Death's Mistress

  “Then why’s your hand still on it?” I asked sweetly.

  “I’m not the only one who is acting possessive.” He stared down at my own hand, blue eyes gleaming. “Are you planning to do anything with that?”

  “I’m debating it. Are you going to tell me what you’re doing here?”

  “That is not your concern.”

  I stared at him, half in awe, half in exasperation. Louis-Cesare had been born the son of a king, and none of the centuries that had passed since had diminished his arrogance one iota. I had his dick in my hand, and he was still acting like he was the one in control.

  “Okay.” I gave him an experimental stroke. It was a new interrogation technique, but I thought it had possibilities. “How about a trade? Give me back my property and I’ll return yours—in good working order.”

  He didn’t look too impressed. So I varied my technique and was rewarded with a shift of hips and a heavy weight pressing into my palm. His eyes squeezed shut for a moment, and when they opened again, they were darker. But he wasn’t about to admit that I was getting to him.

  Stubborn vampire. The evidence was rather . . . outstanding . . . in my favor. I picked up the pace, wondering if I should gentle him along to make this last longer or stroke him harder just to see how crazy I could make him. I felt a reaction ripple through his body and heard a hiss through tightly clenched teeth.

  An answer if I’d ever gotten one.

  But a second later, my wrist was caught in a grip of steel. “The vampire does not belong to you.”

  I shrugged. “Give me back the Senate’s property then. And while you’re at it, you could explain why everyone is suddenly so interested in a loser like Ray.”

  “Hey!” A protest drifted up from the duffel.

  But the only answer I got from Louis-Cesare was a callused fingertip tracing a swollen lump on my cheek-bone. It was a minor wound, collected who knew where, and his touch was unexpectedly gentle. But something about it made me tremble. My skin felt too sensitive suddenly, enough that I didn’t know whether the barely there touch hurt or felt good. But it felt.

  Not too long ago, I’d thought that was something I’d forgotten how to do. Lately, people kept reminding me, with Louis-Cesare’s name at the top of the list. I still wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.

  His eyes dropped to my nipples, which had pebbled in the cool air. He grasped one of my breasts, firmly and without hesitation, like he had some kind of claim on it. It filled his hand, as I’ve never been small that way, at least. He seemed to approve, based on the squeezing that was going on. And God that felt . . . pretty amazing, actually.

  He ducked his head, silky hair tickling my skin, and ran a wet and raspy tongue over the peaked tip. The small contact was shockingly arousing. Fresh sweat broke out all over my body, and my legs wrapped around his thighs, clenching when the hot, wet suction started. It made my eyes want to close, made me want to stop wasting time with questions, made me want to—

  “I need him, Dorina,” he murmured against my skin.

  Okay, now I was sure.

  I moved my thumb an inch, just brushing across the sensitive tip of him. “Don’t try that shit on me,” I said evenly. And the next second I was on my back on the desk again, lengthways this time, so he had room to crawl up my body.

  He trapped my hands over my head, eyes burning. “And what ‘shit’ would that be? The kind your father sent you to stir up?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  A laugh huffed out of him, or more accurately a breath of air, because there was no amusement in it. “Do you think I’m stupid? You rail against him, threaten him, swear you hate him, but when he snaps his fingers, you go running!”

  “Bullshit! Mircea has enough yes types around him; it’s part of what’s wrong with him. But I’m not one, as you damn well know.”

  Sapphire eyes searched my face. In the right light, they could look anything from cobalt to aquamarine; but they were always guarded. My fantasies tended to forget that.

  “I can’t believe a word you say,” he told me roughly, although it sounded more like he was talking to himself.

  “When did you decide that?” I demanded, stung. The last time I’d seen him, we’d been filthy, bloody and half dead—and would have been all the way there if we hadn’t learned to trust each other.

  “When I saw you here tonight—” His fingers gripped my arms, his body radiating a tangle of emotion that I couldn’t even begin to unravel. “I should have known he would send you.”

