“This is a private party,” he says.
“I believe I’m on the guest list. Anna Strong.”
I follow his eyes as they scroll down the page, lips silently mouthing the names. After a moment he looks up. “No Anna Strong on the guest list. I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave.”
He’s human, big in a former pro-wrestler-gone-to-fat kind of way. His suit fits awkwardly across the chest, partly because he has too much chest and partly because of the not-very-well-concealed gun against his right shoulder.
“Well, here’s the thing,” I reply with my brightest good-girl smile. “I’m the owner of this house, and I didn’t give permission for anyone to have a party.”
That gives him a moment’s pause. Long enough for me to shove the car door open. It slams into his gut and he goes down with a whoosh of expelled air. He struggles to get up. I jump out and clock him again with an elbow to the forehead. This time he’s down for the count.
Frey is at my side. We each take a leg and drag him into the guardhouse. I take off his belt and use it to tie his hands, then shove his own handkerchief into his mouth. I wish we had something to secure his legs, but I can’t find anything and neither Frey nor I are wearing belts. In his jacket, I find a set of keys, separate from the usual car and house keys most people carry. On a hunch and after a couple of misses, I find the one that will lock the guardhouse from the outside. After pulling down the shades, and locking the door, our rent-a-cop is tucked away for a nice, long nap.
Frey and I exchange glances. Obviously, I was wrong about Judith expecting me to show up. She didn’t include my name on the guest list.
Frey says, “Front door or back?”
I think about it a minute. “Hell. Front. May as well shake things up.”
I don’t pull the car into the driveway but back it up and park it on the shoulder a few yards away from the gate. If we have to make a quick getaway, Frey and I can jump the fence and get to the car. Anyone following us will have to open the gate first.
Which gives me an idea. I bend close to see how the gate latches. “Think we can jam this?”
Frey gives it the once-over. “It’s electronic.” He looks up and around. “The sensor is up there on that post. If we broke it . . .” He starts looking around. “Here we go.” He hefts a good-sized rock, balances it on his palm, aims and fires it straight at the little blinking light on the top of a ten-foot pole.
It shatters and goes dark.
“Good arm! I didn’t know you had it in you.”
“Three years of college ball.”
For a brief sliver of time, Frey and I smile at each other like two kids pulling a Halloween prank instead of two adults breaking and entering.
The moment passes. “Better move,” Frey says. “Someone may have heard the glass breaking.”
We jog up the long driveway toward the front of the house. The music gets louder, the lights brighter. In the turnaround near the front door, half a dozen stretch limos sit empty. No drivers. I open one of the doors and sniff. Vampire and human.
No surprise there.
Frey touches my arm. “How do you want to handle this?”
I tug the hem of my T-shirt down and run a hand through my hair. “Let’s party.”
CHAPTER 39
I
REMEMBER THE VERY FIRST MOMENT I REALIZED Avery was a monster. Remember the sick feeling of betrayal. Remember how hard it was to walk into this house and pretend nothing had changed so I could free David and plan my revenge.
I’m experiencing all those feelings again. Now.
The doorbell is answered by a young man in a tuxedo. If he’s the help, he isn’t very good. He looks me up and down before turning on his heels and walking away. No greeting. No invitation to come in.
I guess jeans and T-shirts aren’t proper attire. I should tell him I didn’t get the memo.
We follow him in. The guy’s human and, by the smell of him, has had sex recently. Very recently. Like maybe moments before. Musk and testosterone ooze from his pores like sweat.
It makes my nose wrinkle and my hormones jump into overdrive. A restless shift in Frey’s posture tells me he senses the same thing.
We watch as he crosses the slate floor toward the source of the music. The living room. Voices with accents rise above the music and the clink of glasses. The last time I was here, Avery had inhabited a werewolf’s body to try to kill me. What will it be this time?
“Ms. Strong?”
A female voice—a familiar female voice—calls to me from a door to the right. The kitchen, as I remember. I turn toward the voice.
“Dena?”
