All but one.
Mark’s eyes stayed fixed to my face as Allan wove us through the crowd. Cold and heat washed over me in waves as we threaded past vampires and werewolves alike. I was too distracted to search the sea of bodies for famous faces, drawn by the unyielding intensity of Mark’s attention.
“Well,” Allan said, depositing me at Mark’s side. “I fink I see Lady Godiva over dere. Better chat with her while she still ‘as ‘er knickers on.” His turquoise velvet jacket was swallowed by the black tuxedoed crowd like a peacock sinking into a murder of ravens.
“Hanna.” Mark’s voice was as heavy as the monoliths arching overhead.
“Mark.”
My fingers were caught up in an icy grasp from behind as cool lips pressed a kiss against my knuckles.
I spun around to find a man bent over my hand.
“Lady Hanna.” My first thought was to wonder how he knew my name. The second, how the speaker could force entire words out of a mouth puckered tighter than a nun’s ass. Tall, dour, and silver-haired, he looked more like a ruler dipped in black paint than a human being. His unfortunate choice in monotone clothing served only to highlight the fine dusting of snowfall at his shoulders and wrists from skin that was clean, but exceptionally dry.
He reminded me of someone. I struggled for a moment fighting to drag the image haunting my mind’s depths to the surface.
A butler.
That’s who he reminded me of. A starchy, glowering, stoop-shouldered servant perpetually disapproving of people with more power than he had.
Behind the black-clad bony arch of the “Butler’s” back, a servant stood at attention. If you threw a marine and a biker into a blender with a dash of rock star and baked the resulting batter in a blast furnace, the guy hovering at the Butler’s elbow was about what you’d get. He wore a tight black shirt stretched over an amateur body builder’s physique, jeans, motorcycle boots, and a smirk that would frighten predators and charm prey. Not human. But not a vampire either.
“Aren’t you going to introduce us?” The knuckle-kisser’s pale, milky blue gaze slid from Mark to me.
Mark’s eyes fastened on the spot on my hand the Butler had kissed. “Tiberious Klaudios Epaphroditos,” he said, pronouncing the name like the Latin classification of a flesh-eating virus.
“Klaud,” the man corrected, offering me his long, spidery fingers.
“Hanna,” I said. “Lady isn’t necessary.” His cold flesh felt like a loose glove over spindly bones beneath my brief grip. I let go quickly, plagued by the vision of his skin sliding away in my hand.
Klaud followed my gaze over his shoulder and rewarded me with a smile that looked like it required the help of gears and pulleys. “This is my servant, Crixus.”
The full lips that found my knuckles were as smooth as the voice was rough. And hot.
Literally.
Heat sank through my skin and found the veins below, where it sent a vibration up my arm, down my shoulder, through my chest, and then found its way south. Tightness gathered at the place where my femoral arteries fed the nerve-rich flesh between them. When the first spasm found me, my eyes flew wide. This couldn’t be happening.
Crixus smiled, rising.
The sensation didn’t relent. It redoubled. My shallow breath became a pant. Another spasm. And another.
I swayed on my heels as an orgasm expanded outward through my body like the ripples on a pond. The familiar rush of wet heat didn’t follow, and I was grateful. Abernathy would have smelled it.
Why are you panting? Mark’s voice was an earthquake in my skull.
Stupid cors—
Think louder! Mark’s voice arrived in my mind.
Dude. I can hear you too?
It would seem so, came the terse reply.
I worked on slowing my breath. Pulling air into my lungs slowly, softly.
“The Emperor Nero wishes he could have been here this evening,” Klaud said, interrupting our mental conversation with his verbal one. “He was most eager to meet you.”
To my embarrassment, this handful of words still carried enough power to sting a blush to my cheeks. The Emperor Nero was eager to meet me? “Me?” I asked. “Why?”
Klaud’s pupils flared in time with the throbbing of my pulse within its corseted tourniquet. “It’s been centuries since an heir was brought to Castle Abernathy. Why, the last time—”
“Is none of your concern,” Mark interrupted. His look was colder than the heart that failed to beat in Klaud’s chest.
