Selene Page 9

  What if she Turned?

  How long would it be before she couldn’t even pass for human anymore, if Nikolai kept playing with her?

  She was trapped. Again.

  She pivoted, letting out a short cry that bounced off the tiles, and flung the comb across the bathroom. It hit the floor and skittered out the door into Nikolai’s bedroom, followed by a towel. She looked around wildly for anything else to throw. Found a bar of soap and a pretty brass soap-dish, hurled those too. There was a glass bottle holding lotion, she pitched it at the mirror and listened to the sound of falling glass. The heavy smell of roses filled the room, pale creamy lotion leaking down the cracked mirror.

  Seven years bad luck, I’m infected, infected. Why did I have to be born like this?

  She stalked into the bedroom, the dress fluttering around her bare ankles, and overturned both of the chairs, hurled the tray across the room to splatter against the far wall, then leapt onto the bed and kicked the covers off, jumping up to try and tear the curtains down.

  That didn’t work, so she hopped down, almost tripping on the sheets pooled on the floor, stalked to the mantel and swept the vase with its dead rose away. The sound of it shattering as it hit the floor was not nearly satisfying enough.

  The door to the rest of the goddamn place was open. She couldn’t escape the confines of the house.

  But inside the house was fair game. Fury boiled up inside her. It was only the beating of wings against the inside of a cage. If she was lucky she’d batter herself senseless.

  Selene ran out into a long hall with stairs going up at the end, dimly lit by tasteful wall sconces. She couldn’t find anything to throw at them, so she raced down the hall and up the stairs. Her breath came quick and hard by the time she reached another hall, this one with dusty red carpet.

  There were pieces scattered alone—a porcelain vase on a stand, paintings on the wall, and best of all, a slim brass sculpture of a half-naked woman holding up a bowl of flowers. This was about the size of a baseball bat, and its top fit snugly in Selene’s hands.

  He bit me! The scream shrilled inside her head. The bastard, the absolute bastard, it’s not enough that he fucks me, he has to BITE me too!

  She swung the brass sculpture. The porcelain vase shattered. Selene skipped back, avoiding the shower of pieces. Her lips pulled back from her teeth, a rictus that made her cheeks ache.

  Two paintings ripped free of the wall, and she came to a choice. She could go down a hall with bedroom doors on either side, or she could go down another short flight of stairs into something that looked like a gallery, with different glass cases and other things scattered around. Stairs it is.

  The first glass case shattered, and Selene skipped back again. Her heart hammered madly, her ears full of a sound oddly like ocean waves roaring up and retreating. Footsteps echoed through the halls. An awful keening yell rang in the dark, cavernous room. It was her own voice, screaming.

  Trapped. Trapped again, like she’d been trapped all her miserable fucking life.

  Get it, Selene? Fucking life? So funny. You’re such a funny little slave girl.

  Another glass case shattered. She caught a glimpse of what was inside it—a bucket? Rusted and old, but there was a heady breath of Power in the air. Dust swirled, twisted into hieroglyphs, settled, rose again to writhe in complicated patterns. Something magickal was in this room. Or several somethings.

  Selene couldn’t care less.

  There was a low hulking shape covered in a dustcloth, and Selene ripped the cloth free to find a small red car. The little plinth in front of it had a brass plate that read J. Dean. Acquired #053.

  She swung the brass sculpture (the base a little scratched now) and the windshield gave in a shower of pebbly safety glass. Running footsteps echoed through the halls.

  She lifted the sculpture again. It thudded into the hood, once, twice, leaving huge dents in the pristine red paint. Then she bolted, pausing only to smash a case that had something that looked like an Egyptian collar in it. She didn’t read the card for that one. He’s been collecting for five years, she thought, coldly, and now he’s branching out into keeping pets. Paranormal pets.

  Well, if she was a pet, there was no reason not to chew on the furniture and piddle on the rug.

  “Leave her alone!” someone shouted. It was Price Netley. There was a gallery running upstairs along one side of the huge room, and Netley leaned over the heavy carved banister to shout at whoever was behind her. His bland blond face was twisted into a feral mask, his eyes dark holes and his mouth moving far too much. “The Master says she’s not to be touched!” His voice boomed and echoed.

