Unless you were Slava, apparently.
Slava had gone with highly polished blond woods, chrome modernist furniture and art glass, with pretty white and gold fixtures hovering over a reception desk and a water feature trickling away on the opposite wall. It looked like a Norwegian day spa. And the weird thing was, his version was actually more intimidating. Like he was saying “I don’t need the props; I have the real thing.”
Only the real thing must have been inside, because the guy standing up behind the desk wasn’t scary at all.
He also wasn’t vampire. He was garden-variety human—a nice, reassuringly bland presence to welcome the more skittish types—but I was betting there was a call button conveniently located under the desk. And what would respond wouldn’t be nice, human or particularly welcoming.
But the button didn’t get pushed because Marlowe staggered through the lobby with his arm around my waist, flashing some kind of card at the guy. He did it so fast that I didn’t see what it was, and I doubt the guy did, either. But enough of a suggestion rippled through the air along with it to have him settling back against his chair, unconcerned.
And then we were pushing past some frosted-glass doors and into—
Damn.
The penthouse had either come with a full semicircle of fifteen-foot windows, or they’d been added later. Probably at the same time that it had been gutted, leaving a huge open area for maybe a couple hundred guests. And a group of performers in the place of chandeliers, executing flowing, sensual acrobatics in body sequins and some not-so-strategically-placed feathers.
The birds in the Aerie, I assumed.
Anywhere else, they would have been the main draw, and then some. But at Slava’s they apparently counted as decoration. The real show was taking place below, on a rotating platform surrounded by a crowd of people who all looked like they were attending the opera.
I guess PVC cat suits would have clashed with the decor, because there wasn’t one in sight. Instead, tuxes and glittery evening dresses seemed to be the norm, with a few expensive lounge suits and LBDs on the younger sort. The guests were sipping champagne against a breathtaking hundred-eighty-degree view of Manhattan, including a tiny Lady Liberty off to the far left, who also appeared to be watching the show.
Only “watching” wasn’t quite the right word, I realized a second later.
This was very definitely audience participation.
A heavy whip cracked and a powerful body flinched. But the groan that emanated from the perfectly sculpted lips wasn’t pain. I could tell because I felt it right along with him: the biting caress of the lash, the sweet sting of sweat trickling into the wound, the dark ache of arousal.
“Harder.” The low growl caused the two PVC-clad doms on either side of the platform to exchange glances. Maybe because they’d already striped their subject’s smooth bronze skin from the heavily corded back to the muscular, straining thighs.
It was pretty impressive, considering the wings that kept getting in the way.
“Bugger,” Marlowe said, under his breath.
I didn’t say anything. I was busy tamping down a visceral response that had my skin tightening, my breath shortening and sweat starting to bead my skin underneath the silky fabric of the dress. And because I couldn’t have anyway.
The majority of Slava’s family were downstairs, dealing with the disaster, but there were enough up here to make even whispered conversation out of the question. Specifically, there were two of them guarding a door on the far right of the room. And since it was the only one with accessories, I didn’t need Marlowe’s nod to know that it was our target.
There was no reason not to stare as I made my way around the room, since that was what everyone else was doing. You’d think they’d never seen an eight-foot-tall naked guy with long black and silver wings getting the crap beaten out of him before. And either he’d said something to piss off the doms, or they were just in the habit of giving value for the money.
Because they were really working him over.
One of the girls had switched from a regular whip to a cat, and a flick of her wrist sent the straps slicing through the air to land almost gently against the broad back. But the crack echoed around the room, and a spread of livid welts bloomed against the sun-kissed flesh. Her subject murmured approval and leaned into the blows that followed, until they crisscrossed his back and decorated his sides. When the platform rotated back around and she started to similarly adorn his abs, he trembled slightly, but still didn’t cry out.
But the rest of us did.
The whip cracked again, this time reaching around the side to flick over a tender nipple, and the blaze of sensation was enough to have me sucking in a startled breath. And the whole room gasped right along with me. The Irin smiled grimly, his lower lip splitting under his teeth, blood seeping out. He touched it with his tongue, reveling in the delicious wetness of it. And a nearby guy shuddered and slid down the wall.
And that was why the Fallen, aka the Watchers, aka the Irin, were high on my avoid-at-all-costs list.
I didn’t know if they really were fallen angels, as they claimed, or if they were just another demon race with better-than-average PR. But their power was as scary as it was odd, something close enough to mind control to make me really unhappy. But I couldn’t do anything about it now except stay well out of the creature’s line of sight as I worked around to my target.
I didn’t have to worry about anyone else’s.
By the time I got through the crowd, it had ceased to be a group of individuals watching a performance and had transformed into a single entity that moaned and writhed and sweated out the experience right along with the Irin. It was like he was a conductor and we were his orchestra, only what was playing wasn’t notes on a page but sensations on skin. And he was damned good at it.
I had to stop and give myself a mental shakedown before approaching the guards, sloughing off the tendrils of sensation that wanted to wrap me up, to pull me back, to sink me into the collective wave of pleasure building behind me. And force myself to face the job ahead. Because the vamps guarding the door were both masters.
