A Vampire's Hunger

by Carla Susan Smith

I didn’t faint this time, but his words did send a ripple of fear through me. “Shit, if it’s that bad, then you better tell me all at once.”

  “You have to return what was given to you in the exact manner it was given.”

  “I have to what? Do you mean the opals?” I almost started laughing. I’d been expecting something far worse. I’m not sure what, but possibly a blood sacrifice at the very least. “Give me an address and I’ll fucking overnight them to him.”

  “It’s not the Bridal Night Chain—”

  “Please don’t call it that.”

  Ryiel looked momentarily perplexed. He might not understand my discomfort, but he would respect it. “The necklace,” he continued, “is nothing more than a trinket. It was not a part of your original agreement.”

  “Then what is it that I’m supposed to return?”

  “The piece of himself that you carry within you.”

  A blood sacrifice would have been easier. What was it about me? It wasn’t enough I had my own soul, and Gabriel’s soul. Now I also had a piece of a demon too. It was getting a little crowded. I picked up my glass, but somehow it was empty. Ryiel took it from my fingers and returned a few moments later with a fresh one for me. If nothing else, he made a cracking bartender. I took a greedy swallow, feeling the slow, warm burn of bourbon as it contrasted beautifully with the cold snap of cola slipping down my throat.

  “And just how am I supposed to do that again?” I asked, staring over the rim of my glass at the vampire sitting opposite me.

  “The same way it was given to you . . . with a kiss.”

  “Yeah . . . I thought that’s what you were going to say.” In one motion I raised the glass and guzzled down the contents until the glass was empty. “Any idea how I’m supposed to get it in my mouth?” Although I could feel the dark, cold place inside me, I had no idea if it had any type of awareness. Did it know it was inside a different person? Could it feel the wrongness of where it was?

  “That won’t be a problem. It will fill your mouth of its own volition in order to be returned.”

  Something in his tone made me ask, “You sure about that?”

  “As sure as anyone can be.”

  Placing my glass carefully on the low coffee table, I gave Ryiel what I hoped was an unshakable look. “That’s not good enough.”

  For a few moments neither of us said anything, and then Ryiel got to his feet. “Don’t put it in a safe-deposit box,” he said, gesturing to the opal necklace spilling half out of the Tiffany box on the low coffee table. “If he wants it back, let him take it from here. Other people—innocent people—won’t be hurt that way.” Turning, he walked toward the front door.

  “That’s it? You’ve got nothing else?”

  Ryiel turned to face me, his silver eyes shining brightly. “I tell you I have a way for a contract with a demon to be nullified, but you have decided it is unacceptable. That is your choice. Despite your lack of maturity in this life, you are an adult, and as such, I expect any decision you make to have been reached after considering all eventual outcomes and possibilities. I will not insult you by telling you the choice you have made is the wrong one.”

  “Perhaps I was a little hasty,” I said. “I’m still trying to work around the idea of having to wear the damn necklace.”

  He stared at me for a moment, a very long moment, before saying, “Kartel wasn’t entirely wrong about you.”

  The mention of Vampire Smurf’s name put me on the defense. “What’s that supposed to mean?” I bristled.

  “You’re not incompetent, Rowan. Incompetence means not having the skill to do something successfully. It’s not the skill you lack, but the belief in your own ability to succeed. You have already decided you cannot defeat the demon. He’s too strong, too big, too sexy in all his black feathered array!” He made a noise that seemed to be a mix of frustration and disgust. “Yes, he is all those things, Rowan, so you must find a way to use that to your advantage. If you think you cannot defeat him, no doubt he thinks it too.” He smiled at me. “And that has already given you an edge.”

  I began to chew on my lower lip, shaking my head. It wasn’t that I failed to appreciate the pep talk or want to believe it, but I wondered when Ryiel had last seen my demon in his sexy, black-feathered array.

  “Of course,” he continued, watching my face closely, “if your desire to break the contract is false, then you do Gabriel a grave disservice by not telling him.”

  That pissed me off. “How can you say such a thing?” I snarled. “If I didn’t want to break the contract, why am I still here? It would have been easier to just give myself to Satan-in-Waiting when he told me I’d consented to Gabriel’s adultery.”

