by Tessa Blake
He was wearing jeans and a t-shirt again, and wore them like he was doing them a favor. The shirt was just tight enough to showcase everything there was to see, as were the jeans, but unlike some of the guys in the club, who were clearly trying too hard, Gabriel looked like he wasn’t trying at all. It was a knack he had whether he was in jeans or a twelve-thousand-dollar suit.
Holy shit, she thought, I’m dating a guy who wears twelve-thousand-dollar suits. And I’m wearing six-year-old jeans and a shirt that belonged to my dead father.
They met at the edge of the dance floor, and he smiled at her, then at Miri. “I thought you were in for the night?” he said, and leaned down to brush his lips over hers.
“We were,” Lily said, and turned to Miri, gestured from one to the other. “Miri, Gabriel, Gabriel, Miri. Can we go back to your office or somewhere quiet?”
He nodded and led them back to the door he’d come out of, then stood aside so they could enter.
“Wow, tight squeeze,” Miri said, as she and Lily entered the short, narrow hallway.
She averted her eyes from the light booth door and pointed to the one on the left. “That one?”
“That’s the one,” he said, and waited until they’d opened the door and moved through it before coming into the short hallway and shutting the door behind him.
Funny, she thought, he wasn’t so conscientious about personal space when he was ushering me in so he could grope me in the light booth.
They were now in another, slightly longer hallway, which ran for about twelve feet, then ended at a fire door. Through the small window she could see stairs. Gabriel brushed by the two of them, said, “Follow me,” and headed down the hallway and through the door.
They followed him up a flight, down yet another short hallway, and finally into a large room furnished with a sleek metal desk and a bank of a dozen monitors, some showing different angles on the dance floor or the bar, one focused on the restroom doors, and three set up to show traffic at the outside doors, where the bouncers were.
“Here we are, then,” Gabriel said, closing the door behind them. “What can I do for you?”
“I told Miri everything,” Lily said. “She doesn’t believe me, so you need to show her.”
Gabriel said nothing for several moments, while Miri just looked uncomfortable.
“Show her what, precisely?” Gabriel asked, his tone chilly.
“I don’t know, something,” Lily said. “Like, your eyes, or … show her how strong you are, that would work.”
He gazed at her, implacably.
“What?” she said.
“No.”
“Excuse me?”
“I said no.” He leaned against the edge of the desk, crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m not a golden retriever, to sit and roll over and shake on command.”
She rolled her eyes at him; she couldn’t help it. “I’m not asking you to do party tricks. Miri is my best friend, and I need her to believe me.”
“And my answer stands,” he said. “I’m willing to bend. I’ll make concessions for you—even against my own nature—like I did a few hours ago. But I’m not a circus animal, Lily. I won’t be tamed and brought to heel and made to perform, not even for you.”
Miri cleared her throat. “I think maybe—”
But whatever it was she had been intending to say, she was interrupted by the loud crack of the office door being flung open so hard it bounced off the wall, leaving behind a doorknob-shaped dent in the plasterboard.
A woman strode in—and what a stride it was, in knee-high leather boots with 4-inch heels—and caught the door as it rebounded, followed through on that momentum by slamming the door shut behind her.
She stood for a moment, making no movement except to clench and unclench her fists, and Lily got the oddest sense of building power, almost like the charge in the air before a really big lightning strike. And indeed the woman’s hair—a thick but fine-textured white-blonde that fell in a straight curtain to her waist—was frizzing ever-so-slightly around her head. She was clad in black jeans so tight they were like a second skin and a barely-there silk halter top in poisonous green that left her back bare except for a few thin criss-crossing spaghetti straps.
And the skin of her back was … moving. Subtle sweeps and waves of motion rippled across it as though something were trying to get out. Lily was both fascinated and repulsed, struck speechless, and unable to look away.
The woman took three steps across the room, came to a halt in front of Gabriel, and said—No, Lily thought, she growled—“What have you done?”
