In the Garden of Sin (34 page)

Oh, fuck
. He sat up, raking his hair off his face. “No idea.”

“No, of course not.” She didn’t look at him as she spoke, just adjusted the bodice, a complicated affair comprised of several disparate elements laced together with the green ribbons. “After I sank that pigeon under the Whitestone Bridge, I decided to find out what had made you bolt like that in the middle of a death feed. I went back to Bleecker and nosed around a little. You’d left a scent trail a human with hay fever could have followed. Bijan and adrenaline. I didn’t even have to keep to street level. I tracked you from the rooftops so I wouldn’t be seen. At least one of us knows how to be discreet.”

Arschloch
, Turek thought, scrubbing his hands over his face.
You stupid fucking fuckhead
.

She said, “I ended up at that little secret square off St. Mark’s, sitting in a tree right over you, watching you jerk off in the rhododendrons while you played Peeping Tom. I could see through the windows, and I could hear them talking. I couldn’t figure out why you’d followed them till I heard the names Lili and Elic. I realized she was the one you’d told me about, the succubus you had such a hard-on for who used to hang with the Hellfires, and he was the guy who kicked your
ass and landed you in the Bastille. Looks like you were right about him being a Follet, since he’s still around.”

“Yeah,” Turek said dully.

“He’s pretty sexed-up for an elf,” she said, positioning a snug band of quilted gold brocade at the top of the bodice to create a cleavage of majestic proportions. “That’s got to be what he is, a Nordic elf from back when they supersized ’em.”

“I think so.”

“He sure knew what to do with that bottomless boner of his. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a real man have his way with a woman—I mean fucking the hell out of her for hours, taking her however he wants, moving her this way and that, just giving it to her and giving it to her till she’s shaking and moaning and can’t stand up. Holy fuck, a six-and-a-half-foot Bronze Age Scandinavian elf with incubitic tendencies. He’s a goddamned Viking sex god.”

Galiana gazed into the mirror with a faraway smile, absently thumbing her nipples through the quilted brocade. Turek had never seen her get this way over a man, human or non. She’d always seemed to view males, Turek included, as being one or two levels beneath her on the evolutionary scale. To see her all dreamy-eyed like this, well, it was a dramatic departure.

And an interesting one.

Rising to his feet, he said, “So, um, I guess you heard them talking about D and D week, and—”

“Get back down,” she said calmly as she threaded a ribbon through the eyelets on the front of the bodice. “Sit in seiza. Hands on thighs.”

Seiza was the Japanese term for kneeling on one’s calves, and it was Galiana’s favorite resting position for her subs. Turek hesitated.

She glanced at him.

He did it.

“Palms up,” she said with an impatient sigh.

When he was positioned to her satisfaction, she said, “I trailed you as you followed those two nitwits to that bus shelter, and I watched you, the third stooge, blunder through that mugging like you were hoping to get arrested all over again. I laughed like hell when she zapped you in the face with that pepper spray. And then when you ran into that lamppost? I thought I was going to choke on my tongue.”

Turek’s jaw throbbed.

The sleeves of Galiana’s bodice were comprised of separate upper and lower arm pieces laced together loosely at the elbows. Plucking puffs of chemise sleeve through the lacings, she said, “After you ran off, I went over to the little blonde— Nicky?—and comforted her till the cops came. She was far too upset to notice me slipping the other card of entrée out of her blazer pocket. Then I just went home and waited for you to show up”—her eyes snapped to his in the mirror—“and tell me you were planning a trip to Gebirgshaus, knowing I’d rather eat steaming dog turds than spend one second in that moldering old relic.”

“I…I know I…misled you, but—”

“You
lied
to me so that you could throw me over for that bitch you’ve been carrying a torch for all these years. At least have the balls to admit it.”

Only to have her throw it back in his face and torture him to death?
You think that was your punishment?
The only way to save himself now was to make his deceit seem like a misdemeanor rather than a capital crime.

