Dressed to Slay

by Harper Allen

  “Girlfriend, we’re going to have a ton of fun together,” she said through her laughter. “Hand me that letter opener.”

  “What letter opener?” I glanced at my hand and saw the slim leather and ivory dagger I was holding. “Oh, this letter opener.” I went off into another bout of laughter.

  “Yeah, that one,” Cherry said, her tone abrupt. She softened her demand with a smile from her red lips. “Unless you were planning to open some letters with it?”

  I shook my head, still laughing helplessly. “God, no, I was planning to stake a vamp with it, girlfriend.”

  Instantly cutting off my laughter, with one swift move I raised the letter opener and plunged its blade into her chest. A gout of crimson immediately spewed upwards from the entry point, dying the filmy blue of her skimpy bra a dark red. Her violet gaze widened in shock and then a dull film shadowed her eyes.

  “It might have been fun, right?” she rasped. “Us being girlfriends, I mean. We could have gone shopping, maybe done each other’s hair. I kind of missed out on that stuff, being a working girl and all.” She moved suddenly and I tensed, but her grasp on my wrist was weak. “My name was Lorraine Deagan. I came from a little place in Iowa called Greenvale. Tell my folks there hasn’t been a day since I ran away that I didn’t wish—”

  Her hand on my wrist went first, allowing me to turn away from the sight of the rest of her dissolving to dust. I stood up, closed the closet and tried to get myself under control.

  I didn’t feel sick about staking Cherry, the way Kat had felt about staking Maisel. I just felt an incredible sadness for the crappy deal life had handed her and for a mother and father who hoped every time the phone rang that it was their runaway daughter. A cold spark of anger flickered beneath my sadness—flickered, and then steadied into an icy flame.

  Zena was a total fucking bitch. I’d been seeing her as the big evil, which was how Darkheart saw her, and how Kat and Tash and presumably Mikhail saw her. They were right—she was evil. But thinking of her like that was a way of giving her a measure of respect, and I didn’t want to give her that. She was like every crisis-creating, clique-leading, esteem-destroying mean girl I’d ever known in my life. I wanted to see her brought down, if for no other reason than for turning a messed-up young woman into a vampire I’d been forced to kill.

  “If I ever meet her, I hope I live long enough to tell her how I feel about her to her face,” I said under my breath as I let myself out of her office. “Of course, if I don’t get out of Club Sleaze right now, I might find myself doing just that.”

  I set off down the hall at a brisk trot, passing the storage room I’d first investigated and heading toward the curve that opened out onto the entrance area. I heard voices approaching from the direction of the foyer and came to a skidding halt.

  “…can tell Bambi to do a second set. The campers are so drunk they won’t even realize she was on half an hour ago.”

  It was Marilyn. I turned back toward the storage room, intending to slip in there until she and whoever she was speaking to had passed, but at the sound of the second speaker I froze.

  “Is no problem. Cherry’s friend is probably in bathroom getting sick with nerves. You have to lend her extra pair of pasties from costume supplies because she says she doesn’t have own? She is definite first-timer. I tell her get her ass on stage or her friend Cherry gets fired.”

  Before another night passes she will be hunting with me, not against me…The last time I’d heard that voice had been in the vision in which I’d seen my mother die. Zena was here. In a moment she would turn the corner and see me.

  I raced toward the storage room, but as I neared it I changed my mind and kept running. How smart was it to take refuge in a small room with only one escape route? At the end of the main hall I made a second snap decision and took the right-hand corridor that I assumed led to the stage.

  It was my only option. Left would have taken me to the dressing room, where Zena and Marilyn were apparently heading. From the stage in the main room of the club, I could a make a beeline for the foyer and then to my Mini waiting outside.

  The first hitch occurred as I yanked open the door at the end of the short corridor. I burst through and the next moment I felt myself barreling into something solid. The something-solid was no match for my momentum and we both went sprawling.

  If I’d learned anything over the past few days, it was how to take a fall. I braced myself, prayed I wouldn’t land on any part of my body that was already decorated with large saffron-and-indigo bruises and anticipated the jarring impact I knew would run through me. But this time none of that happened, because instead of slamming down onto a hard surface, I found my fall broken by a soft pillow. Two soft pillows, in fact.