Not that it mattered in this case. Even a baby vamp can sense the presence of another, especially one as powerful as Marlowe. Which was why he was hanging back, waiting for me to get the door open before moving up.
Since I had to manage it in full view of the main salon, the idea was to split one guard away from the other and deal with them separately. The dress should have helped with that, being cut up to here and down to there and fitting me like a glove. Along with the extras I’d spent half a day on—short, sleek dark hair, heavily lined black eyes and shiny red lips—I’d expected it to provide a decent enough distraction.
I’d expected wrong. Thanks to the show the Irin was providing, no one was paying me the slightest attention, including the two guards. I actually had to tap one on the shoulder to get noticed.
“Got a cigarette?” I asked, a little more harshly than normal. But, damn it, I could have worn jeans.
“What? Oh, yeah.” He dug a case out of his trousers and passed it over, his eyes never leaving the show.
I hiked the dress up and put a stiletto-clad foot on a nearby chair, flashing more than a little thigh. “How about a light?” I asked huskily.
“In a bowl on the bar.”
“How about you get one for me?”
“How about you get it yourself?”
“How about I knock your teeth in?”
“What?”
I sighed and gave up. I put the cigarette case back in his pocket, took out the passkey and let myself in through the door. The guy never even blinked.
My new phone rang. I dug it out of my purse and checked the readout. Marlowe.
Of course.
“What the hell was that?” he demanded.
“You wanted in, we’re in. Now come on, or I’m going to do this myself.”
I didn’t get an answer, except for an irritated clic
k in my ear. But a few seconds later he slipped through the door I was holding open with one aching foot. And a second after that, I was shoved against the wall, a hard body was pressed against me and a practiced mouth came down on mine.
For a second, I just froze.
The kiss was crazy enough all on its own. But then there was the knee pushing between my legs and the hand moving up my thigh, sliding the slick material of the dress out of the way so he could wrap my leg around his. His hair was cool and soft, his mouth was hot and hard, and he smelled like whiskey and smoke and electricity. And he could kiss; not as well as Louis-Cesare, but more than competently.
Which was going to do fuck all to preserve his manhood in three, two—
A wedge of sound pushed out into the quiet corridor: tinned laughter from some TV show, the buzz of a drink machine, the scrape of a heel against a doorframe. And then—
“Hey,” someone said. “You can’t be back here.”
Marlowe didn’t respond, and I couldn’t, since it looked like he was going for authenticity. Which worried me less than the fact that it was doing exactly nothing for me. And okay, it was Marlowe, but still. Considering the, uh, intensity of the situation, I’d have expected to feel something.
But I didn’t. Not a damned thing. Nothing but anger and annoyance and a weird sort of sadness, because he wasn’t the one I wanted.
Oh, God, I thought in horror. Louis-Cesare’s ruined me for other men.
“Hey, I’m talking to you!”
Marlowe didn’t react, since the voice was still too far away. And neither did I, except to freak out a little and wrap my other leg around him, climbing his body and grabbing his hair and sticking my tongue down his throat, all at the same time. He made a strangled urk sound, but manfully hung in there, bracing his legs and gripping my thighs. And yet I still felt exactly zip.
Until he suddenly pinched the hell out of me.
“Who let you back here?” another voice asked, from closer in. It was a man’s—literally. Because neither he nor his buddy was vampire.
There was no tingle coming from them, no itch, none of the telltale electricity that the vamp pressed against me was shedding like little bursts of lightning. It hurt—like being groped by an electric porcupine. But not as much as when the bastard pinched me again.
I broke off, out of breath and furious. “Son of a bitch!”
“This is a restricted area,” the first of two business suits informed us.
“So is my thigh,” I snarled, wrenching my head around so I could examine my left leg. And sure enough, under the ladder in my hose was a red mark as long as my thumb. It was definitely going to bruise. “Son of a bitch.”
“You already said that,” Marlowe said smarmily. “And I don’t see anything. Do you?” He glanced at Suit #2. Who came around to check it out.
“These hose cost forty bucks,” I said furiously. “I’m adding them to the bill!”
“And I will take them off again.”
“On what grounds?”
“On the grounds that they were already ripped downstairs.”
“You two need to go back out front,” Suit #1 said, coming up on my right.
I glared at Marlowe. “If it’s on your time, it’s on your dime.”
“And who decided that?”
“It’s called expenses!”
He looked at me consideringly as he let me down. “I’ll go halves.”
“Done.” They’d only cost me twenty, anyway.
“Did you hear me?” Suit #1 demanded, finally coming within arm’s length.
And getting coldcocked by my fist upside his jaw.
“Loud and clear,” I said, watching Marlowe extricate his knuckles from the face of Suit #2. “What was with all the pinching?” I demanded.
“No blood.”
“What?”
“I wanted to remind you to make sure to bruise rather than bloody him. This corridor is protected by a sound shield, but they do not block odors. And nothing is calculated to get a vampire’s attention faster than—” He noticed my expression and stopped.
