Crossed Page 4

  Or such had been their plan.

  The plan would change now, of course; I’d go with them to make certain feeding didn’t become a problem. Just in case. Tabitha would insist. And as for the marriage bed, she’d want me there too. Sisters share.

  5

  ERIC:

  WEDDING NIGHT AFTERMATH

  I can’t talk about the wedding night. I promised I wouldn’t and until I forget about that promise, I’ll keep it. Three bodies were in bed with me when I woke up the next afternoon: one dead, one undead, and one alive. Two of them were related to each other (Tabitha and Rachel) and the third I didn’t recognize, but her ghost loomed over me with an angry countenance.

  “You didn’t turn me,” shouted the Asian ghost whose bleached blond hair looked more orange than any other color. Her spectral form was as naked as her corpse and had the same bluish pallor.

  “Was I supposed to?” I rolled the dead girl off the bed, which isn’t as gross (or unusual) as you think if you’re used to sleeping with vampires.

  Her slap would have connected if she’d been able to affect corporeal objects, but she wasn’t anything special from a supernatural point of view, just your standard ghost. Enough will to hang around and bitch, but not enough juju to manifest physically. It happens. “She told me that you’d make me immortal.” The ghost pointed at Rachel’s sleeping form accusingly.

  “No,” Rachel said sleepily. “I said he’d make you immoral.”

  “But I thought . . .” Whoever the girl was, she started to look more panicked than angry. I’d met her before, but I couldn’t remember her name. Kim? Mei? Chun-li? Something.

  Rachel leaned up on her elbows and my eyes were drawn to the golden rings in her pierced nipples, the choker around her neck with its tiny golden padlock. “I can’t help it if you were a dumb horny twat.” She sniffed dismissively. “Eat her, Master.”

  “I think I already did, and don’t call me Master.”

  “I don’t mean her blood, Eric. I mean her essence, her soul. You have all the powers of a revenant and a vampire. Eat her soul so she can’t make a return trip to get back at you. She’s going to hell anyway; she had a foursome with two other girls and a vampire.” Hands wandering along her own body, Rachel paused at her left nipple ring, twisting it casually. “Then come back to bed.” Millions of years of evolution told me to do whatever was necessary to get back into bed and do more of what I’d done last night. Forty-odd years as a vampire told to me to sink my fangs into Rachel while doing it.

  There are times when I do the wrong thing. If last night’s corpse had been a little younger, she’d still be alive. Even when I’m out of control, I care about kids, feel protective of them. Somewhere around the age of consent, that need to defend vanishes. In the old days, I would have called a mage and paid to have the ghost moved along to its final destination, but if Rachel said she was hellbound (and Rachel ought to know), then wasn’t destroying her doing both of us a favor?

  The transition from angry vamp to vengeful ghost is quick, but far from painless. It no longer felt like I was being pulled apart so much as like my whole body had gone to sleep and was in the process of waking up: pins and needles everywhere, and I do mean everywhere. My vision blurred, rendering the world in muted watercolor tones, except for other ghosts. Spirits look alive to one another.

  Her slap connected the second time, and the pain made me angry. I own up to my faults. My speech back in the chapel proved that. Rachel’s voice sounded far away. “You’re getting better at that, baby. Hardly any hesitation at all. Now eat her!”

  If being a vampire was a world of cold punctuated by brief moments of warmth at feeding time, being a revenant was a world of ice with no relief.

  The girl—Suzie was her name, I remembered suddenly—swung at me again, but when we made contact she screamed. Apparently soul sucking is like riding a bike: once you’ve done it, you never really forget how. Her spirit body pressed against mine, sinking into me, a vulgar intimacy.

  “I’m never going to get to Paris, am I?” she asked.

  “Seems unlikely,” I told her, but she was gone. I watched a ghost get sucked into hell once. I tell myself I can’t remember her name either, but I do. Marilyn is someone I’ll never forget. I can’t tell you which seemed worse—getting sucked into hell or getting devoured by a revenant. If given the option, I’d avoid both. “Is there anything in particular you wanted to see?” I asked the air.

