Chapter 25
She’d barely managed to rip its robe, but the biter roared as if suckerpunched. Layla threw herself sideways, or at least tried to—it grabbed her, and Max’s assurance that biters wouldn’t hurt her seemed terrifyingly like a sadistic joke.
“How dare you!” it howled, its claws locked around her arms, and shook her so hard her head bobbled. “How dare you strike at me!”
It gabbled other stuff too, mostly in a collection of foreign gobbledygook, and kept shaking. Layla went limp, and even though the monster was probably going to tear her head off in the next few seconds, she felt curiously… well, deflated.
It was acting, after all, just like a man.
Then it stopped all at once, a flood of terrible, tingling silence.
The monster pressed her against the wall bruising-hard, its body a marble statue, its face buried in her hair.
A long, endless breath—she wondered blankly if strands were getting up its nose and the thought of vampire-snot hair gel was morbidly, distantly funny—as its ribs swelled like a cobra’s hood.
“Ohhhhhh,” it groaned. “Look what you made me do, Psyche.” Another string of incomprehensible gibberish followed, but its volume was falling.
Just don’t let it try to… She couldn’t even finish the thought. Every muscle locked in trembling stasis, a deer staring into headlights as slow dozy hatred swept through its entire body.
She wanted to fight. But if she did, what hideous action would this thing be provoked into?
“—no, no, no.” The creature shifted back to English, which was either a good sign or a very bad one. “All will be well, yes, all will be well. We have just the thing.”
The world turned over. Layla screamed again, a long desperate wail; Max’s father dragged her along the parquet, his ancient bony fist knotted in her tangled hair.
It hurt, she tried to tear free, kicking and scrambling, the sudden irrational fear that her scalp was going to rip loose swallowing every other consideration.
“Stop it!” the old biter roared, bending down to yank her upright again. Another round of shaking, and though she was sunk eyebrow-deep in terror, a hazy realization pierced the shell of panic.
It was nearly as strong as Max, yes, but it was restraining itself. Which was almost as terrible as the alternative.
It finished shaking and dragged her along—thankfully just by the arms, not her hair anymore—for a few paces before kicking the ballroom doors open.
Hallways unreeled around its floating speed and her staggering attempts to put a foot down every once in a while.
Images flashed by, a massive staircase leading to a vast plain of white-and-black squares slippery under her sadly battered boots, and the angle of a doorway set off another firecracker-burst of memory inside her ringing skull.
It’s the old Schellburger Mansion. Griskov’s place.
Their original target—this was his main lair, built by a railroad baron back during the first Texas oil rush, crumbling and renovated by turns, and finally bought by Griskov two decades ago.
There were architectural and lifestyle photo spreads of the interior from the previous owner’s tenure; Layla had pulled them and put together the initial file herself.
Said previous owner had almost certainly been a cocaine cartel lord, and there were whispers of how he’d vanished.
Max’s father had clearly moved right in, made himself at home.
Most of the place looked like a war zone now.
Furniture was battered to sticks and rags, strange huddled shapes lay flung in corners, spatters of dark fluid reaching in high arcs along certain hallways, and the atrocious, titanic stink she’d hardly noticed—she was, after all, confronted with a batshit-insane biter, and that was overwhelming enough—was recognizable as well.
The clustered shapes were corpses; they reeked of shit, fear, and a thick brassy odor she didn’t need newfangled vampire senses to name.
It reminded her of autopsy photos, Suzy’s poor mangled body, a whole cascade of associations any mortal animal knew when that cold metallic aura drifted on trembling air.
Death.
Grishkov’s security? Human, not vampires.
These had to be henchmen or employees; now she could see rifles and pistols scattered about as well, shell casings glinting in sprays and piles.
They’d clearly tried to defend the place—had Max done all this, coming back to tell her the blood all over his clothes wasn’t his, and that Grishkov was ‘no longer a concern’?
Or had the creature dragging her along gone for a murderous spree?
Not like it matters, she thought, hazily.
The corpses thickened, stacked to either side like cordwood.
Another set of doors slammed open; she was hauled through an antechamber and into another dusty, stifling room, thankfully free of dead bodies but holding something even more horrifying—a big white and pink four-poster bed, the kind child-Layla had looked at in catalogs, dreaming about having her own house one day.
Not a trailer, not a ‘manufactured’ or an apartment, an actual house.
But not like this. No.
Ohshit.
A big, white-painted antique vanity sat against one wall, a walk-in closet stood open and empty with a few scattered wooden hangers caught in its throat.
The dark cave of what had to be a bathroom exhaled dual scents of rust and damp through an archway, and a vast bank of pink brocaded drapes showed where there was a window, if she could just get to it.
Hot, numb-tasting nausea filled her belly, crawled up to swamp the terrible thirst.
And she still couldn’t vomit. The feeling was completely, utterly horrible, and useless as well.
The biter shoved her against the bed’s foot, where a padded bench rocked as she landed, hard.
He stood staring down at her, the crimson points in his pupils shrinking, before sucking in another deep bellows-breath and lapsing into motionlessness.
A terrible shadow of sanity crossed that strangely young-looking face.
He looked almost forlorn in that moment. Which didn’t do her any good, no sir; chills raced down her back.
Layla gripped the edge of the bench, did her best not to look at the window.
If she could somehow toss herself out—or at least get hold of some broken glass, there would be a way to saw at her own wrists, her own throat?
All it would take was enough pressure, the older biters had tough skin but she wasn’t there yet—
“I apologize,” the biter said, suddenly. He sounded a lot calmer, but that wasn’t helpful at all. “It has been some time since I was… you must understand, I have been alive so very, very long.”
