“You heard that?”
“I felt the damn knife in my ribs.”
“I wouldn’t have. Not unless I had to.” She shook her head and risked a another small grin. “Sorry, but I don’t sleep with possessed vampires, fang, and things sure looked headed that direction.” His eyes lit with a wicked light that reminded her that she had two puncture marks on her wrist. He’d bitten her, taken her blood.
“But you would with one who is not?” At that she rolled her eyes.
Would she?
“Hell, no.” One thing she knew for sure, Tiberiu Korzha was a hell of a bigger temptation than Matthew Jaise had ever been.
“Claudia,” he said, suddenly serious. “I would not have allowed Jaise to have sex with you. Never.”
“You’re a vamp. How am I supposed to know what you will or won’t do?”
The vamp gave her a low bow, and way he moved, all uptight and mocking, made Claudia feel like complete shit. “Thank you, by the way, for your painful yet creative solution to the problem.”
“You’re very welcome, Tiber.” She tried to imitate the airport intercom voice, with only limited success. “You let me hit you.”
“Did I?”
“You know you did. Since you liked that so much, you’ll be thrilled to know I have another creative solution to run past you.”
“Does it involve my death?”
She grinned at him. He smiled back, and her heart skipped a beat. Maybe two. “Nope.”
Korzha tilted his head. “Most human women wouldn’t have thought to temporarily neutralize a vampire by killing him.”
“Oh. Well. You know. I was desperate.”
“Or been able to do so.” He touched his nose. “You pack a hell of a punch.”
“You were distracted.”
He looked at her with almost no change of expression. “To put it mildly.”
“Also, awhile back I downloaded the Army Field Manual on Combatives Training. Good supplement to the martial arts.” She did two half-hearted karate chops. The Jet Li imitation just felt lame, and now Korzha wasn’t smiling any more. Maybe he was pissed off. “So, wanna hear my plan?”
Instead of answering her, he ran both hands through his hair, then shook his head to keep the front curls from falling into his eyes. If he did that even one more time, she was in serious danger of looking right into those green eyes and doing whatever he asked. He didn’t, and she was safe. For now. She dug into her pants pocket and pulled out a battered scrunchie. “If your hair bugs you that much, take this. It’s green,” she said, tossing it to him. “Matches those killer eyes.”
He caught the scrunchie mid-air and closed his fist around it. “Thank you.” He gathered his curls into a ponytail. Voila. Instant bohemian. He looked better than she’d ever seen him look. “What is it? This wonderful plan of yours?”
“You don’t have to die, you just have to make me.”
Korzha stared at her, and Claudia saw refusal in the set of his mouth. “No, I don’t have to make you,” he said. “More to the point, I won’t.”
“I can’t get Holly back if you don’t.” She took a step toward him.
Even from a distance of several feet his eyes mesmerized her. She didn’t think he intended the effect. He ran a hand over his head, and she got distracted. The weird thing was, he felt closer than he was. They stood at least six, maybe seven or eight feet apart. But he felt closer. A whole lot closer. She stared into his gorgeous eyes and wondered whether, if she could read his mind, she’d want to. “With any luck it won’t be necessary, but we need to be prepared just in case. You need to be prepared.”
“No.”
With eyes like his, with her having this dysfunction of her sense of personal space, looking at him just wasn’t safe. She looked anyway. He didn’t say anything, and something about his expression sent her heart plunging. It was the kind of feeling cops on the scene sometimes got right before they opened a door. “Why not? Everybody knows for the right price you’d make the Pope.”
He sneered. “I have standards, Donovan.”
“I used to have those, too,” she said. “Knowing what’s right and what’s not. Those lines you just don’t cross. You know?” She swallowed hard. “But you don’t. There isn’t any line you won’t cross. I mean, you cross them all the time. Biting people and all that. Being a killer.”
“Believe what you will.” His eyes shuttered and Claudia felt like a complete jerk.
