38
The club was dark except for a single soft spotlight in the middle of the stage. In that soft, white light Jean-Claude stood. The light hit only his shoulders and face, the rest of him was lost to darkness. It gave the illusion that his body formed from the darkness itself, to rise to the shining paleness of his face, the gleaming white of his cravat, the tiny colored spark of the sapphire winking only when he moved. His hair looked as if the darkness had been drawn out into some dark thread and formed into curls. The only color was the drowning blue of his eyes and the crimson smear of lipstick across his face. It wasn't my lipstick, or at least not most of it.
His voice floated through the darkened room. "Who will taste my kiss?" Taste, left a sweetness on my tongue, as if I'd licked a piece of candy. Kiss, gave a ghost of lips brushing my cheek. "Who will embrace me?" Embrace made me feel faintly warm, as if I'd been given a really good hug by someone I cared about.
Jean-Claude's voice had always been good, but not this good. Not this good. With my partial immunity, I probably wasn't getting all of it. I had no idea how much more the audience was getting. It took a force of will to look away from him in that shining circle of light. I made myself look out at the audience. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dark, but when I could see, nearly every face was turned to him. They gazed up at him in the dark as if he were the rising sun and they had never seen anything so bright before. Only a handful of faces weren't turned toward the stage. A few women were shaking their heads and looking confused. A little psychic talent of the right kind or with the right practice helped. Marianne had proven to me that you didn't have to be a necromancer to have some immunity to vampire mind tricks.
One of the few men was standing up, and the woman with him was tugging on his arm, trying to get him to sit back down. He was shaking his head, adamantly. No, no, he wouldn't sit in the dark and let that voice wash over him. He didn't understand that it wasn't a matter of sexual orientation. It was Jean-Claude. His power was seduction, and it had nothing and everything to do with sex.
Two of the waiters were escorting a woman up on stage. She was tall and almost anorexically thin. She'd apparently been waving more money than anybody else, because Jean-Claude preferred more curves on his women. As he'd pointed out to me, the beauties of his day in the French courts were today's size twenty. Most of the old vamps liked short women with curves. Most of us were living in so the wrong century.
The lights around the stage had been growing brighter so gradually that if you'd been gazing at the stage the entire time, you might not have noticed. The light was just barely bright enough so the audience could see more of their bodies. From the waist up, you could see his pale hands sliding over her body. Nothing d¨¦class¨¦, but he got more out of simply touching a woman's back, shoulder, or waist, than some men got out of touching breasts and groin. Sometimes it's not what you touch but how you touch it.
He pressed her against the front of his body so there was no space between them, so that her thin frame seemed almost to mold itself to his body. He lifted her face up to meet his, using one pale hand to cradle her face so that he would control the kiss. His arm slid around her waist, and tightened. Tightened enough to bow her neck and make her mouth open in a surprised little O. One of the women before this one had groped him, so he'd made sure there wasn't enough space between the front of their bodies for anyone's hands to wander too far. The women seemed to take the closer frontal contact as a sign of favor. I knew it wasn't. It was a sign of control and damn near displeasure.
But when he bowed his head to her mouth and locked their lips together in a kiss, there was no displeasure. He kissed her as if he were trying to breathe her down through his mouth. He fed from her lips almost as if he were feeding from her neck. And in a way, he was, feeding at least.
He fed from their mouths in a way that the Dragon's presence in my head had told me about. Except she knew how to eat the essence of the dead and make the undead, really, truly dead. This was not that, but it was eerily similar. He was feeding the ardeur, from a kiss.
"Nikolaos would never let him feed like that," a quiet voice said from behind me.
I turned to find Buzz just behind me. I hadn't heard him, or sensed him, which meant that I'd been more caught up in the show than I'd realized.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Nikolaos knew that he was feeding off the audience without ever touching them, so she forbade him to touch any of the customers." His gaze went past me to the stage. "I think she had some clue what he could have been, and she did everything she could to make sure he didn't come into that power."
"She's been dead almost three years. You make it sound like tonight is the first time you've seen this show."
He looked at me. "It is."
I gave him wide eyes. "Nikolaos was dead, she couldn't stop him."
"But you could," he said.
"What do you mean?"
"Do you really think three years ago you would have dated him after you saw this?"
