Sex, Lies, and Vampires do-3

by Кейти Макалистер

  "You must resist the glamour," he answered, pushing me backward through the crowd. "It is meant for the others. We have much to do tonight, Nell."

  "Yes, much," I purred, rubbing myself against him, feeling wickedly sensual. An overpowering swell of emotion rose within me, a need to touch him, to hold him deep inside me.

  His eyes went sapphire at my words, but he held me off his chest when I would have wrapped myself around him. "Business first, Hasi. Later I will allow you to perform all those wicked acts you are imagining."

  "I can imagine a lot of wicked acts," I warned, quivering with the need to touch him, to possess him. My body was sensitized with a heightened awareness that left the very touch of clothing against my flesh an intolerable irritation. The only thing I wanted touching me was Adrian. I tugged at buttons on my jacket, throwing it to the floor as Adrian backed me through the seemingly solid mass of dancers. Others brushed against me, but it was only Adrian's touch I wanted, only his body that mine craved. I ran my hands over my belly, up to my breasts, imagining they were his hands stroking me as I ripped off my sweater.

  Adrian paused long enough to pluck both my sweater and jacket off the floor. "Hasi, look at me. You must fight the glamour. It is making you feel things you will later regret."

  "I want you, Adrian. I want you right now. I could never regret that. Make love to me, my darling. Make love to me now!"

  He swore under his breath as he pushed me through the crowd until another door stood before us, this one painted red with a sign marked Private. He knocked while I wrapped my arms around him, nuzzling his neck and rubbing my hips against him in blatant invitation. "I want to feel you inside me, Adrian. I want to feel you hard and hot and deep inside me. I want to feel every inch of you pressed against me, our flesh sliding together, your body pumping into mine."

  My hand slid down his chest to the fly of his jeans. The cloth was tight, bulging with the strain of holding him in, his body shaking with the effort to restrain himself. His hand covered mine, intending to remove it from his groin, but at the touch of his fingers I felt his desire and need as I caressed the hard, thick length of him. Passion rose within him along with a terrible hunger, the blackness that still remained in him gone red with arousal.

  "Love me," I breathed, tugging his hair until his mouth descended toward mine.

  He scooped me up in his arms, his lips hot on mine as he kissed me.

  "Has it been so long that you did not remember to ward yourself before entering the lounge?" a voice asked behind Adrian. His body stiffened as his lips parted from mine, but before I could protest the action, we were in a small room, the sound of the door closing behind us cutting through the red wave of need as effectively as if someone had thrown ice water on me.

  Adrian set me down, silently handing me my sweater and jacket.

  "Crap!" I squealed, grabbing both and pulling them on without meeting anyone's eyes. I vaguely remembered that a glamour was some sort of magical compulsion that could be bound to something audible or visible—like a piece of art or music—but I had no idea that it could be such a powerful thing, even away from its direct influence. My body tingled with the remainder of the glamour-induced lust.

  "This must be your Beloved. You are welcome in my house, Nell."

  I buttoned the last button on my jacket and forced myself to look at the woman who ushered us into the room. I don't know what I had expected a Welsh spirit to look like, but she looked as normal as any other red-headed, freckled, buxom woman in a tight scarlet dress that exactly matched the color of the door. She smiled a bit wryly, gesturing with a languid hand toward the room beyond. "I'm sorry Adrian didn't prepare you for that. It is a little bit of silliness, but the locals seem to enjoy it."

  I gritted out a smile and a brief apology for my little striptease before glaring at Adrian.

  "It has never affected me before," he shrugged, peeling off his coat and setting his satchel on a nearby black and red chair. "I did not think precautions were needed."

  Gigli smiled, and I warmed up to her despite my embarrassment over almost ravishing Adrian in public. "You did not feel it before because you had not found your Beloved. Your emotions for her are what leave you vulnerable to the glamour. Please, sit down and tell me how I can be of help."

  I sat in a black leather chair. Adrian stood behind me, his body language expressing unease and discomfort. "I have nothing to offer you in payment for your help, Gigli."

