A Plain-Dealing Villain

by Craig Schaefer

  “Now that must be a world record,” Royce said, dropping into the chair beside us. “You’ve known that woman for all of three minutes, and unless I’m mistaken, you’re strongly considering murdering someone to protect her. For hell’s sake, man, get ahold of yourself. Or can you?”

  I blinked. Jarred from my thoughts, I tried to pull my hand away, but Nadine held it in an iron grip. She stroked my wrist with her other hand, her fingers sliding under the sleeve of my shirt, gently massaging. It felt good. Too good.

  “Don’t pull away,” she whispered. Her aura of fear dissipated, replaced with a soothing gentleness reflected in her voice. “You don’t want me to stop touching you. You like this.”

  I did.

  “Introductions are in order,” Royce said. “Daniel, please meet Mistress Nadine, Grand Matriarch of the House of Dead Roses, the eldest daughter of Lust in the Court of Night-Blooming Flowers. Nadine, why don’t you tell our human friend what you’re doing to him right now?”

  She had the softest, saddest smile I’d ever seen.

  “Right now,” she said, “your hypothalamus is flooding your brain with a chemical called oxytocin. It works to promote feelings of bonding with your mate, as well as trust and contentment. The dose is far, far higher than what your brain could produce on its own. Your body is telling you that you can trust me. That you are safe to trust me. That you are right to trust me, because you want to be with me. Isn’t that so?”

  Her voice took on a lulling cadence, a hypnotic rhythm that pulled my legs out from under me.

  “I’m also dosing you with a flood of endorphins. Endorphins are a natural morphine created by your body, and they can have all kinds of fascinating effects when properly put to use. Given enough time, I could train you to associate fear and pain with the heights of pleasure. But I would never do that, of course. I care about you. I’m only doing this because Royce ordered me to. You believe me, don’t you?”

  I did. I believed every word she said, even though I knew she was lying.

  “I’ll level with you,” Royce told me. “Nadine, here? She scares me a little. She’s really a nasty piece of work. You should see what she likes to do with a pair of scissors. Now, she’s got this pet theory that your species—who she normally refers to as ‘filth-eating monkeys,’ by the way—was created by Lucifer to serve the Choir of Lust. It’s why she can tinker with your nervous system just by touching your skin. Me, I think that’s a bunch of hokum.”

  “That’s not true at all,” Nadine cooed. “I care about humanity. We all do. I care about you. More than anyone in the Court of Jade Tears does. We cherish our human subjects. You should come and work for Prince Malphas. You should pledge yourself to me.”

  Royce crossed his legs and leaned back in his chair, enjoying every second of this.

  “Bad idea, sport,” he said amiably. “I mean, you could do that, if you fancy being dragged down to Nadine’s tower in hell and suffering a few hundred years of unimaginable torture and degradation until she gets sick of you and finds another victim to play with. Or, now here’s a great idea I just had, you could open your eyes and grasp the point of this little exercise.”

  I couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. I knew he was telling the truth. I knew she was telling the truth, too. I sat there, impaled on the paradox, turned to stone by Nadine’s kindly gaze.

  “What,” I said through gritted teeth, “is the point?”

  “That all she had to do,” Royce said, holding up a finger, “is touch you. Everybody knows a succubus’s kiss can be more addictive than heroin, if she wants it to be. That’s no secret. That’s the crude magic, the battering ram at the doors of your soul. But the elders of the Choir of Lust, the truly skilled ones…they can be subtle. Out of idle curiosity, when you first met Caitlin, how many times did she casually touch you?”

  I stood in my circle of salt, drenched in gore, while Caitlin slowly tore Artie Kaufman to pieces in front of me. My heart pounded as she stepped into the circle and pressed one bloody fingertip to my lips.

  Shh.

  She curled her fingers in my hair, stroking the back of my neck, as she pulled me in for a kiss.

  And I wanted her. Amid all the carnage and horror, I wanted her.

  Nadine leaned close and whispered, “I don’t like saying nice things about my enemies, but Caitlin’s better at this than I am.”

  27.

