by J. F. Lewis
“You suck,” I told him. Phillip nodded, turning back to the little marble in his hand, and I left him happily tormenting Roger. At the very least, I figured that Percy might feel better, knowing there were fates not only worse than death, but worse than his. Phillip would torture Roger in ways I’d never conceived of, and he’d do it consistently until he’d run out of new and inventive ways to make his existence hell. If I’d taken Roger home with me, I would have forgotten about him in a week or two. Roger deserved worse than that.
Dennis met me in the elevator and showed me to my rooms. Bea was up there running interference between Rachel and Tabitha. Talbot sat on an overstuffed ottoman, trying to stay out of it. If I could have done the same, I would have. Magbidion walked in from one of the bedrooms. I thanked him and told him that Beatrice was in charge while Tabitha and I were gone. I made sure Rachel heard me and I took Tabitha by the arm. “Can we go for a ride and talk?” I asked.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t like to take Rachel?” It was just more of Tabitha’s shit, but I took it because during the last few days when all the bad stuff happened, even when she’d been ripping off my head, I’d come to understand the truth: I’d never love anyone the way I loved Marilyn, but Tabitha was the only girlfriend I’d had since I died that I missed when she walked away, that I worried about. Maybe what I feel for her isn’t love, but then again, maybe it’s as close as an old dead man like me is ever likely to get.
“I’m sure.” I reached out with my mind and felt Greta in another room nearby, watching the news on television. Ebony was in there with her, groggy, but awake. It even felt like the lights were starting to come back on inside her mind. “Come on,” I told Tabitha. “Let’s get out of here. Are you hungry? I thought maybe we could hunt?”
“I suppose,” she said with reluctance.
40
TABITHA: NOT A ROMANTIC BONE
Eric took us out in his Mustang, which he introduced to me, finally, as Fang. While Eric was opening the door for me, I gave the ’Stang a surreptitious little pat on the hood, still grateful for its help in the parking deck fight.
Eric and I hunted through the city streets, two predators, a mated pair. I was still angry at him, but he was so sorry, like a little puppy dog, that it was hard to stay mad. Eric had taken me hunting. He never took anyone hunting with him, not even Greta. Would Eric have taken a “moist warm tightness” hunting? I think not. The moon was hidden behind the clouds above us and it felt like it might rain.
After picking up two late-night shoppers, we drove Fang over to the ruins of the Pollux and the Demon Heart. Christmas lights dotted downtown right up to the edge of Eric’s property. The last sign of yuletide cheer was a blinking stocking hung over the enclosed bus stop. Not the most romantic setting. I told him as much.
“Not exactly what I’d planned,” he admitted. “I meant to be driving out to the old Eighth Street church, to look at the Christmas lights and the nativity scene. Fang wanted to come here, instead.”
“We can drive out there later, if you want,” I offered. “I understand if you want to look at the Pollux for a while.” I wasn’t entirely sure if I was talking to Eric or Fang.
Eric hopped out of the car. “Son of a bitch!” he shouted. He ran for the theater, transforming into the uber vamp as he ran, exchanging strides for flaps of his massive wings, flying across the rubble, burrowing deep into the ashes.
Heartbeats.
I got out of the car. Three sets of heartbeats.
He pulled three of his whores out of the wreckage: Gladys, Erin, and Cheryl. They looked badly burned, but the burns were healing. Rachel had set them on fire and left them for dead. Sally and Jodi hadn’t fared as well. They were gone.
Watching him fuss over them made me realize something about him. He really does care, not just about me, but about things, people. I don’t think I’ve ever met another vampire who cared about someone they just met, especially humans. Even I don’t and I haven’t been a vampire long.
“Anything I can do to help?” I asked.
