Any Given Doomsday (28 page)

The color scheme was black, accented by glass and chrome, just like the building itself. The sofa was black leather, shiny but soft, with a control panel on the arm. One touch and the thing sprang outward, unfolding into a bed. A second button and music swirled around the room. Barry White. Oh, brother.

The kitchen appeared as if it had never been used, and why would it have been? The entire building seemed to prefer its nourishment straight from the vein.

The bathroom was electric-white ceramic tile with a thin thread of black running through. The tub was huge, big enough for two, with buttons to control the jets and once again to cue Barry.

When I turned on the bedroom lights, I winced at the explosion of color after so much black and white. Red, red, everywhere—the walls, the bedspread, the carpet. My head began to pound just looking at it. How could anyone sleep in that room?

I had a feeling no one did.

Was this seduction scenario for me? Why? I didn’t get the impression that the Strega, or the new and not-so-improved Jimmy Sanducci, bothered with such trivialities. They took what they wanted; then they disposed of what was left.

I drifted into the living room, hit the button to turn the couch back into a couch, then sat down. I tried the remote for the huge plasma television mounted on the wall. All I got was porn.

With a sound of disgust I jabbed at the off button, then laid my head against the buttery leather. Seconds later, I was talking to Ruthie.

Chapter 33

I ran through the open gate and up the walkway. This house was sanctuary, at least in my head.

Ruthie waited at the kitchen table with two cups of tea. The children played in the yard, their happy voices spilling through the open window.

“Why didn’t you warn me?” I asked as I sat across from her.

Ruthie’s finely arched brows arched even further. “About what?”

“Jimmy’s gone to the dark side. I think—” I took a deep breath, let it out, then swallowed. “I think I’m going to have to kill him.”

“Could be.” Ruthie sipped her tea. “Could be.”

“I’m
supposed
to kill him?” My voice was too high and broke on the word
kill
. Can you blame me?

“No, child, you’re supposed to save him. You’re the only one who can.”

“Sawyer said you could have saved yourself. That you knew the Nephilim were coming for you.”

Ruthie took another sip. “So?”

“Why would you do that?”

“Death was my destiny.”

“Death is everyone’s destiny,” I snapped. “I needed you.”

“You have me. It’s much better this way. You’ll see.”

1 sighed. If it was better or worse, it didn’t matter. Ruthie was dead, and I was trapped with Jimmy the dhampir traitor. What was I going to do?

“Remember the most important thing in this war,” Ruthie murmured as if I’d asked the question out loud. Maybe I had.

“Kill them before they kill you?” It seemed like a good rule.

Ruthie didn’t speak at first. I could tell by the way she took her time that she was counting to ten while she did it. She’d counted to ten a lot around me in the past. She’d no doubt count to ten more in the future. If there was one.

“The most important thing to remember, Lizbeth, is that love is always stronger than hate.” I opened my mouth, and she lifted one finger. “You loved Jimmy once; you love him still. There’s power in that, such strength.”

“Jimmy’s gone.”

“No, he’s not. He’s lost. All you have to do is find him.”

“How?”

“You’ll know when the time comes.”

And then she was gone, and I was back in the
Penthouse
penthouse, but I was no longer alone. I knew that as well as I knew the scent of Jimmy’s skin.

I took a deep breath. Cinnamon, soap, and water. Still the same. How could that be?

Someone had turned out all the lights, and the only illumination came from the reflection of the city below us.

He slid out of the shadows, his hair wet and slicked away from his face. The blood was gone; only a few thin slices of white remained on his chest where the cuts had been. His loose black pants rode so low I expected them to fall off. I could see his hipbones jutting just above the waistband. He looked even thinner than he had when he’d shown up in Milwaukee. I suppose an all-liquid diet could do that to a man.

How long had he been here? A few days at most. Didn’t mean he hadn’t been running himself ragged, forgetting to eat, ever since Ruthie died.

In another life, another world, with another me, I might be compelled to feed him. Unfortunately, in this world, what he wanted to eat was me.

I cringed at the double entendre and put it straight out of my head. Panic right now would get me nowhere.

