“Five hundred,” he announced, his words clipped and his voice rumbling with something that wasn’t an accent. If I could see through the shroud of magic hiding his true form, I was betting he was huge. Only something with a big lung capacity could growl their words the way he did. Now I was more certain than ever he was an ogre.
I unsheathed the blade, all twenty-eight inches of hand-folded steel, and the sword sang to me of age and violence. I plopped my credit card on the counter and thanked all the half-gods I knew it wasn’t declined, because I already had the weapon slung over my back.
“Let’s go kill a vampire, shall we?”
If the old man understood me, he didn’t seem to care.
The Columbia was one of several upscale hotels that popped up around New York from time to time. This one was owned by the Rain family and had been designed around the concept of the Canadian province of British Columbia. The walls were lined with redwood tree trunks, and light was filtered through dappled green sconces to give the impression of sunlight through tree leaves. The lobby floor was Plexiglas over river rock, with fresh water flowing under guests’ feet. Instead of music there was the ambient noise of babbling water and birds.
It made the wolf in me very, very happy.
My vampire half, on the other hand, was suspicious of even fake sunlight.
I’d managed to convince an off-duty bike messenger to sell me his empty travel tube, which hid the katana perfectly. It’s amazing what you can get when you show a little cleavage. Or offer to pay twice the value of what something is worth.
Now I was carrying a concealed weapon and brimming with murderous intent. I’d missed a call from Tyler while negotiating with the bike messenger, and since we’d already reached the hotel, I couldn’t call him back. What could I say if I did? Sorry, Detective, I need to kill someone quickly, but once that’s done, can we get to the smooching?
I doubt he’d appreciate that.
Holden hung back, lurking in the fringes and doing what vampires do best by being completely unseen in a room filled with people. The lobby was a mix of real guests and tourists who wanted to photograph the now-famous lobby. I couldn’t do Charlie in down here, so it looked like I’d need to go to his room after all.
I was probably the only woman alive who was pouting about going to Charlie Conaway’s hotel room.
Striding up to the front desk, which was made of driftwood set between two totem poles that rose up to the ceiling, I threw my shoulders back and gave the clerk a wide smile brimming over with ditzy charm.
“Hi!” I inched closer and fixed him with a meaningful look. I might not have been able to enthrall humans, but if I focused hard enough, I could be more persuasive than usual. “I’m here for Charlie Conaway.”
The clerk smiled in a knowing way and winked for good measure. It was then I realized my phrasing made me sound a bit more professional than I’d meant. If blushing was more than a fleeting rarity for me because of how much blood it required, I would have felt my face heat up then. As it was, I accepted this was what it took to get me past the gatekeeper.
Not to mention, if Charlie’s victims were under the thrall, they would have used similar possessive language. I probably wasn’t the first, but I would be the last.
“Penthouse Three.” He nodded towards the elevator bay, whose doors were rescued barn wood instead of typical gold. “Just take it to the top.”
Holden met me at the elevator doors but stayed silent until they shushed closed behind us.
“Who is Charlie to you?” I asked, breaking the quiet lull.
He stiffened. Getting a physical reaction out of him was a sure sign I was on the right track. I’d suspected his attitude tonight had to be the result of something more than professional interest in my contract. The almost giddy behavior, juxtaposed with bouts of surliness, made me wonder what the two vampires meant to each other.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter. I’ve never seen you so moody before. I’ve never seen you happy before.”
He smiled. “You’ve seen me happy before.”
I stared at him, not needing words to make my point.
“I’ll confess, most of my amusement was from throwing a monkey wrench into the gears of your night.” His smile was more honest this time. The way he said monkey wrench was a dead giveaway of how old he was, because even the passé slang sounded forced.
“Jackass,” I countered. Holden always seemed miffed to hear a lady swear, so I tried to do it as often as possible around him.
“He’s not for you, Secret.” He was referring to Detective Tyler.
“He could be.” I was offended. Who was he to decide who I could or couldn’t be with?
“Remember Gabriel?”
After I recuperated from feeling like he’d sucker punched me in the gut, I said, “Gabriel isn’t a marker for every human ever.” I played with the strap over my shoulder so I didn’t have to look at him. It was a low blow, and he had to know he’d struck a nerve.
Gabriel Holbrook had been my live-in boyfriend once upon a time. He’d moved out over a year ago, after living with me for only three months. We dated for almost a year overall, and I had loved him. But how can you love someone when you have to repress everything about yourself that comes naturally? He’d known I was hiding something, and it got to be too much for us both.
