by Gary Jonas
“Oh, I find you very attractive, Ben.”
“Sinclair commanded you to avoid distractions?”
That wasn’t the case. I resisted on my own. However, I didn’t want him to know that because if I let him think he could have had me, if not for the command spell, he might be more inclined to help me get to Victor.
Ben sighed. “That’s a shame.”
“I don’t really like one night stands,” I said.
“It doesn’t have to be just one night,” Ben said, and raised an eyebrow.
Aside from the roofy spell, he’d need to bring something else to the table. Attractive people are everywhere, but I needed my intellect stimulated too. Kindness, generosity, intelligence. Those are the big three in my book. Sprinkle in some good looks and humor, and I’m open to the possibilities.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said.
“You do that. Now, if we’re not going to wake the neighbors, I’ll have to ask you to leave.”
“No problem. Just tell me where to find Victor and I’ll be on my way.”
“I told you, I don’t know where he went.”
“I’m not buying it,” I said.
“I’m not selling it. Just stating a fact.”
“Do you want me to get rough with you?” I asked.
He smiled. “You changed your mind? I do enjoy it when partners play rough. I could use a good spanking. What’s your safe word?”
“Funny.”
“Odd safe word, but I’ll play along.” He undid the belt and stretched out on his stomach, pulling the robe up to expose his ass again.
“No. That’s not my safe word.”
“Mine is avocado.”
“I don’t have a safe word. Cover that ass.” I clenched my fists, irritated. “I just need Victor.”
“Spank me, baby.” He wiggled his ass. “You know you want to.”
I shook my head, reared back and slapped him on the ass as hard as I could.
He yelped in pain. “Fuck! Avocado! Avocado! Avocado!” He rolled onto his side and rubbed his ass cheeks tenderly. Rolling over exposed him to me again. “That really hurt!”
“Next up is a dick punch.”
He held up his hands. “No thanks,” he said.
“Cover it up.”
He pulled the robe around to cover himself. “You’re mean.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“Victor won’t be back tonight, and since your way of playing rough is too violent, I think you should go now.”
“So soon?”
“You would look great as a dominatrix, though.”
“I do look good in leather,” I said. “Tell me where to find Victor and I’ll go.”
“I swear I don’t know.”
“He has business tomorrow night. What is it?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“You don’t know?”
“Oh, I know, but he commanded me not to tell anyone, and he commanded me not to write it down for anyone.”
“He likes to cover his bases.”
“You don’t live—” he said.
“—as long as he has without taking precautions, I get it,” I said. And then I gave Ben a big smile and sat down on the bed next to him.
“Uh oh,” he said.
“Did Victor command you not to take anyone to his business meeting?”
Ben blinked three times then slowly shook his head.
“Looks like we’re spending the night together after all,” I said. “You keep Little Willy to yourself and we’ll do just fine.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
“You know it was implicit in his command that I not take you to him,” Ben said.
He’d said the same thing in different ways the night before, and now that it was morning, he really started pushing to get me to walk away.
“Implied commands aren’t as effective,” I said. “My command is for you to take me to Victor. If you don’t do that, I’m going to cut parts of your body off and feed them to the seals at the zoo.”
“Seals don’t eat meat.”
“Seals will eat any kind of meat they find in the water,” I said.
“You could just hook me up with a Navy SEAL for a night,” he said. “I’ll even share.”
“Nice try,” I said. “I’m going to order some breakfast. Your boss can afford it.”
“Whatever.”
I had room service deliver a nice meal and charged it, along with a generous tip, to the room. As I ate an omelet and bacon, Ben paced the floor like a caged animal.
“Victor will never forgive me if I take you to him.”
“How long have you been his companion?”
“Two hundred years.”
“How many times have you failed him?”
“Not many.”
“So you’re due a Mulligan. Stop worrying about it. He’ll understand. In fact, he might even want you to bring me to him.”
“Why would you say that?”
“Because he left you here in the room knowing I’d find you.”
“I was supposed to seduce you,” he said. “And I failed. This would make two failures in as many days. He’ll replace me.”
“He’ll have to replace you if you don’t take me to him. At least my way you have a chance.”
“I don’t like it.”
“I don’t care.”
“Fine,” he said. “The event tonight is formal. That gown is nice, but it’s not nice enough, and you’ll need to be wearing real diamonds, and those shoes have to go. We should do something about your hair too.”
“I’m crashing the event, not attending it.”
“No. If you want Victor to even consider helping, you don’t want to make him lose face at this meeting. It’s going to be a veritable who’s who of vampires.”
“How many vampires are there?” I asked.
“They keep to themselves. They don’t like regular people to know they exist.”
“No shit, but how many are there in the world?”
“Nobody knows. More than you’d think.”
“Since I thought the number was zero, that’s a given.”
“Thousands,” Ben said.