I didn’t remember coming to my feet, but I had. Good. I didn’t want to be trapped on the couch, with Jimmy looming over me. Not that I wasn’t trapped in this room and in the biggest pickle of my life.

He moved so fast, I had no sense he was coming until he was there, so close his body brushed mine, our faces only centimeters apart. I couldn’t help it, I took a step back. My legs hit the couch, and I almost went down.

He grabbed me by the arms, and now our bodies weren’t merely brushing, but plastered together like lovers.

I lifted my gaze. He smiled. For an instant, in the half-light, he resembled the Jimmy I’d always craved. Then he tilted his head and the strange red flare in the center of his eyes was visible again.

“Let me go.”

He didn’t even acknowledge the words, just continued to stare into my eyes as if searching. But he was the one who was lost.

“So.” His fingers tightened, the pressure, the pain, causing me to come up on my toes, rubbing my breasts against his bare chest. “Didn’t take you long to fuck the skinwalker and have a vision. I figured you’d be there a few weeks at least before he managed to loosen you up.”

I tensed at the crudeness but refused to look away. “Was that necessary?”

“I hear that it was. What I want to know is, was it good for you?”

I couldn’t resist. “Better than you.”

He let me go so abruptly I fell onto the couch with a little bounce.

“Never use his name again.” Jimmy’s voice was a low, rumbling growl. Not human, not beast, but both.

“I didn’t,” I pointed out.

If Jimmy was completely absent, if he was possessed, or no longer human, then why was he feeling the very human emotion of jealousy? If he didn’t love me just a little, somewhere in there, then why would he care so much that I’d slept with Sawyer?

As bizarre as that spark of jealousy was, it gave me hope. If he could feel that, he could feel more, and if I could get him to remember the love, we might just have a chance.

Love is always stronger than hate
, Ruthie had said, and once before, a good memory of a time when our lives had been filled with love had brought him back from a lesser darkness.

I needed to believe what she’d said was true. It was all that I had.

He stalked back and forth in front of the wall of windows. It occurred to me that while he knew I had come into the fullness of Ruthie’s powers, he was unaware of the empathy that made me as powerful as any breed. He couldn’t know. That talent might save my life.

I forced myself to stand again, to move away from the couch and closer to him. “The strega said you asked for me.” Jimmy stopped pacing. “Why?”

“You thought I wanted to save you from death at his hands?” The amusement returned. His moods changed so quickly, I had a hard time keeping up.

I had thought that, for the single instant it had taken me to figure out how foolish I was. “Actually, I thought you wanted to kill me.”

“Eventually.”

He moved again with that preternatural speed, so that it seemed he was standing by the window and then, faster than my eyes could track, he was grabbing me, hauling me against him, pressing his nose to my neck and inhaling deeply.

“What’s happened to you?” I whispered.

He lifted his head, but he didn’t let me go. “We are an ancient race.”

“
You
aren’t,” I interrupted. “You’re more human than Nephilim.”

He ignored me, continuing with the litany he seemed to have memorized, or perhaps had had implanted in his brain. “We will own this world. Humans will be our slaves, our food, whatever we wish. 1 wanted you to be my first.”

“I
was
your first,” I whispered.

Something flickered in his eyes. Memory? I hoped so, but it was gone so fast, I couldn’t be sure. Then he leaned closer, his lips hovering over my own as he whispered, “My first slave.”

I jumped, even though I had to have known that was coming. “You think I’m going to wash your shorts and scrub your toilets?”

His mouth curved, so close to my own I felt the movement, but didn’t see it because I could look nowhere but into his endless eyes.

“Not that kind of slave,” he said, and kissed me.

He still tasted like Jimmy, kissed like Jimmy, and my body knew him, even as my mind screamed,
Monster
!

His hands were rough, holding me to him even though I wasn’t struggling to get away. When his mouth left mine, he pressed open kisses across my chin, down my neck. When I didn’t tilt my head to give him better access, his hand left my hip, capturing my face, fingers bruising as he held me still, inhuman eyes burning with lust.

“You will be my slave for sex. Whenever I want it, however, wherever. You will wear nothing night and day.” He placed a hard, closed kiss on my mouth. “I want to walk into this room and have you ready all of the time.”

