by Ana Calin
I wonder if he doesn’t actually suspect that he’s being followed. He’s been working on mobile devices for hours, his face strained. There’s a deep frown between his bushy grey eyebrows, and his face that still resembles a skinny bulldog holding a lot of tension. Could be business, but it could be something related to Irina. Damn it, as hard as I try I can’t even get a glimpse of the screens of his mobile devices in order to get an idea.
I need a plan of getting inside the establishment tonight without drawing attention. If Herald can recognize Irina he can sure as hell recognize me, the man who helped Juliet Jochs destroy him, her right hand.
By the time the sun sets I’m a nerve wreck. I leave the hotel as soon as Herald Gruff leaves his, stop by a place that sells fantastic masks in the Oranienburger Straße, and stalk people I can approach on the party mile. I have a plan.
The bouncer won’t let me enter with a mask on, not if I’m alone, so I have to take the time and use my own vampire skills on a group of tourists to take along. I seduce one of them in the process, and have her persuade her friends to come with us. Vampire looks and charm make these things so easy it’s unfair, but I’m grateful for them now. I persuade the group to wear masks tonight, arguing that way their identity will be protected no matter what. In the end, this is a ‘special’ place.
“You can’t say you’ve been to Berlin if you didn’t go to a swinger club.”
“Yeah, let’s do it,” the most cheerful guy in the group nudges. “Come on, think Fifty Shades and stuff.”
I grin, and lead them to the place, feeling like a demon of seduction, but guilty as hell. I’ve never manipulated people like this before, and I never took advantage of a woman’s attraction to me, but what other choice do I have? I need to get Irina out of danger.
The girl and her friends wave bills at the bouncer, and promise to ‘make the girls happy tonight.’ He assesses them with a hawk’s eyes, and calculates in a second that they’re harmless. They’re ready to spend money, and they’re easy to dispose of if they don’t play by the rules, so he lets us in. The moment the heavy metal door bangs shut behind us and the group start woo-hooing down the red-lit hallway into the bass-pounding place, I breathe out in relief.
Once we enter the dimly lit club with the tables, booths and the naked women dancing in high heels, it’s not hard to lose the group. It’s easy to keep in the shadow too, the establishment is designed to protect its clients’ identity. It’s dark, with low, intimate lights so that only the people in a booth or at a table can see each other, appearing only silhouettes from a distance. The place is big and maze-like, offering crowd but also privacy, the music pumping from speakers in the walls and vibrating into people’s flesh, making them high along with the booze and the drugs.
Keeping in the shadows has me bumping into the disposal bins. There’s more Viagra in there than condoms. There’s beads and plugs, too.
I slink expertly through the club, my eyes darting in all directions for Irina. I finally spot her. I recognize her unmistakable legs, long, tanned, finely muscled. Her outfit is new. She’s wearing a red latex dress that clings to her tight frame. I can’t take my eyes off of her as I move closer, the fine muscles in her hips rippling as she dances for the man in the booth.
I see who it is only when I’m close enough, but I’m not surprised to find Herald Gruff. He’s sitting on a leather couch, Irina dancing on the table for him. I catch her eye for a split second. She looks away immediately, but I know she saw me. And she knows I’m gonna be watching everything, flexing my hearing to listen to their conversation.
But there’s no talking, at least not at first. Herald Gruff sips his drink as he watches her move, swaying her hips languorously to the beat, her long tan legs flexing in the high heels. She’s up on a special table with a pole of stainless steel. She takes momentum and wraps herself around the pole, then her legs stretch along it in the smoothest split I’ve ever seen.
No, I can’t be so dirty minded, can I? I can’t look at the woman I’m supposed to hate and feel what I feel, my cock reacting to her, my hands eager to crawl under that red latex dress. She takes her hand to her ear, tapping something, and I understand—the device she gave me before she left the hotel room.