A young Eurasian with straight black hair smiles at me as if the last time we saw each other she had merely been Avery’s housekeeper instead of his blood slave. She’s dressed in a black skirt and starched white blouse, a wide black ribbon around her throat. In her hands, she holds a silver tray with champagne flutes and an ice bucket.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
“Working.”
“For Mrs. Williams?”
She laughs. “For you, silly. I have been since Dr. Avery left. I’ve kept the house running. I thought you knew. I missed you when his friend was here a couple of months ago. My mom was sick. I’m glad to see you’re back now.”
Someone from the next room calls, “What happened to those glasses?”
She turns toward the voice. “Gotta go. Your room has been prepared. I look forward to serving you.”
Frey looks as confused as I feel. “You know her?”
“She was Avery’s housekeeper. And one of his hosts. I thought she would have left the moment he did. Go figure.”
I don’t know what Dena said when she left us but suddenly, the music, the voices, the clink of glasses stops as if a switch has been thrown. The living room plunged from party central to morgue central.
Frey goes tense and still beside me. I’m glad he’s here. A vampire and a panther. Should be able to cut a swath through whatever is thrown at us.
We wait. Count off ten, twenty, thirty seconds. Just when I’m ready to unleash the vampire and bring it to them, a familiar face appears in the doorway.
David.
He smiles when he sees me, would probably even give me a hug except that he has a big-breasted blonde hanging off each arm. “It’s about time you got here. Judy said you might not make it until Tuesday. This is a helluva house, Anna. Why didn’t you tell me you owned a mansion?”
David’s got a goofy smile on his face and pupils the size of dinner plates. While his speech isn’t slurred exactly, he speaks as if his tongue is too big and too heavy for his mouth.
Doesn’t seem to be affecting his libido. His right hand has wandered down to grab the ass of the blonde on his right.
Got to hand it to Judy Williams, she treats her kidnap victims well. Don’t know what David’s on, but he’s having fun.
David is a big guy—former pro football player, a bulky, muscular two-fifty on a six-foot-four frame. I carried him once, but he was unconscious and pliable. I have a feeling if I tried to deadlift him out of here now, he’d object.
Frey says, “What do we do now?”
David has moved things along from groping his playmates to kissing them—both, one after the other, with a lot of tongue action and deep-throated groans.
I wish I had a camera.
“Leave him. Let’s go find our hostess.”
Neither David nor the blondes notice when Frey and I walk around them and head toward the living room. It’s still deathly quiet beyond the arched doorway. I have no idea what kind of reception to expect. We pause just out of the line of sight, then, like cops on a drug bust, take a quick step into the room. Frey goes to the left. I, to the right.
Judith Williams is standing in front of the fireplace. She smiles when she sees me and raises a glass in my direction. “Ladies and gentlemen, may I present Anna Strong. The one chosen to lead us for the next two hundred years.”
There are seven vampires in the room. And ten humans. The humans have moved back to stand in a knot near the sliding wall of glass that separates the interior room from the outside deck. The young man who opened the door for us is among them. His expression isn’t so contemptuous now that he realizes I’m not part of the kitchen staff. In fact, he has a decidedly nervous look about him. I meet his eyes, glare until he takes a fumbling step backward, then look away, hiding a smile.
May as well have some fun, too.
The wall is open to the night air, and the scent of the ocean mingles with the sweet smell of night-blooming jasmine. Under the natural scents, though is the smell of blood and earth. The smell of vampires.
Very old vampires.
The vampires raise their glasses in my direction.
“To Anna Strong.” They say it in English, though the accents are varied. “And to the Year One.”
CHAPTER 40
T
HE VAMPIRES DRINK THEIR CHAMPAGNE, BOW IN my direction and resume talking amongst themselves. We are forgotten. Frey and I exchange looks.
I feel like the unpopular guest of honor arriving late for her own birthday party to find her absence had gone unnoticed. Maybe until Tuesday I have no standing at all. No matter. Getting David out of here is the only reason I’d step foot in this house of horrors.
Judith Williams waves a manicured hand and the six-piece band in the corner begins to play. She fluffs her hair, composes her expression to reflect nothing but cordiality and walks over to us.