Heir. I had barely begun to accept this word as applying to me. Bound by blood as the process seemed to be, it wasn’t a stretch to include my mother and grandmother within the label. But there had to be other heirs. From other bloodlines. Were there any now? Was Mark protecting them the way he protected me?
“Who was the last heir you brought here?”
Mark seemed as irritated as Klaud was pleased by the question. “Hanna, this isn’t the time or place to discuss this.”
“Oh dear,” Klaud’s fingers came to rest below the colorless ribbon of his thin lips. “I assumed she knew.”
“She doesn’t know,” I said, directing my narrowed gaze at Mark. “But she’d like to.”
“Hanna,” Mark warned. “Later.”
“Yes,” Klaud agreed. “We would hardly have time to do her story justice here, would we?”
Her. Three letters with the power to set my body ablaze.
“Anyway,” Klaud continued, “I didn’t come to discuss your past loves, Mark.”
Loves? What the fuck is he talking about, Mark?
Not. Now. Hanna. Mark’s voice rolled through my mind like thunder. “Then what did you come here to discuss?”
“I came to discuss the recent disappearances. It has come to the Lord Emperor Nero’s attention that several of his colleagues have gone missing, as of late. Colleagues who happened to be visiting your fair city, Mark.”
“Your kind doesn’t visit, Klaud.” Abernathy leaned in toward Klaud, broad shoulders looming over the painfully thin man. “They were hunting. You and I both know that’s a breach of the Spring Lambing terms.”
“So is murder of a vampire by a werewolf.” Klaud’s voice was as rough and metallic as the edge of a rusty saw blade.
“You can’t murder the dead,” Abernathy said.
Klaud bore the distinctive look of a man—or whatever—who’d just had his Cheerios peed in. “Semantics won’t stave off war, Abernathy. When the council learns of this, there will be blood. It’s only a matter of time.”
“The council would be equally alarmed at the string of recent, unexplained murders in my town,” Abernathy said. “Humans tend to get a little worked up when the corpse is marred by two puncture holes at the jugular. Perhaps Nero would be well-served reminding his colleagues of this.”
“You don’t deny that you killed them, then?”
“My time is precious,” Mark said. “Wasting it on hunting your kind would not serve me. But—” Mark leaned close to the Klaud’s ear “—if any more of Nero’s cronies decide to hunt in my city, you can be assured, the terms will be enforced as I see fit.”
“Is that a threat?” The dusty caterpillar of one gray eyebrow crawled toward Klaud’s receding hairline.
“It’s a promise.” Mark’s hands contracted into fists at his sides.
“I will convey your sentiments to the Lord Emperor Nero.” Klaud performed a starchy bow. “Lady Hanna, it was a pleasure.”
I looked at his hand as it hovered in the space between us. Hesitantly, I met it with my own. When the cold lips again found my skin, a shudder worked its way up my spine. I suppressed a gag.
Klaud turned from us and looked to the crowd. “Crixus, come.”
This word conjured a whirlpool of blood to my cheeks.
A smirk stole one corner of Crixus’s mouth. “Lady Hanna.” He nodded.
I closed my eyes and bent my head to him in reply. They disappeared into the crowd of milling bod
ies.
“Do you really think there will be a war?” I asked when they were gone.
“I’ll do anything to avoid it.” These were the first words Abernathy had spoken to me out loud in two days. “But there are no guarantees.”
“What would that mean?” My question was swallowed by the sweet strains of stringed instruments arching through the grand hall. The jostling bodies condensed into pairs, orbiting each other like atoms.
He looked at me then. Really looked at me. My face. My lips. My hair. My dress. “Dance?”
Unable to manage actual words in the presence of the tuxedoed Abernathy, I only nodded.
His hand registered as a patch of warmth against my corset-clad waist as he steered me through the crowd. Reaching a relatively unpopulated spot, Mark pulled me to him and captured my hand. Inside his warm, heavy grip, my fingers felt like kindling for a fire not yet set ablaze.
“You didn’t answer my question,” I reminded him.
