Carrie Vaughn - Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand

He probably just wasn’t answering his phone. Didn’t mean he was in trouble or anything.

“Thanks for humoring me,” I said to Ben as we walked to the Napoli. I felt like we were a team again.

Ben said, “If he’s not answering his phone, how do you even know he’ll be there?”

“Maybe he’s not. But I have to try. And if he’s in trouble—”

“Kitty. You can’t save the world. What makes you think he even has anything to do with that mess at the Hanging Gardens?”

“It’s vampires. They’re always tangled up. Nothing’s ever simple with them. Maybe you’ve noticed.”

“Yeah, I have. So what, we ask for him at the front desk again?”

“I still have the key card to his penthouse. Let’s hope it still works.”

Inside the elevator, I tried the card, and surprise, surprise, it worked. A smarter guy would have had the card canceled or asked for it back. But Dom was a gracious host. He was also a vampire, which made me wonder what his veneer of amiable cluelessness was hiding.

Beside me, Ben was fidgeting, nervous. “This may be a bad idea, walking into a vampire’s lair like this.”

“You’re probably right,” I said.

He did an actual double take. “Really? You’re admitting it?”

“Yeah.”

“I can’t help but notice we’re doing it anyway.”

Er, yeah... I wrapped my arm around his and squeezed close.

The elevator stopped. The doors opened to the foyer of Dom’s suite. Both Dom’s vampire bodyguards were on watch. Sven stood at the elevator doors, a six-foot-five mass of polished Nordic chill. His smile showed a hint of fang. Behind him, at the other end of the foyer, the other, silent bodyguard stood watch. I avoided looking at him and concentrated on Sven.

I smiled back and waved. Told myself to be brazen. “Hi. Is Dom in?”

“What are you doing here?” Sven said, not angrily or defensively, but curious. Definitely not surprised. He’d probably seen us coming on some security video. It would be easy to keep track of anyone coming to Dom’s suite. Didn’t mean the vampire priestess couldn’t sneak in.

But everything looked normal. Sven even looked relaxed—amused, maybe, at the werewolves who thought they could march in here without a by-your-leave.

I couldn’t make excuses or bluff my way out of this one, so I laid it all out.

“Earlier tonight I had an encounter with the woman from Balthasar’s show over at the Hanging Gardens, and I couldn’t help but notice that she’s a vampire, and I have this sneaking suspicion she may be a really, really old vampire. Like the Babylonian motif over there isn’t just a gimmick. And, well, I had this encounter because she and her boys chained me to a wall and tried to sacrifice me to some goddess called Tiamat. I know this all sounds really silly, but—”

From the suite’s interior came the sudden wail of a woman reaching sexual climax. That kind of orgasmic noise used to make me jealous when I was single and living alone in an apartment complex with thin walls. So. A couple of people were having sex in Dom’s living room. At least, I assumed it was two. And I only assumed they were having sex.

The wail faded to a soft moan, then to a sigh. I might have been blushing. Ben raised his brow. Sven’s expression didn’t change a whit.

“So,” I said. “Am I to take it that Dom is here and just... not answering his phone for obvious reasons?”

“Correct,” Sven said.

Ben leaned close to me and whispered, “Maybe we should take the hint.”

“Follow the example?” I whispered back, and he nodded.

“I’m sure everything here’s just fine—”

“Sven? Is that Kitty? Tell her to come in.” Dom’s voice echoed from the living room.

“Actually, we can come back later—”

Sven stepped aside and tilted his head, indicating that I should enter the vampire’s lair. The second bodyguard’s lips curled in an amused smile.

Now, this was awkward.

“You asked for this,” Ben said helpfully. “How about I wait right here?”

“Don’t you dare,” I said, taking his hand firmly in mine.

We crept forward. I peered ahead, ready to duck away at the first sign of something I didn’t really want imprinted on my memory. I didn’t have to look at Dom to talk to him. The living room with its panoramic windows came into view.

Fully clothed, Dom reclined on one of the sofas, cradling a woman, also fully clothed, in his lap. He held one arm across her chest, bracing her against him. His other hand was hidden under her skirt, between her spread legs. She was flushed, her head thrown back and her mouth open in a grimace of ecstasy. One side of her pink spaghetti-strap cocktail dress had slipped off her shoulder. She clung to him, white-knuckled, and blood trickled from a wound on her neck.

He licked the blood, kissed the spot, then carefully worked his way out from under her, barely jostling her as he moved. She remained lying on the sofa in daze, her eyes closed. Dom adjusted a pillow under her head, then smoothed her dress into a semblance of modesty.

I had never yet had the guts to ask a vampire if blood tasted better with all those sexual hormones saturating it. I figured it must, because they always seemed to be wrapping the blood thing and the sex thing together. I wasn’t sure vampires actually had sex in the conventional sense. But they could sure make people get off on being blood donors. It made a strange kind of symbiotic sense.

Standing before us, hands behind his back, looking suave as ever, Dom licked his lips before saying, “It’s really too bad that thing about having to invite people in only works on vampires.”

“Yeah, well, that’s what you get for being top of the food chain. The rest of us have to have some kind of fighting chance.”

“Why’d you come here, Kitty?”

“You’re not the oldest vampire in town. Who is that woman from Balthasar’s show, that priestess chick?”

“Set her sights on you, did she? I had a feeling.”

“And you didn’t warn me? You didn’t do anything about it?”

“Sorry. I thought you could take care of yourself. But if she decided she wanted you, there wasn’t much I could do about it.”

I swallowed back the growl stuck in my throat. But my claws were pressing against the inside of my skin. Ben put a hand on my shoulder. The touch steadied me.

“How’d you escape?” he said, continuing. “She doesn’t usually let anyone get away.”

“I had help,” I said, fuming. But I couldn’t vent. Couldn’t lose control. I didn’t have the power here. “But I guess that means you haven’t heard about what happened over there tonight? The police are still bringing out the bodies.”

He shrugged, unconcerned. “I know what I need to.”

“And where is she now? What happens to her now?”

“If she’s really as old as you think she is, what makes you think anything happens to her? What do you possibly think you, or any of us, can do?”

“Is this your city or not? Are you the Master here or not?”

He took a few steps, turned to gaze out the city. He wore an indecipherable smile, like he was laughing at me. I didn’t get the joke.

That was it, that was the thing about him: he got all the perks without any of the responsibility. He got to look like he was in control, with the glitzy casino, the penthouse suite, the beautiful women swooning on his sofa. He was all image. And he didn’t care.

“Does Rick know?” I said. “Do any of the other vampires know?”

His mouth turned, half smile, half sneer. “And what are you going to tell them? You tell them any of this, you think they’ll believe you?”

I opened my mouth, starting to say something about truth and justice, but he cut me off with a glance.