by Karen Chance
“It’s a recent acquisition.”
I narrowed my eyes and followed him out the door. That could mean a lot of things, from him getting a lark to spend some of the millions he’d accumulated through the centuries to dueling another master and acquiring his possessions. I really hoped it was one of those and not some plot to keep up with me. I was well aware that I was dealing with a Senate member, one of the most powerful and dangerous vamps on the planet. I’d been underestimated too many times myself to ever do it to anyone else, no matter how human he looked. Especially not this one.
“Well, I hope it has a shower,” I said, pouring the rest of the booze over a nearby pile of highly flammable vamp bodies and tossing on a match. “I need a bath.”
The apartment was posh, Fifth Avenue, and did indeed have a park view. I was relieved to see that it was also furnished in the designer-bland beiges and creams meant to be acceptable to virtually any taste—other than mine. That meant he hadn’t been here long enough to impose his personal style, so maybe he hadn’t been spying on me. I didn’t waste breath sighing in relief, but focused on the only other occupant of the room. I hadn’t been dragged off to the Senate’s local base of operations, but unless I was mistaken, at least one of its members was sitting on a pale camel-colored sofa waiting for us.
The strange vamp flowed to his feet when we came in, his eyes sweeping over the boy before coming to rest on me. I braced for the usual reaction, but didn’t get it. That told me either he’d been warned ahead of time, or he was even better than me at the whole poker-face thing. Not surprising—since they don’t have to breathe or have a heartbeat unless they choose, most vamps don’t have a lot of tells. Especially not the old ones, and I was guessing from the sense of power this one wore like a cloak that he was a lot older than his thirty-something face appeared.
I examined him with interest, since I’d never seen him before. That was unusual, if he was as old as I thought. The newbies come and go, most of them dead before they manage to outlive a normal human—so much for immortality—but I try to keep up with the major players in the vamp world. There aren’t that many first-level masters out there, but this one was not in my extensive mental filing cabinet. I quickly added a new file.
He was dressed in an understated outfit my host might have worn if he’d decided it was casual day, one designed to enhance what nature had bestowed with a liberal hand. The off-white sweater was tight enough to show off a nice upper body, and the tan suede pants hugged muscular thighs. A spill of rich auburn was trying to escape from a gold clip at his nape. It looked like the kind of hair women on shampoo commercials have—luxurious, overabundant and shiny. It should have looked effeminate on a man, as should the long-lashed blue gray eyes, but the broad shoulders and strong, arrogant jaw were all male. I frowned at him. Vamps had plenty of advantages already; they didn’t need good looks, too. I cataloged his scent—a combination of whiskey, fine leather and, oddly, butterscotch—for future reference, and returned my attention to his companion.
“There is a shower in the bath down the hall, or you may use the one in my room if you like,” I was told. “It’s through the bedroom at the end of the corridor.”
My host placed the boy on the sofa, heedless of the expensive upholstery, and whoever the auburn-haired vamp was, he moved to help without a word. He didn’t even bother to keep an eye on me as he did so, which I found vaguely insulting. I’d killed his kind for half a millennium and I didn’t even rate a blink? He must figure the odds were in his favor. Considering that I was in a room with two first-level masters, he was probably right.
I went down a hall that smelled faintly of some generic air freshener. They probably advertised it as “lilac-scented,” but it reminded me more of vats of chemicals than wide-open fields and flowers. There is a downside to supersharp senses, as with so much else about me.
Of course, there is an upside, too. I cocked an ear, but there was nothing much to hear. A girl was on the phone next door, complaining about some guy to a girlfriend, and someone down a floor was either talking to his cat or having a psychotic episode, but both voices were clearer than the soft noises coming from the living room. The vamps were presumably cleaning the wounds better than I’d been able to do at the bar, and bandaging him up. I knew nobody was planning a snack—it would be like offering people used to beluga caviar and Dom Pérignon a sack of stale Fritos and a flat Coke. Sloppy seconds weren’t likely to appeal.
