Chapter 14 Arabella
Arabella
Sinead: All members are invited to attend the opening of the MIDNIGHT GARDEN AND SCULPTURE PARK – a jewel in the crown of Sanctus Estate.
Our esteemed leader, Gideon Blake, will unveil the sculptures and introduce the artists.
Entertainments provided. Thralls welcome.
Open bar. The blood cocktails will be flowing all night.
Alyra: I’m at Sanctus Club, and someone has told me some utterly salacious stories about you and what you used to get up to. Naughty Arabella, the infamous Parisian courtesan. You are way too much fun to be hiding away. Come join us!
“SHOULDN’T YOU BE OVERSEEING your private kingdom at Sanctus Club?” I glare at Gideon as he greets me at the bar in Brimstone. The bar is packed, the music loud and aggressively vampiric – a haunted house soundtrack mixed with what sounds like a vending machine throwing up.
Cleo VII swings her head off my shoulder, opens one lazy eye, and flicks her tongue in excitement.
“Shouldn’t you have that on a leash?” Gideon leans back in his chair and smirks at me.
I hate how beautiful he looks tonight, his hair a glittering golden halo beneath the club lights, his black pinstripe suit perfectly fitted to accentuate his broad shoulders and lend him a slightly dangerous air, and the watch peeking from his cuff sparkling with real diamonds.
The king among his fawning subjects. “Which Cleo are we up to, now?”
“Cleo VII and I come as a team. She’s an excellent business partner. She weeds out the liars and time-wasters because she has no legs to pull.”
Gideon laughs, his aquamarine eyes sparkling. “She’s your business partner? Interesting. I had her pegged as a civil serpent.”
“Only I may say snake puns. Say another snake pun and I will turn around and walk out of here right now and leave you to your fate.”
“Woah. Don’t throw a hissy fit.” He grins. “Sorry, I couldn’t help it. Can I make it up to you with a drink?”
“That depends entirely on the quality of the drink.”
Gideon turns to the bar. He dismisses an Upyr who taps him on the shoulder and leans over to speak to Lilac, who is slinging her signature blood cocktails.
Lilac’s slime-green mohawk glows under the lights as she pours a glass of vintage blood for Gideon and mixes me a cocktail.
She grins at me as she hands me my glass – it’s a bloodsinthe, which is still my drink of choice.
Some habits will never die. I’m shocked that Gideon remembers.
“Enjoy your evening. I hope to see you dance again soon.” Lilac winks at me as she leans across the bar to deal with another customer.
I take a sip. The absinthe is sharp and fragrant, perfectly harmonising with the tang of the blood, with just enough sugar to take the edge off. Exactly the way I like it.
“That Lilac is a magician,” I say. I don’t have to yell over the music. It’s one advantage of being a vampire with heightened hearing.
“I gave her the recipe.” Gideon regards me over the top of his glass as he takes a sip. His glass holds blood only – some kind of royal vintage, judging by the deep claret colour. “We import the absinthe from a boutique distillery in France. Only the best will do.”
“It is satisfactory.” I set the drink down. “You want to do this now, with this raucous party in full swing?”
“There’s always a raucous party at Sanctus.
That’s why you love it here. But truthfully, the sooner we get started, the sooner I can get the development back on track.
” Gideon glances around the room. Something like worry passes over his features.
But I know Gideon Blake doesn’t care enough to fear anything. “I’ll take you to our vault.”
I expect him to lead me to the elevator that goes to his private apartments. I’ve worked with enough rich Upyr to know that they prefer to keep their treasure close. So I’m surprised when he opens a nondescript door to a narrow staircase that leads down into a gloomy basement.
“This way.”
I wrinkle my nose. “Hard pass.”
“Arabella, this is where I keep the goods.”
“You don’t keep your valuables in your apartment? You hide the wealth of Sanctus down here with the…” I point at a dark shape dangling in the corner of the doorframe. “Spiders?”
“I do have a safe in my apartment, but that contains the heart of Sanctus – which, before you ask, is not a garish diamond necklace lost on the Titanic – as well as my personal treasures. This safe is for the regular, boring old treasure.”
Gideon picks the spider from its web and holds it out for Cleo VII, who gobbles it up in one bite.
“You’re just trying to butter her up.”
“I don’t need to. Unlike you, she’s unarmed.” Gideon pats Cleo’s head. “Ladies first.”