“Thousands?” I asked. “No way.”
“There are more than seven billion people on the planet. Several thousand are undead. That’s not many at all in the grand scheme of things. Barely a blip. You can go a lifetime and never meet one. You’re about to see hundreds in one place. It’s very rare. The last time this many vampires met in one place was back in 2001 at a celebration in Amsterdam to ring in the new millennium.”
“Why so many now, and why in Denver?”
“Because there’s been an Event,” Ben said. “And by Event, I mean with a capital E.”
“What does that mean?”
“There’s been a time change.”
“Spring forward, fall back? How is that an event? This is July, not October.”
“Not Daylight Savings Time. What I’m telling you is that time was changed, okay? Time as in the sequence of events in history, and the starting point was right here in Denver.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Let’s just say it was big, and the people living, dead and undead who have been around for centuries all felt it and know it happened. Time rippled and altered around them because something big happened. They’re looking into it, and this meeting was called to explore it. When you show up, you’ll want to be on your best subservient behavior because—”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“—the elder vampires will all be in attendance.”
“Hold on. I get to meet Dracula?” I asked.
“Dracula is fictional,” Ben said. “You want to meet Dracula, go to Hollywood and talk to Frank Langella or Gary Oldman.”
I had to admit I was disappointed. If vampires were real, Dracula should have been real. Ben felt the meeting was of supreme importance. He told me that vampires normally gathered onl
y at the dawning of a new century, and it was extremely rare for them to meet in a sizable group any other time. “It happened maybe once in the twentieth century when the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They didn’t even get together after nine-eleven if that tells you anything.”
“I don’t care about any of that. What I care about is saving my friend.”
“I understand that, and I appreciate it. Look, if I’m taking you to see Victor tonight, we’d best get out there to make you presentable.”
“Your boss is going to be pissed if you spend a lot of money on me.”
Ben waved me off. “Nonsense. He doesn’t care how much money I spend. If it can be worn or eaten, it’s fine. Those are acceptable things to spend money on in his eyes. If I went out to buy a football team, he’d draw the line.”
“Like he could afford a football team.”
“Victor is a multi-billionaire. He’s had more than seven hundred years to acquire wealth.”
“Then he should be the love interest in a series of paranormal romance novels,” I said. “Fifty Shades of Blood.”
Ben shrugged. “He’d tell you there are more than fifty shades of blood, but he’s a connoisseur. I need a shower before we go shopping.”
“Knock yourself out,” I said.
“You need a shower too.”
“I’ll have to tie you up while I shower.”
“Sounds like fun,” he said. “It would be more fun if you just join me in the shower. I’d be happy to soap you up and rub you down, let my fingers caress your lovely skin.”
“Dream on.”
“Fine. Tie me up, but when you finish your shower and I’m gone, you’ll wish you’d joined me instead.”
“If I tie you up, you’ll stay in one place.”
He gave me a smile. “You tie me up, I’ll drop into my own shadow and reappear in the room below us. Then I’ll just walk away,”
“If you could do that, you’d have left already.”
“You think so little of your sparkling company?” He entered the bathroom.
The shower started, and as I sat there on the bed I wondered what I should believe. Was he lying about the vampires? Could he really travel through shadows like the Watchers? Was he a Watcher too? Did Victor want him to take me to the meeting?
The shower kept running.
And running.
After a while, I wondered if Ben was still in there or if he could really travel through shadows and stepped out as soon as he’d started the water, or if it was a ploy to try to get me to shower with him.
I knocked on the door. “You almost done?” I asked.
No reply.
I turned the doorknob. It wasn’t locked.
The door swung open.
The shower was running, and the room was filled with steam.
But Ben was not there.
“Shit,” I said.
***
What were my options? I could stay here and hope Ben or Victor returned.
I looked around at the personal items in the hotel room. A burner phone. Two suitcases. A wallet on the dresser with a set of keys and some change. That was it.
Suitcases first.
I lifted both of them onto the bed. Neither of them weighed much. I unzipped the first. Two pairs of blue jeans, T-shirts, multi-colored boxer briefs, white socks, black socks, and a tie showing Humphrey Bogart in a trenchcoat and hat as Philip Marlowe from The Big Sleep. It was a cool tie. The other suitcase held black socks, black boxers, a few ties, and nothing else.
I opened the closet.
Several suits, white dress shirts, a few colored dress shirts, one blue, one maroon. A pair of Nike tennis shoes, and a couple of pairs of expensive dress shoes. They looked to be the same size, or close to it. Could he have faked the reflection?
The wallet held a black Master Card with the name Victor Pavlenco, a card for Los Angeles Public Library, a black business card with the name Monica and a phone number starting with a 310 area code embossed in gold, and two hundred sixty-two dollars in cash.
The Master Card could be canceled with a phone call. It was useless.
