She placed hers in it, fought off a jitter of revulsion as his fingers twined with hers. He led her back, away from the crowd, then keyed in a code on his private door. “Enter Dorian,” he said for the voice command, and the locks gave.
Inside candles were lit, dozens of them. Light and shadow, Eve thought again. On the wall screen various sections of the club were displayed, the sound muted, so people danced, groped, screamed, stalked, in absolute silence.
“Some view.” Casually, she stepped away from him and stepped over as if to study the action on screen.
“My way of being surrounded and alone at the same time.” His hand brushed lightly over her shoulder as he walked behind her and over to his bar. “You’d understand that.”
“You talk as if you know me. You look at me as though you do. But you don’t.”
“Oh, I think I do. I saw the understanding of violence, of power, and the taste for it in you. We have that in common. Wine?”
“No. Are you alone here, Dorian?”
“I am.” Despite her answer, he poured two glasses. “Though I planned to entertain a woman later.” This time his gaze traveled over her, boldly intimate. “How interesting it should be you. Tell me, Eve, is this a professional or a personal call?”
She let herself stare at him, into those eyes. “I don’t know. I guess we’ll find out. I know you killed those women.”
He smiled slowly. “Do you? How?”
“I feel it. I see it when I look at you. Tell me how you did it.”
“Why should I? Why would I? Lieutenant.”
As if impatient, she shook her head. “I don’t have a warrant. You know that. I haven’t given you your rights. I can’t use anything you tell me. You know that, too. I just need to know what you are. Why I feel the way I do around you. I don’t believe in…”
There was no mistaking the hunger on his face as he walked toward her. “In what?”
She could hear her father’s voice whispering in her mind. There are things in the dark, little girl. Terrible things in the dark.
“In the sort of thing you’re selling out there.” She gestured toward the screen. “Turn that off, will you? It feels crowded in here.”
“You don’t like to watch?” he said, silkily. “Or be watched?”
“Depends,” she answered with what she hoped sounded like false bravado.
“Screen off,” he ordered, and smiled again. “Better?”
“Yeah. It’s better with it off.”
“That’s the signal.” Feeney nodded to Roarke. “All units, move in. Move in. She’s playing him,” he said to Roarke. “She’ll walk him right into it.”
“Or he’s playing her.” With Eve’s voice in his ear, Roarke rushed into the dark.
Into the terrible things.
“Hold it.” There was the slightest hesitation in her order as she slapped a hand against Dorian’s chest and shoved. “I have obligations. I have loyalties.”
“None of which fill your needs.”
“You don’t know my needs.”
“Give me five minutes to do as I like with you, and you’ll know differently. You came to me.” He trailed his fingers over her cheek. “You came to me alone. You want to know what I can give you.”
She shook her head, stepped away. “I came because I need to understand. I can’t settle, I can’t focus. I feel like something’s trying to crawl out of my skin.”
“I can help you with that.”
She glanced over her shoulder at him. “Yeah, I bet you could. But I’m not like Tiara Kent. I’m not looking for cheap thrills. And I’m not like Allesseria Carter. I don’t need your goodwill. I’m not afraid of you.”
“Aren’t you? Aren’t you afraid of what I could make you?”
She looked at the portrait. “Like that?” Her voice was just a little breathless. “I’m not that gullible.”
He lifted one of the wineglasses, drank deeply. “There’s more in the world that slips in and out of what’s deemed reality.”
“Such as?”
He drank again, and his eyes went even darker. “Such as powers, and hungers beyond the human. I’ll take you there. I can show you a glimpse without causing you harm. You should drink. Relax. Nothing will happen to you here. It’s not my way.”
“No, you go to them. Kent practically spread rose petals on a path to her bed for you.”
“Hypothetically, invitations are required.”
“In an occupied building,” Eve agreed. “Not in an abandoned one. Like the one where you dragged Allesseria, where you killed her.”
“Does it excite you to think so, to look at me and see her death?”
“Maybe it does.”
“You seek death.” He laid his fingertips under hers, lifted her hand. “Surround yourself with it. Isn’t that what I sensed, what I saw, in you that first moment our eyes met? It connects us, this…fondness for death in a way the man you give yourself to can never understand. He can’t reach that dark bloom inside you. I can.”
She let her fingers curl to his for an instant, then eased back again. “I don’t know what connects us, but I felt something when I heard your voice come in on Allesseria’s ’link message to me. It was a mistake to say anything, Dorian, a mistake not to make certain the ’link was down and the transmission broken before you spoke to her. We’ll have your voiceprint match by morning.”
He lowered the glass he’d lifted to his lips. “That’s not possible.”
“Would I be here now otherwise? Risking all this so I could see you tonight? This goes down tomorrow, and my part in it’s over. I need answers for me. Why would I tell you we have evidence building that could take you down, give you time to poof? I have to know. For me.”