“Since they took Holly—” She licked her lips. “I don’t want to outlive my daughter. No parent should outlive her children.” She let out a breath. She’d forgotten about the fact that she was dying here in Orcus, slowly but surely. “Well, I guess I won’t.”
“She’s half-demon, Donovan. It’s quite likely your daughter will live long past her generational cohorts.” He gave her a sad look. “Let a few hundred years go by, and you’ll hardly remember your children.”
She let her hands dangle at her sides. “Like you know anything about that.” She blinked and the vampire was right there. Right in her face, standing there with one arm on the wall above her shoulder. Her heart nearly jumped out of her chest. “Give me a heart attack, why don’t you?”
The vampire leaned close. His shirt whisked against the inside of his coat. White canines showed between his lips. “Converting a human is against the law. You know that. If you wanted to get made you shouldn’t have killed me at the portal.”
“You weren’t going to make me, then.” She wondered which held her tighter, his gorgeous voice or his seductive eyes.
“It was a hell of a lot more likely then than it is now.”
“Look, all we have to do is tell the Council that you will. You might not even have to. Forget Jaise, Korzha. If we do this my way, you don’t need him. We make our deal directly with the demon Council. We agree to convert me into a vamp who can open the portal for them without all that inconvenient dying and in return, I don’t die, and I get Holly back. Wait, it gets better, I swear. This is the best part, fang. You get a sanctioned alliance with the demons, and with me in control of the portal, the only ones who make it into Crimson City are the ones under your direct command.”
Korzha was quiet for a very long time.
“It’s brilliant. You know it’s brilliant.”
“You are one hell of a woman, Donovan.” His face went completely and deadly still. But his eyes glittered. “A very long time ago, I won my independence. I will not now tolerate being manipulated. Not even by you. I will not make another vampire.”
“Why not? Vamps go around biting people all the time.” She put her hands on his face. A slight roughness on his cheeks, but cool skin. “Despite the laws, vamps bite people all the time. Here I am, telling you no limits. No stopping point.” She had to convince him. She had to for Holly’s sake. “I’m not going to file a complaint afterward. What’s the problem? You get performance anxiety or something?”
His teeth flashed. “I resent being treated like an animal. A performing bear.”
“I don’t mean it like that.”
“Yes, you do.”
“I’ve read your file, Korzha. You hit the society pages about as often as you end up on the blotter. You got caught fang-deep in Senator Baker’s daughter. Salvatore Giamani testified you hit his Persian connection and had a drink afterward. How come I fall below your standard?”
“She was biting me, Officer, and there were seven witnesses who directly contradicted Giamani.”
“Smoke and fire, fangs. Smoke and fire. You’re a bad man.”
“And an even more dangerous fang.”
“Exactly.”
“No.”
“They want to keep my daughter here, the demons do. She’ll grow up without me, Korzha. I’m her mother. I don’t want to leave her. She’s only ten.” She swallowed the lump in her throat. “Who else is going to love her no matter what?”
Korzha closed his eyes and whispered, “Draga inama.”
Her breath ca
ught and rattled on the way out. Her chest constricted until there wasn’t enough room for her lungs to expand. The force of his thoughts around her, calling to her made her sick to her stomach. “Stop that.” She bent her head, fighting the sensations. “Stop it.”
“Why, when you won’t stop torturing me?”
“Don’t you get it, Korzha? I’m going to die like all the others Aslet has made open the portal. You’re crazy if you think I’m going to leave Holly here at the mercy of these freaks. If you don’t help me, I’ll make my own damn deal, and you can stay here and rot for all I care. You’re not the only vampire in the world. I’ll tell them to bring back someone with fewer scruples than you.”
He had only one hand on the wall now. The other swung free. He leaned in closer, pressing her against the wall. His clothes rustled, but she didn’t hear any breath sounds from him. “You have no idea what you’re asking.”
“I bet you say that to all the girls.”