I descend the narrow stairs, every moment becoming more aware of how trapped and vulnerable I am down here, and how Gideon’s body behind me blocks my only means of escape.
He may claim that he’s given up his crime lord ways, but he still exudes beautiful danger like a Valentino sample sale.
Perhaps I should have told my friends where I was going tonight.
But that’s ridiculous. Did I expect that Isis and Dora would drop their tarot cards and come to my rescue? Or that Winnie and Mina would give up spending the evenings with their lovers to skulk around a dusty basement with me?
But telling the others would mean questions, so many questions, especially from nosy Isis. And I might let slip that my purpose for accepting this job is to find what I need to ruin Gideon.
I don’t need them. I have my knife strapped to my thigh and nearly two centuries of carefully honed vampire instincts. I can look after myself.
Even when you’re alone with Gideon Blake? A dark voice in my head taunts me.
Especially then.
At the bottom of the staircase is a low-ceilinged corridor stretching in both directions.
To the left, I see a loading dock and storage area.
Gideon leads me right, past a series of locked rooms, to a heavy steel door.
A sensor scans his fingerprints and retinas, and the door clicks open. He drags me inside.
I suppress a gasp as I take in the chaos.
The vault is large – over twenty square metres – and every inch is crammed with furniture, rotting wooden chests, stacks of gold bars, and pyramids of hessian sacks.
I touch one of the sacks and it topples over, sending a cascade of twelfth-century gold coins across the concrete floor.
This is absurd.
Why is Gideon trusting me with this treasure?
Surely he knows he’s handing me the keys to his undoing?
I’m used to dealing with, at most, a few sacks of gold or random collections of religious relics.
This job doesn’t require a financial advisor. It needs a vampiric Marie Kondo.
Good thing I know one of those.
I mentally revise the plan in my head. If I let Winnie take care of the sorting and cataloguing, that leaves me free for the scheming.
Gideon clasps his hands together, his eyes widening. He looks so trusting. “So, can you help?”
“Of course.” I step over the pile of coins and inspect a stack of chairs.
They bear the mark of Chippendale on the bottom.
My mind swirls with all the possible ways to use this treasure hoard against him.
“But this isn’t as easy as holding a jumble sale.
All of this needs to be sorted and catalogued before I can start converting it into cash, and it can’t hit the market all at once, or you’ll have the authorities sniffing around. I need Winnie.”
“Consider it done.” Gideon whips out his phone and taps out a text message. “She says she’ll be here in six minutes.”
“How? Black Crag is fifteen miles out of the village, and she’s got to navigate a precarious turret staircase and Alaric’s desire to keep her in bed forever and ravish her body until she’s a quivering mess.”
I mean it jokingly, but my words sound harsh in the brutalist basement. As if I’m jealous of my friend and her happiness. As if I secretly long for a man with a cock like a one-eyed anaconda who could keep me satiated. As if such a man existed.
Gideon’s eyes flash with heat. He steps towards me, his body caging me in so my back presses against the stack of Chippendale chairs. His gaze sweeps over my face, the colour of his irises deepening to a striking cobalt as he digests my words.
“If you ever need someone to turn you into a quivering mess—”
I snort. “I’d like to see you try.”
That was supposed to be dismissive.
It came out like a challenge.
Like a command.
Maybe I am in over my head.
Cleo VII regards Gideon from my shoulder. I silently command her to bite him. Instead, she slithers off me to wrap herself around a chair leg. Traitorous bitch.
“I may have been a mere human last time we tumbled in the sheets.” Gideon leans in. He doesn’t touch me, leaving a space between us wide enough for my imagination to fill with all kinds of filthy promises. “But I seem to recall you enjoying yourself.”
“It’s my job to make little donkeys believe they are stallions.” I glare up at him, defiant, determined to claw back control.
“Those little noises you made, and the way you bit down on me when you came so hard you broke your bed, was that all part of the act?” He’s so close now that his breath brushes my naked neck. “I’ve had a hundred and fifty years to practise. I know a few tricks that might surprise even you.”
“Somewhere in the woods, a tree is working hard to replace the oxygen you consumed with that absurd tale,” I bite back. “You should apologise to it.”
I want him to kiss me, so I have an excuse for castrating him.
Yup. That’s the reason.
It has nothing to do with the tempting way his bottom lip puffs out, or the red cherry and poppy scent that swirls around me, making me light-headed and a heat flare between my thighs.
“You wound me, Arabella—”
A cold head drops between us.