  “Why the hell shouldn’t he?” I asked, confused and angry. “I’m—”

  “Then you may tell him that I will not be distracted from my duty. Regardless of what temptation he throws in my way!”

  “Tell him yourself!” I said, stung. And to think I’d actually missed the bastard. “And don’t talk to me about duty! You disappear for a month and then show up only to—”

  My mind tripped and stuttered at the feel of him sliding languorously up and down the length of me. It was an awful tease, a deliberate distraction. And it worked, damn it. My heart rate sped up and my breath came faster and I wanted. Now.

  A shiver shot through him, and he kissed me, deep and hungry. I approved of the tongue in my mouth, the heat radiating through his clothes, even the feel of his jeans against my naked legs. But that damn sweater was too much. It was as thin and soft as silk, contrasting perfectly with the hard body below.

  Louis-Cesare in cashmere had a completely unfair advantage. I tugged it off over his head, but the heady rush of skin on skin was even worse. Particularly when he suddenly pulled me into his lap in one smooth move that had me straddling his hips.

  He spread his own legs, pulling mine apart as well. A large hand dipped down to my ass before sweeping up to my shoulder blades, pressing me against heat and hard muscle. The other slipped between my legs, and a callused thumb began to move back and forth, tauntingly slow, like the barely swishing tail of a cat.

  I managed to choke back an embarrassing whimper, but there was no way to hide full-body goose bumps. And still he just stroked. “Stop teasing,” I hissed. “Or can’t you find it?”

  His tongue ran up my neck to my ear, hot breath on my skin, teeth teasing my lobe. He bit down just as he suddenly thrust knuckle deep—and hit the spot on the first damn try. My body bucked against him, clenching desperately, and my teeth sank into his shoulder to stifle a moan.

  “I think I can find it,” he told me, amused.

  “But do you know what to do with it?” I gasped, after a moment.

  He did.

  In moments I was shivering, my muscles quivering and aching, hovering on the brittle edge . . . until a final touch provided that tiny bit of extra friction, and everything came apart in a blaze of gold. My hands clenched on sweat-slicked shoulders, and I had to bite my lip to swallow the scream that bubbled up in my throat.

  He grasped my hips, holding me tight as it went on and on, bright shock waves radiating outward to my skin, like my body was a live- wire that kept pulsing with pleasure. My hands fell away after a moment, too weak to hold on. He laid me back against the desk, kissing my neck under my sweat-slicked hair. My eyes slipped closed on a satisfied, groaning sigh.

  “If that was hello, you need to go away more often,” I told him shakily.

  There was no answer. After a moment, I sat up, wanting to see those ever-changing eyes looking at me. And saw the door shutting instead.

  It took me a disoriented second to realize that I was sprawled over the desk, naked and alone. Louis-Cesare was gone, and a brief glance informed me that the duffel was, too. Son of a bitch!

  I hit the floor, wobbled embarrassingly on unsteady legs, and threw open the door. The hall was empty except for a guy sneaking a smoke. He looked vaguely familiar for some reason. He caught sight of me and almost swallowed his cigarette.

  A glance down informed me that I’d forgotten a little something. I ducked back inside and slammed the door, but
a quick look around showed me what I’d feared. He’d left my weapons, but that sneaky, triple-damned son of a rat bastard had taken my clothes. All of them.

  The mirror on one wall informed me that my lips were swollen, that my hair was clinging to my sweaty cheeks and that there were hickeys on my breasts. Very little embarrasses me anymore, but even I preferred not to go out looking like this.

  I cracked the door again. The guy hadn’t budged. I looked him over for a second and suddenly it clicked. “Still want me to be mean to you?”

  His eyes widened. “Yeah?”

  “Well, come on then.”

  A minute later, I had an oversized T-shirt that worked as a dress, a belt to shove my weapons into and a too-large leather jacket to toss over it all. I slammed out into the hall, leaving the guy tied to the desk chair by his underwear. Judging by his expression, he’d just learned a valuable lesson about screwing with strange women.

