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  Abruptly, I dropped out of my bat form, landing on my feet, fully dressed. Some vampires can take their clothes with them when they change shapes. I’m one of the lucky ones who can and the process leaves my clothes clean with a fresh-out-of-the-dryer warmth that makes me smile. I snapped my fingers. “Presents,” I said softly. “Shit, I’ve got to get everybody presents.”

  “Money might be an issue,” Rachel interrupted. “Someone closed your accounts.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your alias, Eric Jones, was declared legally dead. You left everything to Marilyn, she left everything to you…To make a long story short, the city tried to claim your assets. Greta bought the Pollux, the Demon Heart property, and the parking deck with her savings, but now she’s tapped out. She wouldn’t say anything to you about it, I’m sure, but…”

  Rachel looked shorter all of a sudden. She took two steps back. And now I’d changed into my uber vamp form without realizing it and I hadn’t lost control.

  Marilyn would be impressed.

  “Marilyn.” Screw Christmas. Screw the money. I’d forgotten Marilyn. A demon had her soul. A demon that was waiting for me to contact him. How could I have pushed that to the back of my ghostly brain, gotten caught up in the sight of the sun, for months? I hoped he was still waiting. The tangy scent of cinnamon hit me hard enough to make my eyes water, or bleed, as the case is with vampires. I wiped it away with hands that were black as pitch and ended in claws.

  Ever since I met Rachel, I’ve smelled cinnamon whenever she’s trying to calm me down, convince me to do what she wants, or seduce me. I don’t know if it’s magic or something all thralls can do, but it annoyed me that she’d done it in an effort to keep my mind off Marilyn.

  “A demon has Marilyn’s soul.” My voice was deeper, threatening.

  “I’m sorry,” Rachel told me. She cautiously ran a finger along my bare chest. “Do you know which demon?”

  “No…a smarmy-sounding one.”

  Rachel ran her hand much farther south. “You’re such a big boy in this form.”

  “It’s hard to concentrate when you do that.”

  “Then don’t concentrate.” She stripped out of her top, rubbed her breasts against me. “I don’t know any demons, but I know a vampire who would know.”

  “Not the guy from the Highland Towers,” I said churlishly.

  It was a moment before Rachel could answer. “No, not that guy. Another guy. We’ll go to see Winter.” She slipped out of her pants. No underwear there, either. “I’ve heard that he’s very on top of things.” As she said “on top” she pushed me back and I sprawled out on the floor. The wings made things awkward; but, like most guys, I could have been lying on a lit cigarette and it wouldn’t have bothered me at that moment.

  Despite her comment about size, Rachel had little trouble when she climbed on top of me. The way she worked sex into any situation reminded me of a succubus Talbot had saved me from in El Segundo. Rachel wasn’t a demon, but she certainly acted like one. Succubi feed on sex, get power from it. Rachel just seemed to get off on screwing vamps.

  As we moved together, she kissed me on the top of my head, then again between the eyes, then on my throat. Her soft, wet kisses made my skin tingle, flush with warmth, and feel alive. She placed a fourth on the middle of my chest over my heart and it began to beat. We both climaxed, her left hand resting on my solar plexus, her right hand at the base of my crotch. She guided my fangs to her neck again and I drank. Her blood was rich and full; it had body and flavor, burning my tongue like Tabasco.

  Once before, I’d felt little messages broadcasting from Rachel when we were close. Thoughts had danced through my head, pretending to be mine. I heard them again as she lay panting against my chest. “Trust Rachel. Need Rachel. Love Rachel. Be still of form. Be bound of form. Be mine. Be mine.”

  Cinnamon, the smell of it, the taste of it, surrounded me, just as surely as Rachel’s flesh enfolded mine. My heart beat and my lungs drew breath of their own accord. Heat built at my core and my body temperature soared. Blood flowed through my veins as I climaxed again, painfully, and Rachel’s eyes rolled up in her head, her legs clamping around me as best she could, her hands pulling at my ass.

  “Fuck, yes,” she hissed. “Keep going, baby. Come on.”

