Crimson Night Read online

  And that was the secret of my power. Of how I got any man I wanted. When Lust tagged you, she’d turn me into whatever her prey wanted. Blond, brunette, Asian, Hispanic, didn’t matter...I could do it all.

  He chuckled. “And what’s wrong with that?”

  I choose to ignore that comment. That bastard would like nothing more then for me to turn into Marilyn Monroe meets Pamela Anderson: thin, busty, and babaliciously blonde. But I wasn’t turning. Not while I had my riders behind me.

  I tried to bury the nasty thought that I also didn’t want to turn because I was still royally peeved I hadn’t figured out Billy.

  “Oh I see,” Luc came to stand beside me, “you’ve tagged yourself a live one.” He laughed, but the sound wasn’t exactly pleasant.

  Again, I ignored him. My prey was my business. I didn’t bother him about his.

  The ride was coming to an end. I walked toward the controls, the entire time watching them. Their heads were bent. Belle wore a smile that said very clearly Billy was gonna score tonight. That wasn’t what bothered me though. It was the look of hunger, need, reflected on his face that made me tremble.

  And when they kissed, I swear it was magic. I closed my eyes, for a second feeling as if it were his lips pressed to my own, his hot tongue sweeping my mouth. My heart hammered. Lust screamed at me, banging at the walls of her cage.

  She wanted to be fed and she wanted to be fed now. Luc’s gaze was fixed on my face. I felt it like a hot brand.

  “I know that look.”

  “What look?” I glanced at him from the corner of my eye, making sure not to make contact.

  His jaw clicked. “You want him.”

  I shrugged. “He wants her.”

  “Then take him.”

  I planted my hands on my hips and turned to him, pouring as much of my anger into my gaze as possible. “I don’t do that. Unlike the rest of you heathens, I’ve got rules.”

  “Rules are meant to be broken, Pandora.”

  The ride was done. I slammed the button, lifting the bar lap and growled at him. “That’s where you and I are different, Luc. You don’t get me now, you never will.”

  I felt him. I tried not to look. I tried to ignore him. Pretend Billy didn’t exist. But I felt the brush of wind sweep against my arm as he walked past me. Then he looked at me. Stopped and studied me.

  I heard Luc inhale, saw Belle turn with a question in her eyes, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t have ripped my gaze from his if the world was burning down around us.

  In that moment, in that second, I felt a connection to something I’d never known before. I saw me in his eyes. Pandora. Not a reflection of lust, but me, and he was drinking it up.

  I shivered.

  “Billy?” Belle’s voice finally cut through the spell.

  “Coming,” he muttered and when he finally turned, all I could do was take a shaky breath and lean against my booth on knees that felt suddenly too wobbly to hold me up.

  “What the hell was that?” Luc snarled, glancing over his shoulder.

  I shook my head, still smelling sandalwood everywhere. I had no idea. I rubbed goose bumps on my arm that refused to go down.

  “You know what, Pandora...just,” he clenched his jaw, “whatever.”

  I watched him go. His feelings were hurt. He tried to pretend he didn’t have them. They all did. They all pretended to be hard. Bad. Evil. But that’s where I’m different. I’m tired of pretending.

  I should go after him.

  I should do lots of things.

  But I stayed where I was. Riders came and went. My antipathy growing stronger and stronger, knowing Billy had probably left already. Why was I so intrigued by him?

  I hated to admit this, but I kept looking out into the crowd, hoping for one more glimpse. A sighting. My lips twitched.

  He was just a man. Another pretty face in a sea of plenty. Surely there was someone else out there who’d make both Lust and myself perk up with delicious anticipation. But the thought was a lie and I knew it. No one else had ever intrigued me like that. And for someone as old as me, that’s beyond amazing.

  An hour later I finally had to admit defeat. He wasn’t coming back. It was late and the crowd was starting to thin out. The goose bumps were still there, I was feeling scratchy, uncomfortable in my skin. I scratched my arms, trying to exercise the feeling of tiny ants crawling all over me.

  It was Lust.