I let myself into the big master bedroom and looked around. Opulent, understated, rich. What a surprise. In here the decorator had gone out on a limb and chosen a gray color palette, everything from charcoal on the bedding to ash on the walls. I frowned around with distaste and craved my paints so badly my palms itched. A good half hour of work on the bare stretch over the bed would make all the difference. I’ve never gotten a security deposit back yet, but then, in my line of work, that was pretty much a given anyway. And I’ve never lived with flat, gray walls.
The bathroom was all blinding white subway tiles in what I guess was supposed to be industrial chic. I took white—of course—towels out of the closet and got my filthy self into the chrome and glass shower. At least it was big.
I leaned my head against the soon-steamy wall and tried not to imagine Claire with a tiny version of myself in her arms. Dhampirs, children of human women and male vampires, were never a good thing. Luckily, we are really rare, since dead sperm don’t swim too well. However, there were a few cases where a newly made vamp just out of the grave had been able to sire a child. The kids were usually born barking mad and lived very short, very violent lives.
Of course, not all dhampirs were the same. Just like with human children, you never knew how the genes were going to combine. I’d known a few rare ones who took after their mothers and managed to live—mostly—normal lives. Other than for heightened senses and strength, you might never have known what they were. But those were even rarer than the rare breed itself, and I somehow doubted Claire would get so lucky.
I knew her. Whatever the story behind her child’s conception, she would love it, nurture it and defend it fiercely, at least until it grew up enough to throw her off a building in a fit of rage it wouldn’t even remember. I really, really hoped Kyle had been lying. Otherwise, I was faced with killing my best friend’s kid, along with any affection she’d ever had for me, or waiting for her violent death.
It would be useless to try to talk to Claire. She’d never understand how much danger she was in, nor be willing to take the necessary steps to ensure her safety. It was that damn respect for life she was always lecturing me about, the same one that made her a strict vegetarian and forced me to have to sneak out to eat bar-b-que. After all, I could hear her argue, I’ve known you for years and you’ve never wanted to kill me. She’d only be hurt and confused if I explained just how wrong she was. Whatever control I may have acquired through long centuries of practice, I’m still a monster. And like the one who sired me, I’ll always love death and destruction a little bit more than anything, or anyone, else.
I don’t know much about my mother, except that she was a young serving girl dumb enough to believe that the local lord’s handsome son wasn’t just having a good time with her. They’d been together for several months before he was cursed with vampirism, a state he failed to recognize immediately. Unlike the usual way of making a vamp, the curse took a while to complete the transformation. There was no big death scene and no dramatic clawing his way out of his own grave. Instead, he’d shrugged off the Gypsy’s mutterings as the ravings of a madwoman and gone about his usual, love-’em-and-leave-’em lifestyle for a fateful few days. Fortunately, I was the only one to whom he’d passed his newly acquired vampiric genes in the meantime.
Long story short, nine months later, after he’d gone off to get his undead head together, a bouncing baby me entered the world, only to find that the world wasn’t happy to see me. The humans where I grew up were pretty savvy about all things vampire and figure
d out what I was the first time they saw my baby fangs. Mother was told to drown me in the river and save everyone a lot of trouble. I don’t know to this day whether I’m happy or not that she gave me away to a passing Gypsy band instead. She died in a plague some years later, so I never knew her. And my father—well, let’s just say we have issues.
I don’t guess that is too surprising considering that dhampirs and vampires are mortal enemies. Some legends say that God lets dhampirs exist to keep a check on the number of vamps out there. A more scientific explanation is that the predator instinct in vamps is necessary to allow them to feed, but it plays hell with a body that has an adrenal system to overload. But I think at least part of the anger we carry is a natural reaction to being forced into a world where we have zero chance of ever belonging. Vampires hate and fear us, and usually try to kill us on sight. Humans think we’re one of them for a while, until one of the rages takes us and our true nature becomes all too obvious. Then we’re on the run again, trying to avoid angry mobs of both species while attempting to carve a niche out of their world for ourselves.
