chapter Eight
Ethan Carrick hated Roberto Donatelli with every fucking bone in his body. Once they had been friends, back when London was nothing but a mudhole and the Americas didn't exist to Europeans. But then Donatelli had seduced Gwenna and left her to die giving birth to his bastard child, and Ethan would never forgive him for that. Donatelli was a cruel, heartless son of a bitch who enjoyed playing people for power, and would trample anyone who got in the way of his self-serving plans.
Not to mention that he was just annoying as hell. A metrosexual moron.
God, Ethan hated him.
They stared across the conference table at each other.
Donatelli leaned back into his leather chair. "I can practically hear your teeth grinding, Carrick. You need to at least pretend to like me at the Inaugural Ball tomorrow night."
"I'll tolerate you, nothing more. Everyone knows this is a political alliance, not a friendship."
A smirk on his smarmy face, Donatelli said, "You mean I'm not invited to your ranch for fishing, hunting, and relaxing man talk away from the office?"
"I don't own a ranch. And if I did, I'd burn it down before I let you set foot in it." Ethan was still appalled that Donatelli was vice president of the Vampire Nation, while he was president. But there had been no choice. Ethan had been on the verge of losing the election because of the growing unrest of Impure vampires, born mortal with vampire genes, and later turned to vampire. They felt that vampires like Donatelli, who encourage vampire population growth, spoke to their rights more than a conservative like Ethan did. Then when Gregor Chechikov had entered the race, Ethan had known they would have a disaster on their hands if Chechikov won. He was a Russian lunatic, plain and simple, with plans for cloning vampires. Ethan had seen an opportunity to ensure Chechikov didn't come into power by aligning himself with Donatelli. Together they became a moderate, all-inclusive ticket, and it had won them the election, averting what amounted to vampire civil war.
But the immediate result was also that Ethan had to work together with Donatelli in some functioning capacity for the next forty years, and he needed to learn to control his dislike of the bastard or they would never accomplish anything. And unless he got a handle on his anger, Ethan would spend the next four decades walking around pissed off, which was bad for his mental health.
"Let's just get to the point here. Tomorrow we walk in together, get sworn in, and have drinks. It should go smoothly enough. Are you bringing a date or something? Because you can't be strolling into this with some bimbo mortal or eighteen-year-old vampire chick. We all know the truth about you, but you have to least pretend to have some sort of class." Maybe he was just getting a dig in, but hell, he wouldn't put it past Donatelli to do something as stupid as bring his mortal blood slave to the Inaugural Ball.
Donatelli didn't rise to the bait. He shrugged. "I didn't think having your sister as an escort would be in the least bit offensive. Gwenna has always conducted herself with perfect decorum."
The Italian was just so good at infuriating him. "Gwenna isn't your date." He didn't think. She had made it sound like she wasn't against speaking to her ex-husband, but surely that didn't extend to putting on a party dress and walking with Donatelli into a room filled with a thousand vampires. Gwenna didn't like attention, and the kind of buzz their being together would create was enough of a deterrent for his sister, he was sure.
Besides, she had been with a mortal and Alexis was right. Dating two men was not Gwenna's style. Hell, as far as he knew, she hadn't dated any man but Donatelli.
"She's not my date yet. But she will be. I'll drop by her suite after we're done here."
The bastard's self-assurance irritated Ethan. What gave the jerk-off the right to even ask Gwenna to be his date? She'd divorced his sorry ass three hundred years earlier, which meant she wasn't obligated to be seen in public with him. "She won't say yes."
"Yes, she will. She and I have been on much friendlier terms lately. She'll do it as a favor to me, and as a favor to you. She'll understand how important it is for our government to show unity."
There was truth to that, and Ethan didn't like it. But he still said, "I wouldn't expect her to bleed for me like that, and she knows it."
"Being my date is bleeding?"
"Hell, yes. I imagine it would be more fun fucking a frog than dancing with you."
"How colorful. Hopefully you'll never have to do either, because I'm not too keen on the concept of waltzing with you either." Donatelli looked casually around. "Where's your secretary? I need a drink."
Ethan turned to his bodyguard, wanting this little meeting over. God, he was never going to survive forty years of this drivel. "Would you please find Brenda and see if she can find a drink for Mr. Donatelli? Thank you."