  Billy had made her come alive and now she needed feeding. I could try to ignore it. Say screw it and go to bed. But I’ve tried that before. Let’s just say it wasn’t pretty. Think P.M.S. a million fold. She could turn me into a raging hormonal wench, better for everyone if I just did the dirty now.

  I sighed, hung the sign on my wheel saying it was closed and headed to Bubba’s tent.

  He was standing outside, leaning against one of the poles, a half smoked cigarette dangling from his mouth. Red eyes the shade of fresh blood glanced at me. Obviously he’d gotten his fix. I shuddered at the thought.

  “Dora?”

  I wrapped my arms around myself. “Hey.”

  Ugh, I so didn’t want to do this. Didn’t want to step one foot inside the den of iniquity. I wasn’t a slut, though Lust forced it on me. I tried a couple hundred years ago to stop cold turkey. Stop feeding her. Stop having sex.

  Yeah, let’s just say lots of legends cropped up about monsters that went bump in the night after that experiment.

  “You hungry?”

  He wasn’t asking about food.

  I nodded. Feeling like a junkie going to her dealer. Knowing the drugs were killing her, but unable to stop the all-consuming need for more.

  “It’s in your eyes, Dora.”

  I glanced to my right.

  “I hate this.”

  He snorted and flicked his cigarette on the ground, grinding it under his boot. “Got something in there that might cheer you up.”

  “I doubt it.”

  He grinned. “Has ol’ Bubba ever steered you wrong before?”

  My heart thumped thinking maybe, just maybe Billy was inside. I bit my lip, Lust stretched like a lazy cat curling up from a nap.

  “Vampire.”

  Anger sizzled hot and quick. I hated vampires. We all did. Blood thirsty maggots. They needed killing. Cold hard violence, always a razor’s edge below the surface came roaring to life. Lust was pissed this wasn’t Billy, pissed she had to screw something so repugnant, but that would make the killing all the more sweeter.

  I smiled and Bubba nodded, holding open the tent flap.

  I stepped over and around the pile of bodies bumping fuzzies around me—a roman orgy at its finest. Tonight I wanted blood, violence. I wanted to shake Billy from my head.

  For the vampire it was just a matter of the wrong place at the wrong time.

  The vamp was a pitiful whelp of a boy who’d been sired not long out of his teens. The tent’s red lights added shadow to hollows, made his face appear gaunt and skeletal.

  The stripper knew her role, one look at me and she was gone.

  His black eyes grew wide when he saw me near. They filled with desire and heat.

  “Hey, big boy,” I cooed, “wanna play?”

  Instantly I felt my body transform into his idea of perfection. Tall and waif thin, hooked nails and long fangs.

  Ehh, to each their own.

  He reached out for me and I grabbed his hand. “I know a private place.”

  He grinned and when he stood he grabbed my butt, squeezing hard.

  My stomach churned and bile rose in my throat the second he touched me. I hated this. Hated the slut Lust could force me to become. But I shoved it aside; I did this because I had no choice. I did this, because if I didn’t, the demon side of me would become dominant and kill any innocent unfortunate enough to step in its path.

  ~*~

  The vampire stared with sightless eyes. Its still beating heart held firm in my hand. After the sex, I’d lured him to a thicket of trees. I’d told h
im it was because I’d always fantasized about making love outdoors. Truth was I had to kill him away from prying eyes. I knew the game. I didn’t kill after sex often, but you didn’t live to be as old I am without learning the rules. The first and most important rule of the neph: Leave no evidence.

  I threw his heart to the ground and stomped it underfoot. It looked and sounded a little like squishing a rotten tomato with your fist. The heart exploded in a crimson shower of blood and gore and then it was consumed by black flame, charring it instantly and turning it into a fine black powder. A strong breeze picked up the particles and carried it away.

  I dug a ditch with my bare hands. The damp earth sifted between my fingers like fine sand. What might have taken a human hours to do; I’d done in five minutes. With a hole suitable enough to bury a body in, I threw the vamp inside and kicked the dirt back over him until all that was left was a small lump of overturned dirt and debris. I ran my hand over the spot where he lay, pushing glamour into it so that if anyone passed by they’d get a vague sense of unease and scoot along.

