by Kim Harrison
“Then you aren’t looking deep enough.” Art gripped her shoulder until it hurt. “Either I get a taste of why Piscary indulges you, or you take me up with you, promotion by promotion. I don’t care, Ivy girl.”
“Don’t call me that,” she said, fear mixing with the sexual heat he was pulling from her. Piscary called her that, the bastard. If she gave in, it would start her on the fast track at work but kill what kept her sane. And if she held to her lie and refused, Art had her doing his dirty work.
Art’s smile became domineering as he saw her realize the trap. That Piscary had probably arranged the situation to test her resolve only made her love the master vampire more. She was warped. She was warped and lost.
But her very familiarity with the system she had been born into would save her. As she stilled her panic, her mind started to work, and a wicked smile curled the corner of her lips. “You forgot something, Art,” she said, tension falling from her as she faked passivity and hung in his grip. “If you break my skin without my permission, Piscary will have you staked.”
All she had to do was best her hunger. She could do that.
He gripped her tighter, his fingers pressing into her neck where the visible scars of Piscary’s claim had been hidden with surgery. The scars were gone, but the potent mix of neuron stimulators and receptor mutagens remained. Piscary had claimed her, sensitized her entire body so that only he could make it resonate to past passions with just his thoughts and pheromones, but she still felt a spike of desire dive to her groin at the thought of Art’s teeth sinking cleanly into her. She had to get away from him before her bloodlust took over.
“You knew that, didn’t you?” she mocked, her skin tingling.
“You’ll enjoy it,” he breathed, and the tingles spun into heat. “When I’m done with you, you’ll beg for more. Why would you care who bit who first?”
“Because I like to say no,” she said, finding it difficult to keep from running her fingernail hard down his neck to bring him alive with desire. She could do it. She knew exactly how exhilarating the feeling of domination and utter control over a monster like him would feel. Her fear was gone, and without it, the bloodlust returned all the harder. “You take my blood without my acquiescence, and I’ll get you bumped down to runner,” she said. “You can coerce, you can threaten, you can slice your wrist and bleed on my lips, but if you take my blood without me saying yes, then you—lose.” She leaned forward until her lips were almost touching his. “And I win,” she finished, pulse fast and aching for him to run his hand against her skin.
He pushed her away. Ivy caught her balance easily, laughing.
“Piscary said you’d resist,” he said, his eyes black and tension making his posture both threatening and attractive.
God, the things she could do with this one, she thought in spite of herself. “Piscary is right,” she said, cocking her hip and running her hand provocatively down it. “You’re in over your head, Art. I like saying no, and I’m going to drive you into taking me without my permission, and then?” She smiled, coming close and curling her arms about his neck and playing with the tips of his curly hair.
Eyes black with hunger, Art smiled, taking her fingers in hers and kissing the tips. The hint of teeth against her skin brought a shiver through her, and her fingers trembled in his grip. “Good,” he said, voice husky. “The next six months are going to be pure hell.”
Instinct rose and gathered. Licking her lips, she pushed him from her. “You’ve no idea.”
He retreated to the wall beside the elevator. With a friendly ding, the elevator door opened as he bumped the call button. He stepped into the elevator, still wearing that shit-grin. “Coming?” he mocked, looking too damn good to resist in the back of the elevator.
Feeling the pull, she swooped for his keys beside her purse. Her pulse was faster than she liked, and she felt wire-tight from hunger thrumming through her. Damn it, it was only nine. How was she going to get to the end of her shift without taking advantage of the mail boy?
“I’m taking my cycle,” she said, throwing his keys at him. “I’ll meet you there. Better put your caps on. I want out of this crappy job, and I’d say you’ve got a week. You won’t be able to resist once I put my mind to it.”
Art laughed, ducking his head. “I’m older than you think, Ivy. You’ll be begging me to sink my teeth by Friday.”
The door closed and the elevator rose to the parking garage. Ivy felt her eyes return to normal as the circulation fans pulled away the pheromones they had both been giving off. One week, and she’d be out from under him. One week, and she’d be moving to where she belonged.