  Her smile turned rueful. "You have done much to help me in the past without demanding payment, Adrian. I am happy I will be able to pay off my debt to you, although I must warn you, I do not have much cash. My clientele demands only the best, and just last week I had to fly in an entirely new group of sylphs after the last girls decided to form a union and start their own house." She snorted disgustedly. "After all I did for them, that was how they repaid me!"

  Adrian frowned. "I'm sorry about your labor problems, Gigli, but—"

  "Ungrateful, selfish sylphs," Gigli stormed. "You would think they'd have felt some loyalty to me, but no, they stayed long enough to learn what it takes to entertain a poltergeist, then poof! Off they went to start a rival house."

  "Poltergeists?" I asked, my eyebrows shooting upward as I looked at Adrian.

  "They took their costumes, too. Do you have any idea how expensive it is to clothe sylphs? It's all sheer silk this and gossamer lace that."

  "Gigli's clientele," Adrian answered my question, a black frown settled on his brow.

  "And they took my spectral whips. The price of those have positively skyrocketed ever since the poltergeists learned they served as an aphrodisiac."

  "Really?" I slid a glance toward the door, the memory of the entwined bodies still fresh in my mind. "Those were poltergeists out there? Huh. They didn't look ghostly at all."

  "That's because they aren't. Gigli uses the lounge as a cover for her real clients."

  "The poltergeists," I said, trying to look as if there were nothing out of the ordinary in the idea of a whorehouse for ghosts.

  "Exactly."

  "They pay extremely well," Gigli added, evidently having worked out her tirade on the mutinous sylphs. "Not in money, of course, because everyone knows poltergeists have no head for any form of treasure, but they are expert kobold catchers. The market here for tamed kobolds is incredible."

  "Kobolds?" I asked, trying not to look too stupid.

  "A form of house imp," Adrian answered. "If we can get back to the point—"

  "Very popular amongst the affluent set," Gigli said in a confidential tone. "A fully matured kobold can fetch anywhere from four thousand euros up. You can see why it pays to keep the poltergeists happy."

  "Of course I can," I agreed, wondering if now was the point where my head exploded from all the strange things I had seen or heard about in the last seventy-two hours. "It makes perfect sense. You have to buy sylphs so the poltergeists can get it on with them, thereby obligating them into hunting kobolds for you. What's not to understand?"

  Adrian's hand descended upon my shoulder, squeezing it gently. "Gigli, you're frightening Nell."

  "I'm not frightened. Disturbed, yes, I'm disturbed within a hairbreadth of going stark raving mad, but I'm not frightened."

  "We need two tickets to London," Adrian said, ignoring both the rising note in my voice and Gigli's attempt to smother laughter. "If you can provide us with them, I will consider your debt to me paid."

  "Done," she said, lifting a black phone from the black glass desk that sat diagonally in a corner. She punched a few numbers, covering the mouthpiece to add, "I will need your passport numbers."

  I looked at Adrian. He looked at Gigli.

  "What?" she asked, her red brows pulling together slightly. "Don't tell me you don't have your passport!"

  "I have mine," Adrian said slowly, his gaze dipping to where I sat.

  "But mine got left behind in Christian's castle."

  Gigli set the phone back on its cradle, her gray eye
s suddenly hard and assessing as she looked me over carefully before turning to Adrian. "Christian? C.J. Dante?"

  He nodded sharply.

  "If you don't have your passport, how did you cross from the Czech Republic into Germany?"

  "Adrian used me to do a mind push on the conductor on the train, which worked great, even though I had no idea how to make someone do what I wanted them to do just by giving them a mental shove, but…" I gnawed on my lower lip and slid him a quick glance. His face was frozen, his eyes locked on Gigli. "But I had a bit of an accident in the Cologne train station, and we can't do that again."

  "Can you not have Dante send you the passport?"

  "Are you kidding?" My lips curled into a jaded smile as Adrian's fingers tightened on my shoulder. "Christian wants to see us dead. I don't think he's going to help us escape Germany."