  It was something I intended to teach a certain master vampire, as soon as I caught his beautiful thieving ass.

  Chapter Twelve

  The main room of the club was still packed, but I didn’t see Louis-Cesare among the partiers. It had taken me only a few minutes to get out of the back, but that was more than enough for someone who can move like the wind. And who probably had an escape route worked out in advance.

  The surprise was that Cheung’s men seemed to have gone as well, probably off on a wild-goose chase. The few vampires left milling about were Raymond’s boys, looking lost and confused, and none even tried to keep me from leaving. Or even seemed to know that they should.

  I guess they hadn’t checked the bathroom yet.

  Outside, the rain we’d had for a steady week had turned the street into a glossy black mirror. It reflected red splashes from the lanterns edging the club’s roofline, a green electronics store sign next door and a yellow Buddha buzzing across the road. But no arrogant master vampires.

  Not being a total fool, I had of course tagged him back at the club. According to the little charm, he was three streets over and moving fast. I moved faster and caught up with the charm on a corner—attached to the collar of a stray dog.

  “Very funny, smart-ass,” I muttered, and retraced my steps.

  Scent turned out to be no more useful than sight or magic. There were too many competing scents: ginger and garlic from a guy selling chicken wings, incense floating from the open door of a shop, car exhaust and garbage. To make matters worse, the rain was still drizzling down in patches, wiping out pieces of the scentscape like someone had taken an eraser to it.

  After fifteen minutes, I admitted defeat. Most dhampirs have heightened senses, and my nose is considerably keener than a human’s. But no way was I following Louis-Cesare through the scent maze of Chinatown. He was well and truly gone, and it was my fault. I’d let him waltz out the goddamned door and hadn’t even tried to stop him.

  I leaned against a corrugated door and waited for my heart rate to slow. It didn’t seem to feel like obliging. Damn it! I never fell for that sort of thing, couldn’t even remember the last time I’d been so stupid.

  Oh, wait. Yes, I could—the last time I’d dealt with Louis-fucking-Cesare.

  I scowled. Louis-Cesare might be a prince in Europe, but this was my territory, my home turf. He was going to learn the hard way that he couldn’t come in here and dick with me and not pay the price. When I finished with him, Raymond was going to look good by comparison.

  Or then again, maybe not. Because old Ray was looking kind of rough by the time I located his body, huddled in a fetal position on the roof of the building next to the club. His shirt was missing, his pants were dirty and blood-streaked and he’d lost a shoe. For a minute there, I almost forgot about the missing head.

  He didn’t hear me approach, not surprisingly, considering his ears were probably on the other side of the city by now. But as soon as I put a hand on him, he leapt up and swung wildly. I ducked, but of course he couldn’t see it and just kept on going. That was a problem, considering that he was steps away from a three-story drop.

  I got a hand on his waistband, jerking him back from the edge before we found out just how much abuse a vampire body could take. He fell hard against me as I wrestled him back onto the roof. He also copped a feel.

  “Cut it out, unless you don’t mind losing a few more body parts,” I told him, before I remembered that he couldn’t hear me.

  His hands jerked away like they’d been burned, and he stopped, dead still.

  I did, too, as a completely new idea occurred. “Sit down,” I told Raymond, who obligingly buckled his knees and parked his tush on the edge of the roof. His legs swung free over the courtyard below like a little boy’s. A little headless boy coated in gore, but still.

  There are other explanations, I told myself. He could have stopped feeling me up once he’d figured out who I was; he could have sat down because he was weak from blood loss. I might be totally misreading this.

  “Raise your right arm if you can hear me,” I said, and the arm obligingly shot up.

  Or maybe not.

  I patted down my borrowed jacket, but found only change, some matches and half a pack of cigarettes. But Ray had a cell phone in his pocket, although he didn’t seem inclined to give it up. “What?” I asked, slapping his hands. “It’s not like you can use it.”