“The last time werewolves and vampires went to war, a third of Europe died. They called it the Dark Ages.”
“Not the bubonic plague?”
“Vampires were killing at will. Disease was a much more comfortable explanation.”
“No,” I said. “That’s not possible.”
“Humans flourish within the same cycle that governs us all. When a territory is over-inhabited by predators, the numbers dwindle. When those predators are reduced, civilization flourishes.”
“You mean to tell me the Renaissance happened because the werewolves defeated the vampires?”
“What the hell do you think Da Vinci was? Or Michelangelo? Or—”
Only recently had I understood. Artists were werewolves, and writers, vampires. “Okay, yes. I get it.” Kind of.
“Renaissance. Think about the term, Hanna.”
“Re-birth,” I said.
“Werewolves are reborn. Born to another life. Vampires surrender life. That is the price of immortality. Death is part of life. And they won’t have it.”
My head spun in a haze of non-comprehension. “Okay. The Dark Ages. What before that?”
“The Crusades. And after that, World War One, World War Two.”
“Hitler?” I asked, agog.
“Who but a vampire would be so bent on only his kind surviving?”
The rabbit hole bored into the center of the earth, pulling my center of gravity with it. “But you can’t kill a vampire. And he committed suicide.”
“Tried,” Mark said. “By gunshot and cyanide. But vampires don’t die, much to his chagrin.”
“So where is he?”
“He owns a restaurant in Munich. I hear they do a pretty swift business during Oktoberfest.”
“Pretty diverse profile, I bet.”
“You better believe it.”
Bodies moved around us until the whole room became an impressionist painting. Gestures rendered by quick brushstrokes in my periphery. Mark pulled me in closer. The long, dark skirt of my gown whispered against his legs. “About the other day…”
His broad, muscular back stiffened beneath my hands. “I’d rather not talk about it.”
“You’d rather not talk about anything. But I need to. I’m not trying to make anything more complicated for you.”
“You haven’t.” Mark steered us away from another couple, using the opportunity to put some space between us.
A familiar, dull ache started up in my chest. I told myself the corset was to blame, though I knew better. What he’d said was ‘You haven’t.’ What I’d heard was ‘You couldn’t.’ Not you. You’d have to mean something to me first.
“Who was the last heir you brought here?” Better to move the conversation to a topic more painful for him than for me.
“I’d rather not talk about that either.” His hand tightened over mine. The amateur psychologist in my head deciding this to be a subconscious signal of closing down.
“It’s a perfectly reasonable question,” I said, squeezing my hand right back.
“Reason is relative.”
I resisted the very ungraceful and undancerly urge to kick him in the shin. Not that my dress would have allowed me anyway.
Trying to get information out of Mark reminded me of navigating a maze. Walls rose higher than my line of sight in many directions, and most paths terminated in sudden dead ends.
“Remind me why you brought me here again?” I tilted my chin up towards his, as much so he could hear me as to remind him of how easy it would be for him to kiss me. Should he want to. Ever again.
“Because you begged me.” Abernathy punctuated these words with a quick, violent turn, spinning me with dizzying force.
“How am I supposed to make my decision when you keep sheltering me from the things I want to know about this world?” I asked when I had regained a measure of my equilibrium.
When Abernathy wouldn’t meet my eyes, I reached up and placed a hand on his beautifully carved and cleanly-shaven jaw, angling his face to mine. For one simultaneously brief and endless moment, we were the only two people in the room, the castle, the country, the world.
His gaze had the power to do that to me. To render everything not in its direct path utterly obsolete. Meaningless.
“I will spare you as much ugliness as I can for as long as I can. If you choose to remain human, there are certain aspects of my world you would be better not knowing.” He took my hand from his face and put it back on his shoulder. Not I noted, over his heart.
“How does my question fall into that category?”
“The answer is ugly.” The half flirting, half teasing lightness on his face evaporated then, leaving something darker and more impenetrable.
Great.
“Speakin’ of ugly.” Allan materialized at my elbow and despite my boundless love for him, I could have cheerfully strangled him on the spot. “Pharaoh has requested your presence. Gawd, but I’m amazing,” he said, stepping back to admire the gown. “’is thing is a work of bloody art.”