  “Satan-in-Waiting?”

  “He won’t tell me his name,” I snapped, “so what else am I supposed to call him?”

  For a moment we looked at each other. A very large vampire doing his best to look stern and forbidding, and one terrified me, failing miserably at looking as brave as he expected me to be. The panicky feeling inside me was on a massive roller-coaster ride, but it began to subside when Ryiel moved away from the door and sat in the chair opposite me. His arched brow I took as my invitation to resume our conversation. Presumably from a point where I felt comfortable. Trouble was, there was no comfort zone in this topic.

  “You say in order to break the contract I have to return the piece of him that’s still inside me, and the only way to do this is by kissing him. So does that mean I’d get back the piece of me he stole?”

  “He cannot keep it once he has accepted his own back. Yours will return to you of its own accord.”

  “So then the only difficulty I see is in getting him to kiss me.”

  “I don’t think that’s going to be a problem, Rowan. He has already stated his carnal desire for you by gifting you with the Chain. Wearing it will be your declaration of your willingness to capitulate.”

  “That’s all well and good, but wearing the Chain is only half of it. None of this will work if I can’t convince him I want him more than Gabriel.”

  “No, it won’t,” Ryiel agreed. “Are you a skilled enough seductress to do this?” He sounded hopeful.

  I thought back to the only time I’d performed a striptease for Gabriel. Somehow hopping around on one foot while I tried to disentangle my thong from the heel of the stiletto I was still wearing wasn’t anywhere near as sexy as I’d thought it would be. Especially not when I fell over, giving Gabriel the kind of view I usually reserved for my gynecologist. All in all, it was a memorable experience, though not for the reason I had hoped. But I did come away with a newfound respect for women who pole dance wearing six-inch heels. In light of that experience, I thought it better if I came clean regarding my limitations as a femme fatale.

  “I don’t want to do anything that’s going to make him suspicious,” I told the vampire across from me. “If I’m going to play him, then I’ll be more convincing if I keep it as close to the truth as possible.”

  “How are you going to get him to believe you don’t love Gabriel anymore?”

  “I’m not. This isn’t about love. It’s about one-upmanship. I just have to make him believe I want to fuck him more than Gabriel. If he knows anything about the female mind, he’ll know all about the need for revenge sex.”

  “Revenge sex?” Ryiel clearly had no clue how a woman might extract payback if she felt she’d been wronged. Just found out your boyfriend’s been cheating on you with that slut in accounting? Go sleep with his best friend. “And you think this will work?” he asked dubiously.

  “It better, ’cause I’ve got nothing else to go with.” I blew out a breath. “Of course, the plan is to get him to kiss me and not actually have sex.”

  “What if he decides to force you?”

  I shook my head. “He won’t. He could have done that already. It’s important to him that I give myself freely, or at least appear to.”

  “Why?”

  “Ego? Bragging rights? Who kno
ws?” I shrugged. “You’re male, you tell me.”

  Wisely, he kept his mouth shut. We both stared at the opals spilling onto the low table between us.

  “So you have decided to do this?” Ryiel asked softly.

  “You sure there’s no other way?”

  He put his elbows on the arms of the chair and steepled his fingers beneath his chin. “I truly cannot say, but this solution does seem the best fit for the situation.”

  I sighed. Then yeah, I was going to do it. For a moment I was tempted to ask him if it really had been his intention to walk out the door and leave me, but then I decided not to. Some questions were better left unanswered. Although he’d been right about one thing. I definitely couldn’t tell Gabriel what I was going to do, which meant the sooner I went ahead with this, the better. One look at my face and my lover would know I was going to do something he really wouldn’t like.

  “And you’re certain I actually have to wear that thing?”

  Ryiel nodded. “Unless you know of a better way to bring him to you . . . ?”

  Guess an e-vite isn’t going to work, huh?

  “And I have to be completely naked?”

  “Of course.”

  I could feel the heat creep up from below my neck as I asked, “Who’s going to help me put it on?”