I glanced back at the stage. I watched him kissing a strange woman as if she were his deepest love, or at least deepest lust. Would I have tolerated it three years ago? No. Would I have used it as an excuse to dump his ass? Oh, yeah.
The woman swooned in his arms. Her mouth falling away from his as she seemed to half-faint, as if the kiss alone were so intense that she couldn't stay conscious. I would have thought she was play-acting, or exaggerating, but I had to believe it, when the waiters carried her off stage and gave her back to her friends at their table.
Jean-Claude gazed out at the audience with fresh crimson lipstick smeared across his entire lower jaw. It looked eerily like blood, and I knew him well enough to know that the resemblance was not accidental. His blue eyes had bled to solid blue light, as if a summer's dusk could burn in his eyes. "Who will be next?" And it was as if he whispered along my skin, as if he were standing just behind me. The illusion was so strong that I had to fight not to turn around and look. I was supposed to be immune to this crap, if this was how I was feeling, what must the women connected to all those eager faces be feeling?
I lowered my shields just enough to see Jean-Claude shining with power. This was what he was meant to be. This wasn't just feeding the ardeur. This wasn't a substitute for a blood feed. This was an end in itself. This was something I'd never seen, not in Jean-Claude, not in anyone. It was akin to all his other abilities, but more, somehow this was more.
I turned back to Buzz. "Him feeding like this is what saved me."
He looked puzzled, vampires under twenty years dead have so many more human facial expressions. "Saved you from what?"
"If he hadn't fed, then I'd have had to feed for him. That's one of the things a human servant is for. We feed when the vamps can't. I would still be trapped backstage fucking my metaphysical brains out." I shook my head. "No, thank you."
"So you're not disappointed that's he's doing strangers?"
I felt my face go sort of unfriendly. "You sound disappointed that I'm not upset about this, why?"
He raised his hands, making his big arms flex. I think by accident. He meant it to be a harmless gesture, but he was too muscle-bound for it to look anything but impressive, or scary, depending on how you looked at it.
"It just seems like a fast turnaround, that's all."
I sighed. "The last time Jean-Claude asked me if he could feed off the audience, I didn't really understand what he was asking." I smiled, but not like I was happy. "Besides, I wasn't fucking strangers to feed the vampiric powers then. Strangely, that's changed my mind about a lot of things."
He looked way too serious for my tastes.
I didn't know what was up with Buzz, so I decided to change topics. "Primo all tucked away in the spare coffin?"
"We put him in while you were cleaning up."
I nodded. I'd been told about it, but I'd also laid my hands on the coffin and felt Primo trapped inside, behind silver chains and a holy item. It wasn't that I didn't trust everybody, it was just good business to be cautious. Buzz's odd behavior hadn't changed my mind about that, not one little bit.
"Lisandro told me that you ordered him to baby-sit the coffin."
I nodded. "Yes, I did."
"Primo is in a cross-wrapped coffin, Anita. He's not getting out."
I shrugged. Lisandro was tall, dark, handsome, with the longest hair that any of the new security had. He was also the only one with a gun tucked into the small of his back under the black T-shirt. Once I spotted the gun, I pegged him for a wererat, and I'd been right. I told him if Primo started to tear out of the coffin, to kill him. Jean-Claude would probably have agreed with me, but he'd been busy on stage, so I'd made the call. I was happy with the call, and I didn't like that Buzz wasn't.
"Let's just say that I feel better going off to raise the dead, knowing that Lisandro is sitting by that coffin with silver ammo, and a willingness to shoot."
"I'm head of security here, Anita. You should have cleared it with me."
I sighed. "You're right. You're right, I should have. I'm sorry."
He just blinked at me like a deer caught in headlights. I think he'd expected an argument. But I was tired, and late, and feeling squidgie about having had sex with Byron and Requiem.
"I've got to go, Buzz."
"Your security detail is waiting at the door," he said, and nodded toward the door in question.
Requiem was by the door in his black cloak, wearing a fresh pair of pants that he'd borrowed from someone. The new pants were leather, so he'd probably borrowed them from another dancer. But we had a new addition, and that was the dark-haired werewolf that had fallen on top of Clay and me when Primo was fighting everyone. His name was Graham, and his body had that width of shoulder and impressive swell of arm that only semiserious weight lifting can get you. His black hair was cut in a longish layer on top so that it fell like a silken fringe over his ears, but underneath the hair was shaved close to his head and upper neck. It seemed an odd haircut to me, but it wasn't my hair.
