of solidarity. I know it couldn’t have been easy.”

  He inclined his head in acknowledgment. “Here I was, all secure in being the king of my little castle….” There was a self-mocking note to his voice, but also something deadly serious.

  “You still are,” I said sincerely. “We just need… a little help. A little information, that’s all.”

  He inclined his head, still not entirely at ease. “Well, in that case, let me buy you a drink. Walter?”

  Walter popped up from behind the bar, his lips pursed in good-natured acknowledgment of the fact that he’d been had. “Yes sir!”

  “Anything Lady Cory and her people want, on the house.” Rafael made a grand gesture, and I nodded my head thanks.

  “Walter,” I smirked, “I’ll have another virgin rum and Diet Coke, thank you.”

  Walter shook his head in mock irritation and then popped up with an irrepressible grin—dimples, fangs, and all. He must have been a fun kid, and I wondered what had happened to bring him here.

  Bracken ordered a Shirley Temple. Elves and sugar—it might be the only thing that got them giddy, but they had to drink a lot of it, and Rafael snagged a waitress and told her to take care of all of my people. I guess there could be no doubt about which ones were mine.

  I took a hearty swig of my soda and followed it up with the inevitable hiccup, and Bracken laughed. We exchanged a quiet glance of support—we’d pulled off our entrance, and now the really hard shit was up on the table. I looked up from my stone-and-shadow beloved and saw that Rafael was unbuttoning his sleeve and rolling it up his arm. There on his wrist, subdued against his caramel-colored skin, was his own mark—Green’s lime tree, my oak tree, and Adrian’s rose twining around them both.

  My smile was genuinely warm this time. Anyone who had Adrian’s rose had to have either known Adrian or had a certain quality of gentleness in him, and it was good to know where Rafael stood. I nodded.

  “We miss him,” I said quietly, and Rafael extended a fang and punctured his wrist right above his tat.

  “To Adrian,” he said in toast, and I blinked. I was relieved when I felt Bracken tracing a delicate finger on the skin of my wrist as he opened a capillary or two so we could do this civilized.

  “To Adrian,” I agreed and offered him my wrist in turn.

  I tasted first. I didn’t drink—mostly I just extended my tongue like a cat and lapped the black blood as it slowly welled up. I closed my eyes and smiled. Spice and beans—Mom’s cooking; his dog, a golden retriever, swimming at Whiskeytown on warm, sunny days; ice cream; the taste of a pretty girl’s smile; dusty old books that he had loved to read, had lived his life by. I don’t know what Rafael had died of, but his life had been sweet and peaceful, nestled in this notch between the foothills and the windswept plain of NorCal.

  I told him about his life while he breathed in the scent of my blood, and then he tasted from my wrist, a good solid pull before releasing it. He didn’t fall to his knees, but he did let out a quiet keen before fumbling to sit on a nearby stool, weaving as he put his hand against the bar. As a vampire queen, it was pretty much my best trick, and it was all in the taste of my blood.

  “Sunshine,” he said raggedly. “Ah, Goddess… sweet, sweet sunshine….” He closed his eyes in pain, and I watched him pinch the bridge of his nose as though that would stop the crimson trickle of vampire tears from running down his nose. When he looked up, his face was nostalgic and bleak with yearning for what he could no longer have.

  “Bless you, my lady,” he said huskily. “There is not much I wouldn’t do for the taste of your blood, willingly given, on the tip of my tongue.”

  I smiled weakly. I’d given a lot of blood this night, and I didn’t want to show how woozy I was. “Let’s wait until I ea
t a little protein,” I said chirpily, and Rafael smiled.

  “Of course. Walter? Some appetizers?” It was generous of him, but as Walter bustled away, I knew that this was my cue to get down to business.

  Or it would have been, had not that bitch-faced agent of fucking chaos not stomped up in her poor broken heels and screeched in my face.

  “You,” she hissed through smeared coral lipstick, “are so disgusting….”

  I glared at her and shoved a wad of power field in her mouth. She grunted for a moment or two and then glared at me impotently, tears starting in her eyes.

  “A friend of yours?” Rafael asked pointedly, and I cursed the girl all over again.

  “Not even a little tiny bit,” I said, iron creeping into my voice. “In fact, we were just going to go stuff her into the trunk of her car—right, Phillip?”

  Phillip nodded, then popped his fangs out and put on his feeding face, leering into Annette’s eyes until she started to cry. I sighed. He wasn’t usually the type to go out of his way to be nasty—one more sign that Gretchen’s time in his head was getting to him.

  “Marcus?” I said delicately, and Marcus tapped Phillip gently on the shoulder, the touch doing much to tone down Phillip’s irritation and make him back away. Marcus bumped him gently, shoulder to shoulder, and Phillip nodded. Together they grabbed the girl’s arms, hauling her off toward the night.

  “Would you like one of us to go get her?” Rafael asked, and because his blood was still tanging on my tongue, I knew what he was really asking.

  “No,” I said, regretting it. “We’ve been bound with power from helping her, but Nicky’s parents would be really pissed if we… uhm… lost her while she was here.” I shrugged, trying to be philosophical. “Well, you know, some in-laws bring ugly furniture, Nicky’s parents brought… that.”

  Apparently Annette heard me as she was being hauled away, snarling Nicky’s name through a mouthful of Cory-flavored nothing, because her eyes got big and real hatred poured off her. It didn’t deter Marcus or Phillip in the least.