27
Gabriel, unbelievably, looked entirely unperturbed. “I see word gets around,” he said, coolly.
“I’ve just spoken to P—”
Gabriel interrupted. “We’re not alone, Vivienne,” he said, and gestured to where Lily stood, having moved instinctively in front of Miri when the woman had stormed in.
The woman’s head whipped around and Lily saw her eyes were glowing crimson. Lily had seen Gabriel’s eyes do the same thing, so it wasn’t as though it were beyond the realm of possibility, but it was still quite startling.
Behind her, Lily heard Miri’s swift intake of breath and had the vague thought she’d gotten some proof for Miri after all.
The woman advanced on them, and Lily straightened, tried not to look afraid.
“Who are you?” the woman said. “What are you?”
Lily opened her mouth to answer, but Gabriel beat her to it. “Her name is Lily,” he said. “Lily, this is my mother, Vivienne Malignon.”
“She owns the club with you,” Lily said. “I remember.”
Vivienne tilted her head, looked at Lily with disgust. “And I remember you, desperately plying your limited charms on my son downstairs a few days ago.”
“I find her charms quite diverting,” Gabriel said, “and nearly limitless.”
Vivienne looked at him over her shoulder and huffed out a surprised breath. “We’ve already discussed her,” she said. “She’s a nothing. She’s—”
“She’s right here,” Lily broke in, “and would appreciate not being spoken about as though she weren’t.”
Vivienne’s head whipped back around; her eyes bored into Lily’s. They were no longer glowing, but the menacing glare was still pretty disconcerting. “Now, see here—”
“No,” Lily said, with what she knew was more bravado than sense. She’d be damned if she’d back down. “I don’t care to see whatever it is you’d like to explain to me.” She deliberately looked away, cast her glance over Vivienne’s shoulder to Gabriel. “I think we’ll take off now.”
Lily would think, afterward, it was hard to say who was more surprised—herself or Gabriel—at what happened next: Vivienne’s hand flew out, and she slapped Lily hard across the mouth.
“You’ll watch your tongue when you speak to me, you eerie little gold-digger, or—”
But she didn’t get a chance to say what it was that would happen, because before she could get any further, Gabriel was standing between her and Lily, grasping the wrist of the hand that had hit Lily. Vivienne gasped, and tried to pull away, but failed.
“Let me go,” she demanded. “You’re hurting me.”
“I haven’t begun to hurt you.” Gabriel’s voice was low, and furious. “Lay hands on her again, and I’ll grind your bones to a fine powder.”
Lily recognized that voice. She’d heard it in that parking garage in Vegas.
“I’d like to see you try,” Vivienne challenged, and her eyes began to glow again, a simmering pale red this time, but growing slowly brighter as she pulled her arm back toward herself and it moved ever-so-slightly.
The sense of impending lightning-strike in the room ratcheted up a notch.
Lily didn’t know who was stronger, who would ultimately be the victor if this turned into an actual physical fight, but she liked neither possible outcome. If Vivienne won, who knew what would happen; certainly Lily’s and Miri’s lives
would be in danger.
If Gabriel won—well, Vivienne was his mother, wasn’t she? Lily knew he had some resentment towards her, but she didn’t know how deep that resentment ran. What she did know, because she paid attention, was when he spoke of his mother, even with some disdain, he sounded like a boy who’d been expecting a really good birthday present and instead got an ugly sweater.
What she heard in Gabriel’s voice, when he talked about his mother, was regret, and a little bit of something that sounded an awful lot like longing.
Unable to think of any other way to de-escalate, she moved around Gabriel and got between them, turned to face him. “Please,” she said. “She’s your mother.”
Gabriel let go of Vivienne’s arm, though Lily could still feel her presence at her back. Lily moved just a little bit closer to Gabriel, reached up to touch his face.
He, in turn, touched hers, running a fingertip along her bottom lip. “You’re bleeding,” he said. “I ought to break her arm for that.”