I push the buds into my ears, and fix the minuscule mike along the wire to my mouth. I position myself with my back against the back of the neighboring booth, from where no one can see me, but from where I can see clearly.
“Tell me what you like,” Irina’s sexy voice flows through my ears into my brain, and my cock strains painfully against my pants. I shake my head, pulling myself back together. She only asked Gruff so that I can tell her what I saw in that hotel room, reveal his preferences to her.
“He knows you’re a vampire,” I whisper in the mike.
She stills only for a split second, then dances again. She spins and turns with her back to him, her blonde hair falling down her back like a curtain of heavy silk.
“Only one way to find out what else he knows,” she whispers, and whips around, going low.
I clench my fist around the wire. I hate this. My cock is rock hard, and I have to play director of a lap dance now. God help me.
“I didn’t get what he answered you when you asked, but take off his belt, and snap it in your hands. Tell him you can think of many ways to use it on him.”
Her eyes narrow like a cat’s as she steps down from the table like a gazelle. She comes to her knees and unbuckles Herald’s belt.
Whatever that bastard wanted from her or intended to do when he came here is out the window, I can tell that much. He’s staring down at her bewitched. I sniff the air and there it is—the perfumed scent of her pheromones. Poor bastard doesn’t stand a chance.
She slides the leather belt off of him, saying the words with her sexy voice that messes with my head.
“Turn around and rub it between your legs,” he says, hunger in his throaty voice.
Fuck, no.
But Irina smiles, and does as told. She turns with her back at him, pushing her toned ass toward his face, and lifting the red latex dress slowly off her perfectly round buttocks.
Gruff drools as she reveals the top of her red lace thong with a small golden chain. He reaches into his pants and grabs his cock, sticking it out and massaging it. Anger twists my stomach, but at least he’s not hard yet. He must have potency problems. He must have been stoned on Viagra last night, when he did all that with the women.
“What happened to your phone?” I whisper in the mike, trying to deal with my anger. “I tried to reach you all day.”
“Was required to remain here last night, they took it,” she replies. “They played the bullies, and I played the helpless girl.” She’s with her back at Gruff, working her butt at him, and the music pounds in his ears. He can’t know that she’s talking unless he sees her lips move.
She slides the belt between her buttocks and works her ass, soon rubbing it in his face. He’s horny as hell, his skinny bulldog face red and sweaty, and his cock has grown hard enough. He grabs one of her butt cheeks with a greedy hand, and my hand clenches on the wire, ready to tell her to slap him ‘cause he likes it, but she does it before I get to.
The sound rips through the air as she slaps the leather belt over his hand and spins around, grabbing his jaw as swiftly as a snake. She brings her face close, slipping her index finger slowly into his mouth as she talks.
“Bad, bad boy,” she purrs dangerously. “I could feed on you while I ride you.”
The seductress owns the prick, and it makes me so hard my cock’s gonna explode. He stares into her face like a man maddened with desire, and I can see that in that madness he’s actually considering it. He’s considering dying inside this woman, let her suck the life out of him while she fucks him. That’s how powerful Irina’s pheromones are—a lowly woman’s weapons, I have to believe that.
Her hand slides deeper into his mouth, and he lets her do it, completely under her spell.
; “Let’s get out of here,” she says, her sexy voice now charged with danger. “Take me someplace nice. We have a lot to talk about, you and me.”
She takes his hand, and he follows her like a puppy out of the booth. I do the same. I keep a safe distance, which allows me to see things that Irina probably misses—the sudden movement in what seems like a special booth to the side. It’s well-blended among the others, but wider, with an opening towards the club. It’s on a higher level, too, from where you can keep an eye on what happens in the establishment.
A woman with black hair catches my eye. She doesn’t seem to belong in her white suit jacket. A male dancer with a finely muscled lean body full of body painting entertains her, while a group of goons start after Irina and Herald.