“My little vampire-hater.” He put a cool palm to her cheek. “Making a vampire isn’t just a matter of a bite or two. I’ll feed from you until you’re weak and can’t resist even if you want to. Except you’ll want me. You’ll want what only I can give you. I’ll put my cock hard and warm with your blood inside you and make you dizzy with pleasure. And when there’s biting? When I feed, too? It feels good for humans, having sex with a vampire who knows what he’s doing. I do assure you, I know what I’m doing.”
“What the hell difference does it make what it feels like, Korzha?” She stared at the ceiling. It wasn’t safe to look at him. His eyes weren’t safe for her at all. “Give me a hundred orgasms, and I still only want my daughter back.”
“Enough to become a monster like me?”
She didn’t even hesitate. She whipped her head back to look at him. “You’re not a monster. But if it made me one, I’d still do it.”
The vampire moved, stepping in front of her to capture her chin between his forefinger and thumb. His voice sent a shiver through her. “Here in Orcus, the civility, if that’s what we want to call it, of Crimson City does not exist. It’s back to the old ways. Tradition, dear-heart.” He touched the pulse of her throat, pressing gently. “All the ancient lusts and perversions denied us at home are permitted here. Here you’re just meat. A meal.”
She looked at him and wondered why she didn’t feel threatened when, plainly, that’s what he’d meant to do. “Crimson City’s no safer.”
“Here, I can take you if I want you.”
She was breathless. “Then do it.”
“Maybe I will.” He brought his mouth close to hers. In her head she felt a tiny pulse, a touch. His eyes fluttered closed. At the last minute he pushed up her chin and dipped his head to her throat. Claudia’s breath froze in her chest. The vampire didn’t so much insert himself in her thoughts as take control of her heart, replacing the sliver of fear she felt with desire, with a longing to be held by him, with a longing to surrender. His lips touched her throat. His tongue touched, lingered.
Come to me. Ravishing Claudia.
She twisted her body toward him, but he let her go. Electricity crackled between them, even so. She felt the pull. Jeez, his eyes were just brutally green. Devour-me green. “I’m not an idiot,” she said. “I have two, maybe three weeks left before I die. I know this place is killing me.”
Korzha nodded.
“I don’t think anything pleasant happens to humans who can’t open the portal any more, and I don’t want to be anywhere near a demon when that happens to me.” Claudia felt his mental presence in her head. He wasn’t trying to touch her thoughts, not deliberately, she realized; she just felt his intense interest. She bit her lower lip. “You don’t fool me, Korzha. You’re not a monster. I know you killed Masters. Who else would leave fang marks like that? But you didn’t do her just because you felt like it. I’m asking you, Tiberiu, begging you.” She swiped at her face and felt tears. “If I had a choice, I’d tell you to keep your fucking fangs to yourself. But there isn’t one. Not for me.”
Korzha was silent. Claudia waited.
“What a monumental joke this might turn out to be,” he said at last.
“Not to me.”
He chewed on his lower lip. A pinpoint of crimson appeared and vanished. “If you’re looking to be a vampire for other reasons…It won’t make you any happier. It won’t make you belong.”
“Don’t you get it? I’m not looking to belong.”
“Are you sure?”
“This is about my daughter, nothing else.”
He put a hand on the wall, just above her shoulder. “There are always other choices,” he said.
“Like what?” She started to cry in earnest. “There aren’t any choices for me. I don’t have time.”
“Sometimes death is better.”
Claudia freaked out. “Fuck you, Korzha. I don’t give a shit what happens to me.” She grabbed his coat. “It’s Holly who has to get out of here. Not me. I’m not letting her grow up with demons. They think she’s one of them, but she’s not. She’s mine. My daughter, and that makes her human.”
“If you don’t adjust, you’ll go rogue. You’re a cop. You know what that means. You’ve seen it.”
“I only care about what I have to do right now to get Holly home.” She let him go. “Nothing else.”