“Testing a theory,” he said. He cut through his forearm with his claws, spraying the still cooling blood of the night’s kill on his trollops. The effect was impressive, but not impressive enough for him. I could see his disappointment. I think he wanted them to be good as new when the first drop of blood touched their skin. “I don’t know why I didn’t sense them before,” he told me. “I mean, my thrall sense got kinda shorted out when the fire started and everyone started burning, but damn. And the firefighters just left them here…fucking enchantment on the stupid fucking city…probably didn’t even see them.”
Or Stacey was there and he didn’t care, because he knew you were broke, I thought.
We loaded them into Fang’s backseat and sat down on the bench at the bus stop under the blinking light of the lone illuminated stocking. “Damn it,” he swore.
“They’ll be okay, Eric. Won’t they? It seems like they’ll be okay.” I sat next to him on the bench and put my head on his shoulder. He shrank back to normal size.
“I think they’ll be fine,” he sighed. “It isn’t that.”
“What is it?”
“I thought we could do something a little different, tonight.”
“Different how?” I asked. Eric put his hand on my thigh and looked at me, really looked at me.
“I needed to do something important tonight.” He took his hand off my thigh. I slowly cranked up my body heat; unthinkingly, he put his hand back down. Storm clouds gathered in his eyes and the blue of his irises waxed brighter until they were a deep luminous purple.
“I’ve only ever done this once before and for all the other ways in which I’m a modern man, I think that I wanted this to stay old-fashioned,” his attention shifted to Fang, “if that’s okay with you.”
My heart stirred within my breast and I closed my eyes and squelched it with all my might. “It’s kind of sweet, I guess.”
He reached into his pocket and handed me a diamond solitaire. It still smelled like the woman he’d taken it off of, the late-night shopper. She’d been about my size.
“That’s your idea of a proposal?” I asked. It was what I wanted, but not the way I wanted it. The little voice in my head was screaming for me to shut up and just be happy, but one thing I’d learned since becoming a vampire is that I’m special. Could I go through eternity with someone who thought handing me a dead woman’s ring at a bus stop was romantic? Eric took me for granted and I was tired of it, as much as I loved him.
“I…yes.” He checked the car again, worried about his thralls. I turned his face back to me with a gentle touch.
“Look at me, Eric. You made me a vampire and then you tried to get rid of me because it made you uncomfortable. Is that going to happen again? Do you really love me or are you just saying that because you lost Marilyn and you need someone to cling to?” As I was talking, my brain kept screaming for my mouth to shut up and my lungs kept trying to start working again. My heart wanted to beat, my blood wanted to pump; I was having a hard time keeping a lid on everything.
“It’s not the same love I felt for her, Tabitha. I won’t lie about that, but, what I do feel for you—I think it’s love, too.” He took my hand when he said it and squeezed it tight. “I thought you were dead. When the Pollux was on fire and I felt Greta burning, I thought you were both dead. That’s when I knew. I didn’t really love Marilyn anymore. I miss her, but only because we were close, familiar. I must have stopped loving her so long ago that I can’t remember what it was like.”
“I love you, Eric. I love you so much I’m stupid about it. Whatever you want to do, in or out of the bedroom, I want to say yes, just because you want to do it, but I can’t let you treat me this way.” My lips trembled and a tear ran down my face. From the smell I could tell it was a real tear, a human tear, not blood, and I felt more relieved than I can say. “If we stay together, you can’t go screwing around on me.”
“Tabitha.” He put a han
d on my shoulder. “It’s like this, when I’m thinking straight, that’s fine, but I don’t always think straight. Some demon is always using some spell on me. There is always some evil plot. Roger’s gone and Jill’s destroyed, but Phillip says that I have a sire to worry about, a sire who is as powerful as I am and will definitely want to screw things up for me.”
“You just want a loophole so that you can sleep with Rachel.” I pouted.
“She’s something else that we have to talk about.” He sighed. “I know that she did some terrible things, but she did them to get herself out of Hell, to get her life back, and when push came to shove, she did what she could to make sure I figured out how to defeat Roger and that J’iliol’lth was behind it all.”
“I know.” I chewed my lip. Eric opened his mouth to say something else, but I spoke first. “You don’t get to sleep with her,” I blurted.
