“Stop it, Talbot!” Veruca snarled.
“I’ve got a hundred-dollar bill out here if you’ll give me a lap dance, Froggy. Here, Froggy, Froggy, Froggy!” With each “Froggy” Talbot grew incrementally louder.
“I’m serious, Talbot,” Veruca shouted. “I’ll call security.”
“You know, Froggy,” Talbot continued. “I was just talking to Lord Phillip about you. Did you know Veruca means wart? I thought warts were what you got from frogs and toads, not—”
That did it. She charged out at us in a rage.
22
TABITHA:
CAT FIGHT
I expected Talbot to do all of the fighting, so I hung back, watching as he and Veruca tore at each other. Talbot’s claws popped right out of the tips of his fingers like a cat’s. Veruca’s were scarier; her fingers curved and hardened, like talons. Talbot tore a chunk out of her side and smoke billowed up from the wounds. He tried to pull her in close, using the leverage to bite her, but she spun free, slashing open his forehead.
“What the hell?” Veruca yelled. She fell back into a crouch, gripping her side. “You burned me!”
“My claws are holy.” Talbot took a step closer. “I’m a noble hunter, a sacred guardian. You’re just a damn vampire.”
“Hey, watch it,” I blurted, slightly offended. “I’m just a damn vampire, too.”
“It’s just an expre—” His attention left his opponent for only a second, eyes flickering in my direction, but Veruca took advantage. She dove between his legs, rolling to her feet on the other side and flaying open his back with her claws. Talbot stumbled forward away from the door, cursing loudly. I stood in front of Veruca, hands out in front of me to ward her off.
“Stop her,” Talbot ordered. “Don’t let her back in the apartment.”
“Look, uh…Froggy—” I shouldn’t have said that. It slipped out. Naturally, it pissed her off even more.
“You think it’s fucking funny, huh? That you can do a kitty cat and I can’t?” She barreled into me, face contorted with rage, literally tackling me through the apartment door.
“Look out, damn it!” Talbot reached for my arm, but we fell, entangled, into the apartment and down on a throw rug in the center of what seemed to be a sitting room, with tacky chairs and a coffee table. Veruca kicked the door shut with her foot.
“Lock!” she shouted, and the door flashed blue for an instant. Talbot hit it from the outside and the wall shook, but it didn’t give. “Tabitha! The rooms are warded; I can’t get in.”
“Unlock! Unlock!” I shouted at the door, but it didn’t want to take orders from me.
“Talbot may be too much for me to handle,” Veruca snarled, baring her fangs, “but I can still end you!” Time slowed as she stalked toward me, claws at the ready. I slid across the floor, got to my feet and tried to force the door from the inside. It wouldn’t budge.
“It won’t open!” I yelled.
“Not until she or Roger opens it.” Talbot’s voice sounded like he was leaning against the door. “Just fight.”
I turned in time to see Veruca’s claws slashing my way again. I dodged in the nick of time, but only because I don’t think she expected me to have time to react. Her claws slashed the door, leaving large furrows in the dark wood.
Veruca growled, then spun with terrible speed and lunged at me again. Her claws were larger than mine and the tips were hooked. Brawling wasn’t my thing; I misjudged her range. Both sets struck home. Getting hurt felt weird: an initial shock of pain that immediately faded, as though the nerve endings registered it once, then forgot about it.
“Get off of me,” I screamed. My own claws came out and I used them as best I could, scratching at her eyes with one hand and her neck with the other. She might know how to kill, but I knew how to hurt a woman like her. She’d always been vain and petty. If she didn’t have her looks, then, at least as far as she was concerned, she had nothing. Flesh ripped away from her face in jagged ribbons.
Veruca rolled away from me as we both howled in agony. Vampires aren’t supposed to bleed much, but the chunks of flesh she ripped from my sides as her claws pulled free sent a shower of bloody spray across the living room, dappling the ceiling and the walls. This time the pain was jagged, raw and angry, pulsing.
“My face!” she screamed, launching herself back at me.
I moved with vampiric alacrity. Heartbeats faster than she could strike, I rolled backward and to my feet with a grace I hadn’t had since ballet class, pressing my back against the door.