  Standing, I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, feeling his blood smear. It made me gag. I needed to clean up. Get him off me. Forget this had happened. Or what had caused it to happen. One day shouldn’t have been enough to turn me so desperate. I couldn’t understand it and it worried me.

  I was too lost to the thoughts in my head. I should have been more focused on my surroundings. By the time I figured that out, it was already too late.

  The sharp whistle of metal flying through the air rang loud in my ears. I looked up, just in time to see a silver star rip into my upper shoulder. Shocked, I couldn’t move. Then I heard a loud thump and stood face to face with a pair of dull brown eyes.

  My heart tripped. “Billy?”

  He snarled.

  “I knew you were dangerous.”

  “Shut up,” he growled, then a fist slammed into my temple and my world turned black.

  Chapter 3

  First thing I noticed was the metallic, too bitter taste in the back of my throat. When the bastard hit me I must have bitten my tongue, because it had the taste of old blood. I winced at the dull throb blooming in my temple. I tried to touch my head, but couldn’t. My wrists were bound and the way he’d tied them back stretched the wound in my shoulder.

  Right now it was a tolerable ache, but it was one of those cuts that as the night progressed would begin to feel worse if I didn’t heal myself. There was only one way to do that. After the way he’d ambushed me, I didn’t think Billy would be up to the task.

  Or myself for that matter. Cute as he was, I was seriously torn between my desire to bed him or slit his throat. Right now, I was pulling more for the latter.

  I shifted and that’s when I realized the bastard had tied my ankles too.

  Well la-de-da, wasn’t he the smart one? I was really starting to hate cowpoke Billy.

  Although he'd made a tactical error, trying to subdue me with a piece of rope was about as stupid as trying to stop a herd of angry elephants with trip wire. Nothin’ doin’, as Bubba would say.

  The stomp of booted feet and thud of books falling to the floor made me crack one eye open to look.

  I’d made one mistake tonight. I wasn’t about to make another. He wouldn’t know I’d roused until I was good and ready to let him know.

  The only light in the room came from the flicker of several lit candles. I was sitting in a chair, in the middle of a living room. I wiggled my toes. They sank into a soft blue and red patterned Turkish rug.

  Surely he hadn’t...

  I opened my eyes a little wider and glanced to my left. Dark, royal purple drapes hung from the small windows. Crosses of every shape and size covered an entire section of wall and a ratty, brown leather love seat sat catty-cornered at the wall nearest the door.

  That bastard.

  I clamped my jaw shut, taking deep breaths in and out, willing the frothing anger away.

  This was my trailer.

  My foot jerked in frustration. Where were my boots? If he’d ruined them, I’d kill him. No, maybe I’d kill him either way.

  Those had been my favorite pair. It was hard to come by leather so well broken in, not to mention they made my legs look amazing.

  Yes, I was vain. So sue me.

  I grit my teeth, but uttered not a sound. For once Luc would have been proud. I was actually being patient, studious. Normally I’d snap first, ask questions later. I’m not sure why I wasn’t giving into instinct. Maybe I was curious. Then again, you know what they say about curiosity and the cat...

  Piss the curious cat off and get filleted.

  Billy moved from one bookshelf to the other, yanking books out, throwing them to the floor as if they were little more than your everyday paperbacks. Dispensable. A dime a dozen. But they weren’t a dime a dozen. Some were first edition classics, given to me by the author’s themselves. Others had literally helped shape and define cultures.

  His finger grazed my leather bound Oedipus Rex. If he pulled that down, patience be damned, I’d gouge his eyeballs out. It’s not hard, a little squeeze in the right place and, pop, out they come.

  I seethed seeing him touch my things.

  He lingered for a while longer, then seemed to think better of it and moved on.

  Good boy. He’d live to see another day.

  “You’re awake.” That voice was like smooth-malt whiskey, deep and full-bodied. I shivered.

  “Excellent.”

  His back was to me. How had he known? I hadn’t made noise.