He left, and I hadn’t seen him since.
“You can’t have a relationship with a human. It puts us all at risk.”
My sadness filtered away, replaced with hot rage. “The council doesn’t get to tell me who I can and can’t date! I am not one of you, and they’ve made that perfectly clear.”
“If Tyler finds out what you are, we’d need to wipe his memory. And you would be punished.” He wasn’t angry, not rising to meet my tone. He was just telling me the cold, hard truth. “If his memory couldn’t be altered…”
“I know.” It didn’t need to be said. If Tyler’s mind was too strong to be fooled, he’d be killed. And I would be to blame.
The elevator gave a cheerful ding, announcing our arrival at the penthouse floor.
It opened on a secondary lobby, which consisted of a long hallway, dimly lit, with carpet that looked like grass. On each side of the hall were two doors, marked PH1, PH2, PH3 and PH4. If memory served from what I’d read in the Times article about the hotel, behind each door was a foyer and small sitting room, and an elevator which would take guests to their appropriate penthouse level.
I was reaching for the bell on PH3 when we heard something move behind the door. It wasn’t Charlie—this person was too heavy and the footfalls louder and less deliberate than I knew his to be. There was the noise of scuffling heels on marble floor, a muffled scream, and then the unmistakable sound of vertebrae snapping. I was frozen to the spot, realizing with cold horror I’d just heard a girl die less than two feet away and hadn’t been able to stop it.
An instant before the door swung open Holden grabbed me and backed me up against the entrance to PH2. My eyes widened with surprise, and I tried to ignore the sudden discomfort of the travel tube digging into my back where it was sandwiched between the wall and me. I hadn’t felt or seen Holden move. In one breath I was one place, in the next I was on the opposite side of the hall with a vampire pressed against me.
I had opened my mouth to speak but was silenced when I saw a huge, bald vampire, who looked like every bodyguard cliché, exit the door for PH3 with a limp, lifeless girl propped against him. I wanted to get a better look at her, but Holden had a different plan in mind that I was not made privy to until it was in action.
His hand cupped my chin and forced me to turn away from the vampire before the hulking mass realized he’d been seen. Holden didn’t express anything with words, because the other vampire would hear what was said in such a narrow hallway. Instead, my vampire looked me in the eyes with a pleading expression that tried to help me understand what he was up to. I didn’t know what he was planning, but I got the subtext—don’t fight it.
Then his mouth was on mine.
For a moment, from sheer surprise, I tried to pull back. But Holden was a vampire and much stronger. He held me still with one hand. After that, I accepted there was more to his plan than kissing me and let myself yield to it.
He kissed me with the deliberate precision of someone who had learned to kiss over the course of two hundred years. When someone kisses you so brilliantly, you can easily forget who and where you are, and what brought you there. It wasn’t long before I surrendered to his efforts and melted against the movement of his mouth.
It began as a decoy kiss, just lips on lips. But when he sensed I was no longer fighting him, his mouth forced mine open, and he growled as my tongue tentatively brushed against his. He buried his hand in my hair, dipping my head to the side and exposing the smooth line of my neck. This was second nature for a vampire, where sex and blood went hand in hand. But if we were doing this to pretend we were just a frisky couple, unable to wait until we were through the door, we couldn’t behave like vampires. We needed to be human about this.
I bit his lip.
He retaliated by shoving me hard into the door, using the full line of his body to keep me pinned. My mouth opened, a shocked groan attempting to escape, but he kissed me harder and more enthusiastically than before. I put my hands on his shoulders, my fingernails raking upwards from his shoulder blades, dragging him closer to me.
In response, his hands skimmed the edge of my hips and down to my thighs. His knee moved between mine, nudging them apart and inching the hem of my dress higher. He grasped hold of me, and I gave a little hop so he could lift me the rest of the way. With my body still pinned against him, I snaked my legs around his waist. His kisses began trailing down my neck, and in spite of our efforts to be normal, his fangs were exposed and grazing over my skin.
Ding.
The elevator swished closed, and the bald vampire and his corpse were gone.
Holden’s exploring kisses stopped at the sound, and I froze, wide-eyed and painfully aware of my precarious position. I stared at him, and his pupils were dilated and glossy black, overwhelming the usual chocolate brown of his eyes. He put me down and was on the opposite side of the hall before I’d had a chance to smooth out my dress.