My brain turns to turbo. Herald may be in Irina’s power, a marionette in her hands ready to take her out of there, but the owner of the establishment—probably the woman that the male dancer with the body painting entertains—won’t let it happen. I follow the goons. They’re human, they can’t hurt Irina, or at least that’s what I think until they pick up unusual speed. I pick up pace, too, panicking as I start running after them, but a heavy metal door shuts right in my face, just before I can get to plunge in after them.
CHAPTER II
Irina
I take a seat on the side of his leather armchair, moving like a purring cat stretching her limbs. We’re in a cabin up in the brothel building, because the establishment goons wouldn’t let us out, but I’ll deal with them later. Right now I’m focused on the answers I need from Gruff.
“Listen Herald,” I begin seductively, in a secret-sharing tone. “You and I go a long way back, even if we didn’t have much to do with each other in person. I don’t think I have to tell you that Radek Basarab isn’t a normal man. He is—” I bend down to his ear, breathing the words and driving desire through his body using my pheromones. “A supernatural.”
He takes in air, shuddering with need. “That’s interesting information.”
I slide my fingers up his arm, raising goose bumps in my wake. “Come on, you know it’s more than that. It’s a confession. You already knew the facts.”
He looks up at me. His cock doesn’t yet stand to attention, but that has more to do with his waning potency than with my charms. Last night with those women he’d taken something to get himself hard, no doubt.
I smile down at him from my higher ground as I sit sideways on the chair’s arms, my legs crossed. I could get him an erection in a second, it’s what I’m good at, and it’s what my superpower does, but right now I need him tame, under the illusion that he’s in control.
“I don’t know nearly as much about the Prince of Midnight as I’d like to,” he taunts, raising his glass. I smile, tweaking my pheromones and driving them gently up his nostrils. His eyelids become heavier as he’s falling deeper into his attraction to me.
“As you can imagine, I can satisfy your every curiosity about him. In the end, I dated him for five years.”
“You haven’t aged a day,” he says.
“You flatter me.”
“I’m just stating the obvious. You were in your twenties when you dated him, and you look no older than that now.”
I nod, taking the empty glass from his hand and heading over to refill it. I stalk on my stilettos like a cat, and I can hear the prick swallowing hard as he watches me.
“Why not start from the beginning?” I purr. “If I remember correctly, Juliet Jochs, the woman Prince Radek eventually married, used to have a crush on you before she met the prince. She may not be my favorite person in the world, but she was a beautiful woman. How come you didn’t return her feelings?”
“Juliet was a sweet little girl. But I’m more into strong, bad girls like you.”
I walk over to him with his glass that I refilled. “A bad girl isn’t necessarily a strong woman, and the other way around. Still, Juliet is strong to say the least. She is a force.”
“Yes, she became so eventually.” He takes the refilled glass from my hand, his whole body reeking of his arousal. My nostrils flare imperceptibly at the smell. “But when she returned to Berlin, all powerful and bitter because of the way her prince had treated her—having left her for you—she didn’t want me anymore. I guess it was karma.” He grabs my waist and tries to pull me in his lap, but he’s no match for my vampire strength. I giggle, stroking his chin with my finger.
“Be careful, daddy. I could make you my sex toy, but I could also have you for dinner.”
“I’m not even sure which one I’d enjoy more.”
I push his hand gently from my waist and take a seat on the bed, crossing my legs and holding up the flute gracefully.
“Why don’t you tell me exactly what you know about the Prince of Midnight.”
Irina
AS EXPECTED. HERALD Gruff had been acting as a middleman between the Old Priest and the Serpent Lord, which is how he learned everything he now knows. He even knows about Dracula.
“I’ll be honest with you sweetheart,” he stutters as he takes another sip of his umpteenth drink. His eyes are already hooded and his body all slouched in his chair. He’s drunk beat. Drunk enough to keep talking. “You’re not the first vampire I’ve met. Hell, I’d probably tremble in front of you if you were.”
