by J. F. Lewis
I didn’t smell Ebony until she put her hand on my shoulder. She used to work in my club, before it exploded. Lady Gabriella’s face was momentarily overlaid on Ebony’s own when I looked up at her. “Take this one to refresh yourself,” Gabriella’s image said.
“Is this the vamp equivalent of offering the guest a Coke?” I asked as I turned.
She was dressed in white lingerie, the kind that showed a lot of leg but didn’t really give anything away. She and the outfit both looked expensive. Unfortunately for me, the nose knows. Ebony could give me all the come-hither looks she wanted to and I would still have smelled fear where excitement should have been. In the right mood, it might not have mattered. Sometimes it seems like Little Eric has more say in matters than I do, but not today. She was a distraction and nothing more.
“So Rachel works for Gabriella?” I asked, feigning anger. I would have been mad if I could have been mad. Maybe those drugs of J’iliol’lth’s were time-release or it could have just been run-of-the-mill mind alteration, courtesy of my would-be thrall, Rachel. I decided to fake it. “How does that work?”
“I don’t know.” Panic rose in her voice. She’d seen the club burned to ashes, knew that I’d come back when others couldn’t. Here I was, without a scratch and wearing the same damn tennis shoes. She knew what I could turn into if I lost my temper and as far as she knew, she was making me angry. Worse, she knew what I could do just out of spite.
Her eyes told me what they’ve always told me, that Ebony understood what vampires are. We are one of man’s natural predators. We hunt. We kill. We breed. Resignation had its place in her eyes as well. She’d known what she was getting into. Swimming with the sharks is dangerous business. It had been her choice. “The Lady Gabriella didn’t tell me. She said to get dressed and come find you, so I came. I’m to tell you that I belong to you now. You can do with me what you will.”
“Well, that must make you feel real special.” With a big sigh, I patted Ebony on the shoulder. She flinched. “How do I send you back without getting you in trouble?”
“Please, I am for you. Enjoy me.” Her hand slid up my chest.
“Get off,” I shouted too loudly, spraying her with spittle. Vampire spittle is a little gross if you aren’t used to it. Like all of the rest of our fluids, it’s basically blood. Little flecks of it dotted her jaw and the front of her outfit. To punctuate it all, my eyes had gone purple. Two telltale violet dots of light appeared on her face.
Ebony’s eyes darted to the right and her head tilted involuntarily as if she heard a voice that I couldn’t. Her eyes closed and she bit her bottom lip so hard it drew blood. Her heart pumped madly, thundering in my ears. It was so loud and the scent of terror was so great that I nearly missed it when she mouthed, “God, no.”
Tiny footsteps came toward us down the hall. There were two of them and I knew without looking that Lady Gabriella had just upped the ante. She’d sent out the mother and now she was sending out the children.
“We’re for you now, mister,” said a little girl in a white sundress. She was the spitting image of her mother. The boy was dressed in a little suit. Neither one of them was older than six. They weren’t thralls, either, just conditioned to obey their mother’s mistress. Talbot had been right when he said Gabriella didn’t know me. I have a thing about hurting kids. You don’t do it. The gang back on Sweetheart Row hadn’t been children anymore. In my opinion, I’d done them a favor. These two, however, were still human.
My skin crackled like frying bacon, trying to change into the uber vamp. I fought it. Don’t turn into the uber vamp, you moron, I told myself, you’ll scare the damn kids.
I met their gazes, the two little babes, and pushed my mind at theirs. “Sleep,” I told them and they both fell into a doze standing up. They wobbled for a moment then collapsed. I caught them, each child by the shoulder, and eased them to the floor. “Makes you feel really important, doesn’t it, Ebony? I may have had you dance naked onstage, but I paid you good money, and I never treated you like this, like a whore.
“Your children…She sent me your children all dressed up like snack food.” Disbelief had replaced the anger in my voice. “What the fuck, Ebony?”
“She’s not normally like this, Eric. She’s a little demanding, but she’s usually so good to the kids and she gives them things that I never could. When their daddy got turned, I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t come to you for help because you were…”
“Blown up at the time,” I completed for her.