“Thank you, Captain Obvious.”
“I’m on the Senate,” he reminded me. “It’s Lord Obvious. And I don’t want any mistakes tonight.”
I could have said a lot of things to that, but we didn’t have time. “I’ll see what I can do,” I said sweetly, and squatted by my guy to frisk him.
But other than a .45 that I tucked into the front of my dress, there was nothing of interest. Like detailed plans of the smugglers’ intentions. Or a map of their portal system. Or even a photo ID, none of which the bad guys I met ever seemed thoughtful enough to provide.
“Nothing,” Marlowe said in disgust, throwing his man alongside and then crouching beside him.
“But human.”
“Mages,” he confirmed.
“Dark or light?”
He concentrated for a second, then shook his head. “Can’t tell.”
“There’s a lot of that going around.” I met his eyes, and his expression darkened. And I knew we were both thinking about Lawrence and the mage he’d followed into hell. “Mages, demons, vampires, smugglers—what’s next?”
“Let’s go find out,” he growled.
Finding out meant finding Slava’s office, which was a process of elimination involving a lot of rooms that looked like they ought to have interesting activities going on—hence the silence spell, I assumed—but that were inexplicably empty. Like the door the men had been coming out of, which proved to be a break room. And the corridor. And everything except a door at the very end of the hall with a light on under it.
I scowled at it.
We’d been up here six, maybe seven minutes by now, with another couple in the elevator. That was plenty of time for Slava to have prepared a welcome, even if he hadn’t already had something in place. And since this had been his base of operations for years, that seemed unlikely.
He knew we were here. He knew there was a chance we would get past his men. Yet there were no guards, no traps, nothing to keep us from waltzing right into his office except a couple of clueless mages who hadn’t even had shields up. It was enough to give me stomach cramps.
“Hold up,” I said.
We were plastered to either side of the office door, about to break in, so Marlowe didn’t look happy at the interruption. “What now?” he demanded, like the previous delays had been my fault.
“I’m not sure,” I admitted. But it wasn’t just paranoia coming out to play. Something had triggered an “oh, crap” response in the back of my mind.
I couldn’t pin it down any more than that, because there was nothing to see but empty corridor and, thanks to the spell, nothing to hear. And the only odors coming from the room ahead were pretty standard for an office: printer ink, industrial cleaner, a full ashtray, and feline, because apparently even evil pimps keep pets. There was nothing to explain why the hair had suddenly risen all along the back of my neck.
But it had, and it was a problem. Particularly as my big bag o’ tricks had been confiscated on the first go-round. All I had was a purloined gun with no extra clips and no idea what was behind that damned door.
And I was suddenly finding myself less than curious.
“For fuck’s sake!” Marlowe hissed, as I just stood there. “You’re supposed to be a professional!”
“I am,” I said. “And in my professional opinion, there’s something—”
But Marlowe didn’t want my opinion, professional or otherwise. Marlowe wanted inside that room. “Remember—alive,” he snarled. And before I could stop him, he’d grasped the knob, flung open the door and bolted inside with vampire swiftness.
Which was when things got a little confusing.
A blur even my eyes couldn’t track shot out of the room and then shot back in, slamming the door behind it. It took less time than it takes to say, almost less than it takes to think—maybe a second in all. It took me another to notice that Marlowe was now across th
e hall, splayed against the wall.
Nailed to the tasteful gold wallpaper by the knife buried in his heart.
It would have killed a human, and seriously inconvenienced a regular vampire. But that sort of thing doesn’t work so well on senior masters. Not even with wood, and Marlowe’s bloody hands were slipping on a metal hilt. But it didn’t look like it had done him any good, either.
A thin ribbon of blood trickled out of the side of his mouth as he opened it to gasp, “Wha’?”
I didn’t answer, because I didn’t know. And because the door suddenly opened again, if you can call it that when a body is flung through it, splintering the wood and sending someone flying back into Marlowe. And plunging the knife he’d just jerked out of his rib cage right back inside.
Judging by his expression, that hadn’t been too healthy, but I didn’t have time to worry about it. Or about the fact that the vamp who had smashed into him was no longer in one piece, or even two. Or that one of those pieces was screaming in a high-pitched wheeze, like a little girl.
Because the thing in the room was now the thing on me.
What followed wasn’t exactly a fight, since a fight implies planning and strategy and execution and this was just the last step, fueled by pure instinct because there was no time for anything else. I blocked a flurry of knives that was really only one but was wielded by a slashing maniac with unearthly speed that I’d only ever encountered from a first-level vamp. But this wasn’t one, because the feel was wrong; the feel was strange, but it was oddly familiar, too, in a way I didn’t have time to grasp before—
Before I had him.
I feinted left and then jerked right with a liquid movement that I guess my assailant hadn’t been expecting. Because it allowed me to grab the neck that was following the knife headed for my heart. I held on to it with one hand while holding the damn knife away from me with the other. And looked past it to see—