"Is Brenda your new secretary? I hope she's more efficient than that idiotic Kelsey you had previously. While Kelsey is attractive in a vapid, slutty sort of way, she's distressingly dumb. Though loyal. It's a beautiful thing to see her clinging to her junkie husband."
It was still a rather sore spot with him that Kelsey had essentially betrayed Ethan after he'd spent the last forty years providing her with gainful employment—despite her questionable secretarial skills. Hearing Donatelli rub it in wasn't conducive to a stress-free work environment. Nor had it made him the least bit happy to hear from his wife that she intended to spend the night hanging out at a rock concert with Kelsey. That screamed male strippers and possible jail time to him. Kelsey was a magnet for trouble.
"Kelsey left her husband, so just let her be, alright?" Though he had no intention of rehiring her. She had proven herself untrustworthy. "And by the way, you can't drop by to invite Gwenna to the ball, and have her laugh in your face and say no, because Alexis told me Gwenna has plans tonight."
Ethan paused to make sure he had Donatelli's full interest.
"Oh, really?" Donatelli didn't look like he believed him.
"Yes. She has a mortal boyfriend and they're out tonight." And Donatelli could put that in his fucking pipe and smoke it.
"You don't have any exciting clothes at all." Kelsey stood in front of Gwenna's closet, giving every appearance of being in mourning for slut outfits.
Gwenna hated to break it to her, but she wasn't an exciting woman. It was highly unlikely she would have a secret snappy or stylish dress hiding somewhere. "Sorry. I haven't needed a lot of going-out clothes living in an old castle by myself."
"But you're in Vegas now." Kelsey pointed out the obvious as she abandoned searching through Gwenna's many T-shirts, twin sets, and khaki slacks. "And I brought a few outfits in case we found ourselves in this very situation."
Alexis snorted, lying straight across Gwenna's bed on her side. "I can't wait to see this."
Gwenna wasn't nearly as enthusiastic. "Kelsey, what's wrong with me just wearing a pair of jeans? It's just a rock concert, right? Don't people wear jeans to concerts?" They always did in Disney movies. Gwenna liked the Disney channel because every problem was perfectly wrapped up in under two hours, all while the laugh track went off for every canned and trite joke. It made her happy. Being dressed in Kelsey's clothes did not make her happy, since Kelsey was five foot ten, weighed ninety pounds, and was notorious for exposing two thirds of her body at any given moment. She liked to tell herself it was because Kelsey had no reflection and couldn't see exactly what she looked like, but that was probably false hope.
"Sure, it's a rock concert, but you want to be pimped out a little. You don't want to look like you're headed to Wal-Mart. And these guys are vampires, remember, so they're going to notice us immediately."
She didn't know they were vampires because no one had bothered to explain that little factoid to her earlier. "No, I actually had no clue they were vampires. Are you telling me the entire band is undead? Is the whole audience full of vampires?"
"No." Kelsey looked at her like that was an idiotic suggestion. "Why would the audience be vampires? They're a vampire band pretending to be vampires so no one knows they're really vampires. But since we're vampires, we know they're vampires, of course."
Right. She should have guessed that. Gwenna sat down on her bed next to Alexis. "Maybe I should just stay home." She could call Nate and see if he was still available…
"No!" Kelsey shook her finger at her. "You're cheering me up, so you have to go."
Shit. When put like that, there was no way out of it. Gwenna was very good at feeling guilty. "Okay, fine."
"Thank you!" Kelsey beamed. "Now let me go get my bag. I left it in the other room. I have the cutest blue dress I brought for you to wear."
"Fine. But while you're getting that, I have an e-mail to send." She turned to her laptop, which she'd brought into the bedroom with her so she wouldn't forget to send the spreadsheet to Nate. Clicking on her mail, she was surprised to see another e-mail from Slash.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Tonight
Hey Queenie,
Everyone is going to The Impalers concert tonight. If you can get a ticket, meet me there. I'll find you in the crowd.
Now that was rather an odd coincidence. Yet another one. Slash and "everyone" were going to be at the concert that Kelsey had talked her into attending. And the band members were all vampires.
Plus if Slash was confident he could find her in the crowd, then he knew what she looked like. Which meant he had been at the train station and had seen her, because she'd only previously given him a very generic "short and blond" description of herself. He'd never be able to pick her out of a crowd based on that. She shivered. What if Slash was the killer of poor Buzzdrew? She couldn't even imagine what the motivation had been for that.