  “The Eiffel Tower,” something whispered in my mind. The voice could have been hers. I like to think the scream that followed it wasn’t, but I like to lie to myself, too.

  “I’m not doing that again unless I have to,” I told Rachel. My skin was freezing when I transitioned back. Mother Nature wanted to remind me that I was an undead monster . . . like I’d forgotten.

  But you can’t give in to that self-pity crap. Pithy little vampires that can’t face the music piss me off almost as badly as those Doris Day “Que Sera, Sera” motherfuckers who think being dead is “da bomb” or however the hell they put it nowadays. I shook it off and let Rachel warm me up the way only she can, let the memory roll off into that place where forgotten things go. I didn’t even remember her name. Suzie Hu. She wanted to see the Eiffel Tower . . . Okay, so I hadn’t forgotten her yet. Give me time.

  In the middle of round two, I got a call from William, the local Alpha. He and his pack live out at Orchard Lake and we have a semi-truce. I stay out of his area and he stays out of mine.

  “I didn’t know the Apostles were planning to crash your special day.” He cut right to the point without a hello. “But you should know . . . I called my connections at the Lycan Diocese and they’re not going to call him off. They aren’t going to help him either. You’re on your own, but so is he.”

  “Wonderful. So—” Rachel crawled back in bed next to her sleeping sister on the king-sized mattress and I lost my concentration. What the hell had I been saying? “So. Okay, so—are the Apostles something I need to take care of before I go to Paris?”

  “You’re going to Paris?” William asked.

  I turned away from Rachel and Tabitha, focusing on the conference table and chairs that occupied the corner closest to the window. The ghost of John Paul Courtney sat in one of the three chairs. He was clad in the same checkered shirt he always wore, holding his wobbly head in place with one hand while he puffed a nearly expended spectral cigar that he held in the other. Cigar smoke drifted up through the bullet holes in his chest. His jaws clenched with disappointment in me, his descendant.

  “That ain’t right,” he said. “What yore doin’ with them two sisters ain’t right at all. You keep testing Him like this and bad things’ll happen.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I said, answering both JPC and the werewolf on the phone. “It’s for my honeymoon.” Plus, I thought, according to Lord Phil, the vampire that sired me lives in Paris and she’ll be looking for me soon, so I might as well go looking for her and save us both the wait. I wondered if she knew about the curse that had created me or if her sudden detection of me now that I had full Emperor powers was driving her crazy with questions.

  “If he knows,” William told me, “he might follow you.”

  If who knew? I thought. Oh, yeah, Deacon.

  “Fine by me.” I looked at Rachel. She’d seen me as a ghost before, and had noticed Suzie’s ghost, but she gave no sign that she could see John Paul Courtney. Interesting. “I just don’t want them fucking around with my stuff while I’m gone. I’m leaving Greta and Fang here with Talbot and the girls. Lord Phil has promised to look out for them, but . . . I don’t know, maybe I should just cancel the trip.”

  William sighed on the other end of the line. “That’s the last thing we need. If Deacon goes and pisses off that blood-sucking sorcerer, it’ll start another Vampire and Werewolf War. I’ll track Deacon down. He’ll listen to me as long as I’m not trying to talk him out of ending you. Keep your eyes open. If he’s going to France, then he’ll have to start
out in Lozère.”

  “Huh?”

  “Vampires may flit willy-nilly across the globe, but werewolves are territorial. If you’re a werewolf and you’re going to France, particularly if you’re going there to start trouble, you have to check in with the Alpha . . . and in France there is just one Alpha who is in charge of everything.”

  I covered the receiver and cursed. “Great. I don’t suppose you know the man in charge.”

  “La Bête du Gévaudan,” he answered as if I ought to know, as if that should’ve rung a bell.

  “That doesn’t sound like English.”

  “That’s because it’s French. It means the Beast of Gévaudan.”

  “I guess I’d better bring El Alma Perdida then,” I said.

  “I’m not sure it will be any help if the Beast decides to come after you. He’s the oldest werewolf in the world. Some say that he’s truly immortal.”

  “Just peachy,” I said. “Thanks for the heads-up.” I hung up the phone and looked back at Rachel. “I’m going out.”

