Chapter Twenty-Eight
There was laughter. Cold, maniacal laughter. It echoed off the walls and seemed to magnify, the echoes growing louder and louder until all other noise was drowned out, and the only thing I could hear was that laughter. I put my hands to my ears and screamed, as loud as I could, for as long as I could. When my throat became too sore for me to scream any longer, I collapsed to my knees, falling into the pool of blood that had spread from the body at my side. Still, there was laughter. I had no way of knowing if any of this was real–this place had played tricks on me before–but the blood soaking into my pants sure felt real. The laughter sure did sound real. Real, and frighteningly familiar.
I took a shuddering breath and looked once more at the body beside me. Where had I failed? Where had I gone wrong? People were dead, and it was all my fault. And now, I was going to die, too. I just hoped someone was still alive in this God-forsaken place, and that somehow, they’d manage to escape.
As the source of the laughter came closer, the laughter growing louder, I cursed myself. I should have known better. I had thought that little bitch was going to help me, but she had betrayed me. No, not betrayed–what had Chase said? She didn’t like to be directly involved, she just liked to play games. Now, because of her fondness for games, people I knew and loved were dead. Now, because of her, I was dead.
Some game.
—
Nine Hours Earlier
The sun had already set by the time Stavros’ private jet landed at the airport in San Francisco. Stavros stepped off the plane first, followed by Winter, and then me. The Boss had explained the hierarchy for this evening–he, Winter, and I were officially the “big fish,” my words, not his, and the others were acting as merely bodyguards. Personally, I highly doubted bodyguards would be able to protect us from whatever Claudiana had planned. According to Chase and Morgana, she liked to mess with people. And her lair could take a person’s worst fear and turn it against them. How fucked up was that?
I had the sudden urge to turn and get back on the plane when I saw what was waiting for us on the asphalt below.
Two very large stretch limos sat in waiting. That wasn’t the scary part, believe it or not. What was standing in front of the limos was what sent chills up my spine.
There were two vampires, first of all, that I didn’t know. One of them I recognized as the vampire Aria from my latest dream–yeah, I know what I said, but just because I knew of her doesn’t mean I knew her, all right? The other was tall and blonde and looked like someone you wouldn’t want to meet alone in a dark alley. Standing between them, very prim in her taffeta dress and hooded cape, was Claudiana. She caught me looking at her, and she smiled. It was the first time I’d ever seen her outside my dreams.
She was much scarier in person.
Once the three of us were all standing on the ground together, Claudiana started walking towards us. The other two fell into step behind her. Claudiana stopped a few feet in front of Stavros.
“Welcome,” she said in her angelic, childlike voice, “Stavros, Master of Los Angeles and Winter, Second to the Master of Los Angeles.”
Stavros and Winter bowed to her. “Thank you for allowing us into your home, Claudiana,” Stavros said. He had no title to give her; technically San Francisco had no master. I wondered if that would fuck up the whole let’s-all-pretend-to-be-nice-little-vampires thing.
“I accept your thanks,” said Claudiana in a bored tone, and Stavros straightened. I had to keep from balking at her words. She accepted his thanks? Diva, much? Almost as though she could hear my thoughts–maybe she could; some vampires have the annoying habit of reading minds–Claudiana turned to me. She smiled. I almost pissed myself.
“Kayla,” she said, “we finally meet.” She held out a dainty hand, her palm facing up. I wasn’t sure what to do with it. The strange blonde vampire took a small knife from inside his jacket and laid it against her palm, drawing a thin line of blood. The knife was silver, ensuring the wound would heal human slow. I looked to Stavros, confused.
“Claudiana...” he started to say, but she held up her other hand to silence him. She kept her eyes trained on me.
“Drink,” she instructed. Can you say deja vu?
I just stared at her hand; actually, I stared at the blood welling up from the cut on her hand. I had done this once before. Sure, it had been in a dream, but if that was what drinking her blood in a dream could do, I hated to see what would happen if I drank her blood in real life.
“Something you must remember about vampires,” Claudiana told me after I had hesitated too long, “when your host asks you to do something, you must obey.”
As she spoke her eyes narrowed. I had just enough time to worry before I felt myself take a step forward. “Oh, shit...” I muttered.
“Claudiana, please,” Stavros said. As I moved from his side I tried to grab for his hand but she forced my arms down to my sides. I struggled with each step, but it didn’t take her much effort to overpower me.
Claudiana just laughed. “She’s so easy to manipulate,” she said. “Weak human.”
