Vampire Mistress (14 page)

When the door to the bathroom closed after them, some distant part of Anwyn was aware of it. In that area of her mind, she felt steadier, calmer. She’d made a reasonable request, and Gideon and Daegan had reasonably respected her wishes. No matter what had happened in that alley, she was still Anwyn. Mistress Naime.

She jumped as the shadows moved, and gripped the edge of the vanity.
No.
She wasn’t seeing anything. There weren’t dark creatures slithering around her, hovering at the corners of her eyes, snickering at her.
We saw you. You were nothing. A piece of meat to them, and they cut you up and ate you in little bites . . .

She stared into the mirror, at that fading image. As far as symbolism went, it was an in-your-face, direct upper cut. A fist across the cheekbone.

Was Barnabus so diabolically intelligent to know that by turning her, he’d denied her the protective fog that severe physical injuries could provide? Somehow it was worse to have the memories of what happened in the alley in her head, and yet look at the half-healed scars and not feel their pain. When her fingers slid over the puncture at her neck, she forced herself to think of it as Daegan’s bite. The pain had been unusually sharp, like biting into an infected area, but she’d reveled in it, because he was driving Barnabus’s mark away.

Daegan said she needed the sire’s blood to be okay, but she didn’t think so. The wounds weren’t fully closing, but they weren’t gaping or running blood, either. Her hair was softer to the touch, as if she’d conditioned it, and her undamaged skin was almost glowing, as if she’d dropped ten years and returned to the unlined freshness of her teens.

She’d often kidded Daegan about his beauty, about the beauty of vampires in general.
The cost savings in hair and beauty products alone . . .
Goddess, the crazy thoughts she was having, when madness hovered so close she felt its heat on her nape. That heat boiled in her blood, a poison making her feel faintly nauseous. When it had seized control, such that she’d almost sunk her fangs into Gideon’s neck, it had scared her to the marrow. But that had been hindsight. In that moment, all that had mattered was his blood.

“I can’t do this, Daegan. I can’t. I can’t.” She pressed her forehead against the mirror, looked at double images of herself. “I’m strong, I’m so strong, I’m the strongest goddamned woman in the universe. I can do anything; I can be anything . . .” A sob caught in her throat. “I won’t let this beat me.”

In the roiling fire in her blood, slowly building toward another eruption, she didn’t sense any trace of what Daegan was. It was as if the creature she was becoming was something far more monstrous and out of control. Not a vampire at all, just a demon of blood and hunger. She couldn’t survive being out of control like that.

So she wouldn’t be. She straightened, turned her back on the mirror. She didn’t need to see a transparent reflection to know who she was. Defying her trembling legs, her bilious gut, she moved through the bathroom exit that led into her bedroom. She closed that door before she could see the men waiting wherever it was they were waiting. Going to her closet, she began to select what she needed, ignoring the shadow creatures snickering and winding around her feet, or the endless, involuntary tears she had to keep brushing off her cheeks with trembling fingers.

Gideon took a seat at one end of the sitting room, while Daegan stood at the mantel. Daegan had taken him into the appropriate room, shown him what they would need to do. There seemed to be little else to say, though Gideon’s gut was tight with it. Guess if you had to restrain a vampire, there was no better place than a BDSM club owner’s private dungeon, particularly one who might regularly entertain a vampire. Though somehow Daegan didn’t strike him as the kind who’d let anyone tie him up. Gideon hadn’t quite figured out the dynamic between Anwyn and her mysterious roommate. At times it seemed she submitted to his commands, and other times, it was as if they were conducting some elusive dance, hard for an outsider to fathom.

He didn’t want to go there. But like Daegan, he was listening for movement in the bedroom and it was hard to keep his mind from wandering into weird areas. The bedroom door had swung shut a while ago, only a brief flash of Anwyn through the crack. A woman adept at not being seen when she didn’t want to be.

“You’re not an overlord, or a Region Master,” he said slowly, his hands linked between his knees. “I know pretty much all of those in this area. I also don’t get the feeling the Region Master or overlord of this territory knows you’re here, which is pretty rude in the vampire world.”

“Are you going to report me to them?” Daegan gave him an arch look.

“Next time we all go play nine holes together, maybe.” Gideon returned a bland stare. “So who are you?”

“What amazes me, human, is that you think I owe you any explanations.”

“You’re trusting me to stay with her, though you already know who and what I am. I think that gives me some latitude.”

“And if I tell you that you only need the information I deem appropriate?”

“Then I tell you I can shoot an arrow pretty damn fast. It might just hit your excessive vampire ego. Target’s large enough.”

Daegan straightened from the mantel. “Then do your parlor trick, vampire hunter, and see where it gets you.”

“You’ll just smash my face into a wall and try to get overly personal with my ass again.”

“Not unless you plan to start bathing regularly.” Daegan stepped forward and spread his arms, less than ten feet from him. “Shoot, Gideon. I will not move until you loose the arrow from your wrist gauntlet.”

Apparently the two of them were getting pretty damn desperate for something to do, Gideon reflected, because he itched to do it. “You were the one who had to be all honorable and say we wouldn’t come in until she was ready.”

