CHAPTER 2 #2
I swear that he blushes. It’s just a small patch of darker gray along his cheek, visible through the smears of makeup: gray and darker gray beneath flesh-colored camouflage.
“I meant amicable to a deal. I’m here to make you a deal.
” Under his breath, he adds, “And I’m supposed to be a skilled negotiator? ”
Since I don’t know what to do with any of that, I lick my parched lips and force my mind to think through the advantages and disadvantages of agreeing to be alone with him.
But when my gaze drifts to the men’s cell where the prisoners are all studying the brick wall like it holds the answers to eternal questions, I realize it’s a wasted effort to resist him.
He can get to me here or anywhere. I might as well go with him, thereby helping to preserve supernatural knowledge from the world.
He can clean up his kill—me—without the media being alerted, though the so-called journalists are probably already in his pocket.
Damn billionaire vampire.
Fine, I’m scared. I’m even a step beyond scared, but I’m not going to show him that my insides are all quakes and rolls. “Um…”
That’s all I can manage. That’s all my suddenly closed throat will allow. Because alone with him means bye-bye Bunny, it was an average life, so sorry you’re dead.
With a long, slow sound of sadness that has me wanting to hug him and tell him it will be alright, he straightens.
I’m so dead. I give it three minutes before I impale myself on his fangs. Stupid, bad slayer.
“I suppose it will have to be compulsion, but I want you to know that I’m only using my power because we need to act quickly. You’ve wrought incalculable damage.”
My lashes flutter closed, only to open immediately…
except that now I’m seated across a scarred wooden table from him.
We’re in a closed room, presumably with a locked door.
He’s leaning back in a metal chair, hands in his pocket like he doesn’t have a care in the world.
His jacket hangs open, revealing his crisp white shirt, stained with makeup at the collar and puckered over the front, probably from the water I threw at him.
Plus, there’s a nasty rip right over his heart where my stake pierced, though I don’t see any blood. Just the desecration of fine tailoring.
Bunny, the tailoring slayer.
Go, me.
“Before you ask, I compelled you,” he says, in that rumble of honey I’ll take to my grave.
“I’m also holding your delectable ass onto the chair, so I wouldn’t waste the effort attempting to flee.
Now, I’m going to cut to the heart of our predicament: you embarrassed me in front of an audience of millions and potentially outed Kinds to a world unready for such a revelation. ”
Right. I did do that. I hadn’t considered that the emission would be live. I thought they were taping. I was sure that the police, or FCC rules, or something would force them to cut out the graphic slaying. Damn it.
“Exactly.” He nods. “In addition, you’ve impacted my project with your antics.
Power-mad evildoers wish to implement digital identification for purposes of transacting all commerce, which is one small step away from the implementation of a chip.
Hello, End Times. My project is the only one at present with the potential to keep this world spinning. ”
“Oh, come on. Ego, much?” I grit out.
“Not ego, Bumps. Reality.”
Shit. If true, that’s bad. Everyone knows that the big 666 is coming, but I thought it was more of an eventual thing. “And that’s what your work is about?”
“Creating an alternate system in which both wealthy and poor nations can access local currency from a percentage-based fund backed by precious metals, one that will elevate the poor while allowing the rich to keep their goods? A system that is, more importantly, anonymous in nature? Yes. It’s taken me centuries to work out a plan, but now it’s all in jeopardy, thanks to your stunt. ”
“It wasn’t a stunt. You’re evil. I was born to slay you. And besides, I don’t understand how my trying to stake you reflects poorly on you. People don’t know you’re a vampire.”
“Not. A. Vampire,” he grits out from between his teeth.
But suddenly, his gray skin turns darker as he flushes.
If I didn’t know better, I’d say he looks ashamed.
“But apparently, my shareholders and fellow financiers are… upset. They’ve labeled me a harasser for calling you ‘Bumpy’ after staring at your breasts for what must have been several seconds too long, though I’d love to meet the man resistant to such fixation.
Coupled with the fact that my compatriots believe you must have tried to kill me for a reason having to do with sexual misconduct and…
well. They believe I have something to hide. ”
“You do.”
“In any event…” His jaw is so tight, I could use it to crack walnuts.
“In the moment, the only explanation I could find to explain away events was to tell them that you’re my actress girlfriend, and that you decided, in a fit of insanity, to promote your new play by acting out a scene on live television.
Not a brilliant explanation, granted, but my cock still ached from the kiss of your knee, my makeup was running down my face from the holy water, and I was witnessing everything that I’ve worked for—everything the world requires to go on spinning—being dragged into the mud.
I wasn’t at my best.” He takes out his hands and studies them.
Some of the color along the back is spotted, like he also wears his makeup on his hands.
Some of the holy water must have removed it, too.
But now that I see him in the awful light of the overhead fluorescent, it’s clear how truly gray his skin is. Not dead-gray. More like stone. Not sparkly, but… sparkly-adjacent? Like my mother’s gray-swirled marble countertop, actually.