  An outraged yell exploded by my ears. “Get the fuck off my goddamn boobs! Be careful!”

  Careful wasn’t in my repertoire at that moment. I jumped to my feet, nearly stepping on the G-string-clad woman lying in front of me. Her breasts were more than impressive, they were awesome—perfect globes that must have needed at least a triple-D cup to rein them in.

  “These sisters cost me five thousand bucks,” the woman snarled, checking them over—for leaks, I supposed. “And since the friggin’ IRS didn’t agree they were a business investment, that’s five thousand without any tax write-off.” She glared up at me, but as she took in my attire her glare morphed into an incredulous stare. “You’re going on dressed like that?”

  I glanced down at my half-unzipped Juicy hoodie and my suddenly meager-looking 32B lime-green bra. I could see what she meant. Beside her, I looked like a Mennonite.

  “Not if I can help it,” I said quickly. “Look, I’m sorry about crashing into you. Is there a way into the audience area that bypasses the stage?”

  “Up those three stairs and past the curtain,” she said, after giving me a calculating look. “You better hustle. The new owner’s some Russian bitch, and if she finds you hanging around backstage you’ll be in major shit.”

  “Thanks for the advice,” I said, starting for the small set of stairs she’d indicated. “And again, sorry about the falling-into-your-boobs thing,” I added politely over my shoulder as I sprinted up the stairs and pushed past the curtain.

  If you’re wondering, the Hot Box’s stage isn’t really a stage, per se. It’s more like a model’s runway, but instead of black-clad fashionistas eyeing the new fall line like crows spying something bright and shiny, the Hot Box’s runway was surrounded by men. I know this from first-hand experience.

  I was moving so fast as I burst past the curtain that my impetus didn’t slow until I was halfway down the runway. By then I knew I’d been screwed by Balloon Lady. I spared an instant to hope fervently that one or both of her five-thousand-dollar investments were deflating at that very moment, and blinked over the bright footlights that lined the stage.

  I like men. I really do. I think they’re funny and sexy and adorable and sexy and endearing and sexy. On the other hand, a small percentage of them are charter members of Slimeballs Anonymous, which—coincidentally, I’m sure—appeared to be holding its weekly meeting at the Hot Box that night. Around me was a sea of slack jaws and bleary eyes. Behind the alcohol-induced bleariness, however, most of the gazes fixed on me held something that made me rethink my assessment of them as mere slimeballs, and escalate it to potentially dangerous assholes.

  That something was a mixture of fear and hatred and hunger. Right now, the hunger was uppermost, but I could see it changing to unsettled wariness as they took in the fact that I was fully clothed and apparently planning to stay that way.

  “You gonna show us something, sweetcheeks, or you just gonna stand there?” My heckler was a veritable Adonis, if Adonis had been about forty-five, had a beer gut straining over his belt, and hairy forearms like slabs of pork with the bristles still attached. He was sitting at a table near the front with a couple of equally to-die-for cronies.

  I squinted through the lights. “Sorry to disappo
int, but no. I’m with the local electrical board. We received a complaint that some of these lights were shorting out, but they seem fine to me, so I’ll just get out of here and let you boys watch the rest of the show.” As I spoke I walked down the runway, ignoring the charming comment of, “We came here to see a show, bitch!” that one of his compadres growled at me.

  Maybe in recounting this I’m giving the impression that I was cool and collected and in command of myself. But my brave front was just that, a front. Though the men in the room weren’t vamps, I had the impression they could sense fear as well as any undead predators. They hadn’t come here because they liked women. They were here because the opposite was true.

  Brazening it out was my best strategy. I got to the end of the runway, dodging two chrome-plated poles of the kind you see strippers rubbing up against in movies, and shielded my eyes. “Sir, can you move your chair out of the way so I can get down?” I said with electrical-employee courtesy to the lone man at the table in front of me. I couldn’t see his face, but he was obviously younger than the hecklers. In fact, from what I could see he wasn’t bad-looking, and I wondered briefly why he was at the Hot Box instead of out on a real date.

