Guilty Pleasures - Laurell K. Hamilton [6]
She nodded. The first hint of fear showed in her face.
“I would never harm such a lovely young woman.” He took Catherine’s hand and raised it to his mouth. A mere brush of lips. Catherine blushed.
He kissed Monica’s hand as well. He looked at me and laughed. “Do not worry, my little animator. I will not touch you. That would be cheating.”
He moved to stand next to me. I stared fixedly at his chest. There was a burn scar almost hidden in the lace. The burn was in the shape of a cross. How many decades ago had someone shoved a cross into his flesh?
“Just as you having a cross would be an unfair advantage.”
What could I say? In a way he was right.
It was a shame that it wasn’t merely the shape of a cross that hurt a vampire. Jean-Claude would have been in deep shit. Unfortunately, the cross had to be blessed, and backed up by faith. An atheist waving a cross at a vampire was a truly pitiful sight.
He breathed my name like a whisper against my skin. “Anita, what are you thinking?”
The voice was so damn soothing. I wanted to look up and see what face went with such words. Jean-Claude had been intrigued by my partial immunity to him. That and the cross-shaped burn scar on my arm. He found the scar amusing. Every time we met, he did his best to bespell me, and I did my best to ignore him. I had won up until now.
“You never objected to me carrying a cross before.”
“You were on police business then; now you are not.”
I stared at his chest and wondered if the lace was as soft as it looked; probably not.
“Are you so insecure in your own powers, little animator? Do you believe that all your resistance to me resides in that piece of silver around your neck?”
I didn’t believe that, but I knew it helped. Jean-Claude was a self-admitted two hundred and five years old. A vampire gains a lot of power in two centuries. He was suggesting I was a coward. I was not.
I reached up to unfasten the chain. He stepped away from me and turned his back. The cross spilled silver into my hands. A blonde human woman appeared beside me. She handed me a check stub and took the cross. Nice, a holy item check girl.
I felt suddenly underdressed without my cross. I slept and showered in it.
Jean-Claude stepped close again. “You will not resist the show tonight, Anita. Someone will enthrall you.”
“No,” I said. But it’s hard to be tough when you’re staring at someone’s chest. You really need eye contact to play tough, but that was a no-no.
He laughed. The sound seemed to rub over my skin, like the brush of fur. Warm and feeling ever so slightly of death.
Monica grabbed my arm. “You’re going to love this, I promise you.”
“Yes,” Jean-Claude said. “It will be a night you will never forget.”
“Is that a threat?”
He laughed again, that warm awful sound. “This is a place of pleasure, Anita, not violence.”
Monica was pulling at my arm. “Hurry, the entertainment’s about to begin.”
“Entertainment?” Catherine asked.
I had to smile. “Welcome to the world’s only vampire strip club, Catherine.”
“You are joking.”
“Scout’s honor.” I glanced back at the door; I don’t know why. Jean-Claude stood utterly still, no sense of anything, as if he were not there at all. Then he moved, one pale hand raised to his lips. He blew me a kiss across the room. The night’s entertainment had begun.
4
OUR TABLE WAS nearly bumping up against the stage. The room was full of liquor and laughter, and a few faked screams as the vampire waiters moved around the tables. There was an undercurrent of fear. That peculiar terror that you get on roller coasters and at horror movies. Safe terror.
The lights went out. Screams echoed through the room, high and shrill. Real fear for an instant. Jean-Claude’s voice came out of the darkness. “Welcome to Guilty Pleasures. We are here to serve you. To make your most evil thought come true.”
His voice was silken whispers in the small hours of night.