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“And now you accuse her of what? Stealing her own property?”
“It was not her property; it was fey property. And your lady is wise. Perhaps she had discovered this and realized that the only way she could retain the stone was to—”
I didn’t get any further, but I did discover what the two guards were for. A few seconds later, my butt hit the dirt in front of the elegant circular driveway. Frick and Frack were waiting just outside the gate, huddled in the inadequate shade of a small maple. They weren’t bothering to conceal themselves anymore, I guess because I’d already spotted them. They took in my disheveled appearance and grinned.
I grinned back and glanced up at the blazing sun. “I guess we better get started. It’s a three-mile hike back to the car.”
The double doors to the Manhattan triplex were opened by a beautiful young man with silky blond hair, big blue eyes and a pulse. I hadn’t expected a phalanx of guards—this was a private residence, not vamp central—but a human doorman was almost a novelty. “You’re late,” he admonished gently, stepping to the side.
Since I hadn’t bothered to call ahead, I thought that a little strange. “Sorry.”
He let me in, but not my shadows. I’d left them in the lobby, assuming Geminus wouldn’t want to talk in front of Marlowe’s men. The last rays of the setting sun streamed in the floor-to-ceiling windows as we crossed the large foyer.
It made the one at the Senate’s New York office look like a poor relation. A crystal chandelier sparkled from a twenty-foot-high ceiling, lighting up a sweep of carreraclad stairs edged by an elaborate wrought-iron railing. A shining path of marble led off to the left, where I could see a glimpse of a double-height ballroom through another set of doors.
“Main salon,” the doorman said, indicated the ballroom with a sweep of his hand.
I passed through, expecting an ambush but not getting one. The room was huge, with tall windows looking out over the twighlit cityscape. The decor reminded me a lot of vamp central, all old woods, gilt-edged moldings and, in this case, a black, white and gold color scheme. It was the sort of room that called for grand masters in heavy gilt frames on every wall, yet despite there being plenty of space, there wasn’t a painting in sight.
But then, there was a reason for that.
A vamp stood by the fireplace, his cap of auburn hair shining under the lights. He didn’t look up as we approached; his focus was on the young woman writhing face-first against the wall. Her dress was long, red and pooled around her high heels. She hadn’t been wearing anything under it, and her bare skin gleamed in the low light.
Her hair was down, except for a few sweaty strands clinging to her cheeks. It cascaded almost the full length of her back, until the vamp brushed it carelessly aside. It flowed over her shoulders like a fall of russet silk, revealing a scarlet ribbon laced up her back. The ribbon was threaded through a set of corset piercings that framed her spine, eight tiny golden loops biting deeply into her skin and glinting palely.
The vamp stood behind her, toying with the piercings. He ran a finger up and down the tiny loops, just hard enough for them to tug at her skin, to bite a little bit harder than usual, to pull a groan from her lips. His back was to me, so I couldn’t see much of him, just dark auburn curls tickling his neck and the back of a tuxedo. He’d taken the coat off and draped it over a nearby chair, leaving him in white dress shirt and perfectly fitted black slacks.
At first I thought I’d caught him in the middle of dinner. Vampires could feed by touch, pulling blood molecules through the skin, or through the air in the case of a master. And the woman was definitely being fed upon, if her reaction was anything to go by. She hugged the wall, panting, as he slowly began drawing the ribbon from its little loops.
She had it pulled tight, and it slithered out easily, over skin already so sensitized that every tiny tug made her tremble. His finger drew a line down her spine, causing a quick, indrawn breath and a helpless shudder. It might have been pleasure or pain now, because he’d stopped being careful. His touches were raising bruises as he let the blood pool under the skin, not bothering to absorb it all.
And then something happened that shook my belief that I knew pretty much everything about vampires. The masses of small bruises on the woman’s back suddenly began to change, to coalesce, to flow together into new shapes. Where there had been only ugliness before, a mar on her beauty, a crenellated ridge of mountains appeared.
His hand did a second pass, and the remaining bruises became an intricate latticework of gnarled branches, brown and black, framing the hills. And I finally figured out what he was doing. He was healing some sections of the damage in a few days, others a week, still others two, in order to have the bruises change to the hue he liked.
It gave a whole new meaning to the term “living color.”
“Nice,” I said. The overall effect was surprisingly attractive, if you ignored how it had been created. And if you didn’t care that, once the euphoria of the feeding process wore off, the woman was going to be in excruciating pain.
“She is a good subject,” he agreed.
A glance around showed that he wasn’t the only “artist” in the room. The weak struggles of other canvases ringed the walls, bare bodies splayed against exposed brick. Many of them were manacled in place to keep them upright, although most hung limp in their chains, passed out from blood loss. I assumed it was no worse than that. Death would cause the blood in the body to pool in the extremities, ruining the artists’ hard work.
Most appeared to be young women. I guess I knew why I’d had it so easy getting in.
Livid lines cascaded over one pale buttock and down her thigh, a riotous abstract design that mimicked brushstrokes. He was signing his work. “Geminus,” I said, watching the lines etch themselves across her skin.
“At your service.” He finally looked up, and it was still a shock, after all this time, to see how handsome the monsters could be. This one had bright hazel eyes, riotous brown curls and a cherubic face, which brightened in recognition. My feet suddenly slid across the polished floor and my arms flew up, pinning themselves to the wall.
Geminus pulled off my jacket and let it fall to the floor, then smoothed a hand down the length of my back to my ass. Before I realized what was happening, he had casually unzipped my jeans and tugged them down past my hips. I struggled, but I doubt he even noticed, and I certainly didn’t get anywhere.
That doesn’t happen to me often. My strength is better than average and I have a natural resistance to vampire powers. But then, most of the vamps I meet aren’t two thousand years old, either.
He cupped one cheek, running a thoughtful thumb over the skin just above the line of my thong. “I wonder, is it true what they say about dhampirs?”
He pressed down, hard enough to leave a thumb-shaped imprint behind. I didn’t need to see it to know what was happening: I don’t heal as fast as a vamp, but I’m no slouch, either.
“Interesting.” He circled me, his face thoughtful. “I can’t use vampires for my work,” he told me. “They heal too quickly—even the new ones. There is no time to exhibit a piece before it is gone, erased by the body as if it never existed.”