  Selene let out another sharp scream, a falcon’s cry, and broke another glass case. Her arms were burning now. She swung again, the heavy brass base smacking into an ornate wooden Ouija board that splintered under the impact, the sheet of glass laid over it shivering into an odd spiral pattern.

  She screamed again, shattering yet another case. This one held six or seven withered clawlike things that some rational part of Selene recognized as Hands of Glory. All of them had scorch-blackened fingers, and she shuddered, leaping over broken glass. My feet are going to be hamburger if I keep this up. She swung the brass statue again. This time it rebounded from a heavy stone sarcophagus set upright on a black curlicued wrought-iron stand. The shock grated all the way into her shoulders. Her throat felt as if a red-hot collar had been clipped around it, and the medallion swung as she lifted her arms again.

  Another cry burst out of her, and she brought the statue down.

  Nikolai caught it in one hand, his fingers closing around the square base. The statue stopped, but Selene’s arms didn’t reverberate with the sudden shock. It simply stopped.

  Her ribs flared with deep, gasping breaths. I wish I had a gun. Only I can’t tell who I’d use it on. Him, or me, or just the whole goddamn world.

  Nikolai’s eyes flicked over her once, from head to foot. “Bring her shoes, and a coat, and her purse,” he said, apparently to thin air, but Selene heard motion in the shadows. There were only a few lights burning in this cavern of a room. Someone scurried to do what he said.

  Scurry, scurry, the Master’s said so. Polly put the kettle on, master’s come to tea. A lunatic singsong revolved in her head, and she let out another sharp cry. This one wasn’t a scream—it died halfway out of her mouth, broke on a sob.

  Selene tried to wrench the statue away from him. It stayed immobile, though he held it in one hand with no apparent effort. “Let go,” she said, acutely aware of the heat against her throat. Broken glass crunched under someone’s booted feet, but she didn’t look back, staring at Nikolai’s face. You bastard. You undead piece of shit.

  A muscle twitched along his jaw. But he didn’t look angry—one corner of his mouth tilted up, and his eyes crinkled just a little at the corners. His hair fell over his forehead in a soft wave, melding with the darkness, and he wore the same jeans and white button-down that he’d changed into after his shower. He’d added steel-toed boots with heavy tarnished silver buckles against the black leather. “Only if you will. I understand your anger, Selene. Be still, now.”

  An electric shiver spilled through her body. The bite burned on her throat, a spreading fire. Nikolai’s voice had turned dark, and full of cold steel—the voice of a Master Nichtvren, old and powerful, expecting complete obedience.

  “You don’t understand jackshit.” He didn’t give me his blood, I’m not a thrall. Selene jerked on the statue, accomplishing exactly nothing. “I will smash everything in your house, you son of a bitch,” she informed him, her lips strangely numb. “You bit me. I’m infected. One day I’ll drive a stake through your heart. I mean it.”

  “No doubt.” His fingers tightened on the statue. “You are to come with me, to continue the hunt for your brother’s killer. Unless you would prefer to stay here.”

  What? She swallowed dryly. “Aren’t you going to punish me? Isn’t that your undead thing? Punishment?�
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  He looked away then, back at the trail of broken glass and smashed wood she’d left behind. “I value the trinkets less than I value you, Selene.” He twisted the statue free of her fingers and tossed it, carelessly, to his left. Glass smashed and tinkled. Selene glanced, automatically tracking arc of destruction, and when she snapped her gaze back he was next to her, catching her around the waist and lifting her free of the litter of glass and splinters. His boots crunched into broken glass. “Besides, there are far more enjoyable things to do with you than punish you.”

  The medallion grew abruptly chill, then scorching hot. Why? What is this goddamn thing? “Leave me alone—set me down!”

  “You may hurt yourself.” He paused, lifting her smoothly over another diamond glitter of smashed glass. “You look lovely.”

  It was the first time he had ever said anything even remotely complimentary about her appearance.

  “You bit me!” She balled up her left fist and punched him.

