Everafter Series 1 - Everafter (33 page)

“Let’s stick with the DJ this time, okay?”

Val nodded and took my hand. Hers was hot and moist with sweat. I looked up at her, but her gaze was darting around the room, eyes constantly roving in a search for him. “Let’s get a drink,” I shouted over the pounding beat. She nodded and set off for the bar, drawing me behind her through the thick crowd. We threaded our way past a group of men who all had identical haircuts and the same white wolf’s head tattoo on their right forearms. A pack, clearly. I found myself feeling disdain and wondered whether it came from me or from the solitary feline who lurked under my skin. The uncertainty was still disconcerting.

Val slid into a small open space at the bar and pulled me in beside her. “Two whiskeys, neat,” she called to the bartender—a huge, barrel-chested man with a shaggy brown mane that fell to his shoulders. His arms were as thick as my thighs, and covered in dark hair. He looked like a bear. I wondered if he was one.

“Any sign?” I asked, taking the opportunity to draw her arms around my waist.

“No,” she said, resting her head against my shoulder. And then I felt her entire body stiffen. “Holy shit.”

I followed her line of sight to the bar immediately opposite us, where a thin, pale woman wearing a dog collar was digging her fingernails into the pockmarked wooden surface, bracing herself as a chiseled man penetrated her from behind. I squeezed Val’s hand hard as shock and arousal streaked down my spine. My involuntary gasp came out more like a groan. And then the man grinned ferally at his audience before leaning forward to sink his teeth into the snow-white skin at the juncture of his victim’s neck and shoulder.

A rivulet of blood wended its way down her upper arm, but before it could pool in the dip of her elbow, one of the female bystanders leaned over to catch the stream on her tongue. The male vampire growled into the broken skin from which he still drank.

Valentine’s breathing was ragged in my ear, and her fingers dug into the skin above my hips. “Does that turn you on?” she whispered harshly. “Does it?”

I couldn’t stop staring at the erotic scene before me. The woman’s eyes were glazed and a keening sound escaped her lips. She would come soon. I was throbbing in time with each thrust. I wanted Val’s thigh between my legs, but she refused to let me turn around.

“Do you want me to take you that way when we get home?” she said. “Strap it on and bend you over the bed and impale you on my teeth and my cock?”

A violent shudder seized me at her words, and then again as the woman finally screamed out her pleasure in a descant over the music. The vampire was right behind her, the cords in his neck standing out in sharp relief as he slid into ecstasy. My skin felt hot and tight and sensitive, and when Val slipped one hand beneath my T-shirt to run her palm over my stomach, I had to bite down hard on my lower lip to keep from crying out. Despite our lovemaking less than two hours before, I needed her again.

Now.

Desire stripped away self-consciousness. But just as I was about to coax her fingers beneath the waistline of my jeans, the music faded into the background and a microphone crackled to life.

“It’s time,” whispered a sibilant, disembodied voice as two pools of light coalesced onto the stage. One of them encircled the large post. “Time to test the Record.”

The words were taken up by the audience.
The Record, the Record,
they chanted, distracting both Val and me long enough to break the spell between us. This time, when I tried to turn she let me. I threaded one hand into her hair and wrapped the other around her waist. Her eyes were still hazy with desire.

“Baby,” she began, the word heavy with need.

I kissed the soft skin beneath her ear. “Later, my love. I promise.”

The balance of people in the room was shifting even more dramatically toward the front, and they hadn’t stopped murmuring about “the Record,” whatever that was.

“Do you know what they’re talking about?”

“No.”

The microphone channel opened again and the sound of soft, rhythmic breathing filled the room. A hush fell.

“Gwendolyn was reborn in India, one hundred and seventeen years ago. She believes that she can break the Record.”

Gwendolyn. The crowd took up the name, scattering it around the room like leaves on the autumn wind. I frowned impatiently at the twin golden circles of light on the stage floor. The unknown emcee of this event was doing an excellent job of whipping the mob into a frenzy. The cadence of his words inspired a fierce need in me to see him—to know the face behind such a bewitching voice.

A figure stepped out of the shadows, dressed from head to toe in black and holding a cat-o’-nine-tails. Long blond hair cascaded down to her waist, but her face was obscured by a mask shaped like a falcon’s head, the sharp beak ending just above the red slash of her lips. A small holster hung from the left side of her belt, which hung low across her curvaceous hips. Even before she took a bow, the room erupted in screams and cheers.

