Death's Mistress

CHAPTER 32

Outside, heat shimmered off the drive and the sea of white plastic tents. I wished I’d brought a pair of sunglasses, but no such luck. So I bought one from a vendor who was happy to get the business now that half his customers had run off.

Or, at least, they were trying to. There was a backlog of cars still attempting to exit the grounds, clogging air and roadside alike. I decided to leave the Camaro where it was and head off to my first appointment on foot.

Slinking along behind me, carefully muffled up against the glaring sun, were two very unhappy vampires. I assumed they were Marlowe’s, since they made no attempt to attack me, but I didn’t know for sure. They wouldn’t introduce themselves or so much as deign to notice my existence. But when I moved, so did they.

Two miles and about a ton of sweat later, I found myself staring up at a rambling mansion that rivaled the consul’s in size, although not in elegance. But then, it was just a rental. I showed Claire’s note at the door, and was left to cool my heels for half an hour in the vast wood-paneled foyer.

Of course, there was no air-conditioning. I was certain the home came equipped, but vamps don’t need it. They usually only turn it on when they have humans around they want to impress, and apparently, I didn’t qualify.

Finally, I was shown into a sitting room. Or, at least, that was what I assume it had been before it had been draped with red silk and lined with braziers. The braziers were lit and it was hot as hell, but that wasn’t why I staggered and almost fell. The power in the room was like a punch to the gut. It felt something like walking through the consul’s front door, only most of it was radiating off the tiny, little woman on the big, ugly throne.

When I was born, the average height for a guy had been five foot four, so I’d been considered pretty tall for a woman. Then times had changed, diets had improved and I’d ended up shopping in the petite section. But one look at Ming-de, and I decided maybe to hold off on the complaints for a while. If she’d been shopping at the local mall, she’d have had to go to the kiddie store.

Not that she appeared to have that problem. Her bright yellow silk robes were embroidered within an inch of their lives with a glittering menagerie of fantastic beasts. She wore a headdress with pearls as big as cherries and a lot of gold tassels that shimmered whenever she moved. And her little feet, maybe all of three inches long, were encased in lotus shoes so crusted with embroidery that the fabric couldn’t even be seen.

The tiny useless feet were tenderly propped on a tufted stool, with a large guard kneeling on either side. Why, I don’t know. It wasn’t like she needed the help.

I finally scraped myself off the floor and staggered to the bottom of the set of stairs leading up to the dais on which the monster throne squatted. It had gilt mythical beasts writhing all over it or, hell, I don’t know. They might have been solid gold. It didn’t look like Ming-de was hard up. It was backed by a couple of tall, similarly decorated screens so that the whole end of the room was an explosion of gold.

I stood there in my sweaty T-shirt, feeling a little inadequate.

And then she poked a head on a stick out at me, and I cheered up. Mine was bigger.

The tiny shrunken head had been Ming-de’s English translator for a few hundred years, since she would be damned if she was going to learn the barbarian tongue herself. Rumor was that she’d cut it off some English sea captain back in the day, although after the shrinkage and subsequent wear, it was a little hard to tell. It looked dusty.

“Please tell her serene highness that I come as a representative of a princess of the fey,” I instructed, glad to have found a way to communicate.

“She knows that,” the tiny head informed me grouchily. It was about the size of a crab apple, and appeared to have a personality to match. “You sent in a note, didn’t you?”

“Tell her I’m here to inquire about a missing item of fey property.”

“She knows that, too. She said to inform you that she purchased it in good faith and with the understanding that it was the property of the fey selling it. She would return it to the princess, but as she never received it, it’s a moot point. Have a nice day.”

“Please tell her serene highness that the princess appreciates her cooperation. She is trying to avoid a possibly ugly encounter when her family arrives tomorrow. Were she to receive the stone back before then, the whole thing could be forgotten. Otherwise…”

“Otherwise what?”

“It will be out of the princess’s hands. Her family will take over the hunt for the stone. And they may wonder how someone as astute as the empress could be taken in by such a fraud. They may also wonder why she has yet to retaliate against anyone for the duplicity.”

“She hadn’t paid for it,” Crabby said, frowning. “It disappeared before it could be authenticated, and the transfer of funds was never made. She lost nothing.”

“She lost a valuable object that she had every reason to assume was rightfully hers. She lost face in front of the other bidders, most of whom now know that the stone is missing. She also lost the advantage it would have given her at tonight’s challenge.”

“You are accusing the empress of cheating?” The little thing looked outraged. He had yet to communicate a damn thing to the empress, whose beautiful face was as serene as ever. But her long fingernail guards were going clack, clack, clack on the arms of her throne.

I was starting to think that “translator” might not be quite the right word.

“I am merely pointing out what the fey might think,” I said, eyeing him suspiciously. “If the stone is returned to her before the challenge tonight, everything can be forgotten.”

