by Maren Smith
I know what she’s really asking. Of all the people in the world, why did I kill her twin?
Except I didn’t. A man can only proclaim his innocence for so long before he starts to sound guilty, even to himself.
I smile and choose instead to deliberately misunderstand.
“I chose Jez,” I muse, for the first time in centuries actually attempting to dissect my own hunting process for the elusive ‘why’. Why does one darling deer seem tastier than another? I land on the answer, and although I know it won’t please her, I give it to her anyway. “Because she fell quite drunkenly into my lap.” And why not just say it? After all, I did promise her the truth. And since I do plan to strip it from her mind afterward, why not—as they say—bare all? “I was too hungry at the time to say no, and she was every bit my preference.”
“Helpless?” Merris guessed, her gray eyes flaming with indignation.
“Lovely,” I reply. “A bit shorter than I like, but curved in all the right places and, even more intoxicating, she was curious. She made me an offer I chose not to refuse.”
“She made you an offer.” Ah. I’ve pricked my puzzle’s curiosity. “What offer?”
“Anything I wanted for nothing more than the cost of a drink.”
She fights not to flinch, but I know that struck a nerve. She doesn’t want to believe her sister would be that foolish, but I was hardly the first Jez had made such an offer to, and it seems we both know it.
“Liar,” she says again, but she’s trembling.
“Frequently,” I agree. “But not about this. I’ve promised you the truth, and I’m content to give it. Our darling Jez did so like to party. She was an adventurous soul. Adventurous souls don’t often think about the consequences they provoke, especially when a dance or a kiss is all a pretty girl thinks she has to pay to keep the party going with one more drink in her hand. So, I bought her a drink—a strawberry vodka lemonade. She was rather fond of them.”
She’s fighting to hold my stare. “And you put something in it.”
My puzzle pricks my curiosity again. “No, why would I? She’d already promised me anything, and you and I both know Jez was fantastically, shall we say, enthusiastic about keeping such promises.” Folding my arms on the table, I lean towards her again. “Her only mistake that night—”
“The night you killed her,” she accused.
“No, no, no.” I brush that aside with a wave of one hand. “None of this happened the night she died, this was weeks earlier. You asked why I chose her. I chose her because I was bored, and hungry, and she fell into my lap. At which point, she promptly wrapped an arm about my neck and nibbled my ear. Being something of an ear nibbler myself, it got my attention. That is why I chose her.”
The pulse at the base of Merris’s neck jumps, and for just a moment, her eyes go strange. Unfocused. Her breath catches and beneath the thin cloth of her little black dress, the tips of her nipples bead up like pebbles. I don’t often notice such things. Nipples are pretty, but after almost nine hundred years, I’ve seen my share. These days, when I gaze lovingly upon a human body, all I see are artery pathways. I’ve already mapped Merris’s out—neck, inner thigh, clitoris.
I’ll bet she has a tasty clit.
I can all but taste the swollen nub growing beneath the lash of my attentive tongue and it’s all I can do not to salivate.
“My sister was not a prostitute,” she breathes, blinking back the sheen of angry tears.
There it is again. That awkward, sympathetic feeling rising in my chest. The one that makes me want to spare her the additional hurt. I don’t. She wants to know, so I’ll tell her. When it’s over, though, I’ll be kind. I’ll take away the pain and fill her head with happy thoughts instead, sending her back out into the world without a trace of suspicion left to unquiet her restless soul.
“We’re all prostitutes,” I gently correct. “Look at me. I paid your sister a drink for what she gave me. Look at you,” I press, even more gently. “What would you not pay right here, right now, to find out what that was?”
She glares at me, her brow creased with equal measures hate and despair. She looks away, but almost as fast, her gaze locks once more on mine with a renewed glint of determination rolling in the stormy depths. “What do you want?”
I pretend to think about it. “Offer me what she did, and I’ll not just tell you what happened, I’ll show you.”
Her eyes flash. “I am not a prostitute either.”
