by Olsen, Lisa
“Ya drive a hard bargain, woman. Ya realize it’ll take us a good long while to recoup a fee like this.”
“Them’s the breaks, kid.” I flashed my eyes at him, enjoying the exchange. “How about we tack on another forty years to the term then?”
“Ya got a deal, darlin’,” he grinned, rising to his feet to offer his hand.
“Great. I’ll have Felix draft up something that adds that extended term and send it on over. It was a pleasure doing business with you, cous’.” I clasped his hand, grinning back mightily myself.
He held onto my hand once the shake was through. “That takes care of the work, now comes the play. Ya got a date for the party?”
“No, I’m flying solo tonight.”
“Want one?”
There was a time when I might have been easily swayed by those dimples, but it wasn’t hard at all to gently pull my hand from his grasp. “Thanks for offering, but no. Like I said, I don’t like to mix business with pleasure.”
“Where’s the fun in that?”
“Does everything have to be about fun?”
“It should be, darlin’, or ya ain’t doin’ it right,” he winked.
*
The ballgown was the most elaborate dress I’d ever seen. In a bright peacock blue, the theme was continued by a wealth of embroidered feathers in a deep indigo, trailing from one shoulder across the bodice to cascade down the opposite side of the full skirt darkening the overall hue from gaudy to eye-catchingly magnificent. A frothy spill of jagged ruffles beneath the design accentuated the look and flowed with each step I took. A golden mask came in a separate box, packed carefully so as not to crease the brilliant plumage that streaked out from the corners of the eyes. I’d turn heads with this number, that was for sure.
I went heavy on the makeup, going dramatic for once. It was too bad I didn’t have Maggie with me to concoct some fantastic hairstyle to go with it, but I settled for curling the ends of my long, blond hair and piling it up on top of my head with a gazillion pins to keep it in place. Overall the effect came out rather well, I thought, but I stepped out into the sitting room for the real test.
“How do I look?” I asked Rob, turning one way and then the other so the ruffles floated around my legs.
His expression didn’t disappoint, a brief, deer in the headlights look coming over his face before his eyes warmed, heating me from the inside. But all he said was, “You look nice.”
“It’s just you and me here,” I pointed out, moving closer to him, and I saw yearning slide over his features.
“You make me want to forget everything and steal you out of here. Is that what you want to hear?”
“That’s exactly the look I was going for.” A smile stole across my face. “Help me with my mask? I didn’t want to wreck the hair.”
Rob took the mask dangling from my fingers by gold ribbons and stood beside me, leaning close to get the positioning just right on my face before he carefully tied it in place. “There, you’re all set.” His fingers brushed across the tops of my bare shoulders, and a frisson of awareness raced along my skin.
My head turned toward the sound of his voice, to find his face scant inches from mine. “I could stay in tonight. Claim a wardrobe malfunction. No one would have to know.” We’d spent plenty of innocent evenings before, playing cards or watching movies. No one would have to know there was anything more between us.
We swayed closer together, near enough to feel the heat springing from his body to mine. “You’d better get downstairs before you’re mussed.” And still, neither one of us moved an inch.
“I wouldn’t mind a little mussing.”
“Wouldn’t be nothing little about it,” he growled, his breath hot against my neck, but in the next instant he let me go, striding with great purpose for the door. “Best to get moving now before they send someone up to check on you.”
Taking an extra moment to catch my breath, I glided to the door, pausing before him. “Okay, but we’ll come back to this. There won’t always be so many eyes on us.” There had to be a way for us to make it work, even if it was only a few stolen moments like these.
Rob dropped his gaze, pulling the door open and standing aside for me to pass through. He wouldn’t walk beside me on the way down to the ballroom, but remained a step or two behind, like a subordinate. Gunnar picked us up in the hallway, and I entered the party feeling every inch the princess arriving at the ball.
The room was packed. Made even more so by the stage added to one end of the room. Servants were adding chairs in front of it, crowding the dancers and milling people more and more with every row.
Aubrey claimed my attention almost from the start, greeting me with a flourish. “If I had breath, the sight of you would steal it from my body,” he declared, lifting my wrist and bringing it to his lips.
“Thanks, you look very nice yourself,” I smiled. He did look pretty yummy in a black tux with white on white tie and shirt.
“You simply must save me the first dance, but for now, you’re just in time for the festivities. Come and sit with me, sister dear, right up front where you won’t miss a thing.”
“Sure, that sounds like fun.” Tucking my arm through his, he led me to the front row of seats by the stage. There was a small program sitting on each seat, and I picked mine up, leafing through it. Vetis had brought in a troupe to put on a play of Death and Cupid. Well, not a play precisely, but a pantomime show. The brief description explained it was the story of Death and Cupid, who accidentally exchange arrows for a day, sending young lovers to their deaths and old fogeys into each others arms.
It was fascinating to watch. Sort of like ballet, the movement and music telling the story without words. We watched as the main players made mistake after mistake, sometimes with comic results and sometimes through tragedy. There was a brief intermission while they reset the stage, during which more glasses of blood were circulated, as well as fresh champagne for the humans. The lights dimmed to signal they were ready to begin again, and the player portraying Cupid came downstage to address the crowd, a single spotlight emphasizing his powdered features and powerful physique, only barely covered by the costume around his waist.