“I… I did lie to you, Galiana, and I shouldn’t have, but it wasn’t so I could throw you over. I would never leave you. Why would I want to? You’re…you’re the most powerful and beautiful
creature I’ve ever known. I’m the envy of every man who sees me with you, human or Follet.”

Galiana didn’t acknowledge his obsequious flattery as she fussed with her sleeves, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t made an impression on her. Galiana loved to be told how awesome she was, and it never occurred to her to doubt the sincerity of those who fawned over her. They were just speaking the simple truth, after all.

“You know how I feel about Lili,” Turek continued, adding a note of barely repressed fury to his voice to sell the line of bull. It was Galiana herself who’d pointed out to him what excellent actors Follets of all races were. It was a survival mechanism for living in a world of humans who either didn’t believe in you or wanted to burn you at the stake; there was rarely a middle ground.

“I would have made her my queen,” he said, “and she sent me to rot in the fucking Bastille. Do you honestly think I’d try to win her over again, after what she did to me? I’ve never loathed anyone in my life as much as I loathe her. For fuck’s sake, Galiana, I didn’t come here to court the bitch, I came here to fucking incinerate her. How could you possibly think otherwise?”

“And you lied to me because…?”

“I…”
Think fast
. “I… I knew you’d want to be involved, ’cause you’re, like, a take-charge kind of chick, and that’s part of what’s so great about you, but I thought it would be best to carry this out on my own, keeping as low a profile as possible. I mean, it’s not like I can just chain her to a stake in the courtyard and build a pyre around her. I’ve got to get her alone in some secluded place, without her growing suspicious. And without Elic playing the white knight again. That’s just what I need.” He made a face and shook his head, then worried he was overselling it.

“You don’t think I’m capable of keeping a low profile?” she asked.

Turek risked a little grin, making it look as if he were trying not to. “They, uh, don’t come much more high profile than you. I mean, you’re… Galiana Solsa. You’re magnificent. You could cut your hair off and wear a fucking muumuu and glasses and not a stitch of makeup, and you’d still be the most stunning woman anyone had ever seen. You stand out, Galiana. That’s all there is to it.”

She retrieved the gold boots from the tote bag, sat on one of the recliners, and hiked up her skirts. The boots, with their pointy toes and ultra high heels, were absurdly anachronistic, but Galiana never wore any other style of footwear, period.

She maintained a thoughtful silence until she was almost done lacing up the second boot. “It amuses me that you think you could have pulled this off on your own. I may be conspicuous, but I’m far more cunning than you could ever hope to be. I’m over three thousand years old,
marish
. You’re six hundred eighty—and immature for your age, to boot. You lack subtlety. Your schemes are simplistic, your execution sloppy— witness that debacle at the bus shelter, not to mention the great fuck-up of eighty-two. If the cops had nabbed you again, I would have washed my hands of you. You know that, don’t you?”

Turek nodded, his gaze on his upturned palms. Was it possible she’d really bought his story about wanting to off Lili? He might survive this experience after all.

“Look at you.”

He glanced up to find her standing with her hands propped on her hips, regarding him with disgust. “You really have made a piss-poor vampire, Anton, just as I said you would when I turned you. It was a punishment, remember? For trying to cast me aside? I knew the life of a bloodsucker
would just bring you misery, but maybe I should have cured you instead. I could have transfused the plague out of you, kept you mortal, and made you my prisoner. I could have tortured you in very entertaining ways for months, even years, before putting you out of your pathetic human misery. Instead, I sullied the vampire race by making a hopeless loser like you one of us.”

She crossed to the tote bag and came back with some rings and an armload of massive necklaces, all yellow gold. “You’re lucky I decided to come here,” she said as she slid the rings onto her fingers and thumbs. “You would have screwed everything up for sure. I, on the other hand, have three thousand years of scheming under my belt.”