But Andrew had been mortal and vulnerable as such. Gwenna wasn't. And she was bound and determined to figure out what the hell was going on—especially if true slayers were planning an actual attack. Given the large number of vampires in Vegas for the Inauguration, it would be perfect timing for that sort of large-scale attack, and she had no intention of allowing such a thing to occur.
She clicked Reply.
I should be able to get a ticket. See you there. And don't stand me up this time.
Queenie
Might as well let him know she hadn't appreciated his not showing the night before. Then she pulled Nate's e-mail address out of her pocket and entered it in her address book. She clicked to send him an e-mail, attaching the slayers' loop spreadsheet. Then she typed quickly.
Hi Nate,
Here's the info attached as discussed. I also heard from Slash again… we are meeting at a concert tonight, The Impalers. They pretend to be vampires as part of their act. Will give you a description of Slash after I meet him. See you Sunday.
Best,
Gwenna
She was absolutely certain her e-mail sounded boring and ridiculous, but she wasn't sure what else to say. And it was Nate's work e-mail, so it wasn't like she could talk dirty to him even if she were so inclined to do so, which she wasn't. Well, she found the idea sort of intriguing actually, but wasn't exactly sure she'd know how to go about it.
"What are you doing?" Alexis asked.
Gwenna jumped, as if she had actually written a dirty e-mail to Nate and Alexis had seen it. Lord, she needed to get a grip on herself. "Just dashing off this thing to Nate." Alexis and Ethan still didn't know about the murder and she had no intention of telling them.
"You're really digging this guy, aren't you?" Alexis sounded downright gleeful about that.
Gwenna closed her e-mail and prepared to face her sister-in-law, and an endless round of teasing. Only to find herself being confronted by Kelsey with a fistful of blue fabric that wouldn't cover a Chihuahua, let alone a full-grown woman. "Whatever that is, I'm not wearing it."
Kelsey smiled. "Yes, you are. Please? It will make me feel so much better to see you looking hot."
Damn it. Gwenna sighed and took the dress—if that's what it was. It looked more like an odd pair of panties. "If it looks appalling, you have to be honest with me."
"Of course," Kelsey nodded.
"Scout's honor," Alexis said from the bed.
She didn't believe them, but she was also very impatient to get to the concert and find Slash, so she stomped off to the bathroom to try and interpret what constituted "hot" in Kelsey Columbia's world.
Donatelli hated Ethan Carrick. He'd spent a lifetime poisoning Gwenna against him, and Roberto had never been able to figure out why. He loved Gwenna, always had. He wanted nothing but happiness for her. So why in the world was Carrick always so determined to keep Gwenna from him?
He had wanted to smack the satisfaction off Carrick's face when he had mentioned that Gwenna had a mortal boyfriend, but he had restrained himself. There was a much more rational way to deal the situation.
"Williams." He snapped his fingers for his bodyguard, and tossed back a glass of blood. There was an excellent view of the Vegas Strip from his room at the Venetian, but he stared at it without appreciating it. The very idea of another man's hands on his wife had him in a foul mood, even though he knew it was a ridiculous attempt on Carrick's part to irritate him. Gwenna didn't date. She never had. In the three hundred years since their divorce, Donatelli couldn't even count the number of women he had bedded. But he was conversely positive that Gwenna had never let another man inside her body.
Because she still loved him and they belonged together.
"Follow Gwenna and tell me if you see her with a man. I want you to watch her and tell me everything she's doing for the next forty-eight hours."
Williams nodded and left.
Donatelli sighed. It was so highly inconvenient that Gwenna had developed such a stubborn streak. It was clearly a Carrick trait. One he despised.
And one he would break her of if it took all of eternity.
Nate allowed himself a two-hour nap before heading back to the station to see if the autopsy report on Andrew's body had arrived yet. It hadn't, but he did have the e-mail from Gwenna as promised providing him with half the list members' real names matched to their e-mail addresses.
"Hot damn." It was a lucky break, and a huge time saver. Now they could zip through the list and eliminate any names of those out of town with clear alibis. There was someone on the list who was the killer, Nate was convinced of it. He just needed to methodically determine who it couldn't be to figure out who it actually was.
His good humor disappeared when he actually read the body of Gwenna's e-mail. She was going to meet Slash. Who very possibly was a murderer. At a concert with fake vampires.