I tsk. “I didn’t sleep with your sister any more than I killed her.” And then, just in case she wanted to squabble over semantics, added, “I didn’t fuck her either.”
Her pretty cheeks pinken. I don’t think she wants to know, and yet she can’t seem to stop herself. “What did she give you?”
“An hour of her time.” The hunter in me cues in on every subtle nuance of her wavering expression as I add, “In which, she gave me anything I asked of her.”
Her eyes narrowed. “But not sex?”
“What we shared was far more intimate, I promise you.” I smile. “Are you intrigued?”
“Not even close.”
“Naughty girl,” I chide. “Be careful I don’t take you over my knee for lying. You are absolutely intrigued.”
My little puzzle girl likes mystery every bit as much as I do. She’s practically squirming in her seat, trying to unravel all the hidden things I’m not saying. Leaning even closer, I lower my voice as much as the loud thumping music will allow and sweeten the pot. “Everything she gave me, she gave right here in this building. Darling, we’ll barely have to leave the room.”
Shoving away from the table, she leans back in her seat, probably because it’s the only escape she can take without actually running away. She glares at me. “She wasn’t found in this building.”
Oh, we are stubbornly one-track-minded when we want to be.
“Merris,” I say with exaggerated patience. “I already told you. I’m not talking about the night she died. I’m talking about the night we met. If you want to know what happened the night she died, I’ll happily tell you that too, but you won’t understand the latter event if you don’t understand the first. Yes or no, my darling would-be prostitute, albeit of the infinitely more fascinating intellectual variety. How badly do you want to know the answers to your questions?”
She really is innocent. She has no idea how easy it is to read all the thoughts flitting across her expressive, young face. She doesn’t believe or trust me, but she wants to. She wants to find out more than anything, but she’s afraid of what she’ll learn.
“We don’t leave this building?” she asks.
She thinks the crowd in Club Toxic will keep her safe. She has no idea how many vampires have become aware of her since she walked into this room.
“Not so much as a step out the front door,” I reply, and I don’t even have to soothe my conscience because that is not a lie. The Dungeon can’t be accessed from the street or the alleyway. It lies in the basement, and like a lamb to the proverbial slaughter, she’s going to follow me right to it.
Merris
I’m not running away from him. I’m going to the damn bathroom.
That’s what I tell myself as I walk as slowly as I possibly can, crossing the dark lounge floor, feeling eyes on me every step of the way.
“Girl, someone said you were dead,” one of the waitresses hisses as I stalk by her, but I don’t stay to talk. I duck my head, feeling sick to my stomach. Barely making it to the bathroom, I shove open the door and knock into a woman coming out.
“Hey!” she squawks, but I don’t stop.
Of the three bathroom stalls, only one isn’t occupied, and no sooner am I inside with the door slammed and locked behind me, then does my rolling stomach rebel. I barely get positioned in time, but nothing comes out. It’s just dry heaving that breaks down after the second gasp until I hang my head and sob.
Someone hesitantly knocks on the stall door.
“I’m fine,” I snap. Grabbing
wads of tissue on which to wipe my mouth and eyes, in as calm a voice as I’m able, I try again. “I just had too much to drink.”
Whoever it is, after a half-second’s pause, they go away. The sounds of the busy club outside this room get louder with the opening of the door, then they grow muffled again as the door drifts shut. Everything in the bathroom is quiet now. All I can hear is me—my ragged breathing, my pathetic sniffling, the battering of my pulse in my head, at war with the pulse of the bass in the club speakers.
What am I doing here?
What am I trying to accomplish?
I ought to leave right now and… and, what? Go tell the cops I found the owner of the face that haunts my dreams? That every night I see the way he gropes and touches my dead sister, and based on that evidence, what do I expect them to do? Because it’s far more likely to involve me in a psych-ward over him in a jail cell.
Pushing myself up off the floor, I lean back against the door and try to stop shaking. What am I doing here? If I really do think this man is responsible for Jez—and I do, I have to; my dreams are often confusing but they’ve never lied to me before—then what good will come from anything he tells me?