So has Max. How much older was this thing? She held herself very still, wondered if it was possible to strangle herself with whatever moldering sheets were on the bed. There were curtain rods in the closet, she was pretty sure—the hangers argued for that luxury, didn’t they?
“You must be… frightened, yes. But don’t worry.
” The mad biter’s accent had thickened, though the unevenness between words had smoothed out somewhat.
He fumbled at his robe, reaching through the slashes down its front—had she done that?
Heavy brown velvet flopped, and for a moment the biter looked very much like a human teenager patting himself down for missing car keys.
“A treasure made a very long time ago. A pretty, pretty thing, for pretty things like leman.”
There was that word again. Did it mean he wasn’t going to kill her?
But of course, there was something worse.
If this thing touched her, if it tore her clothes off and threw her on the bed…
she might have thought nothing could be worse, but now she suspected her ever-acctive imagination was failing her, for once.
Why didn’t it bite me? Something important about that, lingering just at the tip of her overworked, overheating brain. Max bit me first thing, why didn’t—
“Aha!” The biter now sounded pleased. Its eerie calm persisted; this sudden attack of almost-reasonableness was far more horrifying than the screeching and throwing her around. “Here we are.”
A glitter, a golden gleaming. Thin strands and intricate metal knotwork dripped between long, strong coppery fingers; both he and Max had really good tans even after all the time away from sunlight.
He shook the shining thing out, held it up.
“Do you like, do you find it, ah, acceptable? Gold, of course; silver burns the poor sweet fledglings. But you’ll never need worry about that, no.
” The biter leaned down, arms extending, and the expression he now wore was truly obscene.
Eyebrows anxiously raised, a tentative smile with no hint of fangs—except for the robe and those falling-apart sandals, he looked like a boy offering flowers on a first date.
Except for the way he twitched at the end, as if he couldn’t stay still.
The juxtaposition of human nervousness with powerful, crazy ancient thing was nauseating, terrible, wrong.
Had he been cuckoo-crackers before the vampirism, or had living so long driven him irredeemably ’round the bend?
Was he trying to stay sane, flexible, like Max said?
She almost pitied him.
Almost.
“It’s a collar,” he continued. “Very, very old, made in the East with arts now lost. Cost a big shiny penny, a demimonde thing. You’re just right for it.”
He’s offering jewelry? Another desire to bray with heebie-jeebie giggles rose in Layla’s throat, dark and terrible. If she started laughing now, she might find out what was even worse than dreading the big pink bed lurking behind her.
The biter darted forward, too swiftly for her to dodge or even flinch.
Fabric tore, a terrific yank against her shoulders, sweater-sleeves parting like water.
Cool metal touched her throat; the openings in complex metal knots were designed to leave bare spaces to either side of her larynx, while the band to the back of her neck was solid.
Oh, it’s so they can bite, she thought. Then the necklace squirmed against her skin, warming rapidly, and the biter’s loose dark curls brushed her smoke-tarnished hair as he fiddled with something near her nape—it had to be the catch.
A flash like lightning, an electric white blur filling the world. His cheek rested against hers, cool and hard.
“Yesssss.” A long, satisfied hiss. He inhaled again, filling his lungs, then straightened.
“You’re all right now, little leman, peerless Psyche.
Nemesis will be killed by his siblings, then I will destroy whatever remains.
Or he will finish them all and come to meet his end upon my claws.
” A bright, young, careless laugh, all the more chilling for the note of ancient, sadistic glee.
“I will let you watch, perhaps. Then we will be alone.”
That’s what you think, motherfucker. Layla’s body would not obey. She sat, staring straight ahead, humid summer air caressing her bare arms below the T-shirt’s sleeves.
Her sweater—Max’s sweater—hung from the ancient vampire’s left hand, a dead pelt.
Her breath came softly, regularly; her pulse settled.
The lassitude wasn’t like the warm forgiving syrup of a monster-blood high; it was simple, sheer inability to move.
She could feel the padded bench under her thighs, her hands now loosely draped instead of clutching.
“First the bite,” the young-faced monster chanted, brushing at her hair with his free fingers.
He smoothed the strands almost like Max had, sudden gentleness far more nerve-wracking than the roaring, the shaking, the screams. “Then the claiming. You’ll keep me from true-death, dear Psyche.
And I will see that you want for nothing.
Isn’t that nice? Nod for me, kardoula mou. ”
Her chin dipped without her brain telling it to. Frantic internal signals wouldn’t reach her arms, her legs; she couldn’t move.
Not of her own volition, at least. Her traitorous body performed a slow, dreamy nod.
The creature smiled, rising to his full height, and looked down at her with a nearly avuncular expression.
“Now be good, and do not wander. I must attend to some business, but I’ll return very soon.
It’s rather nice to feel again; I will enjoy many years of discovering the limits of…
Oh, yes. We shall have so many experiences, dear Psyche. So very many.”
Warm air puffed, redolent of dust, neglect, and corpses stacked higgledy-piggledy in hallways. The creature’s scent faded; she heard creaks and shifting as the house settled, a rumble of what might be distant thunder.
Layla strained to get up, to scream, to lift her arms. Could only manage a tiny rocking motion on the bench. It was the necklace, it was somehow locking her in place.
Oh, God. Oh god oh god oh god…
Her heart, her lungs paid no attention. A breathing statue, she stared at the door to the hallway, her eyelids drifting down at regular intervals to blink, then back up.
And she could not move.