  He finally seemed to settle on a book. He grabbed it and turned, still not looking at me, he traced the gold lettering on the front cover.

  I narrowed my eyes. “I see you found my home. Mind telling me how?” I tried, but failed, to keep the dripping anger from my tone.

  Those plain eyes of his flicked to my face. His was an unreadable mask as he studied me. Then he shrugged. “I’ve been watching you.”

  “How long?”

  He opened the book and flipped through a couple of pages.

  My nostrils flared. Anger settled like a hot coal in my gut. He was ignoring me. People had done far less and I’d hurt them far worse.

  Darn me and my philanthropic ways. I’d let him go, and this was how he repaid me. Pushing glamour into my hands, I filled my wrists with heat where the rope touched. I’d cut through this thing and then wrap it around his neck, see how he liked it.

  “I wouldn’t if I was you,” he finally said, looking up from the book and slamming it shut. He moved toward me with the careless grace of a jungle cat, before I could even blink he was upon me. His heat invading mine, his face hovering inches above me.

  There was anger...and something else, something I had no name for, glittering in those eyes. He placed his hands on either side of my chair and turned me around. I cringed. That rug had cost a small fortune.

  “You tear it you buy it,” I hissed.

  His eyes crinkled at the corners. He wasn’t as young as I’d initially assumed him to be. Up close like this I could see the lines and wrinkles of age. Earlier I’d assumed him a fresh-faced college grad, now he reminded me much more of the hot college professor all the girls gossiped about.

  He was still wearing the ball cap and I had a sick feeling I now knew why.

  I’d assumed him human. But no human, even one as strong as a tank, could have gotten through the wards of my trailer, or for that matter masked the fact that he’d been following me.

  My heart thudded...

  “Don’t push me. You’re lucky you’re still alive.” His lip curled. “Nephilim.”

  ...and then it sank to my knees.

  Oh this was bad.

  He pushed away from me, making the chair rock back from the force of it. The pain in my head and shoulder that had become slightly tolerable exploded back to life in a rush of stomach churning queasiness. I squeezed my eyes shut; biting down until I felt my teeth would shatter from the pressure and counted to
ten, waiting for the worst of it to pass before I dared open my eyes again.

  He sat on the love seat, his long lean frame settling in like someone who’d done this a million times before. Which made me wonder, had he? Just how long had Billy been watching me?

  Dammit. Dammit. Dammit. I should have sensed this. Him. How had I wound up in this mess?

  I could always feel the presence of something not quite normal; it was like an irritating buzz below the surface of my skin. But even now, with Billy right in front of me, I felt nothing. The only other time I failed to sense the presence of other beings was if they were equal to, or greater in strength than myself. Which was rare. I was about as high on the totem pole as they came.

  I clenched my jaw. This was not good.

  Again he opened the book, flipping to the middle and read in silence.

  My heart pounded.

  Billy was Pontifex Mortus—meaning priest of death, the name had stuck to them back sometime during the medieval ages when our scholars spoke mostly Latin. The Pontifex Mortus are to us what a mongoose is to a cobra. B-A-D news.

  Several hundred years after we’d come into being, they’d been born. Their existence consisted of only one thing. Killing us. Aside from angels and high caste demon lords, we fear nothing so much as them. We aren’t sure how, or by whom, but the Pontifex Mortus—priests, we prefer to call them—have been given the necessary tools to wipe us out. It isn’t easy to kill one of us, but the right knowledge in the wrong hands, and we’re goners.

  They’re shadow. Able to blend in. Hide among the general population. And it’s hard to say, with any type of certainty what they really are—humans with extrasensory perception and power, or something more—we don’t know. They have abilities and skills beyond that of mortals, but you can never seem to find anyone who knows for certain, because you never bump into a priest more than once. Since meeting one of them tends to turn you one hundred percent, grade-A dead.

  So then how does the myth remain? How can we know priests exist and that they aren’t our version of the boogey man? Two reasons. Two things we know that will always remain a constant. A. You cannot fake that shade of hair. I don’t know who figured out that priests are silver, but any sighting has always confirmed it.