  Then he looked at me and my question was answered.

  He was a vamp. His smile was feral, the tips of his canines just showing under his lifted top lip. He got to his feet and I saw with no surprise that he was hovering an inch or so off the floor. “I’ll even help you down,” he said, extending a hand.

  I took a hasty step backward. “On second thought, it might be easier over here,” I said, moving to the side of the runway. There was a table of men staring up at me, all near-clones of Pork-Arms and his cronies, except for one. The hairs on the back of my neck rose as I saw he was a vampire, too.

  By now my eyes had adjusted to the bright line of lights ringing the stage. My heart thudding crazily in my chest, I scanned the packed room and began to pick out a vamp here, a vamp there, all watching me the way vultures watch a wounded animal. The rest of the audience began to get abusive.

  “Take it off, girlie!”

  “Tits and ass, babe!”

  “Wrap those skinny legs around a pole!”

  “Megan! Over here!”

  Startled, I squinted into the crowd to see who’d called my name, and in a corner near the exit I glimpsed a familiar face.

  Detective Van Ryder’s melted-chocolate eyes held an expression of disbelief and anger. I saw him shoulder aside two men as he began to make his way to the stage and then disappear from view as three burly bouncers stepped in front of him. More bouncers spread through the room, but the combination of alcohol and my non-performance seemed to have ignited a fuse in the crowd and the volume of the insults and obscenities rose.

  “Silence!”

  The one-word command was thunderous. My back was against one of the chrome poles, and I felt it vibrate like a tuning fork at the voice behind me. Slowly I turned.

  In the vision Mikhail had forced my sisters and me to witness, Zena had worn a medieval-looking red velvet robe. Her wardrobe had been updated since then. Her white breasts gleamed like pearls against the black satin of her bustier, her legs were clad in leather boots that rose nearly to her thighs, and her outfit was completed by studded leather wristbands and a choker.

  Oh, and a whip. I almost forgot the whip.

  She kept her gaze on the crowd as she spoke, her voice a purr now. “Impatience is understandable. You come to Zena’s club to see most beautiful girls in world reveal charms, nyet? So you shall, my friends.” Her smile was sexily catlike, and her green eyes glowed like emeralds in ice.

  A voice from the crowd broke in. “Can the talk, Russkie, and get down to business! If blondie’s so fuckin’ shy, why don’t you start grinding that fine ass of yours? Or do you do something with that big mother of a whip you’re holding?”

  It was Pork-Arms who’d called out to Zena. He made a pumping motion with his hands and grinned as his buddies guffawed at his suggestion. I felt a thin rush of air pass by me, and the next moment my stomach lurched with nausea.

  Pork-Arm’s grin had widened from ear to ear. Zena’s whip had widened it for him. Instead of a mouth, he now had a slash bisecting his face, the wound severing the tendons of his jaw so that the lower portion of it dangled down. His eyes bulged and the muscles of his neck stood out as he tried to scream, but all that came from his ruined mouth was a high whistle of agony. A pair of bruisers came up on either side of him, grabbed him by the elbows and escorted him out.

  And no one in the room, not even the men who had been laughing with him, seemed to notice that anything had happened.

  I couldn’t see Van Ryder anywhere, but I couldn’t worry about him right now. Seeing that the vamp directly in front of the runway was directing his gaze toward Zena, I made a sudden dash, intending to leap into the crowd and try to make my way to the door before he or his undead companions could catch me.

  I reached the end of the stage, began my jump, and felt myself being jerked back. Barely keeping my balance, I looked down at the thick leather whip coiled around my waist. It jerked again, and I found myself whirling around to face Zena, her red hair spilling like living fire around her creamy shoulders.

  “I promise you most beautiful girl will reveal charms, gentlemen, and Zena keeps promises. But she needs some persuasion, da? Not with whip, but persuasion of more erotic type.” She raised her voice over the growing roar of approval from the room. “Watch and you will see how I seduce her into doing my will. Will be killer of show, gentlemen!”

  As if the crowd held no more interest for her, abruptly she turned her back to it, her emerald gaze fixing for the first time on me. I returned her stare, forcing my eyes not to waver.