This was not good. This was not good at all. I was right in front of her now. She forced me down on my knees so that I was eye-level with her. “Now will you drink?” She laughed, tinkering, childlike, pure evil.
“You going to give me a choice?” I asked. Behind me, I heard Stavros sigh.
Claudiana laughed again. “I can see why my Mikhail loves you so,” she told me. “For a human you are...endearing.”
I raised an eyebrow. I don’t think anyone had ever described me as “endearing” before.
Claudiana raised her hand higher, offering her blood. “Consider this your choice,” she said.
I didn’t need to be told twice. I leaned forward, lowering my face to her hand. I crinkled my nose at the smell of the blood. I tried to think of it as wine. I put my mouth over the wound and lapped at her blood. If it had a taste, I didn’t notice, because the moment it hit my tongue, I was accosted by images. They were all images of Claudiana’s life. I saw many different lands and cultures. She had been all over the world in her two thousand years of life. Through all the memories, I got the feeling of loneliness. She was lonely. Old and lonely and tired. She didn’t care about anyone or anything and only kept others around her as a source of amusement. And right now, I was her main source of jollies. Great. I pulled back to see her smiling at me. She brought her hand to my face, wiping away a drop of blood from the corner of my mouth with her thumb.
“You spilled some,” she said. “That is to be expected, though. It takes even the best of us time to learn.”
As she spoke, the wound in her hand closed and the blood melted away, as though it had never been there. I watched in shock. “You were keeping the wound open,” I whispered.
She leaned forward until her mouth was beside my ear. “One of my many talents,” she whispered. “Silver does not harm me.”
“Why the show?” I asked her.
She gave a delicate shrug. “Did my little wolf not tell you?” she asked. “I have a...what did he call it? A ‘penchant for the dramatic.’” She took a dismissive step away from me. “You are free to stand.”
I stood. Outside I kept my expression cool, but inside I was screaming for joy. Having a vampire take control of you is the worst feeling in the world, and it had been happening to me with increasing regularity. I tried not to hurry on my way back to Stavros’ side.
“Now I, too, have a tie to your little slayer,” Claudiana told Stavros as I walked back. I shuddered. Great, just what I needed. A tie to yet another vampire.
Chase watched me, and when I got back to the group he opened his mouth like he was going to speak to me, but at the last minute he looked away stubbornly. I sighed. I wanted nothing more than to tell him that I was the biggest jerk in the world, and that I was sorry, and that yeah, I loved him even though it was a bad idea, but I didn’t. It would be better for him that way, when I didn’t make it. Because let’s face it–some scary shit had already happened, and we hadn’t even gotten into the damn limo yet!
Interestingly enough, it was Nick who broke the guard formation to whisper in my ear, “You okay?” All I could do was nod. In my peripheral vision, I saw Chase’s hand tighten on his gun. Was he...jealous? Of Nick? I made a mental note that if I lived, I would never tell Chase that I had, at one time, been sleeping with my handsome fellow slayer. It would probably do nothing to help our already strained relationship.
I made another mental note not to plan for the future I probably wouldn’t have.
“We must be going,” Claudiana announced. “The Carnival will be beginning soon. We wouldn’t want to miss the festivities.”
Personally, I thought Claudiana’s “festivities” were exactly the kind I wanted to miss.
We all piled into the limos. Unfortunately I ended up in the same one as Claudiana–one of the down-sides of being a big fish. You had to ride with all the other big fish. Stavros kept two bodyguards: Chase and Morgana, because they were the only ones who had personal experience with Claudiana.
I don’t think we could have made the limo ride any more awkward if we had tried.
—
The Present
The vampire was behind me; it had me by the throat now. Slowly it pulled me to my feet. “We finally meet again,” it said, the words a caress at my ear. I felt sick. “What’s the matter?” it asked. “Don’t I get a hello?” If I opened my mouth, I knew I was going to vomit. I did not want the last thing I ever tasted to be vomit. It laughed, sliding its nails across the soft skin of my throat. “I could rip your throat out right now,” it said, “but why waste all that precious blood? It would be so much more productive to drain you and eat your heart. That way, I’ll have all your power.”
“What would you want my measly power for?” I finally spoke. “I’m just a human.”
It laughed again. Apparently I was amusing even in the face of death. “Oh, you’re no human, Kayla,” it said. “Far from it, actually.” It ran its nails across my throat again, this time pressing hard enough to draw the tiniest amount of blood. Turning me to face it, it leaned forward and licked up my blood with one long, sure stroke of its tongue, like some terrifying, undead cat. “Tell me,” it said, “how does it feel to know you’re going to die?”