“And now you accuse her of what? Stealing her own property?”

“It was not her property; it was fey property. And your lady is wise. Perhaps she had discovered this and realized that the only way she could retain the stone was to—”

I didn’t get any further, but I did discover what the two guards were for. A few seconds later, my butt hit the dirt in front of the elegant circular driveway. Frick and Frack were waiting just outside the gate, huddled in the inadequate shade of a small maple. They weren’t bothering to conceal themselves anymore, I guess because I’d already spotted them. They took in my disheveled appearance and grinned.

I grinned back and glanced up at the blazing sun. “I guess we better get started. It’s a three-mile hike back to the car.”

The double doors to the Manhattan triplex were opened by a beautiful young man with silky blond hair, big blue eyes and a pulse. I hadn’t expected a phalanx of guards—this was a private residence, not vamp central—but a human doorman was almost a novelty. “You’re late,” he admonished gently, stepping to the side.

Since I hadn’t bothered to call ahead, I thought that a little strange. “Sorry.”

He let me in, but not my shadows. I’d left them in the lobby, assuming Geminus wouldn’t want to talk in front of Marlowe’s men. The last rays of the setting sun streamed in the floor-to-ceiling windows as we crossed the large foyer.

It made the one at the Senate’s New York office look like a poor relation. A crystal chandelier sparkled from a twenty-foot-high ceiling, lighting up a sweep of carreraclad stairs edged by an elaborate wrought-iron railing. A shining path of marble led off to the left, where I could see a glimpse of a double-height ballroom through another set of doors.

“Main salon,” the doorman said, indicated the ballroom with a sweep of his hand.

I passed through, expecting an ambush but not getting one. The room was huge, with tall windows looking out over the twighlit cityscape. The decor reminded me a lot of vamp central, all old woods, gilt-edged moldings and, in this case, a black, white and gold color scheme. It was the sort of room that called for grand masters in heavy gilt frames on every wall, yet despite there being plenty of space, there wasn’t a painting in sight.

But then, there was a reason for that.

A vamp stood by the fireplace, his cap of auburn hair shining under the lights. He didn’t look up as we approached; his focus was on the young woman writhing face-first against the wall. Her dress was long, red and pooled around her high heels. She hadn’t been wearing anything under it, and her bare skin gleamed in the low light.

Her hair was down, except for a few sweaty strands clinging to her cheeks. It cascaded almost the full length of her back, until the vamp brushed it carelessly aside. It flowed over her shoulders like a fall of russet silk, revealing a scarlet ribbon laced up her back. The ribbon was threaded through a set of corset piercings that framed her spine, eight tiny golden loops biting deeply into her skin and glinting palely.

The vamp stood behind her, toying with the piercings. He ran a finger up and down the tiny loops, just hard enough for them to tug at her skin, to bite a little bit harder than usual, to pull a groan from her lips. His back was to me, so I couldn’t see much of him, just dark auburn curls tickling his neck and the back of a tuxedo. He’d taken the coat off and draped it over a nearby chair, leaving him in white dress shirt and perfectly fitted black slacks.

At first I thought I’d caught him in the middle of dinner. Vampires could feed by touch, pulling blood molecules through the skin, or through the air in the case of a master. And the woman was definitely being fed upon, if her reaction was anything to go by. She hugged the wall, panting, as he slowly began drawing the ribbon from its little loops.

She had it pulled tight, and it slithered out easily, over skin already so sensitized that every tiny tug made her tremble. His finger drew a line down her spine, causing a quick, indrawn breath and a helpless shudder. It might have been pleasure or pain now, because he’d stopped being careful. His touches were raising bruises as he let the blood pool under the skin, not bothering to absorb it all.

And then something happened that shook my belief that I knew pretty much everything about vampires. The masses of small bruises on the woman’s back suddenly began to change, to coalesce, to flow together into new shapes. Where there had been only ugliness before, a mar on her beauty, a crenellated ridge of mountains appeared.

His hand did a second pass, and the remaining bruises became an intricate latticework of gnarled branches, brown and black, framing the hills. And I finally figured out what he was doing. He was healing some sections of the damage in a few days, others a week, still others two, in order to have the bruises change to the hue he liked.

It gave a whole new meaning to the term “living color.”

“Nice,” I said. The overall effect was surprisingly attractive, if you ignored how it had been created. And if you didn’t care that, once the euphoria of the feeding process wore off, the woman was going to be in excruciating pain.

“She is a good subject,” he agreed.

A glance around showed that he wasn’t the only “artist” in the room. The weak struggles of other canvases ringed the walls, bare bodies splayed against exposed brick. Many of them were manacled in place to keep them upright, although most hung limp in their chains, passed out from blood loss. I assumed it was no worse than that. Death would cause the blood in the body to pool in the extremities, ruining the artists’ hard work.