He pushes himself up a bit from his waist, reaching behind himself with a crunched face as if he’s trying to remove an object that makes him uncomfortable, but what he pulls out is a small device that snaps into a knife. I stiffen. It’s silver.
He grins, his extra skin folding into a double chin even though he’s skinny. He drops the knife, and I’m tempted to bend and snatch it from the floor, but what if the goons outside have more?
“That’s a small weapon, and I’m human, no match for someone like you,” he says. “But there are people beyond these doors that are prepared to fight vampires, Irina. They have weapons that use silver and even daylight, so I suggest you do exactly what I tell you.”
We hold each other’s stare. I’m old enough to keep my feelings from showing in my face, but worry has nestled in the pit of my stomach. I can see that Herald would force me to have sex with him in the dirtiest ways if he weren’t so drunk and too tired to get it up without his meds. I infuse the pheromones I release with sleeping chemicals, which has him snoring in a matter of seconds, but my brain is buzzing.
I grab Herald’s phone and call Lazarus, my head on fire.
“Pick me up as soon as you can. Gruff is asleep in the brothel cabin. I’ll come out some other way so people don’t see me. Do not, for any reason, come inside, and sure as hell not through the main door. These bastards are equipped to fight vampires.”
Lazarus
“THEY’RE READY FOR US, they’ve been ready for a while now,” Irina says, worry in her cat-like blue eyes. This is the first time I’ve seen her vulnerable, and it puts a buzz in my stomach.
“Sit down.”
She sits in the cozy chair by the window, from where I watched Herald Gruff last night, and tells me about their conversation, and how Herald knows everything about vampires and other supernaturals. He knows that his once employee Juliet is now Radek’s wife, that they are the adoptive parents of Dracula’s half-demonic wife Ruxandra, even that Juliet’s sister Isolde, the pure sweet nurse who used to take care of elderly people, eventually married Dracula’s right hand, the master assassin Tristan DeKnight.
“The Old Priest must have been in close contact with Gruff.” I tap my chin with my forefinger.
“Closer than we think. But he left me with many open questions.”
She bends over to the round table between us and pours herself two fingers of whiskey. “First of all, it was clear he wanted to be turned into an immortal, which makes me wonder.”
She leans back with the tumbler to her lips, not sipping but tilting it to one side then the other as she ponders, her blonde hair spread over the back of her armchair. Her eyes narrow, intelligence sparkling in them. Just
to be sure she doesn’t notice my growing cock I bend forward and pour myself a glass as well.
“If he was so close to the Old Priest,” she says, “and if he’s had close contact with the Serpent Lord, then how come they never turned him into an immortal, why not use the secret to human immortality on him? My best bet is that he still has dues to pay, he still has things to do for them.”
“They surely wouldn’t be keeping him in his position as head over so many Berlin journals if they didn’t have some serious use for him. I spent quite a few years in the Berlin news world as Juliet’s right hand, I know all the privilege he’s enjoying, and all the doors he can open. He’s been in the game all his life, he’s wickedly well connected.”
Irina sips her drink, keeping her probing gaze on me. It’s sexy as hell, but I know she’s deep in thought, simply looking through me, and I find myself wishing that she came on to me. I rub my face with my hand, wishing I could slap myself.
“So they’re still using him,” she says. “If I know anything about the Hidden World, then there is some ultimate prize they expect him to deliver. He has a very specific mission. They even provided him with weapons and people to protect him from vampires and other supernaturals.”
“Working for the Serpent Lord, he must be used to having serpent shifters around. He can’t be very used to vampires, we’re all on Dracula’s side. Any vampire that is on the Serpent Lord’s side is a traitor.”
Irina sips her whiskey and relaxes against the back of the armchair, exposing the fine line of her jaw, and her long neck with the white, almost translucent skin. A dry lump forms in my throat, forcing me to swallow hard.
“Not all vampires are subject to Lord Dracula,” she says. “Remember Gruia and the venom that got even the great Prince of Blood to do his bidding.”