“One week, and I’ll have that bastard taking advantage of me,” she whispered, wondering if at the end of it, she would be counted the winner.
TWO
I went an entire two weeks saying no to Piscary, once, Ivy thought as she idled into the apartment complex’s parking lot on her cycle’s momentum. Art didn’t have a shit’s chance in a Cincy sewer.
Feeling a flush of confidence, she parked her bike under a streetlight so the assembled I.S. officers could get a good look. It was a Nightwing X–31, one of the few things she had splurged on after getting her job at the I.S. and a paycheck that wasn’t tied to Piscary or her mother. When she rode it, she was free. She wasn’t looking forward to winter.
Engine rumbling under her provocatively, Ivy took in the multispecies-capability ambulance and the two I.S. cruisers, their lights flashing amber and blue on the faces of gawking neighbors. The U.S. health system had begun catering to mixed species shortly after the Turn, a natural step since only the health care providers who were Inderlanders in hiding survived the T4–Angel virus. But law enforcement had split, and after thirty-six years, would stay that way.
The FIB, or human-run Federal Inderland Bureau, wasn’t here yet. Art wasn’t here yet, either. She wondered who had called the homicide in. The man in the back of the I.S. cruiser in pajama bottoms and handcuffs? The excited neighbor in curlers talking to an I.S. officer?
Art wasn’t the only thing missing, and she scanned the lot for the absent I.S.’s evidence collection van. They wouldn’t show until Inderland involvement was confirmed, and while many humans lived across the river to take advantage of the lower taxes in the Hollows, to think that this was strictly a human matter was a stretch.
The man in the car was in custody. If he had been an Inderlander, he’d be in the tower by now. It seemed they had a human suspect and were waiting for the FIB to collect him. She’d probably find the crime scene almost pristine, with only the people removed to help preserve it.
“Idiot human,” she muttered, her foot coming down to balance her weight as she shut off her cycle and slid the key into the shallow pocket of her leather pants to leave the skull key chain dangling. She knew what she’d find in his apartment. His wife or girlfriend dead over something stupid like sex or money. Humans didn’t know where true rage stemmed from.
Fixing her face into a bland expression to hide her disgust, she removed her helmet and took a deep breath of the night air, feeling the humidity of the unseen river settle deep in her lungs. The man in the back of the cruiser was yelling, trying to get her attention.
“I didn’t mean to hurt her!” he cried, muffled through the glass. “It wasn’t me. I love Ellie. I love Ellie! You gotta believe me!”
Ivy got off her cycle. Clipping her ID to her short leather jacket, she took a moment to collect herself, concentrating on the damp night. The man’s fear, not his girlfriend’s blood he was smearing on the windows, pulled a faint rise of bloodlust into existence. His face was scratched, and the welts were bleeding. The man was terrified. Locking him in the cruiser until the FIB picked him up was for his own safety.
Her boot heels making a slow, seductive cadence to draw attention, Ivy walked to the front door and the pool of light that held two officers. Spotting a familiar face, Ivy let some of the tension slip from her and her arms swing free. “Hi, Rat,” she
said, halting on the apartment complex’s six-by-eight common porch. “Haven’t you died yet?”
“It’s not for lack of trying,” the older vamp said, his wrinkles deepening as he smiled. “Where’s Art?”
“Biting himself,” she said, and his partner, a slight woman, laughed. The living vamp looked right out of high school, but Ivy knew it was a witch charm that kept her that way. The woman was pushing fifty, but the disguise was tax deductible since she used her looks to pacify those who needed . . . pacifying. Ivy nodded warily to her, and got the same in return.
The faint scent of blood coming from the hallway sifted through her brain. It wasn’t much, but after Art’s play for her, her senses were running in overdrive. “Is the body still in there?” she asked, thinking the situation could be useful. Art hadn’t been up long and his resistance would be lower. With a little planning, she might tip him into making a mistake tonight, and she stifled a shudder of anticipation for what that actually meant.
Rat shrugged, eyeing her speculatively. “Body’s in the ambulance. You okay?”