“What?” I ask, giving her the once-over. “No widow’s weeds tonight?”
She smoothes a hand over the skirt of her bloodred silk dress. “I didn’t expect to see you tonight, Anna, or I would have left your name at the gate.” She tilts her head. “How did you manage to get by security?”
“The Chosen One, remember? Hiring a mortal to keep a vampire out is like carrying a rock to a gunfight.”
She doesn’t find the analogy amusing. “Is he dead?”
“I don’t kill humans indiscriminately. That seems to be your thing. Do you realize how much damage you caused to the vampire community by killing those hosts in Beso de la Muerte?”
She sniffs. “If you’d gone with me, it might not have happened.”
She looks at Frey. “He isn’t welcome here.” She gestures to the vampires behind us as if privy to some communication I am not. The vampires are no longer talking, but watching us.
No. Not us.
Frey. It’s as if they’ve suddenly become aware he is neither vampire nor human.
I also realize she’s learned a lot in a few days. Her thoughts are no longer easy pickings for me. But she’s communicating with someone.
“Frey is with me.”
“Then he must agree to the rules.”
“Rules?”
“This party is for vampires and hosts only. Are you willing to share?”
I can see Frey’s expression harden. I know what he’s thinking. To stay with me, he’ll agree. I speak up before he can. “No. Frey will wait for me outside.”
He opens his mouth to object, and I close a steel hand around his arm. “Wait for me by the gate. I will be out with David in ten minutes.”
Frey’s anger burns through his eyes. “I thought we agreed to stay together.”
I loosen my hold a little but not my resolve. “Ten minutes.”
He’s not happy. I don’t care. There is something in the way the vampires are looking at him that makes me know it’s not safe for him to stay. “Please, Frey. Don’t argue.”
There is another shift in the posture of the vampires, a subtle quiver of anticipation, like a cat gathering itself to pounce on an unsuspecting bird.
You must decide. He will stay or go. The others find it troubling that you would argue with a shape-shifter, an inferior being. They see it as a sign of weakness.
Judith’s words are directed right at me. No mistaking it, she’s mastered the art of psychic communication. I look from the vampires to Judith, tempted to challenge them, but it’s Frey this time who touches
my
arm.
He was not privy to the message, but my reaction is obvious. “It’s up to you.”
“Go. I will be out in ten minutes.”
I watch Frey make his way to the front door. I feel the others watch, too, with alarming intensity.
If anyone attempts to intercept him, you will learn how weak I am.
I let the message carry over the music, over the resumed rumble of conversation. There is a heartbeat’s hesitation as if consideration is being given to the sincerity of my threat. Consequences weighed against principle.
Evidently, principle isn’t that important after all. Frey is allowed to leave unmolested.
Judith breathes an impatient sigh. “So much drama over one insignificant mortal. Anna, you are a puzzle to me.”
Ten minutes. The clock is ticking.
“What did you give David?”
A smile. “Something wonderful. He’s certainly a big one, isn’t he? And so—enthusiastic.”
My shoulders tense. “You seduced him?”
She laughs. “If you mean did I take advantage of him, the answer is most emphatically no. He needed very little persuasion to have sex.”
I get a creepy feeling that there was more to it than sex. “Did you feed from him?”
The tip of her tongue glides over her upper lip. “Of course. Are you trying to tell me you haven’t?”
She looks surprised, which gives way to a smug smile of satisfaction. “You haven’t. You haven’t fucked him, either. How long have you been partners? You sit across from as studly a piece of ass as I’ve ever seen, and you haven’t fucked him.”
I get an absurd flashback to the first time I saw this woman—here, in this very room, dressed in her tasteful little cocktail dress, diamonds flashing from ears and neck, looking adoringly at a man who has made my life miserable this last year. The contrast between that simpering woman and this bitch is beyond ridiculous.
She’s been a vampire for less than three months. She thinks we are equals. She thinks this Chosen One thing is bullshit, even if the others seem to believe it, and she thinks if they insist on choosing anyone, she is infinitely more qualified to assume the position than I.