Circus of the Damned   ::   Гамильтон Лорел

Blood was dripping down my armrather steadily. The blood didn't show on the black carpeting. A good color if you planned to bleed much in a room.

Yasmeen was helping Marguerite to her feet. The woman had recovered very quickly. Why? Because she was a human servant, of course. Sure.

Yasmeen walked towards the bed, towards me. Her lovely face had thinned until the bones showed through. Her eyes were bright, almost feverish. "Fresh blood, and I haven't fed tonight."

"Control yourself, Yasmeen."

"You have not taught your servant good manners, Jean-Claude," Yasmeen said. She was looking very unkindly at me.

"Leave her alone, Yasmeen." Jean-Claude was standing now.

"Every servant must be tamed, Jean-Claude. You have let it go far too long."

I looked over Yasmeen's shoulder at him. "Tamed?"

"It is an unfortunate stage in the process," he said. His voice was neutral, as if he were talking about taming a horse.

"Damn you." I pulled my gun. I held it two-handed in a teacup grip. Nobody was taming me tonight.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw someone stand up on the other side of the bed. The man was still under the covers. It was a slender woman, her skin the color of coffee with cream. Her black hair was cut very close to her head. She was naked. Where the hell had she come from?

Yasmeen was about a yard from me, tongue playing over her lips, fangs glistening in the overhead light.

"I'll kill you, do you understand that, I'll kill you," I said.

"You'll try."

"Fun and games aren't worth dying for," I said.

"After a few hundred years, that's all that is worth dying for."

"Jean-Claude, unless you want to lose her, call her off!" My voice was higher than I wanted it to be, afraid.

At this range the bullet should take out her entire chest. If it worked, there would be no resurrecting her as the undead; her heart would be gone. Of course, she was over five hundred years old. One shot might not do it. Lucky I had more than one bullet.

I caught movement from the corner of my eye. I was half-turned towards it when something flattened me to the ground. The black woman was on top of me. I brought the gun around to fire, not giving a damn if she was human or not. But her hand grabbed my wrists, squeezing. She was going to crush my wrists.

She snarled in my face, all teeth and a low growl. The sound should have had fur around it and pointy teeth. Human faces weren't supposed to look that way.

The woman jerked the Browning out of my hands like taking candy from a baby.