His face was exotic, in the way that people can be when some ancestor didn't come from Northern or Southern Europe. The straight black hair, the ever-so-slight uptilt to the edge of his eyes made me bet he'd come from somewhere much farther east.
I'd argued that I didn't need or want guards, but just as I'd made the call about Primo and Lisandro, so Jean-Claude had given his orders about this before he got carried away on stage. I was to go nowhere without someone with me. He wasn't sure the Dragon was done with us for the night, and it would be a shame if something went horribly wrong. What he hadn't told the security detail, vampire or otherwise, was about what had happened earlier in my office. That had had nothing to do with the Dragon and everything to do with my own metaphysical shit. Well, mine, and Jean-Claude's.
Jean-Claude had even left a list of people he thought were appropriate to the job. Byron had not been on the list, nor had Clay. It had been a damn short list, actually, basically Requiem and Graham. The last thing I wanted to do was be trapped in a car with Requiem, but I didn't have time to argue. I'd gone from having plenty of time, to having to call my clients and tell them to hold fast in the cemetery, I really was on my way.
I was wearing Byron's leather jacket to take the place of my bloodied suit jacket. His was the only one that came close to fitting me and not making me look like I was wearing the upper half of a gorilla. It smelled faintly of his cologne.
Buzz's eyes left me and went to the audience. The man who had been arguing with his date was still standing, but now so was the woman, and she was starting to make a scene. "Sorry, gotta catch that."
"Be my guest," I said.
Nathaniel seemed to appear from nowhere. He escorted me toward the outer door. He was smiling and seemed terribly at ease, more so than I'd seen him in a long time, maybe ever. It seemed an odd night for him to be happy. "You promised to get back in time to see some of my act," he said, smiling.
"I've got two clients stuck in cemeteries," I said.
He gave me the look that was half-pout and half-he-knew-he'd-already-won-the-argument. "You promised."
"Can't we just fuck at home later?" I asked.
He gave me a frown. "I'll be furry, you don't do furry."
I had an idea, an awful idea. "I promised to mark your neck tonight. Oh, no, you so are not planning on me doing it in front of an audience?"
He smiled, and there was something in that smile that I hadn't seen before. Some hint of confidence, of security that hadn't been there before. He'd watched me have sex with two near strangers, and suddenly he felt more secure. Go figure.
"You little exhibitionist, you," I said, "you like the idea of me marking you for the first time in front of all these people."
He gave an aw-gee-shucks shrug, which was all act, because his eyes were bright with the answer. "I like a lot of things, Anita."
I tried to frown at him, but couldn't keep it up. "You got me to promise I'd mark you, and now you're taking advantage of it."
"You're running late," he said, "clients waiting in the cemetery." He looked solemn except for the glint of humor in his eyes, which spoiled the effect.
I shook my head, smiling. "I've got to go."
"I know," he said.
"Would it ruin the illusion if I kissed you good-bye?"
"I'll risk it," he said.
I kissed him. It was chaste, a touch of lips, a little pressure, barely any body language. I drew back with a suspicious look on my face. It made him laugh and push me toward the door. "You're late, remember."
I went, but I went out into the October dark even more certain that I knew absolutely nothing about men. Alright, to be fair, that I knew absolutely nothing about the men in my life. I glanced back to see Jean-Claude on stage with another woman, kissing her as if he were trying to find her tonsils without his hands. Most people looked disturbing or awkward when they kissed that deep. He didn't. He made it all seem suave, erotic, and perfect. I realized I'd kissed Nathaniel good-bye, but not Jean-Claude. Didn't want to interrupt, but didn't want him to feel left out, either. I blew him a kiss as his arms emptied of the woman. He returned the gesture with one pale hand. The lower half of his face was smeared bright crimson with lipstick. It didn't really look like blood, not if you'd seen enough of the real deal, but it was still a less than comforting image to take away into the night. One of the other men in my life was smiling at the door, looking forward to having me do foreplay on him in front of an audience. Sometimes the parts of my life that are weirdest to me aren't the parts dealing with vampires and werewolves and zombies. Even vampire politics didn't confuse me as much as my own love life.