I used the burner phone and called the number for Monica, and a woman answered. “DeVille Escort Service, how may I assist you this fine morning?”
“I’d like to speak with Monica, please,” I said.
“Monica does not accept female clients. May I suggest Selina?”
“I’m not looking to hire Monica. I just need to talk to her.”
“Ma’am, I can assure you that our women do not sleep with clients, so if Monica attended a function with your husband or boyfriend, it was strictly professional. A beautiful woman on the arm of a businessman lends power, prestige, masculinity, confidence, respect, and admiration.”
“I’m not married, so this isn’t about a husband or boyfriend.”
“I apologize, but Monica does not book female clients.”
“Just put her on the line,” I said, getting irritated.
“That’s not how the service works, ma’am. We have an office, but even I’m not there. I work from home booking appointments and I pass those on to the women or men. I’ve never even met Monica, Selina, Brooke, Adeline, or any of our other women. I haven’t even met Stephen, Michael, Benjamin, or Anthony. But here’s what I can do for you. I can take a message and pass it along to Monica for you assuming it’s not offensive or trying to coax her into anything illegal.”
“Never mind,” I said, and disconnected.
When she rattled off the names of the male escorts she said Benjamin.
No. There were a lot of Benjamins in the world.
Then again, the world is a mighty small place sometimes.
Things that make you say, “Hmm.”
I slipped the card back into the wallet. For a moment, I considered taking the cash. There was nothing in the room that would bring Ben or Victor back. Clothes could be replaced easily. The cash wouldn’t mean anything to a multi-billionaire. It would be like me making a drive across town to go back to a store to retrieve a dropped penny. The cash didn’t belong to me, so I left it. I tossed the wallet onto the dresser, took one last look around, and left the room.
Before his death, I worked with a private investigator named Jonathan Shade. He was the best and only true friend I ever had, and the only man I ever really loved. If not for him, I’d have been killed. Because of him I teach women to defend themselves and to get out of bad situations. He told me I could be more than just an assassin. I was always good at killing things, but he was the investigator.
What would he have done in a situation like this?
He would talk to the hotel employees. Get information from them.
But what could they tell me? They wouldn’t know anything about a vampire event. They might be able to tell me where in the greater Los Angeles area Victor called home. But that wouldn’t help me. I didn’t need to know where he was from. I needed to know where he was right now, or where he would be tonight so I could get the damn ring and save Amanda’s life.
Big vampire event.
Of course!
Sinclair would attend that. He’d been around as long as Victor.
All I had to do was go back to Sinclair and accompany him to the event.
If he’d take me.
Actually, that could be a problem. He might decide to take me in ways I didn’t want to be taken. I was under his command.
Could I break away from that?
Unfortunately, the only people in Denver likely to know how to do that were wizards who worked for Dragon Gate Industries. I was persona non grata there. DGI sold their services, but I couldn’t afford them, so we were back to not being welcome there. I could wait outside their office building in the Tech Center and kidnap one of the wizards if I got lucky enough to catch one off guard. Probably not a good idea since they’d put me back on their list of people to kill. Jonathan got me off that list, so it was best to stay off it.
Then it occurred to me t
hat there was one more place I could try.
Tally’s.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The same clerk I’d seen on my first visit to Tally’s sat behind the counter, but this time there wasn’t a line. It was ten in the morning, and this was my second stop. My first stop was my dojo so I could change into a pantsuit and boots. I didn’t want to go to a place like Tally’s in an evening dress.
“What can I do you for?” the clerk asked, bored.
“I was here the other day,” I said. “Do you remember me?”
He looked up at me, rubbed his chin. “Crushed demon bones?” he asked.
“No.”
He gave me a shrug. “We get lots of folks in here. What do you need?”
“Information.”
“Did you check our FAQ page online?”
“I’m not a big fan of the internet.”
He grinned. “Mark Twain giving advice on spotting Sasquatch in the wild sounds made up to you?”
“I need information about vampires.”
“Dark Arts Bookshop over on Colfax. Damn near anything you need to know about vampires. Get something by Cavendish. Most of the rest is bullshit.”
“I don’t have time to read a book. I just need specific information, and I’m willing to pay for it.”
“Lady, we sell tangible items, not information. There’s a librarian in Texas named Suzanne who can get you specific info for free. Give her a buzz, but if you aren’t here to buy something we stock, you need to go.”
This guy was pissing me off. “I suspect there are some specific items I’ll need, but I don’t know what they are, so I need some information first.”
“Come back when you know what you want.”
“Don’t make me hurt you,” I said.
A beep sounded and a red light blinked on a camera in the corner. The lens moved and extended, twisted a bit to focus.
“Security camera,” the clerk said. “Bouncers know you’re here now. Don’t threaten me, bitch. I can have them slice you limb from limb.”