“She is fine, moving around and getting dressed, from the sound of it. Afraid I’ll call your bluff? I will not touch you.”

“Let me guess. This is one of those
Karate Kid
moments, like catching the fly in chopsticks. If I pin the vampire to the wall, I’ll get my answers.”

Daegan raised a brow. “Let me make this easier for you.” He closed his eyes and turned his back on Gideon. The coat spread out like a bat’s wings.

Son of a bitch. No freaking way.
Still, why the hell not? Gideon brought his hand up, even took the time to steady his aim. He was accurate with it up to fifty feet, so ten feet was nothing, but maybe he was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Daegan merely held his position.

Fine.
Gideon hit the trigger. At the last minute, he aimed at the lower back, in case the son of a bitch
was
too damn arrogant. He couldn’t care less, but Anwyn didn’t need any more stress today, and a chiropractic adjustment would be more palatable than a staked vampire.

He’d worked with this weapon until it could fly almost as fast as a vampire. But apparently not this vampire. Gideon blinked. Daegan was in the same place, same position. The folds of the duster fluttered, but that had to be due to the currents of the recycled air in the underground environment. He cocked his dark head, glancing over his shoulder. “Did you fire, vampire hunter?”

“You know I did.” Gideon rose, circled in front of him. There was no arrow, not in the wall and not sticking out of Daegan, as far as he could tell. “And you accuse me of parlor tricks?”

“Parlor tricks can be deadly.” Gideon abruptly found the point of the arrow notched under the soft tissue of his throat, Daegan’s other hand on the back of his neck, holding him steady against it. The dark eyes glittered, the firm mouth too close. “You have some good ones, vampire hunter, but not good enough to beat me.”

“Every vampire can be beaten, Daegan.” Gideon forced himself not to struggle, holding that mesmerizing gaze. “Because every one of you has a weak, undefended moment. If you know enough about me, you know I’m damn good at finding it. If I hang around long enough, I’ll find yours.”

“Hmm.” Daegan pursed his lips, then shoved Gideon back, tossing the arrow in the air.

Gideon caught it, gave him a narrow look as he reloaded and jerked his sleeve back down. “You moved that fast, didn’t you? Moved out of the way and then grabbed it. Or spun around and grabbed it. That’s why your coat was still moving.”

“A trick’s no fun if you know the secret.” Daegan returned to the mantel, though Gideon noticed his attention flickered across the closed bedroom door. He wasn’t the only one feeling the bite of impatience.

“No vampire could avoid that weapon at that distance, standing still the way you did. I adjusted the firing mechanism and the force behind it to make sure of it.”

That got a response. Daegan looked surprised, and then keenly interested. “How did you manage that? The fastest weapon of that style and size is still twenty percent slower than a mature vampire’s speed.”

“A trick’s no fun if you know the secret.”

Daegan snorted. “Show me the weapon.”

Gideon stripped off his jacket and unclipped the wrist gauntlet, passing it to him. What the hell. The guy could outrun it, so it didn’t make it hugely effective against him. But Daegan sat down on the ottoman, his knees splayed, studying it with peculiar intensity. “How did you do this?”

Gideon went to a squat and explained the engineering of it, indicating the relevant points on the weapon. Daegan’s rapid-fire questions surprised him as well. The vampire showed a keen grasp of the mechanics, a scientist’s fascination with his experimentation. Though he could be faking it, it felt like the interest of one warrior in another’s techniques, not one enemy trying to find an advantage over another.

It had been a while since he’d talked with someone as . . . well,
intelligent
as himself wasn’t the right word. Okay, maybe it was. Most vampire hunters had a different mentality. They liked a weapon, but once you showed them how it worked, they didn’t really care about the design, except as it related to keeping it in firing condition. Then again, he hadn’t really talked with anyone much at all since he’d made sure Jacob was adapted to his fanged lifestyle and gone back to hunting mostly on his own.

“Ingenious,” Daegan murmured. At an involuntary surge of pride, Gideon was disgusted with himself. What was he, twelve? Looking for a big brother’s approval? It wasn’t like that, though. It was . . . camaraderie, an alien word to him these past long months.

Gideon groped for an acid reply, something along the lines of “If you’re so impressed, don’t avoid the shot next time.” But before he could fire the volley, the bedroom door opened.

Not really certain what to expect, he was surprised to see Anwyn step out of the room with her hair arranged in a twist on her head, wearing tailored slacks and a silk blue-green blouse that matched her eyes. Her ears and throat were decorated with silver jewelry. While the shirt and waistband of the slacks had to be uncomfortable on those unclosed scars, she didn’t move as if her skin was being irritated. Despite the light application of makeup, he could still see that turning bite on her throat, which Daegan had re-punctured at her request.

“So let’s discuss this,” she said, as if they’d just stepped into her quarters to address a club-related matter, rather than having just shared an intense experience in her garden tub. At first look, and he took a hard, thorough one, Gideon didn’t see any trace of nerves. No shaking in her hands, no desperate look in her eyes. What he did notice was that she gave them both wide berth, skirting the couch and love seat to sit in the wing-backed chair, which only allowed one person occupancy. She perched on the end like a bird ready to take flight, looking up at them expectantly.