“Your claws may be bigger, but the wounds mine make don’t heal,” I lied. “When I’m done with you, you’ll be lucky if you can pay a man to look at you, much less touch you.”
I took a step forward, claws raised to strike. She reared back, feinting with her right hand. I dodged to the left to avoid her deadly claws, and fell right into her trap. As I moved, she dropped into a low crouch, knocking my feet out from under me with a leg sweep. She got in two more slashes before I landed. The first slash caught me in the belly and wasn’t too deep, but the second dug into my left breast and I heard her claws scratching against my breastbone.
I hit the floor right on top of the broken vase and then rolled up into a ball, clutching my breast. Veruca slashed at my back, cutting easily through my sequined top and flaying me open to the spine. I knew Eric could take injuries like this and laugh them off, but I wasn’t Eric and it hurt more than anything I had ever felt.
“How do you like that, pussycat?” Veruca taunted.
I didn’t like it at all, not that I could have replied anyway. Pain was my world and I wallowed in it. Veruca continued to slash at my exposed back, but the more she hurt me, the more I began to drift away from the pain. It was there, but it was being replaced with another feeling. Outrage, maybe? I was a queen, after all, and she was merely a Soldier.
Then a funny new sensation rose in my chest, the outrage mixed with something else: disdain. Before, when I had lashed out verbally at the Drone, I had felt the same thing. I lashed out with it again, now, but not verbally; more than voice and yet less. My mental voice screamed, not in terror, but in utter fury that a lesser vampire would dare to treat me this way. Me—her better!I may be only two days old, my mental voice proclaimed,but a queen is still a queen!
She paused for three seconds and three seconds only, but three seconds can be an eternity when you’re fighting a vampire. It was more than enough time for me to roll over and lock eyes with her. “Who’s the badass now?” I shouted.
My vision tinged with red and I knew my eyes were glowing. I pushed my will right in through her eyes and down into her little brain, just like Eric had done to me the night before. In my mind’s eye, tiny invisible strings affixed themselves to her arms, legs, and head. She fought back, but she had no depth. There was hardly anything to fight.
We stayed there, eyes locked, while my wounds healed. I don’t know how long it took, a minute, two minutes, five, but once I felt whole again, I stood slowly, making sure to keep eye contact with Veruca the entire time. I grabbed the sides of her head and pulled her to her feet, willing her to stand. I walked us over to a large framed photograph of a marina that hung on one wall, feeling like a puppeteer working a life-size marionette.
Talbot was saying something outside, but I didn’t have time to answer. I could feel Veruca fighting me, trying to buy a second or two of freedom so she could tear out my throat. Smashing the picture with my left hand, I snapped the bottom of the wooden frame loose and thrust it through Veruca’s heart to immobilize her. Or at least, that was the plan.
It didn’t work like in the movies, though, and my first thrust hadn’t been hard enough to penetrate all the way to her heart. I glanced down at the stake, remembering Percy and mentally checking biology. I’d rammed it against her sternum, splintering the shard of wood and deflecting it into the side of her breast. I instantly realized my mistake. Stake jutting through the ripped front of her shirt, Veruca head-butted me and
shoved me away from her. I grabbed for her shirt to steady myself, but it ripped, coming free in my hand, and I landed on my ass.
“You are so dead, bitch!” Veruca yelled. She kicked at my face and I twisted away, catching a glancing blow to my cheek. I threw her tattered shirt back in her face as she stumbled, put off balance by the kick. I got a good look at the cute little frog tattoo she had above her pelvis when I grabbed her leg and hurled her across the room.
Vampire strength is fun for the whole family. She flew over the coffee table and crashed through a pressed-wood closet door, bringing coats and jackets down on top of her. I glanced around the room for something wood, something sturdier than the picture frame. The coffee table was glass and the chair legs looked like metal. Damn it.
In the closet, Veruca roared, clawing at the jackets as she got to her feet. Her head bumped the top shelf in the closet, sending a shoe box tumbling and spilling its contents—a pair of leather gloves with scorched palms and an unmistakable pearl-handled six-shooter—onto the floor.
