Beautiful Danger

Chapter 9

Time to kick this mission into gear and stop fooling around. The bargain was due to expire in an hour. Now Lark strode through the back door of the dance club, La Bouche. She never liked walking through the big red neon lips on the main street. It was far too conspicuous for a knight of the Order, and also just silly.

This club wasn’t a paranormal club, but it was known to be a favorable spot for vampires on the prowl. Besides the dance floor that swayed with trance music and the exotic Indian/Electronic mix along with heavy-lidded couples that appeared half-stoned, there were the various rooms that offered illegal drugs and sex.

Todd had found more than a few of his marks here. Lark remembered him telling her how much he hated the vibe of the place. But as she strolled along the dance floor, her thighs brushed by the shing of a dancer’s spangled skirts, and her body subtly moving to the throbbing beat, she decided she liked it. The vibe she got from it was a maharaja’s harem with a gothic yet funky twist.

It wasn’t necessary to scan the dance floor for her mark. She suspected dancing was the last thing that would draw Domingos to this club, if indeed, he was here at all. She’d tracked him to this neighborhood, though, and there were no other clubs in the immediate vicinity.

Shouldn’t the noise drive him beyond the madness?

Maybe that was it. The noise might drown out the voices and violins he heard in his head. La Bouche could very well offer a comforting refuge for him, as ridiculous as that seemed.

After politely refusing to join a slender blond man on the dance floor, she walked right into a man who gently grabbed her by the upper arm. Gray hair gave him a distinguished aura that felt wrong in a place like this. At once Lark could feel his persuasion forcing her to stay calm. Like imperceptible fingers stroking her brain, coaxing ever so slightly. She’d been trained to recognize and fight off a vampire’s persuasion, but with the music thrumming in her veins, it wasn’t so easy to find that calm center in her core and tap into it.

“Will you step aside with me, please?” he asked politely, his grip directing her to the left.

He didn’t seem as if he wanted to get lucky with her, and his intrusion upon her mental struggle to fight back calmed her even as she inwardly argued that she was not calm.

Lark placed a hand on the stake beneath her coat, but she wouldn’t whip it out inside the club. Not unless it was necessary to protect her life, and she didn’t feel danger from this vampire. Or was that the persuasion settling her? To be controlled by another so easily angered her, yet she walked beside him, reasoning that to make a scene would only draw undesired attention.

He walked her toward a hallway that glittered with red and gold spangles and tendrils of smoke that misted vanilla incense. When she thought he might be luring her toward a private room, he stopped, forcing her shoulders against the spangled wall, and leaned in close.

“I’m Vincent Lepore. I’m with the Council. I know you’re with the Order. And I’ll ask you to leave.”

Her distinctive coat was the giveaway. The blades reflected the disco lights in intermittent flashes. And a Council member? This guy had rank within the paranormal realms. The Council was a group of various breeds who oversaw the paranormal nations. They and the Order were diametrically opposed and would never work with each other, though they had historically walked a wide circle around each other, never engaging, because the two organizations had never been given reason for such defense.

Also, Rook liked to say that the Council was a group of milksops who sat about discussing retribution and punishment, yet never actually got their fingers dirty for fear of mussing their coifs.

Lark wasn’t about to change the history books by showing Lepore her aggression. It wasn’t worth the embarrassment, or Rook’s disappointment. And she wasn’t sure she could, even if she tried. Hello, persuasion.

“I’m just looking around,” she said over the music. He smelled like spice, and it annoyed her that she liked it. Must wear the same cologne her hus— She didn’t want to think about him right now.

“Whatever you’re looking for, we don’t need that kind of trouble,” he said, not raising his voice, yet she heard over the din. “Nor does the Order. You armed?”

She nodded.

“You should never have made it past security. You’re out of here.” Now he grabbed her forcibly by the upper arm and walked her toward the back entrance.

Fine. She wasn’t about to cause trouble when her brain was feeling a bit like jelly and was sending that mushy feeling down to her arms. But the humiliation of being escorted out by a vampire would undo her.

Lark shrugged from Lepore’s grasp. “I can see myself out. But I’ll have you know there’s a wolf slayer walking around the city. Don’t you think the Council should do something about that?”

“Wolf slayer?” He laughed, and any modicum of respect his position might have granted him was lost with that callous disregard. “Since when does the Order of the Stake concern itself with werewolves?”

She’d said too much. And he’d only cemented her distrust of the Council.

But seriously? Since when had the Order given a fig what werewolves asked of them? And why had she never considered as much before?

Mushy brain, Lark. He’s making you question everything and even the stuff you shouldn’t.

“Sorry to have disturbed you,” she said, and marched out of the club and across the narrow parking lot past a few groups of patrons either making out or getting high on the latest designer drug.

Inhaling the warm summer night air, she focused on shaking off the persuasion. Deep breaths through her nose and heavy exhales did the trick, and it was surprising how she could feel the veil lift from her brain to clear her thoughts.

The street behind the club was dark, empty of cars—most in the city traveled by Metro—and she strode down the way, close to the dark-windowed retail buildings that could never compete with the elite shops on the Champs-Élysées.

Spinning the stake through the fingers of her right hand like a majorette’s baton, Lark admonished herself for allowing the vampire to piss her off. And for his easy control over her mind.

They were all alike. Among the paranormal breeds, vampires possessed a superiority complex, thinking they were better than most and putting on airs. That was the first time she’d felt overpowered by one of them, and he’d been polite and had barely touched her.

“Stupid longtooth.”

“So now I’m stupid?”

Domingos joined her side, hands in his pockets, bare feet keeping time with her boots thudding upon the tarmac.

“I have a stake, vampire. Be warned.”

“I see that. Up for a little clubbing tonight?”