  It was a good hit, right on his cheek. Something crunched in her hand. His head snapped to the side, but he didn’t drop her. Instead, he simply stopped and brought his chin down, the cat-shine folding over his black eyes again.

  Her hand started to throb. A thin trickle of blood, black in the dim lighting, slid down his chin. One of his fangs must have cut his bottom lip. I just made him bleed. He’ll kill me for sure. She felt nothing but a type of dazed wonder. “You bit me!” she screamed. He didn’t even blink.

  “I did,” he agreed calmly. “Now, will you come with me to find whatever killed your brother, or would you prefer to waste time with this display?”

  “Put me down, you fucking sucktooth,” she snarled.

  “When your feet are safe, I will set you down. Will you come with me?” Not giving an inch, of course.

  Something inside her head, a little voice that oddly, painfully, sounded like Danny, was trying to tell her to calm down. Rationality reasserted itself.

  What could she do? Other than wait for him to let go of her and destroy something else?

  You could go with him. Find out all you can. Smash his things later. The more you know, the better you can fight him. And you’ll have to fight him with everything you’ve got, now. He’s infected you, that means he’s serious about keeping you. For the rest of your goddamn life you’ll be trapped here.

  You’d better start thinking, Lena. You’d better start planning.

  Her throat was dry. Every muscle in her body ached to strike out again. “I loathe you. I despise you,” Selene said. “Where are we going?”

  Nikolai moved, glass crunching like small dry bones underfoot. He carried her between silent glass cases, past a tall bookcase in a glass rectangle. I could have broken that. She shivered. Old leather spines showed and a venomously-glowing yellow glass orb perched on one of the shelves. Another, smaller case held a squat black statue, probably obsidian, that looked like a mad cross between a Tiki god and a Cubist spider. It gleamed wetly in the dim light, like Nikolai’s signet ring.

  When he reached the far end of the room, he stopped and let her slide down.

  Her throat burned as she swallowed. “Why the hell are you fucking with me? Can’t you find someone else to torment?”

  “You are a mystery, Selene.” He held her left hand, folding both of his around it, and Power stirred. Selene’s body leapt. She stared at his pale, perfect mouth. It felt like a small animal was stirring under her skin, and the Power he used tingled at the edges of Selene’s shielding. He was healing it—she had never seen that before, either. “You will not start to rot and become a grave-head, nor will you be a thrall. I did not drink that deeply. Your heart still beats, you are still human—were you wounded near to death, there is only a small chance you would Turn. And were you to become a grave-head instead of a full Nichtvren, I would dispatch you personally.” He let go of her hand and she let it drop nervelessly to her side. Whatever had broken in her hand was now fixed, even if it ached a little.

  “That’s comforting.” And oddly enough, it was. If I can get to the hospital and get an enzyme treatment in time I might even be okay. “Why, Nikolai? You planned this, didn’t you.” You were going to bite me when this whole thing started, you’ve just been drawing it out. Playing with me.

  “I have always intended to Turn you, Selene, and make of you a full Nichtvren. But not yet.” He smiled slightly, his good-natured grin, the one that made her want to frantically retreat and find a wall to put her back to. Then he offered his hand, palm-up. “Come with me. I am hunting your brother’s killer.”

  Selene looked at his fingers and flinched back. Give my regards to Nikolai. “I’ll walk on my own.”

  He nodded, his dark hair falling forward over his forehead. His eyes had the predator’s sheen again, and his sharp handsome face was set into that jolly smile. His hand dropped back down to his side.

  Someday, you bastard, I will get free. And I will make you pay for this. She stared at him, her heart thudding. “Where are we going?”

  His smile widened, and Selene took another step back, hardwood cold against her feet. The dress made a low soft sound, sliding against her legs.

  “We are going,” Nikolai said, “to the House of Pain.”

  Six

  The shoes turned out to be black spike-heeled sandals and the ‘coat’ was a velvet wrap Nikolai slid over her shoulders. Her purse was handed to her by another one of his thralls—Rigel, whose lean dark face showed no expression at all.