Most appeared to be young women. I guess I knew why I’d had it so easy getting in.

Livid lines cascaded over one pale buttock and down her thigh, a riotous abstract design that mimicked brushstrokes. He was signing his work. “Geminus,” I said, watching the lines etch themselves across her skin.

“At your service.” He finally looked up, and it was still a shock, after all this time, to see how handsome the monsters could be. This one had bright hazel eyes, riotous brown curls and a cherubic face, which brightened in recognition. My feet suddenly slid across the polished floor and my arms flew up, pinning themselves to the wall.

Geminus pulled off my jacket and let it fall to the floor, then smoothed a hand down the length of my back to my ass. Before I realized what was happening, he had casually unzipped my jeans and tugged them down past my hips. I struggled, but I doubt he even noticed, and I certainly didn’t get anywhere.

That doesn’t happen to me often. My strength is better than average and I have a natural resistance to vampire powers. But then, most of the vamps I meet aren’t two thousand years old, either.

He cupped one cheek, running a thoughtful thumb over the skin just above the line of my thong. “I wonder, is it true what they say about dhampirs?”

He pressed down, hard enough to leave a thumb-shaped imprint behind. I didn’t need to see it to know what was happening: I don’t heal as fast as a vamp, but I’m no slouch, either.

“Interesting.” He circled me, his face thoughtful. “I can’t use vampires for my work,” he told me. “They heal too quickly—even the new ones. There is no time to exhibit a piece before it is gone, erased by the body as if it never existed.”

“What a pity.”

“It is, really. They can take so much more damage than humans.”

“You seem to have done enough,” I said, watching the woman. She’d fainted near the end of his “painting,” and now hung limp in her invisible shackles, a thin strand of drool falling from her lips. Her chest rose and fell shallowly, but her skin was dead white—except for the colorful bruising. That she would wear for a while.

“Humans are marvelous canvases,” he agreed. “But they have their limitations. Beyond the need to take such care, they also heal so slowly that my creations are static. I may as well be drawing on the wall.”

“Why don’t you? It doesn’t bleed.”

“But you offer some intriguing possibilities. You heal fast, but not too fast. I can see a landscape. It would change with the seasons over the course of an evening as you slowly healed. The centerpiece at a party, perhaps.” He looked around at the gathering crowd, people drifting over from other entertainments in twos and threes. “Like this one.”

“Too bad I’m all booked up.”

He tugged my T-shirt off over my head. “We’ll have to see if we can clear your schedule,” he told me gently.

“You’re not worried about reprisals?”

He looked at me innocently as he unhooked my bra. “You came here uninvited and fully armed. And you are dhampir.”

“I came here to talk,” I said sharply.

“But I had no way of knowing that.” He pulled the scrap of cotton away from my body and tossed it carelessly aside. It landed on the floor with the crumpled shirt, like rags I wouldn’t need anymore. “And I had to defend myself.”

“I’m warning you. Let me go, Geminus.”

Instead, he suddenly pressed against me, a line of heat down my back, and without warning grasped my breasts. It was a firm grip, but not rough, designed for humiliation rather than pain. It was a domineering stance: his clothed groin against my bare ass, the slow glide of his hands over my motionless body, his fingers plucking at my nipples, compelling them to hardness. He was saying without words that he could do whatever he liked with me, that I was no match for him, just a canvas to be molded to his will.

He rested his chin on my shoulder while his hand continued to lazily stroke my breast. “For someone so powerless, you have a big mouth.”

“And for someone attacking a representative of a fey princess, you have a lot of nerve.”

My voice didn’t shake, but I was becoming seriously disturbed, not least because his men were watching. They had crowded close on all sides, clearly relishing the newest diversion their boss had designed. Their thoughts skittered across my skin like grasping hands, making me cringe with just the echoes of what they planned to do to me. I’d been too angry to be afraid before, but some of those images had my heart hammering in my chest hard enough to hurt.

“I don’t know any princesses,” Geminus told me, sounding amused. “But next time she’s in town, do tell her to stop by.”

The crowd seemed to think that was funny. I wasn’t feeling so amused. I’d assumed my chances with Ming-de were pretty low. She was powerful enough that even the fey were going to think twice about challenging her, particularly when there was no evidence that she’d done anything more than place a bid. But I’d had higher hopes for Geminus.

He was a senator, not a consul, with far less personal power to draw on. And his own Senate wasn’t likely to protect him over a power play gone wrong. I’d thought that there was at least a decent chance that he’d panic at the thought of facing the fey and cough up the rune.

Only he didn’t appear to be panicking.

“You may not know her, but you know something about a piece of her property,” I said. “You were at the auction—” An unseen hand suddenly clasped me around the throat, restricting my air. Not enough to truly choke me, but a definite warning.