Veruca grabbed for the gun, wincing as the crosses on the butt smoked against her skin. I launched myself over the coffee table at her, grabbing for the stake, but she pulled away from me and it popped free of her chest.
She fired once, twice, missing both times either because the pain in her hands threw off her aim, or because I was moving too quickly. I darted in low, under the gun, thrusting the stake in at an angle under her ribs. The gun barked again, pain lanced through my shoulder, and she froze, hands flaming asEl Alma Perdida tumbled from her limp fingers. The little frog tattoo flashed bright white and vanished. I was afraid that she might do the same. Her skin began to melt away, followed by the muscle underneath. Her skull opened its mouth in a silent scream and then her entire skeleton exploded into ashes with a loudfwoosh . I’d killed her. I felt sick to my stomach.
At least I’d found the gun. Eric would be pleased with me. Smoke poured out of a nice neat hole in my shoulder where the third bullet had passed clean through. Talbot and I were going to have to dig three bullets out of the wall.
Dropping the stake, I walked over to the door. “Unlock?” I asked it tentatively, wondering how the hell we were going to get the door open if Veruca’s death hadn’t reset it. I guessed killing her had broken the spell, or maybe it was that I still had her dust on my hands, but when I touched the doorknob, the door pulsed blue and opened easily.
Talbot stepped inside and looked at the pile of ash, the broken bit of picture frame, and the blood covering the floor. Finally he looked at me, my clothes in shreds and covered in blood, most of it mine.
“A stake through the heart kills Soldiers and Drones,” he observed. “Bet she wishes she’d made Master.”
“Yeah,” I agreed numbly. I kept expecting her to re-form like Dracula did in the movies, and while I knew that was possible for me, since I was a Vlad, for herpoof seemed to pretty much meanpoof . “I wonder when security’s going to get here.”
“They won’t.” Talbot smirked. “Veruca swung first, and she’s not a resident.” He picked upEl Alma Perdida . “Eric will be glad to see this.” Gun in hand, he walked across the room and dug three perfectly preserved bullets, casings and all, out of the wall. “That’s just weird,” he said after reloading the gun and returning it to the shoe box.
I sat down in one of the chairs, the bullet wound still throbbing. It was healing very slowly, not like the other wounds, where I could literally feel them closing. Talbot looked down at me, his eyes softening. “You did good. Are you hungry?”
I noticed his heart speeding up as he asked me. Sexual excitement rolled off of him in waves. Talbot ripped open his already ruined shirt, exposing his muscular, chocolate-colored chest. Watching me intently, he popped a claw, drawing it lazily down his body, blood welling up along the wound.
His blood smelled strong and powerful, but more importantly, it was warm and so was he. My hunger awoke with a need almost as overwhelming as when I’d first risen. “I thought I didn’t have anything you were interested in,” I said coyly.
Three magic words left his mouth, almost as strong and powerful asI love you . “I was wrong.”
The need for blood permeates everything when you’re hungry, gets confused with other hungers. At that moment there was no difference between the hunger for blood and the hunger for sex. I leapt on him with animal glee, licking the long line of blood off his chest. He shivered and his excitement ignited mine. I wanted him inside me and he didn’t resist as I fumbled with his belt, lapping at his bloody chest while I pushed down his pants.
He slipped off my pants and panties, awkwardly because I wouldn’t lift my lips from his chest. I dove for the artery pulsing in his thigh, but he caught my head and forced me up to his neck. I pushed him back onto the coffee table, following him down, and it shattered, but I didn’t care. Talbot began to protest, but I sank down onto him and he snarled with pleasure.
His hands cupped my breasts and he seemed only slightly startled when I sank my fangs into his neck, penetrating him in my own way.
When he tired, I made him keep going and he did everything I asked and more, like a dying man following the orders of the one person who can give him water. Sex with a warm, breathing person was more than I could have explained. No wonder Eric liked to sleep with the living. They are so alive, so hot, and so full of blood. When I was finally sated, I lay sprawled on his chest, wearing nothing but my diamond necklace, and listened to him breathe, wondering when we’d left the remains of the glass table and found our way to Roger’s bed. Tiny wisps of smoke rose from the little scratches Talbot had given me.
