Night Huntress 06 - Eternal Kiss of Darkness (6 page)

And her memories of it would only be temporary. In some ways, that was the strangest part of this whole thing. How could she simply not remember
any
of this in a week? Wouldn’t some lingering knowledge remain? Like, she’d experience déjà vu whenever she saw a vampire movie in the future?

“There is no need for you to be concerned,” Mencheres said quietly. “Your life will continue on without any ill effects from this experience.”

“Are you able to read my mind now?” Kira asked, feeling embarrassment rise. “Because if so, about that massage…”

His brow ticked upward. “I still cannot read your thoughts, but your scent and expression led me to surmise that you were thinking about your future. I would, however, like to hear about the massage.”

“I’ve, um, got a kink in my shoulder,” Kira said, glancing away.

A soft laugh. “Humans emit a distinct scent when they lie, and you, Kira, smell of that scent now.”

Kira turned back around with a challenging look. He wanted the truth? All right, then. Mencheres might be a powerful vampire; but she was a grown woman, so she wasn’t about to act like a timid,
blind
virgin.

“Dead or not, you must be bored with women telling you how you look like the hottest, most exotic wet dream they’ve ever had. No wonder the thought of you, grapes, and some scented massage oils crossed my mind—and if you drop that towel again, I’m going to need a cold shower.”

Kira expected a smug smile in return. Maybe a knowing glance down and a wink, too. But Mencheres’s expression could only be described as… surprised. Then it became carefully blank.

“You know nothing about me.”

She stiffened. Was that his way of telling her she was shallow? Oh please, he’d flaunted his looks by walking around naked—now she was cheap because she’d noticed them?

“Don’t worry. I think Mount Everest is gorgeous, too, but that doesn’t mean I have any intention of trying to climb it.”

“I do not understand this analogy,” Mencheres muttered.

Kira let out a sigh. “Let’s just keep this subject in the same ‘do not discuss’ category you want your actions yesterday under.”

Pinpoints of green flared in his charcoal-colored eyes, reminding Kira that what she’d said was akin to yanking a tiger by the tail. But for the strangest reason, Kira wasn’t afraid of Mencheres. He might be a predator who could kill her with laughable ease, but Mencheres also had an aura of complete control about him. Even when he’d leapt from the pool to shush her, she’d been startled, but every instinct said he wouldn’t break his promise not to harm her.

Although, if he hadn’t given his word about that, Kira would be terrified of him. All that astonishing ability combined with an iron will made Mencheres more than deadly—it practically made him a force of nature. Someone who could rip the heads off other supernatural creatures without using his hands, who could heal her life-threatening injury, could fly,
and
make her forget that any of it had happened? Mencheres might not frighten her as much as he should, but knowing that power like his existed was scary.

What if all vampires could do the same things he could, but they weren’t as disciplined as Mencheres about not killing humans? The ghouls yesterday would’ve made lunch out of both of them, so clearly, not all supernaturals operated under a strict moral code. Those missing-person case files with strange stories attached to them flashed in Kira’s mind. What if those disappearances weren’t just related to sinister human activity but something else?

Kira glanced up to see Mencheres studying her with palpable intensity. Was he trying to see into her mind again? Was he succeeding? She almost hoped he was. If he could read her thoughts, then erasing her memory couldn’t be far behind, which meant she could go home.

“Any luck tuning in?” she asked.

He blinked once before turning away. An invisible shield seemed to drop over him, covering him in aloofness as if it were a three-piece suit.

“I hear nothing.”

Damn.
“Let me call my sister, then. And don’t worry—you don’t need to remind me not to say anything to her about vampires.”

K
ira paced around her room. Tina hadn’t answered when she tried calling her earlier. She could just be out, but what if something happened and her sister was too ill to get the phone? Kira debated asking Mencheres to send Gorgon around to Tina’s apartment to check on her. According to Mencheres, the blond vampire was already stopping by her office today to somehow mind-manipulate Frank into believing that Kira was unable to come into work because of the flu. Kira had her doubts that the vampire could make her hard-nosed boss okay with her suddenly taking a week off, but Mencheres seemed confident in Gorgon’s abilities.