She opened a hinged, jeweled choker about two inches wide and snapped it around her neck. “Your job is to cozy up to Lili, make her trust you enough to go off alone with you under cover of dark.”

“Tonight?” he asked. “I don’t think I can—”

“No, not tonight, you cretin.” She added a second choker above the first, encasing her neck in jewel-encrusted gold. “Something like this takes careful planning. It absolutely
must
look like an accident so Elic won’t get up in arms and decide to avenge her death. You just work on softening up Lili, and I’ll see to the details. Not that I’m going to do the actual dirty work, mind you. You’re the one who wants her dead. You get to do the honors.”

Of course, it was Galiana who wanted Lili dead, or she wouldn’t be making it a project. She didn’t do favors; the notion was foreign to her.

“And afterward?” he said.

She gave him a quizzical look as she donned the third and last necklace, a long chain with links as thick as fingers.

Employing his last remaining shred of spinal fortitude, he
said, “Are you going to kill me after Lili’s out of the picture and you’ve got Elic all to yourself?”

Smiling at her own reflection, Galiana arranged the heavy chain so that it hung down in back rather than in front. “I
will
kill you, in an extraordinarily prolonged and creative manner, if you don’t follow my plan to the letter and roast that fucking bitch until she’s nothing but cinders. Your whole universe will be pain. In the end, when I finally torch you, I’ll take my time. I’ll make it last and last, an infinity of anguish. You think you know what I’m capable of, but you don’t, Anton. You really have no idea.”

She stepped back from the mirror to appraise her costume and make a few final adjustments. “If you’re smart and do as you’re told,” she said, “you’ll get to live. But not with me. You and I will part ways and never see each other again. For real this time.”

“And you’ll replace me with Elic.”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but yes, that’s the plan. With Lili gone, he’ll be grief-stricken, lonely, vulnerable.”

“Are you going to try to turn him?” Turek asked.

“Not at first. I’ll assure him I have no such intention. But with the right kind of coaxing, I’ll bet I could have him begging for it in no time. I can’t tell you how many mourning humans I’ve lured into vampirism by convincing them it was the only way they would ever find relief from their despair. He’ll make a superlative vampire. He’s beautiful, strong, passionate… perfect.”

It was precisely how Turek felt about Lili. And now, one of the most brilliant and ferocious vampires in existence had given him two options: Kill her or die after suffering “an infinity of anguish.”

“My pussy is dripping just from thinking about Elic.” She lifted her skirts, planted her gold-booted feet wide apart,
and said, “Crawl on over here and lick me, like a good little
cucciolo.”

The first thing Galiana did upon taking her place among the barons and baronesses was to reserve the dungeon torture chamber for an hour that night, beginning at ten o’clock. She asked around for a serving wench who fit her requirements of being both bi and deeply hungry for punishment. One of the doms pointed out a buxom redhead, whom Galiana recognized as the girl who’d been wheeled around the courtyard that afternoon for people to test different lubes on, using fingers, dildos, cocks, and in at least one case, a well-greased fist.

Stepping in front of the wench as she circulated among the doms in the courtyard with a tray of cheese and fruit, Galiana said, “Are you the one they call Isolde?”

“Yes, my lady.”

Galiana grasped the girl’s nipples through her translucent chemise, pinching and pulling them to make them stiffen up. “They tell me you love pain.”

“Yes, my la—” She yelped and dropped her tray when Galiana gave her nipples a good, hard twist.

Galiana slapped Isolde’s face, leaving a ruddy handprint on her freckle-spattered cheek. “Pick that up and throw it away,” she said, pointing to the grapes and cherries and blocks of cheese scattered on the ground. “That was good food, and it’s ruined now. You should be made to pay for it, don’t you think?”

“Yes, my lady,” Isolde replied as she knelt to clean up the mess.

“Get that slatternly little ass of yours down to the dungeon at ten o’clock tonight. Take off your clothes and finger-fuck yourself until I arrive, but don’t you dare let yourself come.”