  She sucked in her breath, her eyes huge as she turned them on Adrian. "You did not mention that Dante is the Dark One pursuing you."

  Pain radiated from under Adrian's grip. I touched his fingers, wordlessly asking him to loosen his hold. He did so immediately, rubbing the sore spot as he answered Gigli. "Does it matter who is trying to find us? We still need to get to London."

  "But this changes everything. Dante is"—she spread her hands wide in a gesture of helplessness—"very resourceful. You know that as well as I. The airport will be the first place he looks for you. This is not merely a matter of booking you on a flight to London. If you insist on flying, you must have new identities, and I cannot help you with that."

  I stood up, twining my fingers through Adrian's. Frustration raged in an angry swirl around him, wrapping me in its embrace until I thought I would scream at the obstructions that seemed to block our every move. "Look, I realize we're asking a lot, and I don't have much I can offer in return, but I can withdraw some money from my retirement fund—"

  "Money," she said, snorting at the idea. "What good is money? It is used only in the mortal world, and I keep my contacts with that to a minimum."

  "A big bucket of cash sure would come in handy right about now," I snarled, immediately ashamed that my bad mood had caused me to lash out at someone who was trying to help us. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean that. It's just that it's important that we get to London. Very important. And we'll do almost anything to get there, so whatever it will take—money, information, kobolds, whatever—we'll get it just so long as we're on a plane in the next couple of hours."

  Adrian disentangled his fingers from mine, wrapping both his arms around me as he pulled me back against his chest. "Who do you know who can make us new identities?"

  Gigli had pursed her lips at my outburst, softening the look to a thoughtful moue as I'd pleaded with her. Her lips relaxed into their normal full lines now as she eyed us. "Seal."

  I leaned back against Adrian, exhausted and too overwhelmed to cope anymore. "Trained or harbor?" I asked.

  "The man who can help you is named Seal," she answered, looking away quickly. "He will be able to make you both new passports."

  "At what cost?" Adrian asked, his voice rumbling deep in his chest.

  She wouldn't meet his eyes. "That is between you and him. I cannot help you there. Once you have the passport numbers, I will arrange for you to be on the next flight to London."

  I had a bad feeling about this guy Seal, but didn't see that we had much choice. Adrian's frustration was still spilling onto me, joining with my own impatience and leaving me edgy and more than a little jumpy. Gigli wrote down the directions to Seal's apartment while I rubbed my arms, trying to quell the sense of disaster that seemed to grow stronger with each second that we were stuck in Germany.

  Before we left, Gigli gave me an odd look, then unlocked a steel filing cabinet, pulling out a small green book which she offered to me.

  "What's this?" I asked, flipping through it. It was in Latin, filled with diagrams and brief explanations along with what appeared to be very bad poetry. I translated a few sentences, surprised when I realized they weren't poems… they were spells.

  "It is a book of charms. As you can see, it's not very old, and thus not worth much on the resale market. I thought you might like to have it, as you are a Charmer."

  I smiled and handed the book back to her. "Thanks, but no thanks. I know that no one but Adrian believes me, but my Charming skills are pretty much limited to a couple of wards."

  "How do you know what you can do until you have tried?" she asked, her lips curving in a smile.

  Unbidden, the image of Beth's bleak grave rose in my mind. I grimaced and looked away. "Trust me, I know."

  Chapter Twelve

  "Do you know this guy Seal?" I asked as Adrian and I hurried toward the nearest intersection, where we stood a better chance of finding a taxi.

  "I have heard of him," he answered. His voice was flat, but as soon as I slid my fingers around his wrist I could feel what he had been trying to hide—intense, profound worry. "He is a forger of some repute, a mortal, but one who has dealings with immortals."

  A taxi zoomed to a stop as if it had read Adrian's mind. I slid into the back seat, waiting until Adrian had given the address before snuggling up to him, asking softly, "Why did I hear an unspoken but in that last sentence?"

  His arm tightened around me. "When I heard of him last, he was mixed up with the Eisenfaust, an offshoot of the German Mafia."