She shook her head. “No one’s breaking anyone’s arm tonight,” she said. “I know you don’t exactly have a conventional relationship—”
Behind her, Vivienne snorted. Despite everything, there was something in the sound that almost made Lily like her—it sounded less like derision and more like genuine amusement.
But almost, as Lily’s father had loved to say, didn’t count, except in horseshoes and hand grenades. Her lip was throbbing, and there was no way she was ever going to like Gabriel’s mother.
Gabriel produced a handkerchief from an inside pocket, dabbed at her lip. “I have something you can put on this,” he said. “I don’t know how to apologize enough. If I’d known she would put her hands on you, I’d have stopped her.”
“You’d have tried,” Vivienne said, but she stepped away from them, leaned against the desk as Gabriel had been doing earlier.
Lily looked heavenward, figured no help would be forthcoming there, and turned to face Vivienne. “I don’t know what your problem is with me—” she began.
“Really? Because I thought I’d made it clear.”
“Clear that you think I’m after Gabriel for his money or something? Sure, you’ve made that clear.” Lily stepped back, brushed against Gabriel and felt that tingle, as always—but an odd sort of uplifting strength as well, enough so she tilted her chin up and decided to just put the truth out there and let Vivienne deal with it. “But I don’t care about Gabriel’s money,” she said, and began unbuttoning her shirt. “As he can tell you, and I wasn’t looking to get involved with him—until this.”
She turned around to present Vivienne with her back, dropped her father’s shirt off her shoulders, and stood there in her bra, her mark on display for Vivienne.
And then all Hell broke loose.
28
Hell broke loose much more quietly than Lily would have expected. A whisper of sound behind her, the hiss of a sharply indrawn breath from Miri. Lily lifted her eyes to Miri’s face and watched absolute horror and fear dawn there, whipped around to see what had happened.
Behind her, the elegant blonde had disappeared. In her place was a nightmare creature of leathery gray skin and enormous wings, glowing red eyes and ill-proportioned fangs—incongruously dressed in Vivienne’s green top and jeans, still with that luxurious fall of platinum hair.
Gabriel shoved her behind him. The storm-warning in the air around them finally bore fruit, as an actual crackle of electricity snapped between mother and son.
“Stop it!” Lily cried, frantically buttoning up her shirt. “I was trying to help!”
Miri shushed her frantically, and Gabriel snarled at her over his shoulder: “Be quiet.”
“How has this come to be?” The voice that came from the hideous maw where Vivienne’s mouth had been was raspy but still recognizably hers. “What have you done, to enter into a covenant with this … this nothing?”
Lily literally trembled in her shoes; she felt a tremor pass through her entire body, and wondered idly if she might pass out. Steeling herself, acutely grateful Gabriel had interposed himself between them, she poked her head up over his shoulder for a second to glare at the monster—at Vivienne. “We didn’t do anything—it just happened!”
Okay, the glare didn’t really work, and her voice was shaking, but even though neither Gabriel nor Vivienne answered her, the tension in the air backed off slightly. Lily couldn’t explain how she felt it but she did, almost a literal easing of the barometric pressure.
“What does she mean?” Vivienne asked. Her voice was smoother, and when Lily went back up on tiptoes to look over Gabriel’s shoulder again, Vivienne’s skin was regaining its human tone, her wings—which had reached nearly to the ceiling—were shrinking before Lily’s eyes.
Behind her, Lily felt Miri shuddering all over, heard her whispering what could only be prayers.
Gabriel, tension evident in every fiber of him, said only, “I’m not going to explain anything until you calm down, sit down, and be quiet.”
Vivienne’s features were shifting, eyes returning to human shape and size, fangs receding. It was the most astonishing thing Lily had ever seen, and utterly unlike any monster transformation she’d seen in the movies. Everything was happening at once, and quickly; she barely had time to notice some part of Vivienne was looking slightly less demon-like before it was fully human again.