The details of what she gave him are so stark in my mind. I know he strips her naked. I know he chains her up, spreads her legs, lets his hand wander down between her legs in ways no one wants to see anyone be with their sister.
What good will come of following this man and hearing from his lips exactly what he did to her?
My hands shaking, I blow my nose one last time, throw the tissue in the toilet and then reach into my purse and turn my cellphone on. I’ve got a voice-recording app on here that lasts upwards of an hour. It’s useless out there where the music is so loud, but if I can get him to take me somewhere quieter, and I can get him to admit something worth taking to the police, then maybe, just maybe, I can put my sister’s killer behind bars.
It’s not like he can kill me in the middle of this crowded nightclub. So long as I don’t leave with him, I know I’ll be fine. I just have to keep it together long enough to get something damning out of him. I’ll go straight to the police afterward. Finally, they’ll have no choice but to do their jobs.
My sister wasn’t a whore.
Neither am I, but Aleron is right. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to catch his confession on a digital soundbite file.
Absolutely nothing.
Does that include fucking my sister’s killer? I steel myself for the possibility, tuck the phone down into an outside pocket of my purse where I hope it might have a better chance to pick up our conversation unnoticed, and I pray I won’t have to. But ‘nothing’ does mean nothing, and the weirdest thing happens in the pit of my belly at the thought of him touching me the way I keep seeing in my mind. I can tell myself it’s because just the thought of it makes me sick, but the truth is this doesn’t feel like revulsion.
Scrubbing my sweaty palms against my skirt-clad thighs, I walk back out of the bathroom.
Aleron is exactly where I left him, head tilted to one side, the corner of his devilish mouth curling as he watches me cross the floor back to him. I’m almost to him before he slides out of the booth and stands. He’s taller than I am, broader in the shoulders, and he looks far more powerful now that he’s on his feet than while he was sitting. His is an air of wealth, power, calm masculinity, and God… that smile.
My nipples react against my will. And that’s even before he holds out an arm as if to draw me in under his wing. I don’t get that close, but when he gestures for me to precede him, the touch of his hand settles light on my back, between my shoulder blades. He guides without words and I go where he tells me, the shortest route out between the crush of people crowding the tables in the lounge, around the periphery of the dance floor. I don’t realize he’s taking me to the coat closet until we draw abreast of the security guards and the subtle nudge of his hand changes my direction.
The guards look at us, but they make no move to stop him. Or me.
“I don’t have a coat,” I say, trying to hide my nervousness. I don’t know why we’d need it anyway. He already said we weren’t leaving the club.
I don’t even see what he touches, but suddenly a section of what I thought was solid wall has opened into blackness, revealing stairs that lead down.
That blackness stops me. My heart slams once against my chest wall and then I feel nothing, just the subtle brush of an air-conditioned breeze wafting up the staircase as he waits to see if I’ll… what, run screaming? I want to. Staring down into that darkness, I can’t imagine what awaits me at the bottom.
“You didn’t take her down here,” I say, hating the quiver of fear I can’t hide in my voice.
“I did,” he countered, and I can hear both the amusement and the challenge in his as he adds, “She came most willingly… repeatedly, even, although I’m generally not one to boast.”
As if my brain needs the reminder. The visions haven’t been far from my thoughts from the moment I came here tonight. I move forward, resting a hand for balance on the cool wall as I step down into the shadows of the stairwell. The light from above bleeds down into inky nothingness, from which I just barely detect… muffled sounds. Whimpers. Moans. The distant clap of skin striking skin, not sharp or loud, but softly.
Sex?
“Don’t be afraid,” he coaxes from behind me. “I promise, my darling Merris, nothing down there will hurt you.”
“Except you?” I challenge. My response makes him laugh, a low throaty chuckle that both shivers me and makes my nipples pebble harder.
“I’m not down there yet.”