  For the first time since he’d walked through the door, Ryiel looked uncomfortable. He shifted in his seat, sliding toward the edge and putting his chin in his hand. A little like that famous statue of the guy who’s thinking.

  Betcha he wasn’t trying to decide the best way to put an opal the size of a small plum up some girl’s whazoo.

  “Um . . . I could instruct you . . .”

  “I’m going to be naked, Ryiel, and isn’t the chain supposed to tie my hands behind my back?”

  Ryiel got to his feet and ran his fingers through his hair. He looked very much like a man who had been asked to explain the workings of the Large Hadron Collider to a class of first-graders.

  “I cannot touch it,” he said, giving me a bleak look.

  Fair enough. “Is the victim usually expected to put this on by herself?” He shook his head. “Then who helps her?”

  “Another female.”

  “Does she have to be intimate with the other female too?” Now really didn’t seem like the best moment to satisfy any curiosity I might have about girl-on-girl sex. It was a relief to be told no. “Okay, but I’m guessing this other female also isn’t human?”

  “Probably not.”

  Well, that put both Laycee and Anasztaizia out of the picture. “Do you know of anyone who could help me?”

  You would have thought I’d just asked him to put on a pink tutu and dance the role of a sugar plum fairy in The Nutcracker. “I live in an abandoned monastery in the Himalayas,” he said in a dazed voice. “How do you suppose I would know anyone who could help you?”

  “I don’t know, aren’t there like vampire bars or something? I mean places where real vampires can hang out with other vampires?” I might as well have been speaking Swahili, except he probably understood that. “So you’re telling me you haven’t been out or hooked up with anyone since you got to town?”

  He made a snarly sound and ran his fingers through his hair in frustration. “In case you hadn’t noticed,” he muttered, “I’ve been occupied.”

  “Hey, don’t blame me for asking.” I sighed.

  “What about the boyfriend? Does he know anyone?” For a moment I thought he’d lost his mind, until I realized he was talking about Aleksei. Trying to come up with a plausible reason would be the problem. I always went to Anasztaizia for help. To exclude her now would send up a red flag. “You couldn’t tell her? See if she would ask him?”

  I adored Anasztaizia, but I also didn’t want anyone I cared about to be on the receiving end of Gabriel’s temper when he found out about what I had done. And he would find out. Even the two sentinels were out of the question. Tomas for obvious reasons and Stavros because I’d already seen what the necklace could do. I certainly wasn’t about to ask him to put himself at risk for me.

  “There has to be someone,” Ryiel muttered.

  “Yeah, well, I don’t think there is. You’re just going to have to help me as best you can, and we need to get this done—or else.”

  He pulled his brows together and gave me a worried look. “Or else . . . what?”

  “Or else I’m gonna lose my nerve.” I had a feeling if I put this off much longer, finding someone to help adorn me with a ridiculously long piece of jewelry wasn’t going to be a problem. I’d just hand myself over to the Dark Realm and be done with it.

  “Do you want another drink?” Ryiel asked, picking up my empty glass. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d downed three Jack and Cokes in such a short space of time and still been stone-cold sober.

  “Yeah, but forget the Coke,” I told him. “Actually, you can forget the glass too. Just bring me the bottle.” I took two good swigs, spluttered a little, and then waited as the fiery warmth tripped happily down the middle of my chest and pooled in a spot not too far below my navel. I thought about the piece of Satan-in-Waiting that had taken up residency inside me. If he liked bourbon, he’d better make the most of it. I was toying with the idea of taking another mouthful when the doorbell rang.

  “You expecting company?” Ryiel asked.

  I shook my head. “If we ignore it, perhaps they’ll go away.” The last thing I needed right now was company. I strained my ears, listening for sounds of movement from out in the hallway. Hearing nothing, I shrugged. “Must’ve got the wrong apartment,” I said.

  “No,” Ryiel told me, “your visitor is still out there. I can hear movement.”

  My unknown visitor rang the bell again. Only instead of just ringing the bell, whoever it was decided to annoy the piss out of me by using the chimes to play a mini symphony.

  “I hope to God you sprain your finger,” I muttered, yanking open the door.