His teeth sinking deep into her, the salt of his dusty blood on her tongue, the rush of adrenaline as he drew from her what made her alive . . . “I’m fine,” she said. “Vampire?” she questioned, since they usually left bodies for the morgue unless there was a chance it might decide it was well enough to get up.
Rat’s expressive face went hard. “No.” His voice was soft, and she took a pair of slip-on booties that his partner extended to her. “Witch. Pretty, too. But since her staked-excuse of a husband was encouraged to ignore his rights and confessed to beating her up and strangling her, they moved her out. He’s a paint job, Ivy. Only good for draining and painting the walls.”
Ivy frowned, not following his gaze to the man shouting in the cruiser. They moved her?
Rat saw her annoyance and added, “Shit, Ivy. He confessed. We got pictures. There’s nothing here.”
“There’s nothing here when I say there’s nothing here,” she said, stiffening when the recognizable rumble of Art’s late-model Jaguar came through the damp night. Damn it, she had wanted to be in there first.
Ivy’s exposed skin tingled, and she felt a wash of self-disgust. God help her, she was going to use a crime scene to get Art off her back. Someone had died, and she was going to use that to seduce Art into biting her against her will. How depraved could she be? But it was an old feeling, quickly repressed like all the other ugly things in her life.
Handing her purse to Rat, she got a packet of evidence bags and wax pencil in return. “I want the collection van here,” she said, not caring that Rat had just told her to collect any evidence she thought pertinent herself. “I want the place vacuumed as soon as I’m out. And I want you to stop doing my job.”
“Sorry, Ivy.” Rat grinned. “Hey, there’s a poll started about you and Art—”
Ivy stepped forward, coiled arm extending. Rat blocked it, grabbing her wrist and pulling her off balance and into him. She fell into his chest, his weight twice hers. His partner snicked. Ivy had known the strike would never land, but it had burned off a little frustration.
“You know,” Rat breathed, the scent of his partner’s blood fresh on his breath from an earlier tryst, “you really shouldn’t wear those high-heeled boots. They make your balance suck.”
Ivy twisted and broke from him. “I hear they hurt more when I crotch-kick bastards like you,” she said, the fading adrenaline making her head hurt. “Who else has been in there?” she asked, thinking a room stinking of fear would be just the thing to tip Art into a mistake. He was currently standing by the cruiser, looking at the human and letting his blood-ardor grow. Idiot.
Rat was rubbing his lower neck in invitation. God, it had started already. By sunup, they’d all think she was in the market to build up the IOUs necessary to reach the lower basement and she’d be mobbed. Imagining the coming innuendos, suggestions, and unwanted offers, Ivy stifled a sigh. Like the pheromones weren’t bad enough already? Maybe she should start a rumor she had an STD.
“The ambulance crew,” the vampire was saying. “Tia and me to get him out. He was crying over her as usual. A neighbor called it in as a domestic disturbance. Third one this month, but when it got quiet, she got scared and made the call.”
Frowning, Ivy took a last breath of clean night air, and stepped into the hall. Not too many people to confuse things, and Rat knew not to touch anything. The room would be as clean as could be expected. And she wasn’t going to sully it.
The tang of blood strengthened, and after slipping on the blue booties, she bent to duck under the tape across the open door. She stopped inside, taking in someone else’s life: low ceilings, matted carpet, old drapes, new couch, big but cheap TV, even cheaper stereo, and hundreds of CDs. There were self-framed pictures of people on the walls and arranged on the pressboard entertainment shelves. The feminine touches were spotty, like paint splatters. The victim hadn’t lived here very long.
Ivy breathed deeply, tasting the anger left in the air, invisible signposts that would fade with the sun. Blue booties scuffing, she followed the scent of blood to the bathroom. A red handprint gripped the rim of the toilet, and there were several smears on the tub and curtain. Someone had cut his scalp on the tub. The pink bulb gave an unreal cast, and Ivy shut off the exhaust fan with the end of her wax pencil, making a mental note to tell Rat that she had.