Two men entered from the wings, then—also dressed in black, but their faces were visible. They led out a naked woman, presumably Gwendolyn, by a chain clipped to a collar around her neck. Despite her captivity, she carried herself like royalty. Her aura of calm assurance did not falter—not even when she was secured to the post and her tormenter snapped the cat in anticipation.

“The Record,” hissed that eerie, tantalizing voice, “is fifty-seven lashes.”

Someone brought down the house lights so that the room was completely black, save for those two brilliant circles onstage. At the same time, the DJ began spinning a dark, throbbing beat.

And then the whip struck for the first time. High above her head, it cracked like summer thunder before smacking against Gwendolyn’s bronze shoulders. I flinched, but she didn’t. Instead, she smiled. The room went absolutely insane. Again, the cat rose and fell, this time on her back. And this time, it broke skin. The crowd surged at the sight and scent of blood on the air. Gwendolyn’s smile wavered.

I pressed instinctively closer to Val. Each crack of the whip made me shiver, as though I were the one feeling the knotted leather cords bite into my own skin. Of course, if it had been me up there, I probably would have shifted as soon as my blood had been spilled, out of instinctual self-defense. Even though the panther and I had reached some sort of understanding over Valentine’s feedings, I was sure that a vicious attack from a complete stranger would trump the measure of control I had fought so hard for.

“Oh my God,” I said, realization dawning. “The Record—it must be how many lashes a shifter can take before she transforms.”

I tipped my head back to meet Val’s look of horror. “That’s…that’s sick,” she whispered, clutching me even tighter, trying to shield me with her body. “Don’t watch. Or better yet—let’s just go.”

“No,” I said forcefully, twisting just enough in Val’s embrace so that I could continue watching the tableau. “It’s…it’s not that bad. We’re staying.” The panther growled inside me, disagreeing, but I had made up my mind and she wasn’t riled enough to wrest control just yet.

“Not that bad?” Val echoed me skeptically. But my resolve must have been apparent, because she didn’t say anything else.

By now, I had lost count. The crowd hadn’t, though.
Thirty-eight,
they chanted.
Thirty-nine.
Gwendolyn’s back was covered in blood; I couldn’t even see any skin left between her shoulders and hip bones. The urge to vomit came on strong, and I buried my face in Val’s bicep, breathing in her familiar, comforting scent. No, I had to keep it together. I was getting seriously stressed out, and that would only end badly. Besides, how ironic would it be if I succumbed to the urge to protect myself before Gwendolyn did?

Val was rhythmically stroking the long muscles of my back. “It’s okay, baby,” she kept saying. “It’s okay.” I forced myself to stand still and watch as Gwendolyn took her strokes. Valentine’s arms around me kept me grounded, kept me human.

Forty-six! Forty-seven!

And then Gwendolyn began to shudder. I felt a strange kind of admiration as I watched her fight the impulse—her fingertips scraped against the pole, and her face contorted in an expression of extreme concentration mingled with agony. But she was losing this battle. Her other self was determined to take over, now, pulled from hibernation by the call of the cat.

I expected the wielder of the whip to hightail it out of there at the first sign of a transformation, but she only continued to raise her arm—up, down. Up, down.
Fifty.
God, she was strong.
Fifty-one.

Gwendolyn’s spine arched into an impossible bow. Her scream as she folded in on herself was abruptly cut off, only to reemerge as a long, low, snarling growl. Where once a broken, bloodied woman had fought to remain upright against the pole, now a huge Bengal tiger crouched, her attention fixed on the perpetrator of her torture. Deep inside my brain, the panther howled in triumph, urging her sister-tiger to take vengeance on her tormenter.

Those red lips lifted in a cruel smile. With one powerful contraction of its haunch muscles, Gwendolyn the tiger leapt—only to be jerked back by the chain around her neck. The tiger whined and snarled in frustration.

The woman wielding the whip calmly drew the gun at her left side, firing into the belly of the beast she had summoned. Gwendolyn lurched forward several times before she finally collapsed. I bit down hard on Val’s arm to stifle my own scream of horror. My brain rebelled even as a surge of adrenaline prepared my body for a fight. The panther pushed hard against my control and I barely held her back. The shifters would never stand for this, never.