  “Tabitha asked you to force her awake before you left,” Rachel said.

  I got dressed without answering, resisting the urge to change into a bat and manifest my clothes. It would have been a waste of blood and I was already hungry. Hungry enough that I didn’t want to feed on Rachel. The sun was still up, but I didn’t care. I had to get away from my bride, her sister, and the dead body on the floor.

  “I forgot,” I said as I stepped out, bracing myself for the sun the way another person might have prepared himself to run out into the rain. “Get someone to take care of the body.” I burst out the door, ready to dash for the shadows, only there was no sun. I was in the hallway outside the Honeymoon Suite at the Void City Hilton.

  Rachel giggled behind me and I slammed the door. A few seconds later, I walked back in and carried the dead woman down with me to the parking lot so that I could feed her to Fang. Waste not, want not, as the saying goes. See how domesticated I am? Even taking out the trash. Isn’t married life grand?

  6

  RACHEL:

  LET’S MAKE A DEAL

  One of the advantages of being enthralled by a vamp as kick ass powerful as Eric is that the deal comes with immortality that lasts as long as your master does or until he sets you free. And as masters go, Eric is the best. Since he doesn’t “believe” in having thralls, he still treats us . . . well . . . like people (while most vampires seem to forget that after a while). He keeps his promises, too. Other vampires will offer to let their thralls go as a twisted-ass loyalty test. Not Eric. He means it. He used to have a seventh thrall, an ex-stripper named Ebony, but Eric packed her and her two kids up and sent them to live out at Orchard Lake with the werewolves, then released her from thralldom. All because she said it would make her happy.

  Why she wanted out is beyond me. Being an Emperor’s thrall has too many benefits. We’re all a little stronger than normal humans, our senses are sharper, and we heal faster. But better than that is this: calories don’t matter. Beatrice noticed it first. Do you know what it’s like to be able to jump from twelve hundred calories a day to unlimited? And he wonders why we all want to jump his bones. I ordered up a Belgian waffle, two sides of bacon, hash browns, and scrambled eggs (with cheese). It’s not the breakfast Eric would have ordered, but I wasn’t eating for him.

  If I’d been eating for Eric, I would have gone with T-bone steak (rare), three eggs (over easy), pork sausage (links, not patties), cheese grits (add salt and pepper), and a biscuit (split in half and buttered). Tabitha can’t stand to watch people eat, because it’s one of the few human things she can’t enjoy, but Eric falls in with the rest of the vampire pack. He loves his food porn. Nothing explicitly sexual about it; in fact, Eric keeps it strictly compartmentalized, no eating naked or food play in bed. When he’s been really good, I choose cold pizza for breakfast. Pizza is his favorite.

  I’d just started eating, when I got a text on my cell.

  Where are you?—Andre

  All of Winter’s goons used Standard English when texting. So did most of the thralls working for the vampiric upper crust. It’s like they were from another planet . . . which I guessed made Andre Winter’s chief ambassador to Earth.

  AFK . . . food

  Before my attention was back to breakfast, my cell dinged. Another text.

  Winter wants to see you.—Andre

  im nt h1s btch. I thumbed the letters angrily, then bounced my cell off Tabitha’s shoulder. It hit with a wet sound, and the smell of rancid filth assailed me. Corpse sweat. Brown trickles of fluid had begun to form on Tabitha’s upper body, covering her skin with a growing sheen of nastiness. Some vampires get it every night, but not Tabitha. It had happened to her once before, just after she turned for the first time, but as far as I knew it hadn’t happened since.

  I ran across and grabbed my cell before it got more yecch on it and hurried to the bathroom to wash it off before the corpse sweat dried there. I retched into the sink as the smell grew, less rotting body odor than the unenviable scent of backed-up sewer. All thoughts of breakfast forgotten, I grabbed my overnight bag and rushed naked into the hall before the odor permeated everything.

  Why the fuck was she getting the sweats now? She hadn’t discovered any new powers (that sets it off sometimes). Getting married hadn’t . . . Shit. She was trying to fight my magic. Some inner part of her wanted to shake free of the hold I had over her. How cute!