The soft hum stopped. In the new silence, she heard the soft conversation and laugh track of a sitcom coming from a nearby apartment. Art’s satisfied voice filtered in from the hallway, and Ivy’s blood pressure rose. Rat had said the man had strangled his wife. She’d seen worse. And though he hadn’t said where they found the body, an almost palpable anger flowed over the bedroom’s doorjamb, broken about the latch with newly painted-over cracks.
Ivy touched the hidden damage with a finger. The bedroom had the same mix of careless bachelor and young woman trying to decorate with little money to spend. Cheap frilly pillows, pink lace draped over ugly lampshades, dust thick on the metal blinds that were never opened. No blood but for smears, and they were likely the suspect’s. Pretty clothes in pink and white were strewn on the bed and floor, and the closet was empty. She had tried to leave. A black TV was in the corner, the remote broken on the floor under a dent in the wall smelling of plaster. On the carpet was Rat’s card and a Polaroid of the woman, askew on the floor by the bed.
Forcing her jaw to unclench, Ivy pulled the air deep into her, reading the room as if the last few hours of emotion had painted the air in watercolors. Any vampire could.
The man in the car had hurt the woman, terrified her, beat her up, and her magic hadn’t stopped him. She had died here, and the heady scents of her fear and his anger started a disturbing and not entirely unwelcome bloodlust in Ivy’s gut. Her fingertips ached, and her throat seemed to swell.
The sound of Art’s scuffing steps cut painfully through her wide-open senses. A thrill of adrenaline built and vanished. Eyes half lidded, she turned, finding a seductive tilt to her hips. Art’s eyes were almost fully dilated. Clearly the fear of the man outside and its echo still vibrating through the room were tugging on his instincts. Maybe this was why he continued to work homicide. Pretty man couldn’t get his fangs wet without a little help, maybe?
“Ivy,” he said, his voice sending that same shiver through her, and she felt a dropping sensation that said her eyes were dilating. “I make the call for the evidence van, not you.”
Posture shifting, Ivy stepped to keep him from getting between her and the door. “You were busy jacking off on the suspect’s fear,” she said lightly. She moved as if to leave, knowing if she played the coy victim it would trigger his bloodlust. As expected, Art’s pupils went wider, blacker. She felt his presence rise up behind her, almost as if pushing her into him. He was pulling an aura, not a real one, but simply strengthening his vampiric presence.
Art snatched her arm, domineering and possessive. Teasing, she feigned to d
raw away until his grip tightened. “I call the van,” he said, voice dangerous.
“What’s the matter, Art?” she said languorously, pulling her wrist and his hand gripping it to her upper chest. “Don’t like a woman who thinks?” Sexual tension lanced through her. Enjoying it, she put a knuckle between her lips, letting it go with a soft kiss and a skimming of teeth. Piscary had made her who she was, and despite his experience, Art didn’t have a chance.
“You think I’m going to lose it over a fear-laced room and a pair of black eyes?” he said, looking good in his Italian suit and smelling deliciously of wool, ash, and himself.
“Oh, I’m just getting started.” With her free hand, she took Art’s fingers off her wrist. He didn’t stop her. Smiling, she ran her tongue across her teeth, hiding them even as they flashed. The fear in the room flowed through her, inciting instincts older than the pyramids, screaming unhindered through her younger body. She stiffened at the potent rush of blood rising to her skin. She expected it, riding and enjoying it. It wasn’t the scent of blood, it was the fear. She could handle this. She controlled her bloodlust; her bloodlust didn’t control her.
And when she felt that curious drop of pressure in her face as her eyes dilated fully, she turned to Art, her paper-clad boots spread wide as she stood in the middle of the room stinking of sex and blood and fear, lips parted as she exhaled provocatively. A tremble lifted through her, settling in her groin to tell her what could follow if she let it. She wouldn’t give him her blood willingly, and that he might forcibly take it was unexpectedly turning her on.
“Mmmm, it smells good in here,” she said, the adrenaline high scouring through her because she was in control. She was in control of this monster who could kill her with a backhanded slap, who could rip out her throat and end her life, who could make her powerless under him—and who couldn’t touch her blood until she allowed him, bound by tradition and unwritten law. And if he tried, she’d have his ass and a better job both.