  “We’re trying to help you,” Royce told me. “Scout’s honor, sport. You’re fighting for the wrong team. This is your official wake-up call.”

  “The truth is,” Nadine purred into my ear, “since the moment we met, all I’ve been thinking about is you, me, and my favorite pair of scissors. I think I’d start by gelding you, like the vile animal you are. And despite knowing this? Despite hearing me tell you exactly what I think of you and how much I’d enjoy making you suffer? You still don’t want me to stop touching you. You still like me.”

  I did. I hated myself for it, but I did. I’m just misunderstanding her, I thought. She’s not really like that. She’s just saying that because Royce told her to. If the two of us went somewhere alone together, away from him, I bet we could sort this all out.

  Nadine cupped her free hand around the back of my neck, massaging gently, like Caitlin had a few hours before.

  “You look so confused,” she said, sympathetic. “I could fix that. One kiss, and you’ll never be confused again. Wouldn’t that be nice? A life of absolute clarity, of purpose.”

  “Ooh,” Royce said with a grin. “I really wouldn’t do that, sport. That would be a bad, bad life decision.”

  “He knows that,” Nadine snapped at Royce, frowning. Then she turned back to me, her expression softening, and took her hand off my neck. Now she stroked her nails under my chin, batting her eyelashes at me. “Doesn’t he? Oh, he knows how unwise it would be, but he still wants to say yes.”

  “Let go of me,” I croaked, no will behind the words. It wasn’t what I wanted to say. Wasn’t what she wanted me to say. Same thing.

  Nadine whispered in my ear, “Beg me for a kiss.” Her voice was a gust of silky smoke, slithering into my ear, coiling around my brain. “Beg me, you filthy little worm.”

  I bit down on my tongue until I tasted blood.

  A shadow loomed over us. Freddie, cradling a freshly poured martini. From the flush on her cheeks, it wasn’t the second or the third drink she’d had tonight.

  “And who exactly,” she asked, loudly enough to draw glances from across the room, “is the skank holding hands with my new BFF’s boyfriend?”

  Nadine let go of me, standing up like a shot. “What did you call me?”

  Freddie looked her up and down, gesticulating with her glass as she spoke. “On further reflection, I’m downgrading your rating to ‘Gucci-drone tacky-ass bitch.’ You may resubmit your application for evaluation in six months.”

  That got Royce on his feet, too. “Mind your tongue while you still have one, Vinter. This woman is an esteemed noble—”

  “Who, her?” Freddie said, jerking her glass in Nadine’s direction. Her martini sloshed over the rim, splashing Nadine’s dress.

  A strangled yowl rose from the depths of Nadine’s throat, a sound like a dozen tortured cats in a burlap sack, as her eyes turned to swirls of molten copper.

  “You,” she hissed, flashing a mouth lined with shark’s teeth. Around us, the shadows responded. Congealing on the walls, growing thick and furry, sprouting legs as they skittered across the ceiling.

  Royce saw them too. He grabbed Nadine’s arm, yanking her back a step.

  “Not here,” he said, giving her arm a shake. “No fighting in the club.”

  “Do you have any idea,” Nadine growled, “who I am?”

  Freddie rolled her eyes. “I just told you who you are. You know, you can get some help for that attention-deficit problem. While you’re at the clinic, see if they can get you a personality transplant.”

  Nadine flexed her hand. Bones cracked and elo
ngated, fingers curling as her nails became claws of black iron. The shadows on the wall bulged and took on three dimensions, a curtain of hairy fist-sized spiders with legs bent to pounce.

  “Nadine,” Royce snapped. “Not here. That’s an order.”

  Nadine took a deep, shuddering breath. She looked down at her drenched dress, then back at us.

  “Later then,” she hissed as she stormed off, “for both of you.”

  “You’d best mind yourself,” Royce told Freddie. “Don’t forget who I am and who I serve. I represent hell’s law in—”

  Freddie’s index finger shot up. She wagged it at him. “I’m not a demon, don’t answer to you, don’t care, buh-bye.”

  Royce gritted his teeth and looked my way.