“If I make you,” he said, “chances are you’ll go rogue. You’ll become dangerous and bitter. You’ll be a risk to everyone in Orcus or in Crimson City. You’ll be a danger, even, to your daughter. It has happened in the past. It happens nine times out of ten when someone converts for the wrong reasons. You’ll be no better than an animal, a killer.”
“You didn’t turn rogue. I won’t either. I promise.”
“Oh, dear-heart. You cannot know.” He kissed her forehead, a touch of shocking tenderness. “I was made against my will, and I very nearly did not survive what I became.”
“You’re okay now.”
“I was made a very long time ago. You’ve seen what happens to a vampire who can’t embrace what he has become.”
“You promised you’d help me get her back. You gave me your word of honor. Well, this is the only way I can see you keeping that promise.”
With his lips above her skin, leaning against her hard, pinning her to the wall, he said, “Madness.”
“Please. Please, you have to. It’s the only way I’m going to get her out of here.”
The sheer quietness of his body reminded her he wasn’t human. When it came right down to it, Korzha had more in common with demons than he did with her even if there had been moments of odd and unexpected kindness. “On one condition,” he finally said. Her heart about flew out of her chest.
“Anything.”
“If you go rogue, I’ll hunt you down and I’ll kill you. And that’s a promise I will not fail to keep.” He stared into her eyes.
“Deal.”
The vampire put his hand on her throat, sorrow emanating from him. “At least you will not live to regret your choice for long.”
Chapter Sixteen
At the door to the Council room, Korzha rested a hand against the small of Claudia’s back. She glanced at him, but didn’t shudder at the contact, and that was something. He didn’t want her to cringe from his touch. Especially not when before much longer, he might well be making his first vampire in a new century. Her plan was risky. Any plan involving demons was risky, but he had to admit there was a good chance it would succeed.
Their timing turned out to be excellent. Jaise was before the Council now, seeking approval to establish a permanent demon presence in L.A, and without him present. Yet more evidence of Jaise’s lack of honor. He and Claudia had wangled their way into the Council Chamber and requested permission to address Jaise and the Council.
Korzha let himself relax, not touching Donovan’s mind but absorbing the essence of her all the same. She smelled of fear, trepidation, but most of all, determination. Considering how little he’d fed from
her, the strength of his mental connection with her surprised him. Not only could he feel her emotional state, he also felt the dark thread of the bond the demons had created with her.
The chamberlain sneered at them, but no matter his feelings on the matter of non-demons, he led them into the Council chambers.
If he did make her and she turned rogue, something Korzha believed was more likely than not, he intended to see to Claudia’s eventual, merciful death. Perhaps a shot of UV, if he could get his hands on some. He’d sit vigil for her, waiting for her to rise, because he didn’t want her to face the reality of a transformation she didn’t embrace. Not alone and not ever. For a time, she would be his. Fully his. He would be her master even if and when she turned rogue.
A vampire was by nature a killer, no matter how often the Primary Assembly claimed otherwise. What natural killer didn’t anticipate the very thing that defined him? Blood and that sweet, final echo of a heartbeat. What a pity if she had to be destroyed afterward. Under the right circumstances, she might be able to make the adjustment. Conversion didn’t have to be violent as it had been for him. He could make her loss of humanity a slow, sensual descent into darkness. She wouldn’t even know it was happening. He could sate himself on her blood, enjoy her body, embrace the fragility of her mortal life until he took it all within himself. Oh, indeed. He’d bring her home and convert her in the luxury and privacy of his bedroom. He could take all night to make her. In his belly, he felt a quiver of anticipation at the thought; a heroin addict looking forward to a long-delayed fix.
The chamberlain paused at a high, narrow door. Korzha and Donovan stood at the threshold of a great hall straight from the Middle Ages. Vaulted ceilings, massive walls, stone floors. Narrow, deep windows, pointed at the top. Tapestries covered the walls, brilliantly woven scenes of demons hunting, dancing, dining, sitting in council. The air in the chamber hall crackled with tension, a feeling he remembered from his last days of mortal life. No ordinary meeting, this. Political lives were at stake.
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