"Jesus Christ." The woman had absolutely no sense of self-preservation.
"What's up?" Jim Connors, the other detective on the case, glanced over at him from his paper-laden cubicle.
Nate explained the situation. "What makes sense to her about doing this? I swear, she'd walk in front of a fucking bus and never even notice it until it ran her over." It was that naivety, that innocence, about Gwenna that appealed to him, while at the same time it frustrated him to no end.
"Yet given the looks of this spreadsheet, she's not stupid." Jim gestured to his computer screen, looking at the data Nate had just forwarded to him.
"No. But this still means I'm going to have to show up at this damn concert and see what the hell's going on." His temples throbbed. "Fake vampires. What is the matter with people? Can't people try a little reality once in a while?"
"Reality's no fun, Nate, my man." Jim leaned back in his wheeled chair, making the seat squeak from his ample weight. "People need a little escape. It's good, clean fun. You want me to go check out the concert? I'm about to head out of here anyway."
The rational thing to do would be to take Jim up on his offer. But Nate wasn't feeling anything close to rational. He was running on little sleep, his emotions were threatening to suck him under, and he had an intense, burning need to keep Gwenna Carrick safe all by himself. It wasn't the department checking up on her, it was him, the man, Nate Thomas.
"Nah, that's okay. I can handle it."
He thought he sounded casual as hell, but Jim barked out a laugh. "So that's the way the wind blows, huh? She was a pretty little thing, I'll give you that. A little too delicate for my taste, though." Jim patted his substantial gut. "I'd crush her. I like a woman I can really grab on to."
Now there was an image he didn't need. "She'd never go for you anyway," Nate drawled as he turned his computer off.
"Hey, thanks." Jim threw a pen at him.
Nate caught it and tossed it onto his desk. "I'm just telling you like it is. She's hot for me, and you wouldn't stand a chance."
He was bragging to throw Jim off the truth, but then he remembered the way Gwenna had responded to his fingers moving inside her, and he knew the truth was that Gwenna was hot for him. And he was hot as hell for her. It wasn't logical, but it was there, and it was intense.
Which might explain why he was heading to a concert by a fake vampire band with every intention of hauling her delicate ass out of there and kissing some sense into her.
Gwenna turned to Alexis. "I feel slightly uncomfortable." Which was her very British way of describing the fact that she wanted to earth to open and swallow her and the very tiny dress she was wearing.
"Why?" Alexis scanned the dark room. "You look fantastic. Just relax."
Easy for Alexis to say since she was wearing jeans. Gwenna was wearing an exercise in insanity. With a plunging neckline. Which she kept trying to tug closed, only to have Kelsey smack at her and spread it even farther apart than it was originally.
So she hovered as close to Alexis as possible without stealing her oxygen and held a little clutch purse in front of her chest. This had been a really poor lapse in judgment. And given the vast crowd of concertgoers, there was no way she was going to find Slash. All she knew was that he was male and in his twenties. That took her potential pool down to a mere thousand guys, many of whom were strolling around pierced, tattooed, and wearing chains off their clothes or body parts. She saw lots of people opening their mouths and exposing fake fangs to each other as well, which she found incredibly disturbing.
Why did they want to be vampires? What exactly was the lure? Immortality, she supposed. Power. And of course, the irony was that Gwenna had never asked for her vampirism, had been given it by Ethan to prevent her from bleeding to death after Isabel's birth nine centuries earlier. There had been many times where Gwenna would have gladly given the gift of eternity back.
No longer, though. She had a purpose now, and it was to ferret out the slayers, and prevent an attack. And she needed to help Nate find Andrew's killer. His hobby, his playacting, like all these men around her pretending to be vampires, had gotten him killed, and somehow she felt inadvertently responsible for that.
"Hey." A guy with a shaved head and a black T-shirt that stated "Get Impaled, You Know You Want It," smiled at her.
Yikes. He was flirting with her. He was big and scary and she was so not ready for this. Gwenna felt the urge to grab on to Alexis and pretend they were a couple, but that would be an avoidance technique. And she was resolved to be stronger, more confident, to meet problems head on and deal with them entirely on her own.
"Hi," she said. Wow, that was really handling things.
Of course—duh—maybe this was Slash. Which meant she had to talk with him long enough to determine if that was a possibility.