“I bet you’ve never done that with Eric,” I teased.
“Definitely not,” he laughed. “He’s even less my type than I thought you were.”
“Why do you stay with him?” I asked.
Talbot’s beautifully massive chest rose and fell deeply. “He’s a unique individual—worth protecting. You could say he awakens in me an infinite curiosity.”
“And me?”
He blinked and smiled, showing me his fangs. “You’re unique, too. I find you almost as curious as I find Eric.”
“I still love Eric, you know,” I told him seriously.
His eyes flashed and the pupils became slits. “I’m glad. If you fell in love with me, it would end badly for one of us. Eric would kill me or perhaps eventually you would kill me. After all, my kind is incapable of the kind of love you more human types feel for each other. Our bonds are based on dominance, mutual need, and, at most, a deep and abiding fondness.”
I still didn’t understand what Talbot was, but I felt I understood him. Maybe he was some strange cat-human hybrid, or perhaps he had lied about not being a lycanthrope. The romantic in me liked to think it was a spell. Anything was possible. I’d met a wizard, become a vampire. Perhaps Lord Phillip himself had trapped Talbot in the body of a man, as punishment, like with Percy. No, that didn’t sound right. Talbot had described himself as a sacred guardian, a noble hunter. To me, that said: cat. Obviously not a normal cat, but a magic one. I wondered absently if it counted as bestiality if you had sex with an animal that had been turned humanoid.
I lay there, trying to bask in his warmth, in the afterglow of our intimacy, but the moment was gone. A final curl of smoke drifted up from the shallow scratches around my breasts and my pale skin was whole once more, as if the act itself had not taken place, leaving me empty and restless. Talbot had been a nice substitute, but I craved Eric.
I got up, found Roger’s shower and washed the last traces of combat from my body. Once I was dry, I started going through Veruca’s clothes. She’d been smaller than me, in every way, and her clothes tended to be one size too small for her already. Not having to breathe enhances a vampire’s ability to dress for effect, but it also meant that there wasn’t anything in her closet that fit me. Which left me my panties, my shoes, and my diamond necklace. The pants had long rents in them and I didn’t want to put back on what was left
of the sequined top.
“What the hell am I supposed to wear?” I asked, holding the remains of my clothes and shaking them in Talbot’s general direction.
“I think that outfit suits you just fine,” Talbot murmured throatily from where he was sprawled on the bed.
I rolled my eyes and changed into a cat.
“That suits you even more.” He wasn’t teasing.
I changed back, in further exasperation.Poof …clothes. Yay me! The clothes I’d been wearing were new again and I wasn’t holding them in my hands anymore, I was wearing them. The magic that had repaired them left them feeling right-out-of-the-dryer warm.
“Now, that’s something I’ve seen only Eric do.” Talbot rolled out of the bed, naked. He stretched and yawned, his fangs and claws popping out midway through and retracting at the end. He flexed at me and I admired him openly. He was taller than Eric and more heavily muscled. His dark skin was sleek, almost glossy, and stood out in perfect contrast to the red satin sheets. The picture he made was incredibly alluring, and I considered taking off my newly created clothes. Just because I was in love with Eric didn’t mean I couldn’t enjoy a little companionship from the living. What was good for the goose…
“How does it work?” I asked softly, placing my hand on Talbot’s shoulder.
“With Eric it seems to work automatically,” he told me. “When he changes shape, unless he’s paying close attention, it changes whatever he was wearing into the same jeans and T-shirt outfit he prefers. I mentioned it to him in El Segundo, but I’m sure he’s forgotten by now. Not that it matters much since he wears the same damn thing every day.”
“I think he looks nice,” I said defensively.
Talbot laughed at that, and I couldn’t help but join in.
23
ERIC:
NO GOOD NEWS
With no music playing in the Demon Heart, no crowd, not even Marilyn or one of the girls getting ready to open the club or shut it down, the silence ate at my nerves. I needed something to block out the sound of the oni out front jabbering back and forth at each other in Japanese in between mouthfuls of dead werewolf.
Urban Fantasy Collection - Vampires Page 55