Blood Rights (8 page)

Damn Sweets. What was he thinking? ‘What for? And how did you come by that blade? Just knowing what you are raises a multitude of questions.’

Doc raised his hand. ‘We back to that comarré thing again?’

Anna, or whatever her real name was, ignored Doc.

‘Jonas said you could help. And I could say the same thing for you, vampire. Besides those impossible markings you wear, your being here’ – she glanced around, clearly unimpressed – ‘raises a few questions as well. Where’s your luxury? Your display of wealth? Your servants? If this ghost and this varcolai are the best you could do, then I pity you.’

‘I could be fringe,’ Mal said. If only his life were that simple.

Anna didn’t look convinced. ‘Fringe can’t shift their faces.’

Fi shot forward. ‘I’m no one’s servant.’ She jerked a thumb at Mal. ‘Especially not his.’

‘Don’t get too close,’ Doc mumbled, waving the ghost back and staring hard at Anna. ‘How’d you know I’m varcolai?’

Anna slanted her eyes at him. ‘You smell like a shifter.’

Doc growled softly.

‘Enough.’ Mal shot him a visual dagger before looking at Anna again. Her glow was impossible to ignore. Worse still, the
pulse at her neck beckoned.
Drain her. Quiet her.
He shifted his gaze. ‘I have my reasons for being here. What are yours?’

She kept her blood red lips firmly shut.

‘Storage container.’ He kicked his feet up onto the desk, leaned back, and picked up the book he’d been about to read earlier. The movement sent fireworks through his field of vision.

Doc jumped to his feet. ‘Let’s bounce, princess.’ He grabbed Anna’s arm and yanked her up.

‘I knew Jonas was no good.
Mortal.
’ She filled the word with the same disgust Mal felt toward the being responsible for his curse.

‘But you are one.’ Couldn’t hurt to remind her.
Couldn’t hurt to drain her.

‘What?’ Doc looked at Anna a little harder. ‘Princess is mortal?’

‘Sure,’ she said, staring Mal down. ‘As much as the vampire used to be.’

Doc jerked her once. ‘Chill with “the vampire.” He has a name—’

‘Doc, storage container, now.’ The last thing she needed to know was who he was. Comarré knew their history, or were supposed to. He wasn’t sure of anything about them based on this one. Unless she was some sort of renegade.

‘Wait.’ His feet went back to the floor. If she was renegade, there might be someone after her. He stood, digging the point of the sword into the desk for support.

‘Tie her to the chair. If she fights, knock her out. Then run the perimeter. Make sure Anna came alone.’

‘Shouldn’t one of us check her for weapons?’ Fi asked. ‘She seems to have a serious stash of them.’

‘I’ll take care of that when I get back, just get her tied up.’
He made it to the downstairs fridge without passing out. Seemed like a good sign. He drained the last quart of pig’s blood, hating every drop and wishing with each swallow it was the blood of the woman upstairs.
Take her. Drain her.
He’d never tasted comarré blood, but he’d heard stories. It wasn’t just nourishment; it was power, prestige, protection. If you could afford it.

He headed back up feeling marginally better. Doc and Fi waited at the door.

‘She’s trussed like a Sunday goose,’ Fi said.

Perfect for the eating.

Doc winked at Fi. ‘Yeah, Fi’s pretty good with the knots.’

‘Doc, you sweep the ship. Fi, haunt the incoming streets. Look for any strange vehicles, scents, beings – anything out of the ordinary. Report only if you find something. Otherwise, I’ll let you know when I’m done with her.’

They nodded and took off. He gave up on hiding his true face – after all, she’d seen it already. Not masking it would help him conserve some energy. With that, he pushed through the door and locked it behind him. Anna’s arms and legs were tied to those of the chair.

She sneered at him, all blonde rage, pale anger, and shimmering glow. Her pulse boiled through him. ‘Does this make you feel strong and powerful, vampire? Binding a gentle comarré like some great enemy?’

‘Considering you’ve sunk two blades into me, gentle left the picture a long time ago.’ He kneeled in front of her, putting them at eye level. Time to see what else she might be hiding, starting from the ankles.

She sniffed at him. ‘You just fed and yet you still smell hungry. Animal blood will not sustain you. Why don’t you take
what you really need?’ The question brought his head up. Her eyes were the pale blue of the last dawn he remembered.

‘Is that an invitation?’
Take it.
He eased his hands over her right ankle, then worked up her calf over her trousers. So warm.
So ripe.

She stiffened at his touch. ‘I meant why have you not fed properly for so long?’

‘I don’t drink from the vein, and my source hasn’t come through.’ A little honesty given might a little honesty get. He stopped midthigh and switched to her left ankle.

‘You’d be much stronger if you took from the vein. You’re barely surviving.’

‘I’ve survived just fine for the past fifty years or so, thanks.’ He glanced up. She was staring. Hard.

She leaned in, studying his contorted facial bones. ‘When the bloodlust is this strong, it keeps you from hiding your true face.’

With great effort, he shifted to his human face, then let it go, just to prove he could. ‘I can hide it if I need to.’ The exertion cost him a chunk of his control, just what he hadn’t wanted to do. His hands stopped above her right knee.
So full of blood.
Her body heat sank into his skin through her thin silk trousers like tiny, licking flames. Her heart’s rhythm pulsed into his gut, tightening it, making him want. This close, she seemed bathed in sunlight. He suffocated a groan.
Drain her. Drink her. Hot, sweet, yours.

Her mouth moved, but the voices in his head drowned out the words.

‘What?’ Concentrate.

‘I said why do you wear those marks?’ Her eyes studied the strip of skin visible where his ripped shirt hung open. He should have changed.

He skimmed one finger down the back of her naked hand. ‘Why do you hide yours?’