  Rigel was an enigma, quiet even for a thrall, tall and thin and usually dressed in a black T-shirt and jeans, moving far too silently to be strictly human though Selene could never smell Power on him. Tonight Rigel wore black leather pants and a long black coat, boots that matched Nikolai’s. His dark hair was short in the back and sweeping longer in the front, very punk and almost cute. A diamond earring winked from his left ear.

  Selene’s purse was still closed. She unzipped it and checked, ignoring the fact that Nikolai, Rigel, and two other thralls were waiting for her to get into the long, gleaming limo waiting quietly in the huge garage. Ranks of cars stood on either side, most of them hybrid, a few antique petroleo models crouched on gleaming black tires.

  I hadn’t pegged Nikolai for a conspicuous consumer. She tapped one heel against the concrete. I wish he’d brought me some boots instead of these things.

  The manila folder was still there. Her wallet was still there. The tarot cards, wrapped in their hank of red silk, were still there. Her purse didn’t smell like a thrall had gone through it.

  “What are you looking for?” Nikolai asked. It was as if he had closed a warm hand over her nape, his thumb stroking the most sensitive part. Her stomach flipped, settled.

  “I’m checking to make sure you’re not a thief as well as a total bastard,” she snapped, and zipped her purse closed. The medallion hung between her breasts, warm and reassuring. Nikolai tilted his head back and regarded her.

  She ducked into the limo, clutching the purse to her chest. At least it was black leather, and not too scruffy. Why do I care? She swallowed hard against the lump in her throat. Scruffy or not. Nikolai’s scruffy little pet. His property.

  Selene scooted all the way over to the window on the other side, her ankle twinging a little bit. The Power unleashed by Nikolai’s feeding—and my own, let’s be honest, I fed too, like a good little sexwitch—had repaired muscles and torn tendons and taken the swelling down, but she would still be a little sore. The slice on her hairline was closed and healed over, and her lip was no longer sore and puffy. She was in better shape, but nowhere near full health.

  And the baffled, helpless rage was a steady blowtorch high in her chest, like indigestion. I wish I had a gun. A big one.

  There was a murmur outside, and Rigel ducked into the limo. He sat opposite, stretching out his long legs. Nikolai took his place next to Selene and settled in, almost close enough to touch her. The medallion was hot against her skin, pulsing underneath the dress.


  The door closed. The two other thralls would be up front—one driving, the other on watch. And Rigel. Selene looked, saw the telltale bulge under Rigel’s arm. They were armed. Probably all them were armed, except for her.

  Great. Of course, if I had a gun, I’d shoot Nikolai. He probably wouldn’t find that amusing.

  Or he might, and that prospect sent another shiver down her spine.

  Nikolai touched her shoulder as the limo crept smoothly across the garage floor. She jerked away from the contact, but there was nowhere else to go except through the window, and she couldn’t do that. Not yet, at least.

  It must be full night, she thought, but she was wrong. When the car slid out of one of the garage doors, she looked through the polarized windows and saw it was only dusk, the sun drowning in the bay. Nikolai’s nest was set on a hill overlooking the river and the city, a metaphorical and physical height at once.

  I could open a window and let the sun in.

  Except they would anticipate that, wouldn’t they. Her brain shook like a rabbit in a cage. Gone mad. Gone to lunch. Gone buzzo.

  He smoothed the velvet down over her shoulder, a gentle touch. The mark on Selene’s throat and the medallion both burned. “You’re angry,” he said, a soft dark tone caressing even the upholstery.

  Selene stared out the window. God, I wish I had a gun. “Shouldn’t I be? You bit me, Nikolai.”

  “I gave you my sigil, which marks you as mine. You agreed to it.” He sounded calm and reasonable, and his fingers never ceased their stroking.

  “I don’t belong to you.” The words choked her. Who are you at war with, Nikolai? Who wants to kill you so bad they’ll settle for killing Danny? Or me?

  “If it does you good to think so, Selene, by all means, continue.” Now he sounded amused. “I am being patient. Any other Master would have you trammeled in the nest, chained if necessary.” His eyes met Rigel’s.

  Selene turned away from the window. “I could break the glass and let the sun in.” Her voice broke, she cursed herself for being weak. “I wish I had a gun. One day I’m going to pound a stake right through your black little heart.”