  “I keep my promises, too,” I said, wishing my voice didn’t sound so thin. “I promised myself that if I ever met you face to face, I’d tell you what I thought of you.”

  “Da?” She gave me the catlike smile she’d used on the crowd. “And what do you think of me?”

  “That you’re a total bitch,” I said, knowing I was about to die.

  Zena’s smile grew intimate, as if she and I shared a delicious joke that no one else in the world could ever appreciate. She took a step closer to me; her perfume, a heady mixture of jasmine and spices and something I couldn’t identify, wrapping around me along with her body heat.

  “So what’s so bad about being total bitch, my beautiful darling?” she laughed softly, her upcurved lips almost brushing mine.

  And right then and there, I felt myself falling in love.

  Chapter 11

  I know what you’re thinking. Whoa, Meg-baby, a little bit of a one-eighty without any warning, no? One minute you’re all “Mikhail’s tight butt” and “Van Ryder’s bedroom eyes” and the next minute you’re in let-me-count-the-ways mode with a female. What’s up with the no-foreshadowing, girlfriend, and are you bi or gay or what?

  Okay, point taken, and to answer your questions in order: sorry, sorry again, I can see how it would seem that way, and excuse me all to hell for not foreshadowing, but my reaction to Zena wasn’t foreshadowed to me, either.

  And as for your bi/gay/straight question? I’m boringly straight. All right, when I was fifteen I had a dream one time about Christina Aguilera, but that was it, and in my dream we decided to be just friends.

  So when Zena looked deep into my eyes and called me her beautiful darling, there was no way my heart should have gone pitty-pat, given that she was a vampire as well as being female. I knew that. I knew I was in the dangerous presence of a glamyr a hundred times more powerful than any Dean or Cherry had been able to conjure up, and that Zena’s glamyr had to be what was fogging my synapses into making me think I was falling for her. But all I could see was her white skin and her teasing red lips and her incredible emerald eyes.

  “I…I guess there’s nothing so wrong with being a total bitch,” I said as she gave the handle of the whip another tug. I spun around, the lash un
coiling from my body, and when I came to a stop I grabbed the chrome pole in front of me to keep from falling to the stage. I shook my head to clear it. “No, wait a minute,” I said more strongly. “There’s a lot wrong. For one thing, you killed Cherry, and for another, you killed my mother!”

  We were no longer face to face, but a few feet apart. As my hand moved toward the letter opener I’d dropped into my pocket after staking Cherry, I heard three sharp cracks and instantly felt three hot bee stings: one on either arm and a third on my stomach. Just as I was wondering in distracted anger where the bee had come from and where the little sucker had gone, I heard a roar of approval from beyond the glaring footlights.

  “Is partial revealing of charms, my friends.” Zena gave a mocking bow to the room. “More to come, I promise.”

  As she spoke I glimpsed Van Ryder again. No longer hampered by bouncers, his struggle to reach the stage was still being impeded by the press of the crowd. Our gazes locked, and just for a second I forgot Zena, the drunks and everything else that should have been occupying my attention right then. The sudden flare of heat in his dark brown eyes seemed to indicate that he was having an identical lapse of memory.

  Then his expression hardened and he resumed his attempts to make his way through the crowd. Recalled to my own situation, I reached for the stake in my hoodie pocket. My hand clutched at thin air, and in confusion I looked down at myself. For a moment I didn’t believe what I was seeing.

  From the waist up I was naked, except for the lime-green bra. My lilac hoodie lay in scraps at my feet. As my arms crossed instinctively over my breasts, I saw thin red lines running from my shoulders to my wrists, and a similar red line running down my stomach. They no longer felt like bee stings, they felt as if burning wires had been placed against my skin. But even as I watched I saw the thin red lines blur and thicken, and in shock I realized what they were.

  I’d been sliced by Zena’s whip—not as deeply as Pork-Arms had been, but with razor-blade precision. My hoodie had been sliced, too—once down each arm and once down the front, so that it fell away in three pieces. It was an exhibition designed not only to stir up the creeps in the audience, but to let me know she could have killed me…and hadn’t.