Guilty Pleasures

When I could see again, I was huddled by the wall, and she was standing over me, not touching, not needing to. I was shaking, shaking so badly my teeth chattered. I was cold, so cold.

“Eventually, animator, you will call me master, and you will mean it.” She was suddenly kneeling over me. She pressed her slender body over mine, hands pi

The beautiful little girl leaned her face against my cheek and whispered, “I am going to sink fangs into your neck, and there is nothing you can do to stop me.”

Her delicate shell of an ear was brushing my lips. I sank teeth into it until I tasted blood. She shrieked and jerked away, blood ru

Bright razor claws tore through my brain. Her pain, her rage, turning my brain into silly putty. I think I was screaming again, but I couldn’t hear it. After a while I couldn’t hear anything. Darkness came. It swallowed up Nikolaos and left me alone, floating in the dark.

Chapter 39

I woke up, which was a pleasant surprise all on its own. I was blinking up into an electric light set in a ceiling. I was alive, and I wasn’t in the dungeon. Good things to know.

Why should it surprise me that I was alive? My fingers caressed the rough, knobby fabric of the couch I was lying on. There was a picture hanging over the couch. A river scene with flatboats, mules, people. Someone came to stand over me, long yellow hair, square-jawed, handsome face. Not as inhumanly beautiful as he had been to me before, but still handsome. I guess you had to be handsome to be a stripper.

My voice came out in a harsh croak. “Robert.”

He knelt beside me. “I was afraid you wouldn’t wake up before dawn. Are you hurt?”

“Where…” I cleared my throat and that helped a little. “Where am I?”

“Jean-Claude’s office at Guilty Pleasures.”

“How did I get here?”

“Nikolaos brought you. She said, ‘Here’s your master’s whore.’ “ I watched his throat work as he swallowed. It reminded me of something, but I couldn’t think what.

“You know what Jean-Claude has done?” I asked.

Robert nodded. “My master has marked you twice. When I speak to you, I am speaking to him.”

Did he mean that figuratively or literally? I really didn’t want to know.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

There was something in the way he asked it that meant I shouldn’t feel all right. My throat hurt. I raised a hand and touched it. Dried blood. On my neck.

I closed my eyes, but that didn’t help. A small sound escaped my throat, very like a whimper. Phillip’s image was burned on my mind. The blood pouring from his throat, torn pink meat. I shook my head and tried to breathe deep and slow. It was no good. “Bathroom,” I said.

Robert showed me where it was. I went inside, knelt on the cool floor, and threw up in the toilet, until I was empty and nothing but bile came up. Then I walked to the sink and splashed cold water in my mouth and on my face. I stared at myself in the mirror above the sink. My eyes looked black, not brown, my skin sickly. I looked like shit and felt worse.

And there on the right side of my neck was the real thing. Not Phillip’s healing bite marks, but fang marks. Tiny, diminutive, fang marks. Nikolaos had…contaminated me. To prove she could harm Jean-Claude’s human servant. She had proved how tough she was, oh, yeah. Real tough.

Phillip was dead. Dead. Try the word over in your mind, but could I say it out loud? I decided to try. “Phillip is dead,” I told my reflection.

I crumbled the brown paper towel and stuffed it in the metal trash can. It wasn’t enough. I screamed, “Ahhh!” I kicked the trash can, over and over until it toppled to the floor, spilling its contents.

Robert came through the door. “Are you all right?”

“Does it look like I’m all right?” I yelled.

He hesitated in the doorway. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“You couldn’t even keep them from taking Phillip!”

He winced as if I had hit him. “I did my best.”

“Well, it wasn’t good enough, was it?” I was still screaming like a mad person. I sank to my knees, and all that rage choked up my throat and spilled out my eyes. “Get out!”

He hesitated. “Are you sure?”

“Get out of here!”

He closed the door behind him. And I sat in the floor and rocked and cried and screamed. When my heart felt as empty as my stomach, I felt leaden, used up.

Nikolaos had killed Phillip and bitten me to prove how powerful she was. I bet she thought I’d be scared absolutely shitless of her. She was right on that. But I spend most of my waking hours confronting and destroying things that I fear. A thousand-year-old master vampire was a tall order, but a girl’s got to have a goal.

Chapter 40

The club was quiet and dark. There was no one there but me. It must have been after dawn. The club was hushed and full of that waiting silence that all buildings get after the people go home. As if once we leave, the building has a life of its own, if only we would leave it in peace. I shook my head and tried to concentrate. To feel something. All I wanted was to go home and try to sleep. And pray I didn’t dream.

There was a yellow Post-it note on the door. It read, “Your weapons are behind the bar. The master brought those, too. Robert.”

I put both guns in place and the knives. The one I had used on Winter and Aubrey was missing. Was Winter dead? Maybe. Was Aubrey dead? Hopefully. Usually it took a master vampire to survive a blow to the heart, but I’d never tried it on a five-hundred-year-old walking corpse. If they took the knife out, he might be tough enough to survive it. I had to call Catherine. And tell her what? Get out of town, a vampire is after you. Didn’t sound like something she’d buy. Shit.

I walked out into the soft white light of dawn. The street was empty and awash in that gentle morning air. The heat hadn’t had time to creep in. It was almost cool. Where was my car? I heard footsteps a second before the voice said, “Don’t move. I have a gun pointed at your back.”

I clasped my hands atop my head without being asked. “Good morning, Edward,” I said.

“Good morning, Anita,” he said. “Stand very still, please.” He stood just behind me, gun pressing against my spine. He frisked me completely, top to bottom. Nothing haphazard about Edward; that’s one of the reasons he’s still alive. He stepped back from me, and said, “You may turn around now.”

He had my Firestar tucked into his belt, the Browning loose in his left hand. I don’t know what he did with the knives.

He smiled, boyish and charming, gun very steadily pointed at my chest. “No more hiding. Where is this Nikolaos?” he asked.

I took a deep breath and let it out. I thought about accusing him of being the vampire murderer, but now didn’t seem to be a good time. Maybe later, when he wasn’t pointing a gun at me. “May I lower my arms?” I asked.

He gave a slight nod.

I lowered my arms slowly. “I want one thing clear between us, Edward. I’ll give you the information, but not because I’m afraid of you. I want her dead. And I want a piece of it.”

His smile widened, eyes glittering with pleasure. “What happened last night?”

I glanced down at the sidewalk, then up. I stared into his blue eyes and said, “She had Phillip killed.”

He was watching my face very closely. “Go on.”

“She bit me. I think she plans on making me a personal servant.”

He put his gun back in his shoulder holster and came to stand next to me. He turned my head to one side to see the bite mark better. “You need to clean this bite. It’s going to hurt like hell.”

“I know. Will you help me?”

“Sure.” His smile softened. “Here I was going to cause you pain to get information. Now you ask me to help you pour acid on a wound.”