Her gut wasn’t sensing any menace from Gorgon, just like it hadn’t with Mencheres, but maybe that was part of a vampire’s natural camouflage. Nothing helped predators more than their prey’s thinking they were harmless. Kira wasn’t about to risk exposing her sister to a vampire, even if Gorgon was harmless and it would set her mind at ease to have Gorgon report that Tina was fine.

She’d just have to try calling her sister later. Mencheres didn’t seem to be so draconian that he’d only allow her one call, regardless if she reached Tina or not. For an undead captor, in fact, Mencheres was turning out to be pretty accommodating. He’d told Kira she could have free rein of the house, pool, and the surrounding garden—as long as she didn’t try to make any unsupervised calls, e-mails, texts, or attempt to run away again. Her shackles would be velvet-lined, apparently. How odd. She’d been in harsher captive circumstances when she was married.

Kira brushed aside the thought as quickly as it had come. That chapter of her life was closed, and everything she’d seen in the decade since had just served to reinforce that she’d done the only thing she could.
Survival.
Sometimes it wasn’t noble or pretty, but it was necessary.

Her stomach growled, reminding Kira that she’d only had a banana for breakfast and nothing at all to eat the day before. Mencheres told her to help herself to whatever was in the refrigerator, actually sounding apologetic when he said she’d have to prepare her own food.

Velvet shackles, indeed.

Kira strode out of the bedroom, heading for the kitchen. Time to see if Mencheres meant it when he said she’d have free run of the house.

She went down the staircase, pausing on the landing of the second floor. Her bedroom was on the third floor, and though there were two more doors in her hallway, she hadn’t heard anyone else on her floor. If Mencheres was up there, he was very quiet. Or was his room on the second floor? Aside from her, Gorgon, and Mencheres, she hadn’t seen anyone else in the house. Were they the only ones here? If so, why did Mencheres need such a big place, if it was normally just him and Gorgon?

And either Mencheres was the most unsentimental person
ever,
or he hadn’t been here long. The house had no personal photos or memorabilia that Kira had seen, and it had that cold, model-home perfection that spoke of habitual emptiness. If this wasn’t Mencheres’s main home, why was he here now? And where did he live when he wasn’t here?

Laughter jerked Kira’s attention away from curiosity over her mysterious captor. It had a distinctly feminine lilt to it, correcting Kira’s assumption that she, Mencheres, and Gorgon were the only ones in the house. Kira went down the last flight of stairs almost cautiously, hearing a masculine chuckle next. A peculiar twinge went through her. Was that Mencheres? If so, who was the woman he was laughing with? His girlfriend?

Or wife, perhaps? The vampire wore no wedding ring, but who knew if that meant anything? Maybe vampires didn’t do ring exchanges.

Kira squared her shoulders and followed the sounds. At least they came from where she was already headed—the kitchen. No need for an excuse to go in there; her growling stomach would explain her presence. But when Kira caught her first glimpse of the people clustered around the dinette table, she didn’t recognize any of them.

Conversation stopped as Kira entered, and they looked up at her. From the food in front of them, Kira surmised that the two men and one woman were human. More witnesses kept against their will? Kira wondered. Good Lord, did Mencheres have a stable of people held captive who’d inadvertently found out about vampires? A tremor went through her. Maybe everything Mencheres had said was a lie. Maybe he had no intention of
ever
letting her go.

“Hi,” the blond woman said in a cheerful way, waving over at the stove. “There’s some eggs and bacon left over, if you’re hungry.”

“ ’S up,” the dark-haired male said, to an accompanying friendly grunt from the sandy-haired guy whose mouth was full.

Kira blinked at their greeting. If these three were prisoners, they sure seemed relaxed about it.