“I bet you do,” I managed, even though he still held my jaw far too tightly for easy speech.

“I’ll suck you dry slowly. Who knows? You may even find a way out of this with enough time. Keep me satisfied, I might keep you for centuries.”

“Yeah, that’ll happen.”

He leaned forward and caught my lip in his teeth, biting down until the pain began before releasing it. “You’d better hope it does, Elizabeth.”

I hated it when he called me that. What I wouldn’t give now to hear
baby
just once.

Jimmy released me. “Take off your clothes.”

“Not.”

He didn’t bother to cajole. Instead he fisted a hand in my shirt and yanked. I was drawn forward with such force I stumbled. The seams split, the shirt practically disintegrated. Ruthie’s crucifix spilled free and brushed against his hand.

A hissing sound, the scent of burning hair. Jimmy jumped back, hissing himself, as smoke rose from his skin.

I was left standing in my bra and jeans, mouth wide open. The icon hadn’t bothered him before.

If I’d needed any proof that Jimmy had changed, that he was becoming less and less human and more and more vampire, I had it.

“Didn’t care for that, did you?” I murmured.

His hand snaked out, and he yanked the cross and Sawyer’s turquoise from my neck, then tossed them across the room. The chain made a tinny, slithery sound. The cross and the stone bounced like gravel. All three disappeared beneath a huge breakfront of cherry wood and glass. I was going to have a helluva time fishing them out.

“Don’t think you can use that against me.” Jimmy held his hand up in front of my face. Despite the sizzle and scent, there wasn’t a mark on him. He’d already healed. “You can’t hurt me; you can’t kill me.”

I glanced at the bank of windows, then at him in contemplation. Would he fry like bacon beneath the dawn’s early light? Once again my face gave my thoughts away.

“The sun won’t do a thing. My father is a daywalker, and so am I.”

“The others?”

“A few daywalkers to keep things running smoothly. The rest only awaken at night. Peons.” He shrugged. “They have their uses.”

That explained why everyone had been rushing in and out of the place after-hours as if the clock read ten a.m.

“An entire building of beings that only work at night and no one’s noticed?”

“Of course. People are breaking down the doors to hire us. No one else keeps those hours. We fulfill a service for all the scurrying nine-to-five drones.”

“The vampire legion actually works for a living?”

“Someone has to. At least for now.”

No matter how supernaturally powerful they were, there was still the problem of cash flow. Amazing.

“Enough,” Jimmy snapped, and tore off my bra with a sharp tug. My breasts spilled free and his eyes, if possible, became even darker.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” he murmured. “Dreaming of you as I touched all of them.”

My eyes narrowed at the word
all
, but I let it go. I really didn’t want to know.

“Why me?” I asked instead.

He shook his head as if coming out of a trance. Sheesh. Get a grip. My breasts were good, but not
that
good.

“I crave you. Father says your seer blood will give me more strength than the blood of a dozen others.”

I thought if he called that thing “Father” one more time I might just lose my mind. But the longer he talked, the more I learned, and the less sex we had.

“Is that what this place is all about?” 1 indicated the fold-out bed, the all-porn, all-the-time television.

“My father’s idea.” I winced at the word; I couldn’t help it. “Sometimes it’s fun to seduce them. Sometimes it’s fun to just take them.”

He was speaking of people, of women, as things. Not that a lot of men didn’t, but Jimmy never had. Ruthie wouldn’t have allowed it.

“You’d like his suite.” His lips curved. “I’m sure you’ll see it. If Father wants a little seer sex. I don’t mind. Maybe we’ll have you together.”

Do not gag. Do not gag.

“You’re suddenly so pale, Elizabeth.” Jimmy laughed. “You’re a slave now. You’ll do anything I want.”

“And if I don’t?”

“You die, and the whole world dies with you.”

Choices, choices.

Sleep with Jimmy, try to make him remember who he was, that he’d loved me once, and maybe, just maybe, discover a way out of this mess.

Or…

Attempt to kick his ass, die horribly, and fail at the big mission. Let’s see…