“He kept coming over, threatening to turn them, to make them his little forever children, Eric. What could I do? She offered to take care of us, to protect them. I would do anything for my kids!”
Real tears poured down her cheeks. She was on the verge of collapse and the mixture of emotions that was coursing through her sent a nauseating array of smells at my sensitive nostrils.
“One more thing, Ebony,” I said harshly.
“What?” she answered, blinking up at me through her tears. I caught her face between my hands and made her look at me. I had no idea whether I could do it or not, but I wanted Gabriella out of her head. I touched Ebony’s mind with mine and felt Lady Gabriella in there with us. I ignored her, stuck my thumb in my mouth and wiped the blood onto Ebony’s shoulder. Her eyes widened conveniently and I reached for Lady Gabriella’s mind. I couldn’t leave Ebony tied to the kind of undead thing that would discard her this way and send her children out to pay the butcher’s bill.
Pain, merciless and blinding, filled my head, but I kept on pushing. Ebony screamed. High on her left breast, the rose tattoo flashed brightly before it faded. An echoing scream came from farther down the hallway. My pain was gone and Ebony was sweating through her clothes. My blood formed a tiny butterfly tattoo on her shoulder. Ebony went limp in my arms and as I lowered her to the floor, I said the magic words. “I mark thee and bind thee. Master to servant. Servant to master. You are mine until I set you free. You are mine. So mote it be.”
Propping Ebony in a convenient armchair and tucking her sleeping kids into her arms, I announced myself to the whole building. “If anybody touches these three, I’ll find you, wherever you are, wherever you run. I’ll ram a stake through your heart and then we’ll get to be all experimental and find out what it takes to actually make you stay dead! Do you hear that?” Without a clue whether anyone actually heard me, I sat down, stared at the kids and their mom, and wondered what the hell to do about them.
About two minutes later it became clear that someone in the building had gotten my message and taken it very seriously. Elevator doors opened to reveal a young blond man. “I’ll be happy to look after them, Lord Eric,” he said cheerfully. There were bags under his eyes and he looked like he had gotten dressed in a hurry. It was the same little prick I’d seen at the Artiste Unknown with Tabitha.
“I’m Dennis, personal assistant to Lord Phillip. I assure you they’ll be quite safe,” he said, and either he was the world’s best liar or he was telling the truth. “I’m dreadfully sorry for the inconvenience. Had you called ahead, I should have been quite happy to meet you at the door. Hannah should have awakened me upon your arrival. I’d like to extend my master’s regrets as well. His sleeping schedule has become quite erratic over the years and is now completely unpredictable. He’s slumbering now; otherwise I am quite certain that he would have come to meet you in person.”
“If he’s asleep, how did you know that I was here?” I asked.
“Sir Hollingsworth and Lord Giarmo were awake playing Go and when they sensed your ire, they contacted me at once,” he explained. “Lord Phillip owns this building and since I am his personal assistant, many of the tenants are used to coming to me with their problems rather than disturbing Lord Phillip himself. Now…regarding the young ones and their mother, if you’ve no objection, I’ll just take them up to Lady Tabitha’s rooms and have guest services send up a nice nutritious meal.”
I nodded numbly, said, “Thanks,”
and helped him carry them into the elevator. The doors to the elevator closed and then reopened.
“Oh, and one more thing, Lord Eric,” he said convivially. “Lady Gabriella is in the Rose Suite. It’s down the hall and on the right. You can’t miss it.”
The doors closed again and I turned to look down the hallway. Somebody had just been sold out by the management and it sure as hell wasn’t me.
27
ERIC: GETTING TO GABRIELLA
The Rose Suite was hard to miss. A transition from carpet to rose-colored marble began in the middle of the hallway and continued on into a side passage that opened onto an interior courtyard. Gabriella’s waiting area was large, maybe twenty feet wide and twenty-five feet deep, not that I’m Mister Fix-it or anything. It was tasteful, in that same extravagant way in which other vampires seemed to approach everything.