Most of my kind burn out early, either by overtasking their systems or—far more often—by dying in a fight. I know of only one other dhampir as old as me, a batty Indian fakir who lives in the desert of Rajasthan, as far away from human habitation as he can get. It took me more than two months to find him the only time I’d bothered, and he didn’t have much useful advice to impart. He manages to keep a lid on things by meditating the centuries away, controlling his true nature by simply denying it any contact with possible prey. That really isn’t my style. I prefer the traditional method of letting my second nature out occasionally to hunt, providing that it kills only the undead. Or demons, or the occasional were, or pretty much anything that isn’t human. It’s messy, but it works, and it even led to my current job.
I soaped up my greasy hair and wondered if that was why I’d been tracked down. It seemed unlikely. If the Senate wanted someone dead, they sure as hell didn’t need to hire me to do it. They had plenty of their own muscle and an intelligence department second to none. One cut-rate assassin they could do without.
There was also the little matter that I had a habit of refusing assignments unless I knew the circumstances involved—all of them. I had promised myself to limit my sprees to those who, as the saying goes, needed killing. I figured that since it was my hand on the ax—or the stake or the rifle or whatever—it was up to me to be certain I didn’t take out someone who had merely irritated a local loan shark. But that nosiness, as the Senate would view it, would have put me off their list of hired talent even if the accident of my birth hadn’t already made me persona non grata in a big way. So my skills at the hunt were probably not what was needed here.
I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what else it could be, though. Occasionally I earned a few bucks checking the supernatural underground for people with problems that the human authorities couldn’t manage or even understand. But again, there was nothing I could offer that the Senate couldn’t do itself and probably far better. All things considered, I was stumped. Not that it mattered anyway. As soon as I got a few answers out of buffet boy, I was off hunting Michael. Whatever the Senate wanted, it could damn well come up with some other way to get it. And as for my host, he could drop dead. Again.
Chapter Two
“This is Louis-Cesare. I would appreciate it if you refrained from attacking him while under my roof.”
I had slipped back into the living room unannounced, but of course I’d been heard. I was relieved that at least they hadn’t smelled me coming—or not as easily as before—since I was clean for the first time in days. I was also wearing one of my host’s pristine white dress shirts over my blood-spattered jeans, which he refrained from commenting on, although he did tighten his lips somewhat. I grinned. It had probably cost as much as my rent for the month and it hung down to my knees, but I hadn’t had a great selection to choose from. The closet in his room had been almost bare, another good sign, since the guy is a clotheshorse. If he’d been near the New York shops for more than a few days, the place would’ve looked like an Armani boutique.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I told him, sauntering over to the bar and mixing myself a double. With my metabolism, alcohol burns off too fast for me to get drunk—one of the few perks of my condition. “Where’s the kid?”
“I’ve arranged for his care. He was taken away a few moments ago.”
I tightened my grip on the bottle and counted to ten. It wasn’t a record—he’d managed to get under my skin faster on previous occasions—but it was close. “I needed to talk to him,” I said carefully, turning around. “He was the only lead I had. You had no right to—”
“He retains his memories, for the moment,” I was told. “You can speak to him later if you must. For now, there are more important matters.”
I looked down at a crunching sound to see that I’d cracked the bottle. I set it carefully on the bar and ignored the single malt draining away over the dark wood. Five centuries of fighting for control, and it was all I could do not to smash the thing the rest of the way against his head. How did he do it? No one else caused me to reach boiling point this fast, at least not anymore. “I’d prefer to speak to him tonight,” I said evenly. “I’m in something of a hurry.”
I noticed that the redhead had closed in a little, as if he thought his buddy might need backup. I repressed a smile. At least I had his attention now.