“I know.”
“And no three-ways…at least not with her.”
He grinned and I either had to slap him or kiss him.
We kissed and Eric’s hands roamed over my torso in a way that I’d missed since joining the ranks of the undead. We necked the way only vampires can and our clothes made their way to the concrete next to the bench one article at a time.
“We’re in a bus stop,” I complained.
“I thought you said you wanted to do anything I wanted to do.” He laid me down on the pile of our clothes, the corners of my mouth drawn involuntarily into a smirk. I had said that.
“I still want a ring,” I said as he entered me.
“I got you a ring.”
“A ring of my own.” I bit him gently on the ear.
“You’ll get one,” he promised. “A big one.”
“And a church wedding,” I added.
“Okay, sure, we’ll figure it out.”
As we neared climax, I couldn’t resist: “Where do you want to go on our honeymoon?”
“Paris,” he said breathlessly.
“Why?” I asked.
“So that we’ll always have it,” he answered.
It was the right answer. “I love you,” I told him.
“Thanks,” he said. It wasn’t what I wanted to hear, but it was enough.
41
ERIC: LOOSE ENDS
About an hour before bedtime, Phillip delivered on his promise. He sent up a new wardrobe of various fashions for Tabitha. Three weeks’ worth of clothes, underwear, and lingerie, all enchanted to do this funky color-changing thing. He’d even had everything all wrapped up for Christmas. She loved it and when I tucked her into bed, she was wearing one of her new nighties.
The headboard and footboard were paneled in Brazilian rosewood; it had been my parents’ bed. I’d wondered what had happened to it when Dad died. Now I knew. Like so many other things, Roger had helped himself to it. I held Tabitha as she settled in and once she was asleep, I climbed out of bed, went to the phone, and dialed room service.
“Room service,” said a sultry female voice.
“I need you to get Dennis on the phone.”
“I can’t, Sire,” she apologized. “He won’t arise until tomorrow evening. When he does, I’d be happy to deliver a message for you.”
“Arise?” I asked.
“He was selected during the night, fifty or sixty minutes ago. Lord Phillip was very pleased with him.”
“I’ll bet,” I observed. “He’ll be missed. So are you the new girl?”
“I might be the favorite for the next round,” she admitted. “My name’s Wendy.”
“What happens to the applicants who fail, Wendy?”
“They are presented to the chosen one as gifts to do with as he or she pleases.”
“So Dennis won the guy round and you’re hoping to win the girl round, huh?”
“Yes, milord.”
“Maybe you can help me after all, Wendy. Is Lord Phillip still awake?”
“One moment and I’ll check.” She put me on hold and I listened to Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf while I waited.
“He is, Lord Eric,” she said when she came back. “I’ll connect you.”
“Eric, my boy,” Phillip said, “what can I do for you?”
“I wanted to call and thank you for the clothes,” I told him. “I especially like the way you had Dennis claim he was delivering something I’d ordered months ago. It was a nice touch. I couldn’t tell he was lying.”
“He’s an accomplished liar, that one,” Phillip agreed. “He’ll make a fine friend and then, after a while, he’ll make an even better enemy.”
“That he will,” I concurred.
“What else can I do for you?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I told him. “That’s really all I wanted.” I didn’t sound convincing, but I hung up anyway.
I watched Tabitha breathe for an hour before I slipped out of her room and across the hall to my new suite. Beatrice was watching a cooking show with the volume off and the subtitles set to French, while Gladys, Cheryl, and Erin slept off their wounds on one of the king-size beds. Phil had out-done himself with the suite he’d provided. Five bedrooms, two dens, a kitchen, and three and a half baths were more than I was used to having. There was even an office that looked enough like mine to make me paranoid.
Rachel walked out of the bathroom wearing nothing but an evil grin. She looked kind of weird with the butterfly on her cheek, but she still exuded sex. “I want to be in charge of your bachelor party,” she said, running her hands down her body.