Several squares of grass broke up the marble floor and gave the impression of a small yard or patio rather than a reception room. A white wrought-iron table and three matching chairs had been tastefully arranged in the center of each square. Parked at a decorator’s angle on the right near the gate was a small tea cart.
Looking up revealed a glass ceiling about a foot below a skillfully painted mural designed to replicate the sky outside. I was willing to bet that the lighting changed to match the time of day, even the time of night. Puffy white clouds slowly drifted across the ceiling…definitely magic.
At the back of the courtyard, separated from the front by a gated white picket fence, there was a private stair constructed of the same rose-colored marble. It led up to a doorway, set into a wall that looked like the outside of an old plantation home, windows and all.
So many vampires seemed to spend so much time and money pretending that things are as normal as they were before they became living dead things. In my experience, it just makes things worse. If crying about what you’ve lost in the middle of the night sounds like fun to you, then be my guest, but this kind of make-believe only makes things worse for me. I’d tried it, more than once. It’s nice for a few months, but it sucks every time the happy little house of cards comes down and reminds me that I’m just a bloodsucking undead monster that kills to live.
Gabriella would eventually learn that lesson the hard way: all vampires do, providing they survive long enough. Whether or not Gabriella survived really depended on what I found inside her place and what she had to say about Roger and Rachel and why the hell they were together. It was nice to know that my antics earlier were good for something. Taking out Sweetheart Row and the Bitemore must have been enough to rattle Gabby’s cage.
The fence wasn’t locked, so I reached over and opened the gate before marching up the stairs. One flight up, the stairs opened up onto a wide platform. On either side of an ornate wooden door were potted plants that went three-quarters of the way up the door, roughly even with the sliding view slot.
A crimson cord with tassels on the end hung next to the door. There was also a gold-plated knocker in the shape of an opening rosebud. I ignored them both and knocked “shave and a haircut” on the door. It’s a habit.
Gabriella’s rooms must have had excellent soundproofing, because I could barely hear inside. There was movement and a muffled conversation and then the view slot slid open to reveal two blue-gray eyes. A human? My thrall-sense went off like an alarm.
“I am quite sorry, sir,” spoke a soft feminine voice. Whoever she was, she wasn’t Lady Gabriella, but she did belong to her. Her voice was very pleasant, with a lilting accent. French, maybe? “Lady Gabriella is not at home to visitors this early in the day. Perhaps you could come back after sundown? If you would like, I would be happy to schedule a visit with the Lady Gabriella for another time? For you, sir, I believe that she could be available as early as Friday. To others, of course, her schedule is quite full, but the Lady is always happy to make exceptions for important persons such as yourself.”
“No, that won’t be necessary. She knows what I want to know and she knows that she’d better tell me. She just sent one thrall and two children to me as some kind of freaky-ass peace offering and now she’s got you up here acting like that didn’t just happen. Does she think I’m an idiot?”
“Bien sur que non, monsieur!” I could barely hear her pulse, but it was racing. “Excuse me, what I mean to say is, of course not, sir. The Lady Gabriella did awaken briefly, overcome as she was by your grand presence, sir, and she immediately dispatched Ebony and her little ones to you as a token of her respect. It is regrettable that she is a very heavy sleeper, however, and lapsed back into the slumber of the immortals shortly after confirming that you had received her tokens of esteem.”
She paused and I heard someone faintly whispering in the distance. It could have been Gabriella, but there was no way to be sure. Mystical soundproofing. When the voice resumed, it was shaking. “I have been instructed that should the Lady’s offerings be displeasing to you, I am to offer you myself if my demeanor and appearance would be more acceptable.”
“What’s your name?” I asked softly.
“Beatrice, sir,” she answered.
“How would I know if I find your appearance more pleasing if I can’t see all of you, Beatrice?”
“I would be happy to reveal myself to you, sir, but I am instructed to make certain that milord is aware of the special properties of the doorways here in the Highland Towers before doing so.”
“What special properties?” I asked. As a delaying tactic, Beatrice was doing a wonderful job. I could only hope that Lady Gabriella wasn’t slipping Roger and Rachel out the back somewhere while I was chatting up the help.