  The bell pusher leaned against the wall, a forefinger still depressing the lighted button. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but I was certain of one thing. When the Cosmic Wheel of Fate decides to fuck you over, it doesn’t hold back.

  “Hello, Little One,” Katja said, giving me a sickly smile. “Have you missed me?”

  Chapter 25

  It’s funny how the body will have an unexpected reaction to certain things. I know certain smells can bring back a specific memory, transporting you to an exact moment in the past. Sometimes this can be a good thing, especially if the recollection is a good one. Reliving the instant is like slipping on a favorite coat, one that promises to always keep you warm. Other times the memories aren’t so great. Being forced to step back into an agonizing freeze-frame of time can be even more excruciating than the original event. Then you had no idea what was coming. Now all bets are off.

  I stared at the violet-eyed vampire bitch leaning against the wall, able to feel once more the prick of her sharp nails digging into my upper arms as she held me, and the sting of her fangs puncturing the side of my neck. But the very worst thing was the burning sensation as she tore her mouth across my shoulder, hoping to make me bleed out. If I lost too much blood before Gabriel could get to me, well, that was just too bad. She just hadn’t counted on Sebastian coming to my aid. Truth be told, no one had.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?”

  I should have been on my guard and wary about finding her on my doorstep, but all I felt was a cauldron of bubbling anger set to spill over. There was a ton of stuff I still didn’t know about vampires, but I knew a lot more than I had when I’d first met Katja in the Greenley Heights multiplex parking lot. And I was a damn sight more confident of my relationship with Gabriel than I had been then. Playing mind games wasn’t going to work this time.

  “You might find this hard to believe,” she said in a raspy whisper, “but you’re not who I’m looking for.” I was actually glad to see the flash of animosity that sparked in her eyes.
It would have been too awful if she’d suddenly gone all goody-two-shoes on me.

  “Then stop hanging on my damn doorbell,” I snarled.

  I knew Ryiel had moved up behind me when I saw Katja’s eyes shift to a spot above my head. “Ah . . . you are here.”

  I can say in all honesty that Katja was the very last person I ever expected to see again in my lifetime. Even when Stavros first told us she had escaped the monastery, I never thought she’d be so colossally stupid as to come within a hundred miles of either me or Gabriel. I couldn’t imagine she thought we were going to forgive and forget. I leaned against the open door and folded my arms.

  “How did you know he was here? With me,” I added out of spite.

  She sighed, peeved at having to explain. “I’ve been following his scent.”

  Well, that is what a bitch does, isn’t it?

  “And where’s Vampire Smurf?” I asked.

  She gave me a blank stare. “Who?”

  Absolutely fucking clueless.

  “Your boyfriend. Where’s Kartel?”

  Her narrow shoulders lifted, and it suddenly became apparent that her slouch against the wall had nothing to do with an insolent attitude on her part. She needed the support.

  “I don’t know. He left me in Madrid.”

  “Why?” There was more anger than curiosity in Ryiel’s voice.

  “Maybe he got tired of me, yes?”

  That, I decided, was probably the most honest thing I’d ever heard Katja say. The pencil-thin female vampire shuddered slightly, and I looked at her. She was shivering. I frowned because generally vampires didn’t feel the cold. Arctic tundra temperatures maybe, but the sixty-eight degrees in the hallway should have been positively balmy to her. Her behavior warranted a second look. A long second look.

  The black hair that I had envied for its glossy sheen had lost its luster. It hung dull and lifeless, still reaching her hips, but the bounce and swing was no longer there. A cloudiness in her eyes dimmed the sparkling purple irises, making them appear washed-out. She wore no lipstick, and her mouth, which I had once almost been tempted to kiss, was now a pale slash in a ghostly face. I glanced at her hands, mimicking mine by being folded across her chest, and saw her nails were devoid of any polish. As I recalled, Katja had been extraordinarily proud of her long manicured nails. Her fashion sense appeared as edgy as ever, but the fringed miniskirt and matching midriff-baring top seemed to hang on her frame. Even the short bolero jacket looked a few sizes too big.