The Living Night (Book 1) (14 page)

The man watched a fly move from its orbit around
his head to his chest.

"What's your name?"

"Kiernevar.” The man’s eyes never left the
fly.

"
Ke
ir
nev
ar
,"
the albino pronounced. "Russian?"

"Kiernevar," the man repeated.

Jean-Pierre brought the cigarette to his lips
and held it there a moment. He hated stupidity; it was the trait that annoyed
him above all others. This one wasn't stupid, though, just deranged. Insanity
was a trait the albino tended to romanticize. The shit made it hard.

"I won't kill you, yet,” he said. “But I
can't let you persist in your present state, knowing you're strong enough to
resist my pull.” He paused. “Did you know that immortal blood can cure many
diseases, even erase scars sometimes? Maybe once you have my blood you’ll
regain your wits. Your power could be harnessed."

Kiernevar started laughing. And continued
laughing. The albino frowned.

"Kiernevar!" he snapped, and the man
smiled. "Kiernevar—I'm going to make you one of
us
. I'm going to let
you cross over."

"Cross over," the human said.
"Become an albino." He scraped at his chest, then flung the excrement
at Jean-Pierre. "I don't
want
to be a werewolf!"

Some sanity, then
. Jean-Pierre wiped at
himself. "Now
that's
something
I
couldn't give a shit
about."

He stepped closer. The man screamed.

*
    
*
    
*

The
limousine thumped along the slickened streets, a getaway car without a
destination. Danielle had roused at a few sips of Ruegger’s blood and nestled
tightly in his black leather jacket, drinking some coffee Veliswa had brewed
for her in the car's maker. Danielle felt sick. The horrible thing was that,
although she detested him utterly, she couldn't bring herself to hate
Jean-Pierre. He was too miserable for that.

“I guess your investigation in New York is over,” Veliswa said. “Thanks to
David. And it
had
to be him.”

“We found out one thing,” Ruegger said. “We’re
going to the Clearglass Inn to follow up on it.”

"I think we should split up.”

"
No
," said Danielle
reflexively, reaching for Ruegger's hand.

Veliswa smiled. "No, I meant that
I
would split away from you two. If I stayed with you, I'd only be dragging you
down, and I know someone I think can help us—if only I can get to her."

"But Veli," said Ruegger, "and I
mean no offense by this, but you haven't been on the run in years. It's just
not something you're used to. You'd be too vulnerable."

"That can't be helped. And I think I could
do us more good if I branched off.”

“Who's this friend?" Danielle said.

"Well, here's my plan. I know it may sound
far-fetched, but I can't think of anything better. The order to kill you came
from Vistrot, this much we know, but Vistrot doesn’t seem to have any
particular motive to want you dead. So he’s acting on behalf of someone else. What
we need to do is
infiltrate
his organization, find out who gave
Vistrot
the order—find out who wants
you dead. Then maybe we can do something about it. Until then, we're just going
to be dodging Jean-Pierre and whoever else they send to kill you."

"You too," Ruegger said. "Don't
forget that. You harbored us, knowing Vistrot had a hit out on us. He's not
going to forgive that."

"I know.”

"So who's this friend?" Danielle
repeated.

The ghensiv turned to her. "Her name is Sophia,
and she may just be our salvation."

Sophia
, Danielle thought. The name sounded familiar …

“Shit!” she said. “You don’t mean
the Ice
Queen
?”

“She could just be our salvation.”

*
    
*
    
*

At
that moment, it was late in the evening in Los Angeles,
California, where Sophia was staring up at the
smog-shrouded stars from the veranda of a Spanish-style mansion, nestled safely
in Beverly Hills
and wrapped lovingly by endless vines.

Long and sleek, Sophia sipped red wine with a
faint smile, and she would be the first to tell you she wasn't anybody's salvation.
With long dark hair, she boasted clean white skin and an expression that seemed
eternally mocking. She wore a tight black leather bikini, which clashed with
her
moonly
pallor; from a distance she looked like
some severed fragment of an old black-and-white movie, cast here in the world
of color for the amusement of the gods.

Except for her eyes. They were a livid violet.

Unlike most shades, she’d been born immortal,
and she wore it arrogantly. Nearly horizontal now in her reclining deck chair,
she set her wine glass down on the Spanish tile, picked up a double-edged razor
blade that lay nearby and distracted herself by carving bleeding hearts across
the flesh of her tight stomach.

Delighting in the slow, glistening crawl of her
blood, the ghensiv watched it run like warm molasses down her belly. It hurt, and
her face grew very still as it washed over her; she dug deeper, and, with a
quavering gasp, deeper still. She moaned as her fingers dipped in her essence,
this sticky crimson that flowed through her veins. A scream threatened, as the
pain built to a crescendo, but Sophia suppressed it with a ragged exhalation
that ended in a smile.

She raised her hands from the blood and ran them
south, the red spreading down from her navel to what lay under the black
leather thong. She let go the razor (she wasn’t
that
much of a
masochist), and let her fingers explore. Running them over the dark mound and
then inserting them in the crevice, the hole that had stole many a man's
offspring and pride, the hole that was lined in the fluid that gave her
immortality, the hole that even now grew tighter, the countless gleaming teeth
in its folds squirming eagerly. The ghensiv writhed, wasting little time in
bringing herself to climax.

She had things to do.

The Ice Queen released a long low sigh. Weary of
pain and sex and stars, she went inside, the blood dried on her belly and the
cuts healed. She'd a meeting that needed some preparation, so she strolled in
to her long walk-in closet and examined her clothes. Selecting something
properly garish, she dressed.