  “I hope you take my little demonstration to heart, Daniel. Your ‘lover’ is using you. Playing your heart like an instrument, like my Nadine did, just now. When you grow tired of being an abused pawn, remember: you would find yourself welcome in my court as an honored guest.”

  Freddie snorted and tossed back what little remained in her glass. “Buh-bye, Royce. Don’t make me say it a third time.”

  “Oh? And what if I do?”

  I felt change in the air, even before the light around us shifted to faded blues and blacks. Not the club’s shadows now. Hers. Chill washed over me, the chill of a famine winter, and my breath puffed out on a curlicue of frost. Even though I’d eaten a full meal a few hours ago, my stomach growled and knitted itself in knots of hunger as if I’d been starving for days.

  “I’ve always wondered,” Freddie said, her voice slow and soft, “what the flesh of an incarnate demon tastes like. Maybe I’ll get to find out.”

  Royce’s eyebrow twitched. His lips curled in a defiant sneer, but he still took a step backward.

  “I have a tournament to prepare for,” he said. “No time for this nonsense.”

  As soon as he left, the light returned and the warmth flooded back. Freddie stood over me, her bubbly boozy mask firmly back in place.

  “I am surrounded,” she proclaimed, “by tacky-ass bitches. They’re all around us, and they don’t even know they’re tacky. Hey, are you okay? You look sick.”

  I shook my head, slow. “I’m not okay.”

  “I’ll go get Caitlin,” she said but stopped when I held up one empty hand.

  “No. Don’t do that. I need to be alone right now.”

  * * *

  Alone didn’t last. I suppose, on some level, I didn’t want it to. Alone meant time to think. Time to think too much.

  Caitlin found me in the gaming parlor, eyeing the Judas Coin as I circled the glass display case. I recognized the sound of her high heels, clicking their way toward me from the door.

  “Any luck?” she asked.

  “Ran into Royce.”

  “And?”

  I turned and shrugged. “Not sure. He didn’t ask me about the coin, or let on that he knew about my talk with Scudder, but he did try to mess with my head a little.”

  She frowned. “What did he say to you?”

  I waved off the question and started walking to the door. Caitlin fell into step with me.

  “I think he wants to recruit me,” I said, opting for half the truth instead of a whole lie. “Or make me think he does, anyway.”

  “Either is possible. The Flowers have had you on their radar ever since that whole mess with the Redemption Choir. Winning you to Prince Malphas’s side—or taking you off the board—would make up for the embarrassment they suffered.”

  “Yeah, well, I wouldn’t care for my coworkers.” I paused, a question on my lips, not sure if I should give it voice.

  What’s the problem? I asked myself. Are you afraid of what she’ll say? Or afraid of what she won’t?

  “Royce had a buddy with him. Woman calling herself Nadine. Does that ring any—”

  Caitlin grabbed my arm. Hard. She stopped in her tracks at the parlor door and turned me to face her.

  “Nadine is here?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Pretty, blond, has a Taylor Swift thing going on? Hobbies include moonlight walks on the beach and cutting people up?”

  She didn’t say another word—and didn’t let go of my arm—until she’d hustled me out of the building and into the parking lot. A damp chill hung in the air, the kind of cold that seeps into your bones. We walked through the lot, past the odd assortment of old junkers and high-end sports cars, and toward the sounds of traffic one block over.

  “Did she touch you?”

  “Caitlin, what are you so upset about—”

  Her fingers clenched hard enough to leave a bruise.

  “Did she touch you?”

  I didn’t want to lie. And in that moment, hearing the growl at the edge of her voice, I realized something that chilled me deeper than the weather.

  I didn’t want to lie, but I was afraid to tell the truth.

  Now it was my turn to stand my ground. I stopped walking and looked her in the eye.

  “What’s going on, Caitlin? I’m not moving until I get a straight answer.”

  She let go of me, her hands falling limp to her sides. She sighed.

  “What’s going on,” she said, “is that this situation just became exponentially more dangerous. Nadine leads the Dead Roses. They’re a sect, I suppose you could say, inside the Court of Night-Blooming Flowers. Half monastic order, half training academy.”