“I have an alibi,” he insisted.
“Kendra Lake? Another spoiled rich girl running on hormones, vanity, and chemicals. She won’t help you. She’ll crack, we both know it. She’s on the juice, she’s your lover. It won’t hold.”
“You’re lying.” He gulped down the rest of the liquid in the glass, heaved the glass aside. “You’re lying. You bitch.”
Okay, Eve thought, time to change directions.
Outside the apartment it was hell. Screams and shouts echoed through the mist some clever soul had boosted up when the small army of cops had burst in, announcing a raid.
Roarke flung one attacker aside, dodged the swipe of a knife from another. Preferring fists to stunner, he used them viciously. Despite the cacophony, he heard Eve’s voice clearly in his head.
“She’s losing him,” he yelled to Feeney. Whirling, Roarke sprinted for the stairs through streams of stunner fire.
“Caught me,” Eve said. “I’m lying about any pretense I find you attractive or compelling on a personal level. About the rest, that’s a wrap. You not only ran your mouth where it could be heard on Allesseria’s ’link, EDD’s working on cleaning and enhancing a few seconds on screen during the trans. You moved partially into view.
“Added to that,” she continued, “we’re about to link you to one Pensky, Gregor. Shouldn’t have used a former known associate as a fall guy. Even a dead fall guy, Dorian. Little slips, they’ll kill you every time.”
She glanced idly around the room. “I bet you saved some of Tiara Kent’s blood for a souvenir. I get that warrant in the morning, I’m going to find it, and the jewelry you took off her dead or dying body. You scum. That’ll put you down for three counts of murder. Anything
else you want to add to the menu?”
“Do you think you can threaten me?” His eyes were black pools. “Play with me?”
“If you’re trying for thrall, you’re missing. I’ll have you locked on Allesseria in a matter of hours. The rest will tumble right into the pile. You’re done. I just wanted the satisfaction of telling you personally before—Don’t,” she warned. She laid her hand on her stunner when she saw the move in his eyes. “Unless you want to add assaulting an officer to the mix. In which case, I can haul you out of here. Sun’s down, Dorian.”
“Yes, it is.” He smiled, and to Eve’s absolute shock, showed fangs.
He leaped, almost seemed to fly at her. She drew her weapon, pivoted, but she wasn’t quick enough. Nothing could have been. She got off two shots as he hurled her across the room. He took both hits, and just kept coming. She felt it in every bone as she hit the stone wall, and though the stunner spurted out of her hand on impact, she managed to roll, then kick up hard with both feet. The force knocked him back far enough to give her room to flip up.
She braced for the next attack, but instead he hissed like a snake, cringed back. She flicked her gaze down, saw he was staring at the cross that had come out from under her shirt.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” He snarled as he circled her. “You actually believe your own hype.”
Whatever he’d drunk had juiced him up good, she determined. So good, she’d never be able to take him in hand-to-hand. She held up the cross as she tried to gauge the distance to her stunner, and her chances of reaching it.
“I’ll drink you dry.” His tongue ran over his long incisors. “Almost dry. And make you drink me. I’ll change you into what I am.”
“What? A babbling lunatic? Why didn’t Tiara change?”
“She wasn’t strong enough. I drank too much of her. But she died in bliss under me. As you will. But you’re strong, strong enough to be reborn. I knew it when I saw you. Knew you’d be the first who’d walk as I walk.”
“Uh-huh. You have the right to remain silent.”
He sprang, leaping like a great cat. She blocked the first blow, though she felt the force of it sing down her arm, explode into her shoulder. But the second sent her sprawling. She thudded hard against one of his metal tables, and tasted her own blood in her mouth as she rolled painfully onto her back.
He was standing over her now, fangs gleaming, eyes mad. “I give you the gift, the ultimate kiss.”
Eve swiped the blood off her mouth. “Bite me.”
Grinning, he fell on her.
Outside the door, Feeney pulled out his master and a bag of electronic tricks to bypass the locks.
“I’ve got it.” Blood seeped through the ragged tear in Roarke’s jacket where a knife point had slipped through. He flipped out a recorder, closed his eyes to focus first on the tones of the beeps.
Quickly, he played his fingers over the keypad in the same order, then held the recorder to the voice command.
“Enter Dorian,” the recorder replayed.
“Hey, Dallas said nothing was to be recorded.”
Roarke spared one glance over at Feeney’s wide grin. “I’m a poor team player.”
They pushed in the door, Roarke going low as he knew Feeney preferred high.
She was flat on her back, blood soaking her shirt. Even as Roarke rushed toward her, she pushed herself up on her elbows. “I’m okay. I’m okay. Call the MTs before that asshole bleeds to death.”
Roarke barely spared a glance at the man lying on the floor with a wooden stake in his belly. His own stomach muscles were knotted in slippery fists. “How much of this is yours?”
