Dead But Not Forgotten (37 page)

More than a hundred years later, I
am
in hell.

I wake, remembering with longing my happy dream of sex with Eric. And now . . .

I'm facedown in a pile of blankets. My head feels as if it's lined with silver as shiny black millipedes with leaden feet tap-dance inside my skull. The pain threatens to shatter me, and it's only after a bit that I realize I was dreaming of my making. My most treasured memory, the night my life After began, came to console me. Given my circumstances, I'm worried that this may be the night my After life ends.

Finally, someone turns off the damn klaxon alarm, and my head reverberates with its dying echoes. Agony, as if I've been sunbathing, but I don't smell smoke, don't feel flames. I'm awake, so it must be night.

I've been poisoned, captured, but I can't remember anything.

I burrow deeper into the blankets despite the fact that they reek of mothballs and mildew.

A grating noise—a door opening. I wish my head would just explode and be done with it. I must get up
now
, because I know I am in the worst kind of trouble.

I'm still trying to pull myself up when I hear the voice. Of any in the world, it's the last one I want. It fills me with dread.

“Pam Ravenscroft. I'm sure you remember me.”

I can't see past his motorcycle boots, but I remember flaming red hair and, incongruously, a scatter of freckles.

“Of course, Morgan,” I mutter to the damp cement floor. “I keep a scrapbook of degenerate monsters. You're my prize.”

Not my best retort, but I've a head full of silver filings I can't account for.

“Well, you put up quite a fight, though I'm not sure what tipped you off. Exactly how old are you, that you can smell trouble like that?”

Idiot. Never ask a lady her age. If she's human, she'll lie and say younger. If she's vampire, she'll lie and say older and more powerful. “As old as sin itself, and twice as sexy. Where's Eric?”

“Unaware of my intentions. For the moment.”

“Good. He'll be on his guard and you'll shortly be a puddle of guts.”

“I think not. He suspects nothing.” Morgan stoops and shows me my phone. “He imagines you've secured the perimeter of the ‘Out-of-the-Coffin Day' anniversary dinner party and are meeting Lily for a private celebration. I owe him a lot of money and don't want to pay him, so I'm going to make it look like human fang-haters when I kill him. I can be as gruesome as I want and still have people believe it's a human attack.”

Simple math, if you're a vampire. Plus, Morgan is a pervert, so “gruesome” would only be the start of it.

I must escape and warn Eric, but—

Morgan might have been reading my mind. “That silver will be in your system for a couple of hours. By the time you can sit up straight, I'll be solvent and Northman will be dead.”

“Eric shit bigger things than you when he was human.”

He laughs. “Maybe I'll keep you around as a pet. Or I could feed you to Lily. You disappointed her so terribly, that would be a thing to see.”

Oh, hell. Lily. I slump. Years ago, Morgan killed Lily's maker and took her as his own, treating her vilely.

Morgan laughs again and leaves.

I give him a few minutes to get out and then manage to sit. I'm not as sick as he thought; I don't think they got the full dose into me, but I'm still feeling rough.

I must do something, so I go for the low-hanging fruit. “Hey! Hey!” I bang on the door.

A vamp so green you can still smell the dirt on him opens up the peephole. “Shut up in there!”

“Unless I get something to eat, this silver will kill me. You don't want that.”

Instead of telling me,
Yeah, he does
, he says the most wonderful thing in the world.

“Huh?”

Oh, thank you, fates. “If I die, Eric will sense my death. He'll know something's up.” I try to look pathetic. It's not hard.

He actually bites his lip, he's trying so hard to think. I've seen more wit in Bubba sizing up a three-legged tabby for dinner.

“Get me a bottle of TrueBlood.” I hate the stuff; it tastes like a Barbie smells. “If you don't want Morgan's plan to fail.”

The door shuts. I'm alone with my worry.

It opens again shortly, and I can't believe my luck. I raise my hand weakly, then let it fall back, as if exhausted.

The little idiot actually comes in. I wait until I can almost see where his pimples used to be, before he was made, then spring up. I grab his arm and yank down, seizing the back of his head, which abruptly meets my knee. Then, since I still appreciate the housewifely virtue of “waste not, want not,” I drain him dry.

His body collapses into a pile of nasty black gunk that will require a squeegee to clean up. I toss back the TrueBlood as well; I'll need every bit of strength I have to get through the night alive.

I know the house. It doesn't take me long to find my way out.

There's one other guard, and he's bigger and meaner than the puppy I ate downstairs, but I'm warmed up and feeling feisty. Once he's returned to primordial ooze, I take his phone and car keys, and then his car.

Eric's not answering. He's probably so far underground the cement is blocking the signal.

As I drive, I wonder. I may not actually be as old as sin, but I'm not being vain when I consider that the junior varsity shouldn't have been left to guard someone like me. It seemed far too easy to—

Oh. I get it. The A-squad is reserved for taking Eric out.

Shitballs.

I gun the engine and race hell-for-leather toward the party. I can't concentrate on a plan. The only thing in my mind is seeing Lily right before the silver-filled hypodermic needle hit my neck.

I loved the twenties. I
roared
through them. Jazz and gin and shoes made to dance in. Beaded dresses, no more than scraps of silk but so heavy, so sensual, they might have been designed with a vampire's heightened senses in mind. Feeding at that time was like ripping open an expensive box of chocolates. After years of thousands of tiny jet buttons and yards of wool, it was easier than tearing the plastic off a Twinkie and twice as sweet.