Cinnamon hit my nostrils, and from the smell, it wasn’t just affecting me. Beatrice was getting interested, despite herself.
“I think Talbot might be a better choice,” I told her.
“You think so?” She tugged on the hoops piercing her nipples. “Why don’t you let me show you a preliminary outline.” Her hands glided down her smooth taut skin to her navel piercing. Shit.
“Put some clothes on,” I told her before her hands could go any lower.
“She’d never know.” Rachel pouted.
“Not until you told her,” I said.
Rachel laughed, sliding into some panties and a baby doll nightie. Not my idea of clothes, but it fit the letter of the law if not the spirit of the request. “Why don’t Bea and I put on a show for you.” She smiled.
“It’s tempting, but no. I do need your help with something, though.”
“What?” she asked eagerly.
“I need to find a good jewelry store. I promised your sister a ring.” I turned to Beatrice. “You’re coming along, too.”
Rachel put on some real clothes and we drove out of town toward a twenty-four-hour jeweler Beatrice said all the society vampires used.
As we passed by the city limits I noticed a large billboard in the rearview mirror. It read, Welcome to the Void. Beneath it, City Music Festival had been painted out. Over that, in red spray paint, someone had scrawled, We suck. I wondered if the author was just being vulgar or if he had any idea how true that statement really was. I made a mental note to have Talbot get me a good digital picture before the city had it painted over.
“I want to ask you both something,” I said. “Something that’s been bouncing around the back of my head for a while now. Normally I don’t want to know these things, but this evening…”
“What is it?” Beatrice asked.
“Roger made Marilyn his thrall over forty years ago…” I paused.
“You don’t want to know,” Rachel offered.
“…but Roger was a Master, so she should have stopped aging…”
“How much more slowly than normal did she age?” Beatrice asked.
“He doesn’t need to know,” Rachel said emphatically.
She was right, but this was Marilyn and I was going to know, even if I forgot it, even if it changed nothing. I owed her that.
“I didn’t notice any slowdown in her aging process at all.”
“Then she was fighting him,” Beatrice whispered. “When you fight your master’s wil
l, you age. If she aged normally, then—”
“Then she fought him, every day, all day,” I said. “That’s my girl.” Something cold and wet hit my cheeks and when I wiped at it my hands came away red.
Fang swerved slightly to pass over some bit of roadkill. The eerily soft clatter of tiny bones rained down on the pile of Fang’s other meals in the trunk, like a morbid rainstick. Thinking of rain made me think of dripping water, which made me think of…“Shit!”
“What is it?” both women asked.
“My sword!” Fang hung a U-turn in the middle of the highway, scattering cars and eliciting honks from other drivers.
“What sword?” Beatrice asked me.
“My magic ice sword! I left it in the closet. If some damn fireman stole my magic sword, I’m gonna be so fucking pissed off!”
Red and blue lights flared in my rearview mirror. Just what I needed—cops. Fang’s excitement coursed out through the steering wheel, like a horse eager to gallop.
Laughter rang out from the backseat. “Don’t you think you ought to stop for the police?” Rachel asked. “Just accept the ticket and let Phillip fix it for you later.”
That would have been the smart thing to do, but I didn’t want to do the smart thing, and it wasn’t just me; Fang didn’t want to stop, either. I took my foot off the brake. The accelerator dropped to the floor, my foot still hovering in the air above it.
Fang wanted to keep on going, to tear ass through the city until we lost them. He didn’t care about morals or laws. Fang just cared about using his power, having a blast, getting fed. Greta had better take good care of him while I was in Paris. I was going to miss Fang.
“Fine,” I told the car. “Go for it.”
Fang kicked in the speed and Beatrice let out a loud whoop. I supposed she’d finally found the exciting life. “I forgot to tell you something,” she shouted over the wind, the engine, and the radio.
“What?”
“You got a note from Ebon Winter.”
I laughed. “A Christmas card?”