  Pushing myself up with my wings, I rolled us over and kept thrusting, my hands on her shoulders, holding her in place. I expected my erection to subside, but it didn’t. Purple light from my glowing eyes cast strange shadows on the floor and made her eyes seem to glow a matching violet. As the orgasm hit her, my heart beat faster, and I climaxed a third time, which is pretty much unheard of for me, let alone most men. Maybe it was a thrall thing, some sort of mystic Viagra for vampires.

  Every time I asked her about one of her little skills, she said it was a thrall thing. I was going to need a second opinion. Again, I had the feeling I was forgetting something. Something important. I rolled off of her and quickly returned to my normal self, dressed in jeans, a belt, sneakers, and a black Welcome to the Void T-shirt.

  “I wish I could do that,” Rachel laughed as she struggled back into her jeans.

  “Do what?”

  “The instant clothes changing thing.”

  “It is a perk.” As I picked up her top and threw it to her, I remembered. “We’re supposed to be doing something.”

  “We just did,” she teased.

  “No.” I smacked the floor. “I was talking about it right before. What was it?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  She remembered. I knew she did. I grabbed one of her nipple rings gently, but firmly. “Don’t lie to me.”

  “I thought you were joking.”

  More little voices danced in my head. They were harder to hear now, but they were there. Trust. Trust. Trust.

  “I wasn’t.”

  “We’re supposed to go see Ebon Winter at his club, the Artiste Unknown. You wanted to find the demon that took that old woman Marilyn’s soul.”

  I pulled her close and kissed her. She had a hard time returning the kiss in the beginning, mad that I’d accused her of lying, but she covered it up. I’m the kind of guy who would rather not know if all my friends really hate me. If my girlfriend is sleeping around, I’d like her to have the decency to be smart enough about it that I never find out.

  “You’ll need a tux if you want to talk to Winter,” Rachel blurted.

  “Does everyone dress like that at Winter’s club?”

  “No.” She fluttered her eyelashes at me. “But we will. If you want to meet Winter, you have to make an impression.”

  “I don’t own a tux anymore. It blew up. Where’s Talbot?”

  “I haven’t seen him.”

  “He wanders off sometimes.” I sighed. “Like a damn cat. He’ll be back eventually. In the meantime, I guess you’ll have to go rent me one. Do you have the right kind of dress?”

  “I still have the green one you bought me, but you’ll need to come with me to get your tux.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because if you’re going to make an impression on Winter, it will need to fit well.”

  An impression? The impression I usually make on most High Society vamps is my boot print on their asses. Now I had to charm some jackass to get information? Shit.

  10

  ERIC: THE ARTISTE UNKNOWN

  For a man who’d just risen from the dead (again), I looked good in the rented tux. Rachel had suggested that I buy one, but I didn’t want to eat up the rest of Greta’s savings. I felt guilty enough about renting the limo with Greta’s credit card, but Rachel said that entrances were important and an undead Mustang did not say elegance. It was her first ride in a limo and I think the only thing that kept her in that strapless green gown was a desire to impress Ebon Winter.

  The driver, an oni named Tiko, didn’t need to be getting any ideas anyway. Oni are Japanese ogres that eat people. He was big, green, and had a single black horn protruding from hi
s forehead. In Void City, Tiko and his brothers perform public services for the supernatural folks who can afford it and don’t want to pay off the cops. They are also the reason that a lot of disappearances go unsolved, thereby avoiding a costly Fang Fee for the supernatural perpetrator. If there’s no body, then there’s no crime, and, like the werewolves who’d eaten Roger, Tiko and his brothers don’t tend to leave any leftovers lying about.

  The Artiste Unknown was in a much nicer neighborhood than my club. It looked bigger, more expensive, and in all ways superior to the Demon Heart, except that I could tell just from looking at it that there would be no naked girls inside. Even if there were naked girls inside, they wouldn’t be dancing the way my girls had. They’d be covered in silver body paint or disguised as trees or something. Even so, it was quite impressive, a modernistic palace of glass and light and style. I hated it.