She dropped her chin, breaking eye contact. ‘I do what I must to pass.’

At last, a little piece of her puzzle revealed. ‘Why do you need to pass as human?’

For the span of three breaths, she stayed silent. ‘How do I know I can trust you?’ Her voice was softer. Almost touching. If this was a ruse, it was a very artful one. Practiced. But of course it would be. She was comarré.

His hands slid up her arms, gently squeezing, feeling the mechanisms that had held the hidden wrist blades, then going higher. ‘You can’t. Just like I don’t know if I can trust you. You can take the chance though. See if it pays off.’

‘And if it doesn’t, I end up dead.’

‘Who would want to kill you, Anna? You’re comarré, not exactly the scourge of the vampire world.’ That was his job.

She tipped her head back, exposing the length of her pale, beckoning neck. If he’d had breath, it would have caught in his throat. Most likely the exact response she’d been going for. The voices begged.

‘My patron is dead.’

Blood coursed beneath her delicate skin. Think.
Drink
. Respond.
With fangs
. Find words. He stared at the ceiling along with her. ‘So … dead. Then … you’re free, right? Isn’t that how it works?’

‘He was murdered.’

Mal took his hands off her and rocked back on his heels. Another piece of her puzzle clicked into place. ‘And they think you did it.’

T
he cobra nudged Tatiana’s fingers, traveling over her palm to rest his heavy mother of pearl head against her wrist and forearm. She learned long ago her pet’s affection came easier if she fed before visiting him. Nehebkau preferred her warm.

His tongue flicked her skin, and she smiled. ‘My darling,’ she whispered. ‘Can you tell I’ve missed you?’

She stroked his smooth back as he slithered his meter-long body around her arm. In the two years since his hatching, the albino serpent had become her favorite companion, and the room she’d turned into his home, her sanctuary. The space had been transformed into the perfect habitat with all the appropriate jungle flora and fauna and elaborate systems designed to recreate the proper humidity and ultraviolet light. When Tatiana came to visit, the replicator automatically shifted to night. Overhead, a false sky twinkled with fiber-optic stars.

‘Those suckwits think I killed him. Can you imagine? I am nothing if not patient. The ruins prove that, don’t they?’ She shook her head. ‘Makes me want to drain the life out of something.’

Blood red eyes met hers expectantly as he raised his head. She smiled. Her anger cooled.

‘My sweet boy. At least you listen.’ Not that he had a choice. ‘We cold-blooded creatures have to stick together, don’t we?’ He hadn’t struck her since the first few months of his life, and those times were inconsequential. The venom had no effect on the already dead.

‘Come, let’s sit and you can tell me all about your day.’ She patted a lump in his midsection. ‘I see you got the rat I sent you.’ She’d begun feeding him rats injected with her own blood in an effort to make her pet as immortal as she was. Nehebkau was her fourth cobra and she hoped her last. Losing the first three had hurt, not as bad as losing a child, but close. As mementos, she’d had a belt and slippers made from the skins. A little macabre, perhaps, but such things did wonders for one’s intimidation factor. Everything for a purpose.

She carried her precious boy to the teak chaise and lay down beneath the special circulating heat lamps. Nehebkau stretched, uncoiling from her arm to wind across her belly and chest until his head nestled at the hollow of her throat.

She pulled her locket out from under him and unsnapped it, studying the painted portrait inside. A wistful smile crossed her mouth as a twist of pain knotted her belly. She snapped the locket shut and tucked it into her blouse.

Closing her eyes, she slid into her favorite fantasy, imagining herself as some great Egyptian pharaoh-queen. Not Hatshepsut or Nefertiti or even Cleopatra, but one greater still. A true goddess come to rule on earth. She caressed Nehebkau’s drowsy form. In her mind, sparkling jewels and beads of gold adorned her, showering her in reflected sunlight.

Her lids lifted. That was always where her fantasy ran
aground. Those wretched Egyptians and their stupid sun god. For all their dreams of immortality, they’d been headed in the wrong direction. She twirled the end of Nehebkau’s tail through her fingers.

Perhaps she should be Eve instead. An immortal Eve, unafraid of the apple, unashamed of her nakedness, and all too willing to corrupt man. She laughed. Nehebkau shifted.

Footsteps approached, followed a moment later by a knock on the door. It had best be a dire emergency. She was not to be disturbed when she was in her sanctuary.

‘What is it?’

‘Mistress, there is news.’

‘Of what?’

‘The girl.’

The girl? The girl was dead. Wasn’t she? Tatiana bolted upright, tumbling Nehebkau to her lap. He hissed like a distant tornado, raising his head and flaring his hood. ‘Now, now, Nehebie, this is very important. I won’t be a minute.’

She scooped him to the side, where he wound around himself to bask in the heat, then she went to the door.

‘Well, what news?’

The minion handed her a sealed note. ‘This just came from the Nothos dispatched to the IRF.’

She snatched the paper. ‘I don’t care if it is the Islamic Republic of France, just call it bloody France, you prat.’ If the kine grew a backbone, they might stop being overthrown by whichever one of them had the bigger gun or the more frightening god.

‘Yes, mistress. France it is from now—’

She shut the door and strolled back to the chaise. Nehebkau hadn’t moved. She sat next to him and tore open the note.

Found traces of comarré blood in the Paris sewers. Believe the girl alive and fled overseas. No sign of ring. Proceeding as discussed.

Bollocks. What proof did the Nothos have that the girl was alive? Or were they just assuming? Not that she trusted Madame Rennata either. If the blood whore was alive, that would change everything. Because thanks to the council’s insistence on justice, she was now going to have to bring the girl in, still alive, to be tried. And to prove her own innocence so she could be made Elder.