  “What kind of training?”

  “Spies. Assassins. Seducers and killers. Nadine’s agents are the backbone of Prince Malphas’s intelligence service. Few in number, but bloody near unstoppable. The Roses’ regimen, you see, is…beyond cruel. For every fifty aspirants, only one survives to graduation—and usually with the blood of the other forty-nine staining her claws and teeth. In Nadine’s house, you’re either the best and brightest, or you’re meat for their table.”

  “So what does this have to do with her touching me?”

  Caitlin bit her bottom lip.

  “Certain members of my choir,” she said slowly, choosing her words one by one, “the eldest, and most skilled, can manipulate natural energies in ways that others can only dream of. Nadine is arguably the greatest daughter of lust alive, and she’s earned her reputation. She’s been known to…subvert people with nothing more than a gentle caress. I was concerned that Royce might have used her to get at you.”

  I stood in the heart of a verbal minefield.

  “I always thought,” I said, stepping lightly, “you had to kiss someone to get into their heads. You, collectively, I mean.”

  “Most do, yes.”

  Ask her what SHE can do. Go on, ask her.

  “So,” I said, “Nadine…she’s extraordinary?”

  “Let me put it this way: you know the myth of Helen of Troy? The woman so desired she launched a thousand ships and brought a nation to war?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  Caitlin gave me a wistful half smile. “Though it’s never been proven, rumor has it, that was Nadine in disguise. She cared nothing for the love of Menelaus or Paris. She just started a war to see if she could. Some say she’s even older, that she was one of the original daughters of Lilith. Suffice to say you’ll rarely meet a more dangerous member of my choir.”

  “Rarely,” I echoed. But you didn’t say never.

  “Rarely,” she said.

  28.

  Back at the Four Seasons, our room was dark and warm, with the faint humming of a heater the only sound. We hadn’t talked much in the cab on our way to the hotel. Not much we could say with the cabbie listening in, and besides, I needed time to think. Caitlin did too, I supposed.

  I just wasn’t sure what she was thinking about.

  I felt confused. I felt anxious. More than anything, though, I felt guilty as hell.

  Caitlin had risked her job for me, risked her life for me more than once. And here I was, putting her on trial without even telling her.

  Sure, Nadine had made me feel things with her powers, things l
ike what I felt for Caitlin. Sure, she and Royce could be telling the truth, and sure, maybe I’d been Caitlin’s sucker since day one.

  But who had more motivation to lie?

  And the worst part is, I thought, just the fact that I’m asking these questions means I don’t trust her as much as I should. It’s like I’m betraying her just by wondering.

  That was how love was supposed to be, right? Absolute trust? Hell if I knew. I was never much good at relationships. I had a lot of whiskey-fueled one-night stands in my rearview mirror, along with a scrapbook filled with affairs that had gone off the tracks as soon as they started. Lovers flitting in and out of my life, here one week and gone the next.

  Jennifer and I had been doomed from the start, but at least it was over fast and our friendship came out stronger than before. Roxy? I’d thought Roxy was the one, but I managed to torpedo that relationship until there was nothing left but driftwood and sinking rubble. Some part of me knew, I think, that I didn’t deserve something that good in my life. So I ruined it, to save her from me.

  And now here I was, with the woman I loved, and getting ready to wreck things all over again.

  Caitlin closed the door behind us and latched the dead bolt. I reached for the light switch, but she caught my hand, cradling it gently.

  “No light,” she said.

  “What is it?”

  She moved close to me in the dark. I could smell her musk perfume, feel the warmth of her breath on my cheek.

  “She touched you. Didn’t she.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Yeah,” I said. “She did.”

  “I imagine she told you things about me. Ugly little lies.”

  “I didn’t listen.”

  “But you heard.” She took a deep breath, held it, and let it out slowly. “My kind are not jealous creatures, Daniel. It isn’t in our nature. But we are territorial.”

  “Caitlin, I don’t know what you think happened—”

  She pressed her finger to my lips. Shh. Just like she did in Artie Kaufman’s kitchen. No blood this time, only perfume.