Guilty Pleasures   ::   Гамильтон Лорел

8

I watched Catherine's cab vanish around the corner. She never turned, or waved, or spoke. She would wake tomorrow with vague memories. Just a night out with the girls.

I would like to have thought she was out of it, safe, but I knew better. The air smelled thickly of rain. The street lights glistened off the sidewalk. The air was almost too thick to breathe. St. Louis in the summer. Peachy.

“Shall we go?” Jean-Claude asked.

He stood, white shirt gleaming in the dark. If the humidity bothered him, it didn't show. Aubrey stood in the shadows near the door. The only light on him was the crimson neon of the club sign. He grinned at me, face painted red, body lost in shadows.

“It's a little too contrived, Aubrey,” I said.

His grin wavered. “What do you mean?”

“You look like a B-movie Dracula.”

He flowed down the steps, with that easy perfection that only the really old ones have. The street light showed his face tight, hands balled into fists.

Jean-Claude stepped in front of him and spoke low, voice a soothing whisper. Aubrey turned away with a jerky shrug and began to glide up the street.

Jean-Claude turned to me. “If you continue to taunt him, there will come a point from which I cannot bring him back. And you will die.”

“I thought your job was to keep me alive for this Nikolaos.”

He frowned. “It is, but I will not die to defend you. Do you understand that?”

“I do now.”

“Good. Shall we go?” He gestured down the sidewalk, in the direction Aubrey had gone.

“We're going to walk?”

“It is not far.” He held his hand out to me.

I stared at it and shook my head.

“It is necessary, Anita. I would not ask it otherwise.”

“How is it necessary?”

“This night must remain secret from the police, Anita. Hold my hand, play the besotted human with her vampire lover. It will explain the blood on your blouse. It will explain where we are going, and why.”

His hand hung there, pale and slender. There was no tremor to the fingers, no movement, as if he could stand there offering me his hand forever. And maybe he could.

I took his hand. His long fingers curved over the back of my hand. We began walking, his hand very still in mine. I could feel the pulse in my hand against his skin. His pulse began to speed up to match mine. I could feel his blood flow like a second heart.

“Have you fed tonight?” my voice sounded soft.

“Can you not tell?”

“I can never tell with you.