I met Lily while I was hunting on New Year's Eve. The woods of the Scottish highlands in 1926 were as pretty as a picture as I tracked two partygoers who'd sneaked off for a chilly game of slap-and-tickle.

The stink of their fear as I chased them was sauce on game, lemon in tea, whiskey on cake. My stomach wasn't actually growling, but the idea was amusing. Every time I ate, it was as if I were rediscovering the act, finding some nuance revealed, some ecstasy not yet explored. Terror, exhaustion, and confusion added indefinably exquisite layers to taste. Maybe we lacked the need for other mortal organs, but vampire senses and appetites were enhanced to joy almost beyond bearing.

My hunger lent lightness to my step and wings to my feet. I'd cast off my dainty dancing slippers, rather than lose them—I've always taken care of my nice things—and gave in to the chase so quickly, I made no tracks on the snow.

The pair were weighed down with their meaty mortal bodies, their fear, and their clumsy will to live. They had no concept of what living was. Despite their every pretense at decadence, this would be the most lively night of their lives. It would be my gift to them.

A faint rustle, a skitter of ice pellets across the crust of snow. A rabbit? Some bird stirring?

My pace slowed as I warily tried to identify the source of the noise.

Another vampire, a stranger. There might be additional violence before the evening was through.

Best not to anticipate. It could as easily be happy violence as angry. Either would please me.

Like a breath, the rustling was gone. My fellow hunter had gone ahead, like a lioness circling around prey.

A shriek in a clearing ahead of me. The other vampire had appeared out of nowhere. She set down a lantern on a stump.

The light showed a man who'd been stopped by a slight woman, apparently in her late twenties, her black hair in a fashionable shingle, ornamented with sparkling jewels and graceful white feathers. The beads of the fringe on her dress were green on white silk, and the way they swayed reminded me of windblown pine boughs.

Her mouth was perfectly formed, a Cupid's bow in scarlet that matched her nails. I had not seen such pallid perfection in skin since meeting Eric. Her features hinted at a delightful mix of Asian and European ancestry.

“Shall we share?” Her voice matched any Bloomsbury bluestocking, educated and precise. “Or shall we fight over them? You found them, but
I
stopped them.”

“What do you mean, share?” The big man had found his balls again. It was now clear that he believed he'd been chased by devils, who turned out to be two flappers from a New Year's party. “Get away from me, you thieving tarts!”

“I do not tolerate interruptions!” she snapped. “Sit down and be quiet!”

Under her glamour, he sat down on a log, quite ignoring the thick layer of snow on it.

His companion was a slight thing, shivering with fear and cold; her thin dress was garish red and cheap. She should have taken a lesson from me; my dress was far nicer and the deep rose red suited my complexion. “He has money,” she said. “Take it, let us go!”

“Now, now,” I said, chiding her. “Money is a good and useful thing, but it is not all, my dear. Sit down.”

She sat down on the log beside her beau, trembling, her eyes glazed with terror. A small nosegay of red carnations fell from her hand.

“So, what is it to be?” Lily asked me.

I was quite fascinated by her. “What are your plans this evening?”

She affected casualness. “I had nothing particular in mind.”

All thoughts about meeting Eric for hunting and a late dinner had fled. It was the first time I'd ever found anyone who could distract me from him. “Perhaps we could share these, and then find some diverting way to see in the New Year together?”

She clapped her hands. “
C'est tres agréable!
Shall we start with the big one? Let the little one stew a bit, save her for pudding?”

“My thoughts precisely.” I held out a hand. “I am Pam Ravenscroft.”

She shook. “Lily Macintosh.”

“A pleasure.”

“I hope so.” She clapped her hands again, and said, “You! Big 'un!”

The man roused from his dullness, and without another word, Lily clawed the collar down from the man's shirt and tore into his throat. His face was a mask of horror and ultimate torment, but he was helpless to resist.

I took a moment to admire the reflections of Lily's beads against the hard snow, the spatter of blood in the flickering lamplight, and the eager way her head bobbed as she fed.

And, oooh! She liked nice things, too; her dress was by Worth!

The big man fell, a slave to weakness and gravity. I saw the blood flowing still, heard the faint flutter of his still-beating heart, and took his wrist before she could drain him entirely.

He tasted of rare roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, a reasonable Bordeaux, followed by champagne . . .

Nothing like good traditional British fare in winter, shared by lamplight.

Lily's appetite was as great as mine. She licked the tears from the sobbing girl's cheeks, and I couldn't resist doing the same.

Sublime.

Lily grabbed a meager wrist and I took the carotid. Even though we dug in with all the gusto of schoolgirls sharing a chocolate sundae, I realized I was no longer hungry for blood.

Lily stared at me from across the body of the girl, who was dying but far from gone.

My new friend reached over, removed a drop of blood from my lip with a finger. Popped it in her own mouth with a mischievous grin.

I moved the hair behind her ears, wiped a smear of blood from her chin.

Lily stood and hooked her thumbs under the straps of her dress. The weight of the beads pulled the silk down as quickly as any stage curtain. Besides her shoes, she wore nothing but the most charming camiknickers.