She looked down at her shirt in some disgust. “Hardly any. Missed the heart. Bastard was on top of me. Gut wounds are messy. Feeney?”
“Contacting the MTs,” he told her. “Situation below is nearly contained. Hell of a show. But looks like you’re the headliner here. Jesus, what a freaking mess.”
“I can’t believe I’m going to have to thank Baxter for being a smart-ass. Lost my weapon. He’d’ve done some damage before you got through if I hadn’t had the pointy stick.”
She started to stand, and with Roarke’s help made it to her feet. Once there, she swayed and she staggered. “Just a little shaken up. Hit my head on various hard objects. No, no, don’t carry me.”
He simply scooped her into his arms. “You’re doomed to have me disobey.” Then he pressed his lips to the side of her throat where he saw the faint wounds. “Got a taste of you, did he?”
She heard the rage, and tried to tamp it down. “Told him to bite me. It’s the first time anyone’s ever taken that suggestion literally. Except you.” She turned Roarke’s face with her hand so that he looked at her rather than Dorian. “Put me down, will you, pal? This seriously undermines my authority.”
“Hey, hey!” Crouched over Dorian, Feeney stopped even his half-hearted attempt to stanch the blood flow. “Is this guy sporting fangs?”
“He must’ve had them filed down that way,” Eve said. “Then had them capped. Easy on, easy off. We’ll sort it out.”
Peabody ran in. There was a darkening bruise on her cheekbone and a nasty scrape along her jaw. “Unit’s heading out to escort the MTs in. Holy crap!” she added when she saw Dorian. “You staked him. You actually staked him.”
“It was handy. Let’s get those medics in here. I don’t want this guy skipping out on multiple murder charges by dying on me. I want to know the minute he’s able to talk. I think we’re going to get an interesting confession.”
“It’s supposed to be the heart,” she heard Peabody mutter. “It’s really supposed to be the heart.”
Eve blew out a long breath. “Keep it up, Peabody, and I may have Mira shrink your head after she’s done with this second-rate Dracula. I want some damn air. I’m going up to the real world.”
Once she had, she took the bottle of water Roarke passed her and drank like a camel. She lifted her chin at the blood on his sleeve. “Is that bad?”
“It damn well is. I liked this jacket. Here, take a blocker. If you don’t have the mother of all headaches yet, it’s only due to adrenaline. Take the blocker, and I won’t haul your stubborn ass into a health center for an exam.”
She popped the blocker without a quibble. Then since it was there, she sat on the edge of the floor through the open door of the police van.
“He believed it,” she said after a moment. “He actually believed he was a vampire. Drugs probably pushed the act into his reality. Mira nailed the profile from the get. It was the pretending to be the Prince of Darkness that was the pretense, for him.”
“More likely he was just pushing the con as far as it would take him—and gambling to use it to plead insanity.”
“No. You didn’t see his face when he looked at this.” She held up the cross. “And thanks, by the way. It bought me a few minutes when it counted.”
Roarke sat beside her, rubbed a hand over her thigh. “Illogical superstition. Sometimes it works.”
“Apparently. He’s got himself some kind of super-Zeus recipe, is my guess. Not just the whacked brain it causes, or the temporary strength. Speed, too. The bastard was fast. Magician training, grift experience, drugs. I wonder when it turned on him, stopped being a way to case marks.”
Gently, Roarke traced a fingertip over her neck wounds. “There are all kinds of vampires, aren’t there? Darling Eve.”
“Yeah.” Very briefly, since all of the co
ps running around were too busy to notice, she leaned her head against Roarke’s shoulder. “Under it, he wasn’t really like my father. Not the way I thought. My father wasn’t crazy. Dorian, he’s bug-shit.”
“Evil doesn’t have to be sane.”
“No, you’re right about that.” And she’d faced it—and she’d beaten it. One more time. “Well, the bad news is he’s going to end up in a facility for violent mental defectives, not a concrete cage. But you take what you can get.”
Roarke’s hand rested on her knee. She laid hers over it, squeezed. “And right now, I’ll take a hot shower and a fresh shirt. I’ve got to go in and clean myself up, and clean this up, too.”
“I’ll drive.”
“You should go home,” she told him, but her hand stayed over his. “Get some sleep. It’s going to take hours to close this up.”
“I have this image I can’t shake.” He got up, drew her to her feet. “Of the sun rising, all red and gold smears over the sky. And you and I walking toward home in that lovely soft light. So taking what I can get, I’ll take sunrise with you.”
“Sunrise it is.”
She kept her hand in his as she pulled out her communicator to contact Feeney, Peabody, the team leaders to check on the status below.
With her hand linked with Roarke’s, the demons that plagued her were silent. And would stay silent, she thought, through the night. And well past sunrise.
J. D. Robb, Eternity in Death
(Series: In Death # 25.50)
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