“All of the doorways to the suites of the Highland Towers are enchanted, sir. When the enchantment is active, there is an impenetrable field of magic in place over the door. It delivers a powerful jolt to any who try to cross the threshold, unless they already possess permission to enter or exit. When I open the door, sir, I would not wish for you to accidentally be injured by brushing against the barrier. It similarly affects those who try to force the door open if they do not have permission to do so.”
I punched the door and received a semi-electric jolt for my trouble. Running up my arm, the electric hum set my teeth to vibrating and made my eyes sizzle. I gracelessly tumbled down the stairs, landing at the bottom, my left leg still jerking spasmodically. “Magic s-s-sucks,” I said lying on my back. I stared up at the sky and watched some pretty convincing clouds pass by on the ceiling.
Warmth poured down from the sun as it came out from behind the clouds and I was consumed with envy for Gabby’s enchanted ceiling. I hadn’t felt the sun on my face for decades without bursting into flames—being a ghost didn’t count—and it brought a tear of blood to my eye. I wiped the bloody tear off on the hem of my T-shirt and when my leg stopped jerking, I stood up.
“How much did it cost to get the ceiling done?” I called up the stairs. “And why do you keep calling me ‘sir’? Shouldn’t you call me ‘Lord Eric’ or something?” I walked back through the gate and picked up one of the chairs, testing its heft. Somebody could get really messed up with one of these things.
I heard the creak of the door opening, followed by the sound of high-heeled shoes on marble. Beatrice was wearing a green velvet dress that looked like it belonged in a Renaissance faire, except that it pushed everything up and to the middle with impressive results. Her bosom wasn’t large, but the dress put what there was to good use.
Fiery red tresses cascaded in ringlets down to her shoulders. Her lips had the natural pouty look most women who get Botox injections are looking for and her eyes were a startling blue-gray, like storm clouds. “Please, do not break them, Highness. I have no doubt that you could, but the Lady, she would be so heartbroken. The Lord Winter, I doubt he would come back to redo them for her.”
“Since you said ‘please,’” I smiled, putting down the chair. “So, you belong to me now?”
“If you wish it, Highness.”
“From sir
to highness.” I walked in her direction and ran my fingers through her hair. She tried to control herself, but she was terrified. It was like petting a skittish colt. Her nostrils flared and any sudden movement seemed likely to make her bolt. “That’s a pretty good promotion. Your mistress must think I’m one huge misogynistic bastard. Which I guess is better than being taken for a pedophile.”
“I’m certain no insult was intended.” She let the words linger on her lips and it dawned on me that I’d been snowed again. She was a marvelous actress and she’d been giving me an Oscar winning performance. She wasn’t scared at all. A lot of vamps get turned on by fear and she was trying to seduce me.
“You ever met a female vampire named Irene?” I asked.
“I don’t believe so, Highness,” she said, trembling. Boy, was she good.
“She was a good actress, too.” I looked Beatrice in the eye. “She got even better when she died. Do you mind sitting over there?” I pointed to one of the chairs in the seating area.
“Of course not, sire.”
“I’ll be right back.” I winked.
At the stairs, the door stood open, revealing a room that would have looked more at home in some palace in France a few hundred years ago. I’m certain it would have impressed Tabitha or Roger. It didn’t impress me. I just wanted in.
“Okay, Gabby,” I called into the room. “I really hope you aren’t sleeping, because if you are, then I’m going to feel really stupid.”
Windows. Doors. Walls. Magic protects the door, I said in my head, but magic doesn’t protect the ceiling. Does magic protect the walls? I glanced over my shoulder at Beatrice. She sat obediently where I’d left her, observing me with a carefully indifferent eye. I walked to the window three feet to the left of the door. I held my hand over the glass, concentrating on breaking it open. Sure enough, my palm began to tingle. I did the same thing to the wall and grinned. Civilized vampires go in through doors, and maybe windows. Uncivilized vampires, who don’t give a shit what others think of them, who could care less about their place in society, have more options. I punched the wall and my fist went right through it. Score one point for the Neanderthal!