  As we walked up, a smooth-looking vampire with blond highlights joined the one watching the door. They had a quick discussion and I could tell that the newcomer was not pleased. From the sound of it, the guy at the door really worked security and had just pummeled a prospective guest. I supposed he was used to a far more straightforward job description than being a doorman at this club required.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Andre,” the stand-in said. “Klaus said he would just be a minute and that guy wouldn’t wait.”

  The human in question was standing off to one side and his vampire girlfriend was gazing into his eyes with a concerned look on her face. When Andre looked her way, she bared her fangs. “That cretin almost killed Ken.”

  I stepped forward with Rachel and the female vamp bared her fangs at me. I bared mine in response and “announced” myself.

  Vampire society classifies vampires by how powerful they are and any known weaknesses they have, dividing them into Drones, Soldiers, Masters, and Vlads. It has nothing to do with bloodline, but everything to do with personality, the strength of the individual’s character. I’ve always thought of it as a supernatural Rorschach test. I guess being a Vlad is like getting the perfect score. That makes being an Emperor like getting college credit for the course or something. All I know is that I have all the powers in the book and I tend to come back from just about anything, like Dracula.

  The lower down the food chain you are, the more your betters can fuck with you. Vlads and Masters can detect each other. We get a mental image, a sense of age from those nearby, and if we want, we can push an awareness of ourselves into a Drone or a Soldier, kind of a big don’t fuck with me bulletin. That was what I did when I “announced” myself to the three vampires at the door. From their reactions, the girl and the stand-in were both Drones, but Andre was a Soldier. He kept his cool pretty well. I almost liked him.

  “Might I be of assistance?” I offered. Social interaction with most vampires is like a damn dance. I knew a few of the beginner steps, but if we started to cha-cha I was going to be out of my league. I’d probably have to start putting undead back in their graves.

  I missed Roger, even though he had killed me twice. Roger had been much better at this crap. He’d enjoyed it. He’d liked hanging out at the Artiste Unknown.

  There was a reason I’d let him handle all of this stuff before I found out what a murderous little backstabbing power whore he was. God, he’d been good at it, even if he had always been a little sloppy. If you pushed him around, he developed a stratagem and set plans into motion. By the time the last domino fell and you finally saw what was going on, you were already screwed to the wall and crying for mama. When I get pushed around, I push back. I can’t help it; it just happens. I had a feeling that killing off this Winter guy’s employees wasn’t going to help my situation.

  Andre looked into my eyes and smiled. His eyes didn’t, but his mouth did; it made me like him a little less. “No, thank you, sir. Everything is well in hand. Go right in, Lord…”

  “Eric,” I told him. “Just Eric. Kind of like Sting, but not.”

  I offered Rachel my arm and Andre held the door for us as we walked in. The music and the lights hit me all at once, but that wasn’t what made me pause. I sensed twelve Master vampires and two Vlads. I couldn’t sort them all out, but I thought I recognized one of the Vlads. It was Ebon Winter; it had to be. The second thing that hit me was the people. Over five hundred hearts pushed a few thousand quarts of blood. Most of them were dancing; the varying scents and perfumes, the heightened states of excitement…after the calm of being a ghost, it was just too much. I pulled Rachel tight to my chest and buried my face against her neck.

  “Shhh…,” she said soothingly. Her fingers traced small circles on my back underneath my jacket. “Focus on me. One heartbeat, all yours. One blood, all yours. One body, all yours.”

  My hands clenched and I grabbed my own forearms, afraid that if I grabbed her, I might break her. Rachel blew softly on my neck, cooing to me as if I were a child, whispering little nonsense words. I smelled the cinnamon that was perpetually on her breath and knew she was up to something. The background noise began to fade; the scents, the blood, my intense desire all slowly abated. Concentrating on Rachel helped. Another thirty seconds and I was able to pull slowly away from her. Her scent was confusing. She seemed excited, afraid, and relieved, all at once.

  “Works like a charm,” Rachel said mischievously. “Are you okay, baby? I thought I was going to lose you there for a sec.”

  I nodded.

  “How did you do that? Was that more thrall stuff?” I asked.