The guy had to yell, since the opening band was on stage making what sounded to Gwenna like a godawful amount of noise. "You been to see The Impalers before?" he asked her, leaning down to speak directly to her ear.
His breath tickled her cheek. Shifting slightly away and looking up at him, she shook her head and forced a smile. "No, this is my first."
"A virgin." He grinned. "You'll like it, they put on a good show."
She just smiled, wracking her brain for something flirtatious to say, or at least something conversational. "I, uh…" Nothing. Zero. She couldn't even complete the sentence because her mind was utterly empty of words. And he was starting to lose his grin, like he thought she was a half-wit. Which maybe she was.
Kelsey saved her by moving in between the two of them and putting her forearm on Gwenna's shoulder, using her as a support. "So what's your name, cutie?" she said to the very tall and tattooed man who was the polar opposite of the descriptive cutie in Gwenna's book.
"Jason. What's your name?"
"Kelsey." She nudged Gwenna. "And this is—"
Gwenna cut her off, bursting out with, "I'm Queenie. It's nice to meet you."
Alexis gave a snort of amusement. Kelsey said, "Wow, cool, I like it," as if they didn't know each other. But Gwenna should be grateful Kelsey didn't just flat out give her away. And the guy was looking a bit skeptical.
"Queenie?" he said.
"Yes. My parents were British and Mum had royalty envy." It was much easier to roll with a lie when it was ludicrous. She briefly wondered why that was as Jason started to back up. "Is Jason really your name?"
"Uh, yeah. Well, um, enjoy the concert. See you." He disappeared into the crowd.
"Shit, I think you scared him, Gwenna. And he was cute, too." Kelsey frowned at his retreating back.
"I scared him? I don't think so. I'm not the least bit scary." She rather resented that. And if he couldn't take an unusual name, then he wasn't worth her time anyway. Not that she was at all interested in Giant Jason, but it was a bit insulting to think that little bitty her had been so weird or uninteresting that he had felt the need to dash off. Wimp.
But the important fact she had gained from that encounter was that she was now down to nine hundred and ninety-nine potential Slashes, because Jason hadn't reacted at all to her online name.
"What's with the Queenie thing? If you're going to use a fake name—which I totally support—couldn't you come up with a better one?" Alexis asked. "Like I think maybe I'll be Mackenzie for the night. I've always liked that name because it's a power name."
"Oooh, fake names. Okay, I'll be Winnie," Kelsey said.
Gwenna tried to imagine how Kelsey had plucked the name Winnie from the vast stores of knowledge in her sixty-year-old brain. It was more random than Queenie, which was really saying a lot. "Winnie. That's an unusual name. What made you think of it?"
"I've always liked the Pooh Bear stories." Kelsey's lip started to tremble. "Ringo used to read me the Winnie the Pooh books."
Now there was an intriguing glimpse into Kelsey's marital life. Her heroin-addicted assassin husband had read her the silly old bear stories? "That's so very sweet, Kelsey." And odd as hell, but who was she to judge?
"I need a drink," Alexis said. "So Mackenzie is going to the bar. Can I leave Winnie and Queenie together without the two of you getting into serious trouble?"
"Why would we get in trouble?" The very concept seemed to puzzle Kelsey. "We'll be totally fine."
"Okay, but stay together. Got it?" Alexis shook her finger at them.
Gwenna nodded. "We'll be fine." Her sister-in-law was spending too much time with Ethan. She was getting to be almost as overprotective as he was.
"Does anyone else want a drink?"
"No, thanks." Unlike other vamps, Gwenna had never developed a taste for any drink besides blood. But then she was supposed to be opening herself to new experiences, embracing life. "Actually, I'll have whatever you're having."
"I'll take a martini. Something flavored," Kelsey said.
"Okay, I'll be back."
Alexis headed to the bar, and Kelsey grabbed Gwenna's hand. "I'm so totally depressed. We have to hit on guys, that always makes me feel better."
And she dragged Gwenna to the nearest quartet of men, who looked up with obvious lustful interest, which was to be expected given they were being assaulted by two women not wearing enough clothing. Gwenna felt her cheeks burning, but reminded herself the room was dark, with red strobe lights, and no one would notice in the slightest her blush. Besides, she was supposed to be looking for Slash. It was part of her new plan to be proactive. Waiting around for him to approach her was so last century.
"So which one of you has the biggest penis?" Kelsey said to the men.