“He has been heavily medicated, Dorina. He won’t be able to tell you anything for approximately eight hours. If you wished it otherwise, you might have mentioned the fact.”
I felt my stomach twist into a knot and my heartbeat speed up. I tried to slow my suddenly accelerated breathing, knowing what was coming if I couldn’t get a grip, but all I could think about was Claire. I thought of the past month, of the useless leads and the sleepless nights, of calling in every favor I had and promising more to entirely the wrong types for information that had turned out to be useless. I thought of Kyle’s smarmy face as he told me a worst-case scenario that still had me wanting to scream, and then a familiar rushing sound filled my ears and I blacked out.
It happens that way sometimes, although mostly these days I keep it under better control. But that night was like old times, when I’d gone on rampages that sometimes left dozens dead, and I was never able to remember more than flashes later. It was the real nature of a dhampir and the reason no one ever trusted us, especially the vamps, who were our favorite prey. It was one of so very many reasons I hoped Claire had been a lot smarter than Kyle had said.
I came around eventually, which rather surprised me. One of these centuries, I fully expect to die in the middle of some berserker rage and never even know when it happens. I’ve come close more times than I can recall, waking up broken and bleeding, surrounded by bodies in places I didn’t recognize and sometimes days later than my last memory. This was better than most. There was something sharp pinning my shoulder to the wall, and the burn of familiar pain helped me concentrate enough to pull the rest of the way out of the trance.
I knew when I’d succeeded by the fact that my shoulder suddenly felt like it had caught fire. As an added bonus, I was the proud owner of an aching jaw, a pounding headache and a severe urge to vomit. The redhead was holding the rapier that had me skewered like a butterfly on a pin, rendering my left arm temporarily useless, and my host was using both hands to hold my right. I was glad to see that they looked more than a little beaten up. The redhead’s pretty white sweater was stained with blood that didn’t smell like mine, and the brunet had a long gash down one side of his face that had barely missed his right eye. It wasn’t deep, though, and it started to close over as I watched. Damn.
“My lord, I do not mean to interfere, but perhaps restraints…?” The voice had a faint French accent, which explained why I hadn’t known him. The redhead was a Senate member, but from the European version, not the North American. And I hadn�
��t been to Europe since a very memorable visit during the Great War. He was looking a little spooked, which would have pleased me under other circumstances. At the moment, however, I was distracted by my host moving one hand up to grip me around the throat.
“I would put you over my knee if I thought it would do any good,” he told me grimly.
The other vamp looked like he’d just been slapped. I laughed. “He thinks you’re being kinky,” I said, pausing to spit out a tooth that had come loose. No worry. I’d grow a replacement soon enough, and at least it was a back one this time. I grinned at the French vamp, who looked vaguely ill at the thought of anyone doing anything with me, except maybe planting a stake in my ribs. “You didn’t tell him, did you?”
The brunet sighed and released me, pausing to yank out the rapier as he did so. I didn’t wince. At the moment, the pain almost felt good, a reminder that, once again, I’d beaten the odds and lived. Not that I’d been in serious danger this time. He wouldn’t kill me when he needed my help. Well, at least not until I turned him down.
“I was planning introductions, had you given me the opportunity,” I was told acerbically.
The redhead’s expression was now bordering on revulsion. There must be a brain inside that pretty head, because he appeared to be putting things together, but not willing to believe what his instincts were telling him. I decided to help him out. I turned to my host, who was looking down at me with an annoyance he wasn’t bothering to hide. I threw my good arm around his neck and gave him a robust kiss on the cheek. “Hello, Daddy!”
Fifteen minutes later I was lying on the floor howling, and it wasn’t from pain. I hadn’t laughed that hard in years, to the point that I almost couldn’t breathe and my ribs actually hurt. Of course, that could have been from one of the new bruises I was sporting—between the bar fight and blacking out, I was a little under the weather—but at the moment I didn’t care. I wiped my streaming eyes and tried to sit up.