“Oh, thank God,” Val breathed suddenly. Her voice was relieved, which didn’t make sense to me at all. “Tranquilizer.” She slumped slightly against the bar.

Tranquilizer? Tamping down my panic, I focused on the immaculate snow-white fur of Gwendolyn’s belly. I expected a red stain to be growing beneath her by now, but there was no blood at all—only the feathered end of a dart protruding from her pristine coat. Val had been right. There would be no bloodbath, after all.

I stepped back into her embrace just as she signaled the bartender for two additional much-needed whiskeys. The crowd was still wild; Gwendolyn hadn’t broken the record, but she had come very close. I watched the dominatrix take her last bow before exiting stage right, while from stage left, the two men dragged the dead weight of the tiger into the wings.

“That was royally fucked up,” Val muttered. When she looked down at me, contrition and guilt warred on her face. “I am so sorry for subjecting you to that.”

“You didn’t.” Only when the words were out of my mouth did I realize just how true they were. I was as responsible for what had happened onstage as Gwendolyn and her anonymous tormenter. I had invited in the animal that now cohabited my body, and she had her own needs, her own agenda. I could still feel her pushing at the boundaries of her prison, instinctively longing to be free in this room that reeked of rage and blood. The atmosphere suited her far better than it did me. Val had been right to question my ability to control my beast tonight.

She handed me my second whiskey and I took a long, grateful sip. Maybe the dancing would start up again. The crowd was slowly beginning to settle down, and I imagined that Val would want to walk around, to leave no metaphorical stone unturned. I didn’t relish the thought of trying to maneuver through such a dense pack of people, but I also didn’t see an alternative. Regardless, until the house lights came back up, she didn’t have a chance of finding him.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” crooned the voice. “I do hope you’ve kept your raffle tickets. The main event is about to commence.”

Val and I exchanged a look. The main event? Whatever she saw in my face galvanized her, and she drained the last of her glass. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

I shook my head. “I’m staying.” When Val glared at me, I lost my temper. “Stop being so patronizing, Valentine! I’m not some helpless flower of femininity who’s going to fall apart at the seams, here.”

The passion drained from her face, frustration turning to contrition. “You’re right,” was all she said before turning to hail the bartender again. God, I hated making her feel bad. But I also wasn’t going to put up with her Sir Lancelot routine.

The stage was still empty, and I wondered whether our emcee would ever show himself. All around us, vampires were holding on to their raffle tickets as though each was the Holy Grail. Val hadn’t looked at hers, so I moved in until our thighs were brushing and stuck two fingers into her pocket. She shivered. I looked away from my hand and up into her dark, apologetic eyes, allowing my touch to smooth over the tense moment.

I dug out her ticket. “Three-oh-four. Maybe you’ll get luck—”

“Look.”

The two men were back, this time parading in a gaunt naked male twentysomething who couldn’t seem to walk in a straight line. He was either drunk or high—the manacles on his hands didn’t seem to faze him, and he smiled at the crowd, swaying on his feet while the stage crew secured him to the post just as they had Gwendolyn. He would have been handsome if he’d had a little more meat on his bones. I frowned, trying to figure out the name of this particular game. He was human—I had no doubt of that.

“This is Craig,” said the voice, slicing through the crowd’s buzzing murmur. “We found Craig on the corner of Thirty-Sixth Street and Eighth Avenue lying in a pool of his own urine, with one dollar and seventy-eight cents in his pocket. He was in withdrawal when we found him but, as you can see, he’s buzzing quite nicely now!” The crowd roared in approval.

Dread pierced me, cold darkness slowly chilling my blood. Craig was clearly one of New York’s many homeless. If he disappeared, no one would miss him. Now I understood why the vampires were the only ones holding tickets.

“Who will have the honor of the first taste?” mused the voice. “Could it be…could it be number two-hundred and seventy?”

A high-pitched scream of exultation echoed throughout the room as a thin, blonde vampire ascended to the stage, waving her ticket. It was checked by one of the black-coated men, who then allowed her to approach Craig. She smiled. He blinked at her in a mixture of confusion and lust.