  I slipped into a crimson thong, a pair of tight side-stitched low-rise jeans, a white long-sleeved crop top, and my black Skechers.

  So you’re not interested in his deal then?—Andre

  wht d3al?

  The one Winter would like to speak to you about.—Andre

  5p311 !t out, @55.

  I’m afraid I didn’t understand that last text.—Andre

  Grr. Andre’s inability to read a simple text message pissed me off no end. “Fine.” My fingers jabbed the keys rapidly.

  Spell it out, Andre. What deal?

  I didn’t wait in the hallway for Andre’s next text message. I wanted caffeine even if Tabitha’s stench-ridden protest had put me off my breakfast. A quick trip to the elevator and down to the hotel lobby took me to an embedded Starbucks. My Venti Mint Chocolaty Chip Frappuccino Blended Creme with Chocolate Whipped Cream and a double shot of Espresso was still in progress when my cell beeped.

  Winter proposes a deal that will give you what you want. You want the issues between you and your sister over Eric to end. If you work with him, by the end of the game, you will no longer have to worry about the competition.—Andre

  Before replying, I read the message twice more.

  Does he have a bet riding on the outcome? I texted. My drink vanished, barely tasted, while I waited. I bought a Raspberry Apricot Thumbprint Scone and ordered another Frappuccino, constantly checking my cell for messages. Ten minutes later, the response came in, a simple Yes without the —Andre.

  WTF?!? Winter said he was betting against Eric in aris . . . I stabbed Send and watched the little animation, a winged envelope flying into the distance, as my cell transmitted the message.

  Meet him and talk about it tonight, Andre’s message blinked back at me. Just because Winter has bet against Eric in Paris doesn’t mean he expects him to lose in Void City.

  When and where?

  Meet him at the Iversonian. Sunset.

  What? “Why the hell is Winter asking to meet at someone else’s club? Much less a true immortal’s club?” I murmured to myself. Iver Richardson a.k.a. the Iversonian, the club’s owner, is a true immortal, a collector of the unique, both sentient and nonsentient. He rarely gives his acquisitions up, which is why others started calling him the Iversonian, and he has a massive control complex, which is why he named his club the Iversonian in some sort of weird bid to “own” the nickname. He’s tangled with Talbot (which was a check mark in his favor as far as I’m concerned), but true immortals can’t be ended—not really. Their essence can be a
bsorbed by another of their kind, and under the right circumstances they can be freed from their body, transmuted completely to spirit, but even then, they are still present somewhere. I wonder if a revenant can eat the essence of a true immortal. The thought danced in my head, a tantalizing bit of curiosity.

  Why not Winter’s club? I texted back.

  Discretion, he sent back.

  “Discretion.” I strummed my fingers on the tabletop in the Hilton’s lobby. Fine. I’d go, but if Winter thought he was going to try anything funny with me . . . I’d saved up enough of Eric’s imperial glory to defend myself. I tapped into a small sample of the power I sapped from Eric every time we had sex and smiled as my fingernails turned black and cold, extending into claws.

  7

  ERIC:

  THE DEMON HEART—NEW AND IMPROVED

  Fang drove me into the shaded lower level of the Pollux Theater’s parking deck and I stared across the street at the newly refurbished and repurposed Demon Heart—or rather, Demon Heart Lanes Bowling Alley. What the hell had I been thinking? I’d traded strippers for synthetic Day-Glo balls, bowling pins, the sweet smells of griddle cakes and bowling alley pizza . . . Ah. That had probably been it. The pizza.

  I took the short walkway from the parking deck to the lobby of the Pollux, my movie palace, and smiled at the improvements. The place had been gutted by fire several months ago, and Ebon Winter had restored it for me as a wedding gift.

  Many things hadn’t been changed at all, or if so, only subtly and with magic. The front was still four glass doors opening into a spacious area where, in times long past, moviegoers had purchased their tickets from a ticket seller inside a golden colored ticket booth. Winter had wired the booth with modern connections and credit card readers even though I wasn’t likely to ever need them, given that I hardly ever show movies to the public. A state-of-the-art alarm system had been installed as well, with a full set of Guild-certified wards layered over it.