Within moments, she appeared as she had when she’d entered the room—a well-proportioned, attractive woman maybe ten years Lily’s senior, with looks to die for and a body to match.
Miri gasped behind Lily. “That’s the woman from 30 Luxe,” she said. “The one you said didn’t pay for all those shoes?”
Lily nodded. It was, and she remembered the way the saleswoman at the store had looked, as though she’d been hypnotized. No surprise there, given what Vivienne was.
“Is she … What is she?” Miri said, quietly.
Apparently, quiet was a relative term when dealing with the nonhuman, because it was Vivienne who answered.
“It’s not bad enough you have to drag this ignorant human into this, but now we’ve got her little friend to educate as well?” she said. “Shall we just take out an ad, then, in the Times? Or a billboard perhaps?”
“Oh, stop it,” Gabriel snapped. “As if you’re not indiscreet twenty times before brunch every day.” He reached behind him and found Lily’s hand, pulled her to stand beside him.
Lily noticed he still kept himself between his mother and Miri, though, and her heart swelled a little at that.
Vivienne sighed, now completely back in her human form, and leaned against the desk again, crossing her legs at the ankle and her arms across her chest. “Explain yourself. I’m calm, as you … requested.”
They all knew it had not been a request, but a command, and Lily wondered if—and how—that insult would be repaid, but for now she was just grateful the air in the room had returned to normal, that there seemed to be some sort of truce.
“Lily and I became intimate recently,” Gabriel said, and Lily was pleased he spoke so delicately, and doubly pleased he ignored the nasty little grimace that flickered across Vivienne’s face. “Afterward, that mark—the binding mark—just appeared on her back.”
“Just appeared?” Vivienne repeated, her tone making it clear she didn’t believe it. “You’re telling me one of the most powerful of our ritual bonds simply happened with no action from either of you?”
“I’m telling you what I know, and what is,” he answered. “I’ve no reason to lie, and every reason to want to understand what’s going on.”
Vivienne looked at him for a long moment, then nodded. “I would know if you were lying,” she said. “What you are describing isn’t possible, according to my knowledge. The words of the ritual can vary, certainly, but the intent has to be there, and there has to be a pledging of self and a total acceptance of the other, in all his—or her—inhumanity.”
Lily thought back, running over the conversati
on she and Gabriel had had before he’d taken her to bed—before, to be completely accurate, he’d left her alone to choose him.
To … accept him? In all his inhumanity.
She felt suddenly short of breath, a little light-headed.
“Vivienne?” she said, and hated how her voice sounded high, a little out of control. “What are the customary ritual words?”
Vivienne looked at her haughtily. “Well, as I said, they can vary. Those who would bind themselves to such a creature as myself or my son, they are often theatrical, dramatic. The few times I’ve presided over a ceremony of binding, the participants have written their own ritual words.”
“But they all say basically the same thing, at the heart of them—isn’t that what you’re telling us?” Lily asked.
“I suppose, yes. There are words of acceptance, always, that’s very important,” Vivienne said. “I see you for what you are, and I enter into this covenant in full understanding of our differences, that sort of thing.”
She really did sound like the lawyer Gabriel had compared her to.
Lily swallowed, looked up at Gabriel. He looked back at her, his eyes soft, and she knew he was remembering that moment when she had knocked on his bedroom door, when she accepted him, knowing what he was.
“You told me once,” she said to him, slowly, “that with this kind of thing—with covenants, or contracts, or whatever we’re calling them—there was no signing in blood, none of that Hollywood silliness.”
“Yes,” he said.
“Intent matters.” She rounded on Vivienne. “That’s what you said.”
“Yes, I said intent is a component, though there’s more to it than that,” Vivienne said, but while her voice was still angry she sounded less sure of herself than Lily wanted. “There has to be a pledging. There’s an acceptance. There are … there should be words, damn it.”