“For this next scene we require a few volunteers from the audience to portray partygoers at the dance of the dead. What say you, will you join us?” He paused in front of the delegate from Salete.
“Why not?” he declared with good humor, hopping up on the stage with a flourish.
“Shall we go up there?” Aubrey nudged me gently.
“No… you go ahead.”
“Volunteers?” Cupid paused before us, waiting expectantly and Aubrey rose to his feet, his hand outstretched to me.
“I’ll only go if you join me. Come on, it sounds like fun.”
“Here we are, two more,” Cupid beamed in approval, and I found myself taking Aubrey’s hand and letting myself be pulled on stage. Once we were up there, the other members of the cast gave us each a prop. Felippo was given a giant rubber scythe to hold onto, to his great delight, and he kept giving it a swing in the direction of a pretty girl dressed like a fawn. Aubrey was given a large, jeweled cup filled with water, and I got an oversized fan made from peacock feathers which actually matched my gown pretty well.
Three more volunteers were called up, and each of us were placed very deliberately on the stage and given a few whispered stage directions. To Aubrey’s disappointment, he was set halfway across the stage from me. I waved my fan at him before turning my attention back to my assigned partner, a very handsome human dressed like a Roman soldier.
“Relax and have a good time. It’ll be over before you know it,” he whispered, winking at me before schooling his features into a stern mask as the lights came up and the music started.
We all pantomimed conversation at a party, and I felt silly pretending to speak to the Roman, but he looked so serious that I didn’t dare break character and laugh. Mostly I nodded and smiled, pretending he had the most inte
resting things to say. We were supposed to ignore Death, who circulated among the crowd, unseen.
Death stalked us, but when he let his arrow fly, the intended victims instantly fell in love with the first person they saw. The audience laughed when Felippo was struck and took the opportunity to start making out with the startled fawn girl.
I tried not to react when the hooded figure trained his arrow at the Roman’s back, and it was harder than you’d think to completely ignore him and pretend he wasn’t there. I prepared myself for the theatrical kiss I was sure would be coming next, but at the last moment, the tall man stepped aside and the arrow struck me.
Only instead of the floppy arrows that hit the rest of the cast through the entire show, the arrow fired at me was real enough to strike me down.
There wasn’t time for even a gasp of shock as the arrow pierced my chest. It seemed ridiculous that I’d really been shot, especially in front of so many witnesses. I wanted to look down and make sure for myself, but my body wouldn’t cooperate. Still, I knew the arrow had found its mark, I felt the bite of the wood before the cold spread through my limbs, leaving nothing but a numb heaviness.
Why was there no pain? Shouldn’t I be in agony with a wooden shaft going through my heart? My eyes slid shut, no matter how hard I tried to open them again, or were they open? It was hard to tell, but everything went dark. Something wet and sticky oozed from my side and onto my hands, and I thought I smelled blood. Was it mine?
“My dress…” I cried, only not a sound came from my lips. I was paralyzed, unable to so much as breathe, though I could still hear. Even that sounded funny though, like I was listening through a tin can.
Screams.
There was screaming, and I felt my body passed through many hands, some rough and some tender. I thought I heard Rob yell my name, but everything spun out of control as my mind shut down.
Chapter Twenty-One
There was no pain. There was no anything, only a sense of movement as the sounds receded and I couldn’t tell which way was up or down anymore. Then everything went completely still, and I thought I might have died.
There were no angels, no devils – just a black emptiness where nothing penetrated the inky silence. How long it lasted, I’ll never know, but in one instant I was torn from the void and thrust into a world of pain as someone pulled the arrow free. I still couldn’t move, but I could feel, and it felt like someone had stabbed me through the heart with a chainsaw. I couldn’t even pull in a breath to scream, and that made it a thousand times scarier.
I slowly began to understand that I was being carried through a dank tunnel. Bit by bit my senses returned, and the stench of fetid water and slimy growth assaulted my nose. My eyes slid open, but it didn’t do me much good in the near dark surroundings.
“What…”
“Shhh, you’ll be alright now. I’ll keep you safe, I promise.” The familiar voice reached out to me in the darkness and much too slowly my brain found the corresponding owner.
“Bishop…”
“We don’t have time to talk, save your strength. I need to get you out of here.”
I wanted to ask where Rob was. What had happened? Who attacked me, and were they caught? Was I dying? Why was he dragging me through the sewer, or wherever we were?
But in the end, all I did was pass out as my body consumed itself to try and repair the massive damage.
*
My first waking memory after that was of blood. Deeper and richer than human blood, I drank on auto pilot, my body craving the powerful elixir to heal the terrible wound in my chest. But soon enough, the fog cleared and I was able to take in my surroundings and who I was with.
“Bishop?”
“Yes.” His voice sounded thick, strained, and I remembered I’d been drinking his blood and what that must have felt like for him. Talk about awkward. I let a few moments pass for him to collect himself before I spoke again.
“Where are we?”