And here I’d have thought it smarter to assure me he wouldn’t hurt me. Nervous as I am, I don’t realize I’ve said that out loud until Aleron laughs again.
“Oh, but I promised I wouldn’t lie. Nothing but the truth,” he reminds. “However, if it makes you feel better, I promise nothing I do will prevent you from walking back out of here when we are done, your questions all answered to the best of my knowledge, and I won’t lay one hand on you until you ask me to.”
I snap around to stare at him, eyes narrowing at the way he’s watching me. A predator herding me down into the dark.
What would you pay…
For my sister? I face the bottom of the steps again and, steeling myself against the black, down I go.
The narrow high heels of my shoes descending the steps send echoes back up through the stairwell. The light from above doesn’t want to follow us down. With every step, I am losing my ability to see. Already this flight of stairs seems far longer than any normal flight should be. How far I am from the bottom, I don’t know, but I stop when he taps my shoulder.
“I’m going to reach past you,” he cautions.
The bare flesh all up and down my arms prickle, sending shivers across the back of my neck a half second before I feel the brush of his coat. A latch clicks and suddenly the blackness is broken by the opening of a door. The light down here is dim, but at least there is light, and God help me, does it ever set a mood.
I have never been in such a place before, but I know automatically exactly what this is. The basement of Club Toxic is a dungeon. Not as in castle or prison, but as in BDSM and… yes, okay, prison. The music here is darker, deeper, rhythmic bass thumpings that make my heart beat along in nervous time. The light strips along the ceiling cast red-bulb illumination on the strangest of furniture. A giant wooden X, a variety of padded benches, a steel cage in one corner, and black-painted walls studded with massive steel rings from which one woman is already tied.
Wrists bound, she is stripped as naked as Jez in my dreams. Facing the wall, she grips the ring while the equally naked man behinds her slashes at her back, again and again, with a multi-tailed flogger. The sound of it striking her makes me jump. Her answering moan, however, goes straight through me, igniting dull pulses of fire in key places that I am not at all comfortable feeling. My breasts grow heavy as my breath catches in my throat. My mus
cles tighten, pussy clenching sharply even as heat flows molten all the way down to dampen the crotch of my panties.
Before I can stop myself, I move closer and almost walk right into that man’s swinging flogger.
Aleron catches my arm, pulling me back before I’m caught by those slapping tips, but I feel the rush of air as they fly harmlessly past me. Flinching another step back, I bump into Aleron even as the man, catching my retreat from the corner of his eye, glances back at us. He checks his distance automatically, his shadowed gaze moving over me even as he frowns.
“Your pardon,” Aleron says, anything but apologetic. When he pulls, I follow and we move away. “Dimitri likes to play by the door,” he tells me, his voice low against my ear. “He enjoys catching the unwary on a backswing when they least expect it.”
Dimitri and his naked woman aren’t our only company in this place, though. Passing a doorway, I hear the unmistakable sound of vigorous sex—the wet slapping, the moaning, the hungry suckling of a mouth breaking suction with skin to the muffled accompaniment of a mewl of disappointment. And in the very back, on a raised dais under the glow of another strip of red lights, a man is chained to a ceiling hoist, pulled high up onto tiptoes while a woman kneels, breasts bared, her dress a puddle of silver sequins and white cloth around her waist. Her mouth attentively works his high-standing cock. She wears a collar, just like the workers upstairs, and behind the man she’s working on, a taller man moves into position at his back. Taking hold of the chained man’s throat, he adjusts himself with his other hand and before my astonished eyes, tension ripples the chained man’s body as he’s invaded from behind.
Pain and pleasure warble his long groan as the taller man begins to pump. He is not gentle. The hoist clinks, jostling with each hard thrust, and the woman’s actions escalate to match. As if on cue, the tall man and woman both bite and the chained man stiffens with a shout. His whole body shakes in orgasm, and I can’t look away. Not even when Aleron takes my arm, drawing me stumbling through a velvet curtain into a very dark, semi-private alcove.