I hadn’t planned to mention Naudiz, hadn’t even wanted to bring up the fey, especially not in front of an audience. But I wasn’t going to stand there and be drained—or whatever else he had planned. Let him explain what the fey wanted with him.

After a moment, the pressure eased a bit. “What princess did you say?”

“Read the note. Left- hand-side pocket of my jacket.”

He picked it up off the floor and felt around the pocket. He took enough time to read the note two or three times, before he finally moved away. The power holding me broke at the same moment, so abruptly that I went to one knee.

“And what does this princess want with me?”

“To do you a favor.” I got my back against the wall before I even pulled up the jeans.

“I like favors from pretty women,” he told me easily. “Come.”

I jerked the T-shirt back on, not bothering with underwear, grabbed my jacket and followed him through a door on the far side of the room. We passed down a long corridor, which gave me a moment to get my breathing under control and remind myself that I wasn’t allowed to kill him. Yet.

We eventually stopped at an office. Or, at least, I guess it was supposed to serve that function. It was so stuffed with weaponry that it was a little difficult to tell. I shoved an antique shield off a chair and sat down, as Geminus got behind the desk.

“What is this princess going to do for me?”

“Her name is Claire, and she’s half- human,” I told him shortly. “She grew up here and only recently claimed her heritage when she agreed to marry a Blarestri prince. But she’s never really gotten used to the way the fey do certain things. She’s a vegetarian pacifist, for instance; she hates unnecessary violence.”

“I’m fascinated.”

“You should be. Anyone else would have just turned you over to her family for punishment.”

“I don’t recall angering any fey. Not of the royal kind, at any rate.”

“They tend not to like it much when you steal from them.”

“Then I am fortunate, for I have stolen nothing.”

“You were seen at the club, right before the fey ended up dead and the rune went missing.”

It was a lie, but I thought it was worth a shot. But he didn’t take the bait. “Was I?”

“And you’re certainly strong enough to take out a fey warrior.”

“You flatter me.”

I glanced up at the wooden sword mounted over the fireplace. It was old and crumbling, barely held together by some stained twine, but carefully preserved behind a glass case. Two thousand years ago, Geminus had gotten his start as a gladiator, one of the few ways for poor young men of the time to rise to fame and fortune. He was rumored to have been fearless, despite a seer prophesying that he would die on the arena sands. He hadn’t, instead winning the sword and his freedom after successfully defeating numerous opponents.

By all accounts, he’d been doing the same thing ever since.

“I don’t think so,” I said simply.

He laughed. “Strong enough but not stupid enough. No relic is worth that kind of trouble.”

“Not even if it gets you control of the Senate?”

“But I do not wish to control the Senate,” he told me easily. “Let them bicker and squabble and plot and plan. My interests lie elsewhere.”

“You expect my employer to believe that you just shrugged off what happened at the auction? Come on, Geminus. That’s not your style.”

“Of course I didn’t.”

“Then what did you do?”

He sighed and kicked back against the wall, one foot propped up on the desk.

“After Cheung did his fiddle with the auction, I was… annoyed. It was obvious that he’d never intended to give the stone to anyone but Ming-de. I don’t like being played, so I had my servants to do some checking. They discovered who the sellers usually used for authentication. And fortunately for me, the little bastard was swimming in debt.”

“You’re talking about the luduan.”

“Yes. I offered him a deal. I’d pay his debts if he switched the rune for a fake when he examined it.”

“And once the fey found out and tracked him down?”

“That was his problem. But he could always deny it. There was no way anyone was going to know where, exactly, it went missing.”

“Why were you at Ray’s, if you already had a plan in place?”

This time, he didn’t budge. “I wanted to make sure he didn’t double-cross me. The stone was worth considerably more than I was paying on his debts. I didn’t trust him.”

“What happened?”

“My men and I surrounded the building, and the luduan went in. He was supposed to bring me the rune, but he never came back. I finally sent one of my boys in to check on things, and he found the luduan gone and Raymond screaming about a dead fey. I decided it might be prudent to leave at that point.”

“You’re telling me a luduan killed a fey warrior?”

“They’re both fey, and the guard might not have been expecting it.”

“If I were him, and I had something worth a king’s ransom, I’d have been expecting it.”

“Yet someone managed to do it.” He had a point there. “I don’t know if he killed the guard. I don’t know that he has the rune. I only know I don’t. You can tell your lady that.”

“I will. And she may even believe you; Claire’s the trusting type,” I said, standing up and tucking my card under a corner of his blotter. “Unfortunately, her family isn’t, and they’ll be here tomorrow. Knowing Caedmon, he may decide to find the rune in the most efficient way possible.”

“And what would that be?”

I shrugged. “Attack everyone who was at the auction and see who doesn’t die.”