  “I have my ways,” she teased. “The principle is similar to what some parents in England did during World War II. Children were having trouble sleeping because of the war, the air raids, all of that, so they learned that if they put the child to bed with a piece of bread, then the kid could sleep at night because at the very least they knew what they were going to have for breakfast.”

  “I remember that.”

  “Same thing,” she said as we worked our way through dancing couples, some human, some vampire, and most mixed. “It doesn’t matter how much blood is out there or how many women, because…” She guided my hand to her left breast. “You’ve already got your prey right here.”

  I didn’t want to think about that, so I changed the subject.

  “This Winter guy…How would you describe him?” I removed my hand from her breast and took her by the arm. I could smell the alcohol from the bar across the room. More surprising was the aroma of food. The tang of various fried, grilled, and broiled things made my mouth water. The thought of watching Rachel eat was appetizing; there was also the possibility she might actually be hungry. We headed that way.

  While I maneuvered us toward the bar through the crowd, Rachel answered me, “He’s…well, beautiful, like a piece of art or something. Really metrosexual.”

  I stumbled over the word for a moment, before I realized I’d heard Tabitha use it before. If I remembered correctly, it meant a straight man who had the style and fashion sense of a gay man. That sounded like him. The image in my mind had shown him to be physically in his early twenties. He had carefully ruffled blond hair that reminded me of David Bowie, but younger and more attractive.

  Outward appearances can be very deceiving amongst the undead, but from the feeling I’d gotten when I sensed him, Ebon Winter couldn’t have been more than a decade old. He felt like the last performance of “Candle in the Wind” or Johnny Colt and Marc Ford’s last show with The Black Crowes…very late nineties.

  “He’s younger than I expected.” I wasn’t used to sensing a large group, but I got the same feel from the others in the room. They were all young as far as vampires go, only ten or fifteen years undead at the most.

  We made our way through the club. A circular glass stage moved up and down in the center of the room on a sleek column. Large screens of various sizes showed the action onstage. The two biggest screens had to be fifty feet high and ran the entire length of the walls they were on. A band was onstage—modern alternative, but good. Raw talent was proppin
g them up until they got a little more experience under their belts. If I’d been a talent scout, I would have signed them in a heartbeat.

  “He was supposedly turned on his twentieth birthday eleven or twelve years ago,” Rachel told me. “I hear it pissed off a lot of people when he was made instead of the competition.”

  “Competition?”

  “His sire is some really ancient Vlad from way back and he only turns two vampires every ten years, a male and a female. I don’t know exactly how it works, but apparently the potential vampires have to compete against each other for the privilege. There’s supposed to be a lot of money involved, too.” The music changed, and Rachel, recognizing the tune, laughed and let go of my hand. She moved in amongst the dancers and joined them. She belonged there, dancing with them to the techno beat. I didn’t. Dancing is something I watch others do. The hunger and the presence of so many people began to close in on me again. I gave her a warning look and she stuck her tongue out at me in reply, but came back to my side.

  “A lady doesn’t leave her escort,” I said, quoting Sinatra at her.

  She pointed up at one of the walls that didn’t sport an enormous video screen, indicating a series of terraced box seats. “Winter is probably in one of those when he isn’t onstage. Or he could be in the lower level under this floor. There is a whole second club down there just for his highest paying patrons and their guests. It’s called The Velvet.”

  “Winter? He goes by his last name?”

  “Yes.” She rolled her eyes at me. “Everyone knows that.”

  Everyone but me. “Okay, okay. So if we can get down to The Velvet and they let us in, we have a better chance at getting to meet him. How do we do that?”

  “I don’t know everything.” She smiled. “But we’ll think of something.”

  That didn’t sound good.

  11

  ERIC: DOMINANCE TRAINING

  For the next few hours we killed time waiting to be noticed. Rachel and I danced half a dozen times. I know, I know. I don’t dance. Don’t get me started. We got seats at one of the little glass-on-metal tables near the bar and Rachel ordered an appetizer. The chairs looked—and felt—like they’d been bought for appearance over comfort.