  He gave me the finger.

  I ignored him and dialed a number that doesn’t show up in the phone book. It took me a minute to get through because there was some sort of party going on. And because the staff hates me.

  “Senator Mircea Basarab,” I repeated for the fourth time, several minutes later.

  “Lord Mircea cannot be disturbed,” yet another supercilious voice informed me. “Might I take a message?”

  “Yes. You can tell him that his daughter’s on the phone. And if he doesn’t take my call, I’m going to dump that corpse he wanted in the river.”

  There was some murmuring in the background, but no answer. Vamp #4 hadn’t hung up, though. I could hear party noises: music, laughter and the muted chime of fine crystal. And then a voice that managed to be more beautiful than all three.

  “Dorina, are you all right?”

  It was unfair what vampires could do with intonation, especially that one. Warmth, concern, love—it was all there in one short sentence, and it was all a lie. He was in a good mood because he thought I had Ray. He was going to be a little less amused when he discovered my part didn’t talk.

  “Why wouldn’t I be?” I asked, my voice sounding harsh in my ears.

  “This isn’t one of the numbers we have on file for you.”

  “Yeah, well, there’s been a snag.”

  “Do you require assistance?”

  “I require answers. It seems there’s a few things even I don’t know about vamps.”

  “Such as?”

  “Say there’s a fifth- level master who’s lost his head—”

  “I assume you mean that literally,” was the dry response.

  “—and say that said appendage is no longer in the immediate area—”

  “It’s missing?”

  “I’ll be glad to give you a play-by-play later! Right now, I need to know why a headless body would continue to hear and obey commands.”

  “It wouldn’t.” The sounds of the party faded, so I assumed he’d moved somewhere more secure for this conversation. Good. He might actually plan to cough up a few facts for a change.

  “Yeah, well, empirical evidence would suggest otherwise.”

  There was silence for a moment, while he debated it. I doubted he felt any shame about siring a monster who regularly went around killing his kind, but only because that particular emotion wasn’t in his repertoire. But he nonetheless avoided telling me any facts that might make my job easier. He was probably afraid that I’d use them against him someday.

  Smart man.

  “A vampire’s body is connected on the physical plane like a human’s,” he finally tol
d me. “But we also have a metaphysical connection to our corporeal form that is not easily severed.”

  “So, metaphysically speaking, he still has a head?”

  “Yes. Its sensory perceptions are dulled, of course, and will rapidly become more so. But for a time, our limbs can move and carry out commands even when detached from—”

  “I know that.” I should; I’d been attacked by enough hacked-off body parts through the years. “I need to know if the brain can send more than just signals to muscle groups. Can it transmit information—like where it is?”

  “That is what I am attempting to tell you,” Mircea said, sounding faintly annoyed. No vamp ever dared interrupt him like that. I was such a trial. “The metaphysical link becomes strained without the physical to reinforce it. Eventually, it will fade altogether, usually in about a week at that power level—”

  “I know that, too! I just want to know if it can draw me a freaking map!”

  “—with the higher brain functions being the first casualty.”

  Shit. “So no map.”

  “At that level, I am surprised he is mobile. However, he may yet be of use. The connection will be stronger the closer the severed parts are to each other. The body should therefore act somewhat like a Geiger counter, telling you by its strength and coordination how close you are to your goal.”

  “So, the more energetic the closer, the more sluggish the farther away?”

  “Essentially. How animated is it?”

  I glanced down at Ray, who had confiscated the cigarettes. He had somehow managed to light one without barbecuing himself, and now he was smoking it—through the hole in his neck. I understood the need for a nerve settler, but still . . .

  “Pretty animated.”

  “Then the missing item remains in Manhattan. Give me your location. I will have a search team join you.”

  I didn’t reply, because three vampires had entered the courtyard and were looking around. They weren’t Ray’s—I could feel the energy they generated from here, which meant that they were masters. Even worse, at least two of them were Hounds.