“Now?” Mark dropped my hand, irritation clear on his features “We had our one-on-one earlier today.” This was easily the most work-related thing I had ever heard Abernathy say.
“You had a one-on-one meeting with the Ahkenaten and you didn’t let me take notes?” I asked, disappointment further crushing my already collapsing chest.
“Because you taking notes would have been more akin to you jumping in his lap and choking off his air-supply with a patented Hanna neck squeeze?” Abernathy and Allan traded a look that suggested they were both in agreement with this assessment.
“Ah-ha!” I said, holding up my finger for emphasis. “But vampires don’t need air, do they?”
“Their bones also don’t heal for years. If anyone could manage to pulverize the millennia old ruler of an immortal species, it would be you,” Abernathy said.
I folded my arms across the velvety fabric of my corset. “Like you’ve never attack-hugged someone, Mr. Judgy McJudgypants.”
“I’ll be so bloody glad when you two shag and get it over with.”
“That’s not—” Mark began.
“I haven’t—” I added.
“I know, I know,” he said, holding up silk-gloved hands to quiet us both. “‘ere’s no tellin’ what’ll ‘appen. Hanna ‘asn’t decided, and there are plenty of available female alphas slobberin’ for the chance to jump on Mark’s royal knob. You can deny it all later. Right now, sod off and talk to the Pharaoh.”
“I’ll be back,” Mark promised before disappearing into the crowd.
“Nice to see you two are talkin’ again.” Allan tucked a few stray curls back into the nest of hair piled onto my head.
“Not about anything of substance,” I said.
“Give him time, love.” Allan gave my shoulders a reassuring squeeze.
Gasps and shrieks rose from a clump of bodies in the crowd. The word ‘naked’ floated up above the general din.
“Oh fuckin’ ‘ell,” Allan sighed. “That’ll be L
ady Godiva. I towd de bartender not to serve her. One flute of champagne and ‘er tits are out quicker’n than green grass frough a goose. Be right back.”
No sooner had he departed than a cold hand closed over my wrist. I glanced over my shoulder to find Klaud fixing me with a rictus grin, the roots of his yellowed teeth were visible above his retreating gums. My fingers began to tingle, this simple contact with a vampire enough to change the patterns of my blood flow.
“Klaud,” I acknowledged, I jerking my hand from his grasp.
“Forgive me, Lady Hanna.” He bowed. “Our conversation earlier gave me pause. There’s something I feel you need to know. Will you accompany me?”
The mere suggestion filled me with dread. I glanced around the room, but was unable to locate either Abernathy or Allan. “I don’t think that would be a good idea.”
“Forgive me, I just feel that it’s only fair that you are given all the information about the previous heir.” His voice had an unpleasantly dry quality that suggested if he coughed, a cloud of dust might just erupt from his thin, livery lips. “There are things I can tell you.”
“Why should I believe you?” Curiosity gnawed my insides hollow as I searched his dampish, rheumy blue eyes.
“Werewolves are notoriously secretive.” Klaud cast a baleful glance over the swaying, chattering crowd. “Not that my kind doesn’t also have our…quirks.”
“That’s putting it rather mildly.” My hand drifted up to my neck, where the faint scar from Oscar Wilde’s vicious bite still ached with the memory.
Klaud gave me a mirthless smile. “An heir has considerable power within both worlds. I only think that, should you decided to take on that role, it should be with all the information available.”
“Why do I feel like my ability to make this decision with full information is not your sole motive here?” I raised an eyebrow at him.
“Because it is not,” he admitted. “Of course I have an interest in the Emperor retaining his current scope of power, and should you take your place, he stands to lose that.”
“I thought that might be the case,” I said, shifting to take pressure off my aching feet. Still, Klaud’s having readily admitted this was a far cry from the verbal hand waving and frequent subterfuge I had become accustomed to in Abernathy’s case.
Love Lies (Tails from the Alpha Art Gallery Book 3) Page 16