  "He sounds like a delightful individual." I gave his ear a quick kiss, just because it deserved it. "But if it comes down to you against him, my money's on you."

  "I am not concerned with beating him in a fight," Adrian said, his eyes a bright cerulean that promised so much. "I am worried about what payment he will ask."

  "Well, I've told you how much I can raise. If he asks for more than that, just flash a little fang. I bet that'll knock a couple of grand off his price."

  Seal turned out to be an emaciated man whose skin—the color of very milky coffee—was stretched tightly across his bony frame, making me think of him as sort of an animated skeleton. The entire five minutes we were in his apartment, the skin under one eye ticked constantly, but it was the jittery, slightly unfocused look in his muddy eyes that screamed serious drug addict.

  "What do you want?" he asked in impolite German through the barely opened door after Adrian had pounded on it for three minutes.

  "Gigli sent us. She said you could help us."

  The eye peeping out at us narrowed as it examined first Adrian, then me. "A Dark One and a human. What sort of help do you want?"

  "I prefer to not discuss my business in public," Adrian said. I nodded, holding firmly onto his arm while giving the hallway behind me a suspicious glare. I swore I saw something small and rodentlike move under one of the many piles of garbage that had been scattered down the dirty passage.

  Seal's shadow moved behind the door as it closed, the sounds of several chains scraping across it as he unlocked it. His head popped out to peer around us.

  "Come in, come in," he said quickly, pulling us through the door before he slammed it shut, locking in fast succession three dead bolts, four chains, and a metal brace designed to keep a door from being kicked in. "Now you will tell me what business you want of me."

  Adrian frowned as he glanced around the room. It, like our host, was threadbare and shabby, hinting of days of glory long past. Dingy wallpaper peeled off the walls, bits of it drooping onto a sad, shapeless armchair. Two and a half plastic chairs sat around a small linoleum table that held an extensive array of printing equipment—probably worth more than the entire apartment building. No wonder Seal was serious about keeping people out of his digs.

  Adrian pulled out one of the plastic chairs for me, removing the plate of furry French fries and a half-eaten burger so I could sit. "We need to get to London without anyone knowing our identities. How quickly can you make us passports?"

  "How quickly do you need to be there?" Seal spoke in clipped German, almost as fast as Adrian. I lumbered along behind them both linguistically,
German not being a language with which I'm very familiar, trying to follow the conversation without getting too lost.

  "Before dawn."

  Seal shook his head without even glancing at the cracked and broken clock that clung drunkenly to the wall over the table. "Impossible. It takes at least three days to make a passport that can get through international security."

  "We don't have three days. We need to leave tonight." The muscles in Adrian's jaw tensed. I touched his arm, more as a way to remind him not to lose his temper with the forger than to assess how angry he was.

  "That is no concern of mine. I'm telling you how long it will take me to make the passports."

  "Do you have any idea who I am?" Adrian snarled, his fangs flashing wickedly sharp as he grabbed a handful of the stained T-shirt that drooped off Seal's chest, lifting him up and slamming him against a wall. A tendril of wallpaper drifted down at the impact, following in the path of a piece of disattached plaster.

  "Yes, you're a Dark One," Seal squeaked, his arms and legs flopping around helplessly as Adrian held him a good foot off the ground. "A very big Dark One."

  "I am the Betrayer," Adrian answered, his voice a low hiss that promised retribution if he was crossed. "I do not have three days."

  "I might be able to do it in one," Seal gasped as Adrian lifted him higher against the wall. "Tonight! I could have it for you tonight! Twelve hours, that's the fastest I can make them."

  Adrian snarled and let go of the man, who promptly fell in a whimpering heap. "To delay an extra day does not please me."

  "Twelve hours is the fastest." Seal dragged himself to his feet, dusting off already filthy pants and unbunching his dirty tee with an odd sort of dignity. "It's not just a matter of putting pictures on existing documents. First I must find the names of people who've died recently, in order for the computers to register a history. Then I must create the holograms, and those take time. Twelve hours is barely enough time to do the background research, but as you are in such a hurry, I will make an exception for you."