“Thanks,” she managed, heading over to the stove more for something to do as she pondered this new development. Kira glanced around. No signs of Gorgon or Mencheres, but that didn’t mean they weren’t nearby.

She scraped the leftover eggs and bacon from the two pans onto a plate, then sat at the remaining empty chair at the dinette table. Three sets of eyes regarded her curiously.

“I’m Kira, by the way,” she said, wondering how to discreetly find out if they were being held against their will.

“We know,” the black-haired guy replied, with a slight grin. “Name’s Sam, and this is Selene and Kurt.”

Kira chewed some eggs, trying to appear casual. “You know, huh?” she remarked once she’d swallowed. “What do you know?”

“That you’re not staying here long, and that you’re not thrilled about the time you are spending here,” Selene summarized with that same sunny smile.

Kira swallowed another bite of eggs before replying. “And you are, ah, thrilled about the time you spend here?” she asked carefully.

“Beats working a nine-to-five,” Kurt said, speaking for the first time.

The three of them laughed at that. Kira blinked. They were here willingly? Did they not know what Mencheres and Gorgon were? Mencheres had sounded so confident about his ability to mesmerize humans under normal circumstances. Was it possible that these three had no idea their other “roommates” were vampires?

“So, are you three self-employed, then?” Kira asked, wanting to keep them talking.

More chuckling. “You could say that,” Sam replied. He leaned back, balancing himself on the back two legs of his chair. At a glance, Kira guessed he was in his early twenties. All of them looked younger than she was, in fact.

Come to think of it, so did Mencheres, despite his “older than dirt” comment. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe these three weren’t human. They were eating regular food, yes, but so far most of Kira’s assumptions about vampires had proven to be wrong. Maybe vampires ate three square meals a day just like everyone else—except they followed up those meals with a blood chaser. Kira looked them over as surreptitiously as she could while she pushed her eggs around on her plate. Selene, Kurt, and Sam appeared normal in every way… but so did Mencheres. Right up until he started moving like greased lightning or ripping heads off people.

“How did you meet Mencheres?” Kira settled on asking.

Selene shrugged. “I was turning tricks for meth back in ’Frisco several years ago when Mencheres rolled up on my pimp knocking me around. He drank him, then asked me if I wanted a new life. I did. So Mencheres took me with him, got me off the drugs, and here I am.”

Kira had heard far-more-sordid tales as a P.I., but she almost gaped at how casually Selene relayed a tale of drug addiction, prostitution, and murder to a complete stranger. Before she could even say anything, Sam spoke up.

“I was a Legacy. Used to belong to Tick Tock, but he died in the war over a year ago. Mencheres was Tick Tock’s Master, so he inherited all his property when Tick Tock died, me included.”

“Master? Mencheres considers you his
slave
?” Kira blurted, aghast.

Sam gave her a look. “Not Master like that, lady. Master of the line of vampires Tick Tock came from. If you’re a human who belongs to a vamp, you’re considered their property, but I can walk away from this anytime I want to. I’m no one’s damn slave, got it?”

“I’m more like you, Kira,” Kurt said, breaking up the tense moment. “Didn’t know about vampires until I stumbled across some by accident, but I decided to stay because they were safer than the gang I ran with.”

Kira’s mind spun with this new information. Selene, Sam, and Kurt knew exactly what Mencheres was, yet they all stayed with him willingly. Or did they? Had Mencheres manipulated their minds to make them think they’d
chosen
to be here? Was he waiting to do the same thing with her? What if she were thinking Mencheres’s ability to erase her memory was her ticket home, but in reality, she was giving him the ability to lock her up forever?

It was such an ugly thought that Kira felt bile rise in her throat. Her instincts, which had been her flawless compass for the past dozen years, might not be trustworthy when it came to Mencheres. If vampires could manipulate minds, then it stood to reason they could alter someone’s gut reaction to them, too.

Kira looked around at the kitchen and the three people seated in it. On the surface, everything was the picture of normalcy, but scratch the surface, and all of that disappeared.