"You like?" she asked her cat, who sat
watching her with detached interest. Anubis was a black, wretched-looking thing
with three legs and one eye, but for all his handicaps he got around just fine.
Sophia liked to think that in one of his nine lives he was the familiar of some
witch or other.

Anubis yawned and slunk away.

"Smart cat.” Sophia moved to the kitchen,
picked a banana and a beer, and departed for her execution.

She drove her thirty-year-old yellow convertible
Corvette Stingray—the wind a chorus of cat-calls about her, tossing her hair
and teasing her eyes. She smoked a Black Death cigarette on a cigarette holder,
peering out at the Los Angeles
nighttime landscape through wraparound Ray Bans. She smiled as the car roared
beneath her, and the gas petal grew steadily closer to the floor.

She finished her banana and beer and tossed them
both overboard. She was late for her rendezvous, but that wasn't unnatural.
Today her would-be lover wanted to meet her somewhere reclusive, which was as
it should be for this part of the operation. The scam was almost concluded. The
ending was her favorite part.

By the time she'd finished her second cigarette,
she was in the hills. The moon looked gray and unhealthy above. She took the
car down a gear as she rounded a corner and spotted the big stone mailbox of
her lover. Shooting down the tree-flanked driveway, she hit the horn as she
screeched to a halt. She was out of the car in a slash, sweeping up the wide
staircase in time to see Robert's gloomy expression as he exited his house. His
face brightened artificially when he saw her.

"Well, dear, how nice to see you,” he said.

She gave him a big hug, staying in character. Robert's
manservant stood only a few feet behind his master, eyeing her severely.

"Well,
baby
, it's only
been
a
few days," she sighed into Robert's ear. "You look as if it's been
forever!"

He separated himself from her, coldly, and she
could see the depth of his hurt. She had won his affection, then betrayed him.
But he would still be uncertain.

"Come, dear," he said. "Follow me
inside."

She did, wearing a slight pout that was to be
read as
Oh, poo.
She ripped off her oversized hat, hearing the door
close—and lock—behind her. She supposed this was the point at which she should
start acting nervous. It took a lot of concentration on her part to play a
mortal, and a scared one at that, but she was an accomplished actress of sorts,
though her performances were mainly viewed in private.

"Kind of cold in here," she murmured, and
affected a small shiver.

Robert led her past the rough wood walls and
mounted heads of animals, from deer to alligator, past grand windows, drapes
pulled, and up a polished wooden staircase, then up another. In all honesty,
she did feel a draft.

"Robert," she said, "why don't
you say something? You're so silent! Heavens, is something wrong?"

He scowled back at her and continued their
little journey until he came to a closed door, which he opened almost
ceremoniously and beckoned her to enter: his office, she knew, where he
attended to his shady business when required. He was quite evil for a mortal,
and though this was a trait that Sophia was inclined to admire at times, she
had taken special delight in winning this bastard's affections and then
crushing him.

He liked to dominate people, women especially,
but the ghensiv had been able to read him, as she always could, and knew that
beneath that power-hungry exterior lay a core that was afraid: a pinprick of
self-doubt that craved to be told what to do, and how to do it. And though the
exterior could never slip (he was far too controlled for that), she had found
the chink in his armor and had penetrated deep. She'd bent him and pulped him,
playing dominatrix in the bedroom, knocking him to his knees in release so that
he could shed his responsibilities for the few precious moments they were
alone—and in public she played every bit as submissive as he could have wanted.
And then, after she'd discovered his weaknesses and exploited them, she robbed
him of every penny he had available and sent rumors through his employees
(rumors that were sure to come back to him) that she had been having an affair
on the side, wrecking him emotionally, too.

There was no way he could touch her, though. He
didn't know her real name or residence (she'd used an anonymous apartment
during most of the operation), or race of being. She'd pulled this scam many
times before, and it nearly always ended the same way. The boyfriend, or
girlfriend as the case may be, eventually rounded the ghensiv up and demanded
retribution. This was when she observed their grief personally, and this was
often the time when they subjected her to tortures in an attempt to relocate
their lost capital. She liked pain, so this was usually the most eagerly anticipated
part of the operation, and she hoped it would begin soon.

Robert perched behind his desk, brooding and
staring at her until he had to avert his eyes.

"You took something from me," he said.

"What are you talking about?" She
tried not to sound too innocent because, she realized, he was confused and not
a hundred percent certain that she was in fact guilty.

"I know what you did, you little bitch. You
used me. The whole time, you were using me ... and then what you took ..."
He closed his eyes, and the Ice Queen was amused to see tears spilling down his
cheeks. A part of her almost felt guilty for causing him pain (she'd enjoyed
her moments with him), but this was a small part and easily silenced.

Robert shook his head. "You filthy little
whore. You nearly ruined me, you know. If not for my off-shore accounts ..."

"So fucking what?" she said, surprised
at the emotion rising in her. She took a step closer, all pretense at
vulnerability dissolved. "I do this sort of thing for fun, Robert. To pass
the time. I destroy people like you for sport. Usually that's all it is. But
I'll tell you something, Bob. This time there was a small personal motive as
well. You see, I'd made friends with this girl, a club-hopping little witch
hooked on crack and god knows what else. You pimped her, or one of your
franchises did. You strung her out and used her until she died. She weighed
sixty-five pounds when she died, Robert.
Sixty-five pounds.
" Sophia’s
voice lowered. "She had a nice smile."

Robert pushed his chair back from his desk, more
in surprise than fear, although some small tick had tugged at his face when he
saw her step forward, as if he'd seen something ghastly. A glimpse of
inhumanity, perhaps, but then why should this shock
him
of all people,
he who profited from the weaknesses of others?