I was laying across an ugly brown couch, stiff and new, my head propped up across his lap with a couple of pillows. His arm was conveniently placed for me to feed, but that was the only contact I had with his body.
“We’re in London, in a safe house I set up.”
House was a bit of a misnomer. It was a studio apartment, sparsely furnished with the basics, a tiny bathroom tucked into one corner. I could smell meals cooking from neighboring apartments and the scents competed with one another. Curry? Spaghetti? I stopped trying to identify the miasma and turned my head to look up at Bishop.
“We’re in London? How did we get here?”
“I carried you.”
I had a dim recollection of him carrying me through a stinky tunnel. “You carried me all the way to London?”
“Until I could steal a car, yes.”
“Where’s Rob,” I wondered aloud, “and Felix?”
“Back at the mansion.”
I looked down, afraid to see what the wound in my chest would look like, but my skin was smooth and flawless. I was also naked except for my panties, a thin white sheet covering me for modesty’s sake. The idea that he’d been handling me nearly nude didn’t bother me – he’d seen my goodies before – but I did feel somewhat vulnerable without my clothes. Sitting up, I wrapped the sheet around me, noticing that my muscles felt heavy and sore all over.
“Why do I feel like I just ran a marathon?” I groaned, shifting my legs so they were tucked up next to me.
“Your body went through a pretty traumatic injury. While it focused on healing the damage to your chest, it drew from other parts of your body. I gave you some of my blood to help once we got here, but I couldn’t get you to take much before now. You were too far gone.”
That explained it then. “So, that was torpor, huh? I don’t recommend it,” I winced, rolling my head first one way and then the other. “How long was I out?”
“You pretty much stayed passed out all last night and all of today too.” He stood up and tossed the pillows onto the bed. “How are you feeling now? Can I get you anything?” His whole posture was solicitous, hanging on my every word. If I hadn’t been shot in the chest, I would’ve thought he was replaced by a pod person without his usual indifference.
“I don’t suppose you have anything I can wear?” Even an oversized t-shirt would’ve been welcome.
“Oh, yeah, sure.” He went to the nightstand and opened a drawer. “I picked you up a few things when I went out to hunt before. Let me know if the sizes don’t work, I’ll find you something else.”
“Thanks,” I smiled, doing a quick check of the tags. The shirt would probably be a smidge tight, but I didn’t care. “No, this is fine.” I let the sheet drop to pull it on, and he immediately turned around, giving me some privacy. My movements were slow, and the t-shirt did stretch snugly across my chest, but it was better than the sheet.
“What time is it?” I asked, as I worked on getting into the jeans.
“A little past midnight.”
Not so much time, I supposed, to come back from the dead. I understood the mechanics of wood piercing a vampire’s heart, and the idea that I could’ve been permanently left in that blank void or worse chilled me to the bone.
Once I was suitably covered, I sank back down again, feeling woozy. “What happened back there?” My memory after being shot was sketchy to say the least.
Bishop came back to the couch, picking up the sheet to fold it neatly as he replied. “It was pandemonium after you were shot. Delegates scrambling to escape before they got shot too, security trying to reach the stage. It took me forever to get to you. When I caught up to the ones that had you, they were already down a couple of levels heading towards the old escape tunnels. The players… it’s like they deliberately got in the way to keep anyone from catching up with you or the death figure. I took down a couple of them, but I couldn’t be sure who was in on it and who wasn’t beyond the two that had you. Death wasn’t with them.”
“Then nobody caught him?”
/>
“I don’t know, I was too focused on getting you out of there.”
“Then he could still be out there,” I realized with a frown. “Who were those guys? The troupe was mostly human, weren’t they? Did someone hire them to attack me, do you think, or was I in the wrong place at the wrong time?”
Bishop put his hand up to stem the unending flow of questions. “I don’t know. The ones I caught up to were vampires, not human. I’m assuming the others have been rounded up by now and questioned, but I haven’t checked in with anyone yet.”
I sat up a little higher. “But you did call in to tell them I’m safe, right?”
“No, I didn’t want them to track us here while you were still so vulnerable.”
I could understand the wisdom of that, but Rob and everyone must’ve been going nuts. “Let me see your phone, I have to let them know I’m alive.”
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” he said, his hands coming up again. “Not until we know who was behind the attack.”
“For all we know they’ve already picked him up. We need to call and check in, see what’s going on.”
“And I will, but not from this phone.” His face softened. “How are you feeling?”
“Good, I guess, all things considered. Just tired, and sore, you know?” Then again, maybe he didn’t know. “Have you ever been paralyzed like that before?”
“No,” he replied with a quick shake of the head. “I’ve seen it done to mete out punishment, but I’ve never felt it myself. Was it… was it awful?”
“It was scary, mostly because I didn’t know what was going on. But torpor was just a big lot of nothing. It actually hurt a lot more when you pulled the arrow out.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“No, I know.” I reached over to pat his arm across the back of the couch and gave him a soft smile. “Thanks, it sounds like I would’ve been a goner if you hadn’t gotten to me.” I’d been completely defenseless for as long as the wood pierced my heart. It bothered me more than I liked to find out that they’d been taking me somewhere rather than just killing me right on the stage.