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scared me. One of the things that's kept me alive is shooting first and asking questions later. Doing it the
other way around was no way to stay alive.
"Is Jean-Claude's human servant afraid of me?" She stood there framed against the darkness beyond,
smiling. The basement was like a great black pit behind her.
But she couldn't sense vampire marks, or she'd have known I wasn't his servant. She wasn't as hot as
she thought she was. I hoped.
I ignored the outstretched hand, but walked down those two steps. My shoulder brushed her bare skin,
and it felt like worms were crawling down my arm. I kept walking down the steps into the dark beyond,
left hand in a death grip on the railing. I heard her high heels clattering down the steps to catch up with
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me. I could feel her irritation like heat rising from her skin. I heard the menfolk following us, but didn't
look behind to check. We were playing chicken tonight. It was one of my best games.
We went down the steps together like horses pulling a carriage, my left hand on the railing, her hands
lifting her dress. I kept up a pace that made gliding effortlessly impossible, unless she could levitate. She
couldn't.
She grabbed my right arm and whirled me around to face her. I couldn't go for a gun. Because I was
wearing wrist sheaths, I couldn't even go for a knife. I stood there nearly face to face with an angry
vampire and couldn't reach a weapon. All that could save me was her not killing me. Trusting my life to
Ivy's beneficence seemed like a bad bet.
Her anger spilled along my skin. Heat flowed down her body. I could feel her hand, hot, even through
the leather jacket. I didn't try to pull away; things that can bench-press Toyotas don't let go. Her touch
didn't burn, because it wasn't that kind of heat, but it was hard to convince my body that it wouldn't hurt
eventually. Years of warnings, don't touch, it's hot. Heat flared along my body like I was standing next to
a fire. If she hadn't been doing it unintentionally, it would have been impressive. Hell, it was still
impressive. Give her a few centuries and she'd be scary as hell, as if she wasn't already.
I could still meet her eyes, drowning deep and glowing with their own light. That was going to do me a
hell of a lot of good when she ripped my throat out.
"If you hurt her, Ivy, our truce is over." Jean-Claude glided down the steps to stand just above us. "You
do not want the truce to be over, Ivy." He ran his fingertip along the edge of her jaw.
I felt the jolt of power jump from him, to her, to me. I gasped, but she let me go. My arm was numb at
my side like it'd gone to sleep. I couldn't have held a gun. I wanted to ask what the hell he'd done, but
didn't. As long as I got the use of my arm back, we could argue about it later.
Bruce pushed between us, hovering over Ivy like a worried boyfriend. Watching his face, I realized that
was accurate. I was betting she'd brought him over.
Ivy pushed him away so hard that he went tumbling backwards down the stairs, lost in the thicker
darkness. Everything seemed to be working on her just fine. I could barely feel my fingertips.
Heat rushed over me like a scalding wind, and swept outward into the dark. Torches flared to life in
sconces along the walls with awhoosh and a shower of sparks. A large kerosene lamp suspended from
the ceiling filled with fire. Its glass chimney exploded in a shower of glass, its flame burning naked on the
wick.
"Serephina will make you clean up your mess," Jean-Claude said. He made it sound like she'd spilled her
milk.
Ivy walked down the rest of the steps in a hip-swinging glide. "Serephina will not care. Broken glass and
flame have so many uses." I didn't like the way she phrased that.
The basement was black. Black walls, black floors, black ceiling. It was like being in a great dark box.
Chains hung from the walls, some with what looked like fur on the cuffs. Straps dangled from the ceiling
like obscene decorations. There were . . . devices placed throughout the room. I recognized some of
them. A rack, an iron maiden, but most of it was like looking at bondage paraphernalia. You were pretty
sure what the point was, but not how it worked. There were always more holes than I could figure out
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what to do with, and nothing ever seemed to come with instructions.
There was a drain in the floor, and a thin trickle of water ran down it. But I was betting that the drain
wasn't there just for water.
Larry moved down the steps to stand beside me. "Are those what I think they are?"
"Yeah, they're torture devices." I forced my hand to make a fist, and another one. The feeling was
coming back.
"I thought they weren't going to harm us," he said.
"I think it's supposed to scare us."
"It's working," he said.
I didn't like the decor much either, but I could feel my hand. I could have held a gun if I had to.
A door that I hadn't even seen opened to the left. A secret panel. A vampire came through the door. He
had to bend nearly double to make it through the door frame. He unfolded, impossibly tall and thin,
cadaverous. He had not fed tonight. and was wasting no power on looking pretty. His skin was the color
of old parchment and clung to the bones of his face like a thin film barely covering his skull. His eyes
were sunken and dull in his head, the dead blue of fish eyes. His sickly hands were long and bony with
impossibly long fingers, like white spiders sticking from the sleeves of his black coat.
He stalked into the room with the edges of his black coat sweeping behind him like a cloak. He was
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