“I’ve got slaying on my mind,” she said curtly. “Next vampire to piss me off gets titanium through the heart.”

“I’ll try not to piss you off.”

She stopped and swung around, walking him backward into a tight alley that fit them single file and that reeked of ripe fruit. “Why must you test me like this?”

“I’m not testing you.”

“You follow me like a hungry stray.”

“You were following me, hunter. I felt you on my back the whole way through the fifth quarter.”

“Yeah?” The truth wasn’t going to win him any points. “Well, now you’re the one following me.”

He shrugged. “Our deal is still in effect for another hour.”

Huffing out a breath, Lark slammed her fist, clasped about the stake, against his shoulder. “I’ve been given an ultimatum. If you’re not dead by midnight, I’m off this job.”

“Midnight is right around the end of our deal.” He rubbed his palms together gleefully, ignoring the stake at his shoulder. “This could get interesting. So I assume you’re not going to let me out of your sight for the next hour. Wouldn’t be a very smart hunter if you did.”

“You’re already dead, vampire. Why prolong the agony? Just ask for it right now, and we can be done with it.”

“You’re very cheeky.” He guided the stake away from his shoulder with a finger, and Lark relented, holstering it at her hip. “Thinking I’m some kind of creature who would ask for his own death to be free of the torments he suffers?” He chuckled and shook his head, then made a show of sniffing the air. “I can smell the lingering persuasion on you. Who was it?”

She tugged at her ponytail, adjusting it over a shoulder to hide the eerie shiver that sent goose bumps crawling up her neck. “Vincent Lepore.”

“Council vamp. You’re making friends in high places.”

“He’s not a friend. He stuck his fingers into my brain and stirred it up. I don’t like being manipulated or lied to.”

“I would never lie to you.” He resumed following her as she strode onward. “I don’t think I could manipulate you if I tried.”

“You haven’t persuaded me?”

“What would be the purpose? I don’t want you to forget you spoke to me.”

“You could make me forget I want to stake you.”

“That wouldn’t be fair play.”

“Oh, and you’re all about fairness.”

“Have I given you reason to believe otherwise?”

No, he had not.

It frustrated Lark that, more and more, the vampire proved himself a worthy being, someone—were he not a creature—she could entirely see having as a friend. And he was a musician? She hadn’t chattered about music with someone for years. Of course that would detract from her mission, and—hell, just being around Domingos LaRoque was proving a distraction.

The vampire nudged her gently with an elbow. “Come with me.”

And he walked away without waiting to see if she cared to follow, a shadow clad in darkness that moved as if he were a ghost of mortality past.

Lark stopped in the center of the alley, feet spread and trigger hand flinching near her hip. She would not do as a vampire commanded.

But you already have.

Maybe the only reason he hadn’t used persuasion on her was that he couldn’t access that power since his torture? Domingos was strong physically, but perhaps his vampiric powers had been diminished. Like his inability to will up his fangs.

The shadow walking away from her turned a corner. He was right about one thing. A wise hunter would not lose sight of her prey.

Lark picked up the trail, swiftly gaining the corner and turning into an even darker, narrower pathway. Paris was a twisting labyrinth of passageways that she enjoyed navigating only so long as she didn’t end up at a dead end or walking into someone’s house, which happened on occasion.

Halfway down the block, Domingos strode haphazardly, swaying every now and then as if drunk. Vamps could get drunk off the blood of an alcoholic or someone who’d imbibed too much. Had he bitten someone from the club?

“Probably just the madness,” she muttered. A thought that was, strangely, more appealing than knowing he might have drunken blood.

She didn’t rush to catch up to him. She had time. Less than an hour, though she hadn’t a watch. For some reason she wagered the vampire would announce the midnight hour to her, defying her to grant his death.

Was that it? Maybe he desired death and couldn’t bring it upon himself. For the pain and mental torture he appeared to constantly suffer, it was a rational conclusion. And yet he didn’t want to die until his revenge mission had been completed.

Well, if he thought to string her along until then, and then ask for the stake, she had another story line for him to read.

Surprised he didn’t jump to a roof, Lark followed him at a distance through the thirteenth quarter and eventually they landed in an industrial neighborhood in the fourteenth.

Very near the ring road nestled a quiet neighborhood that looked like a scene out of a Tim Burton movie, dark and brooding, as gothic as could be. She guessed he was leading her to his home. That would put her opponent to the advantage come midnight, but she welcomed the challenge.

Had he prepared for her? Set traps to ensnare the hunter?

“Bring it,” she muttered, and strode through an open wrought-iron gate set in a brick fence.

The vampire led her toward a narrow mansion tucked between other limestone mansions, which might have been built during the 1700s, and edged by high, fragrant hedgerows and a crumbling brick fence. He walked through the front door—painted black with a stained-glass inset depicting a white rose—leaving it open behind him.

Lark marveled that the overgrown vines and plants spilling across the small front courtyard could be nightshade or wolfsbane or some other wildly macabre plant. With what else would a vampire choose to landscape his dread lair of horrors? The leaves touched her boot toes, and she was cautious only until she realized how ridiculous her thoughts had become.

Crushing a white bloom into the cobblestoned walk, she strode up the crumbling steps to stand before the open doorway. She’d never been inside a vampire’s home, and she paused at the threshold. No invitation was necessary for her, a mortal, unless he’d had it warded.

She tested the air before her but was not repulsed, nor did she sense an invisible barrier. She expected a trap, and had been trained to foresee the unexpected. Should a vampire claim a hunter kill, especially a knight of the Order, his fellow vampires would revere him.

Just as you are revered by the knights for your tally? Seventy-one lives destroyed in half a year’s time.

Was that really something to be proud of?

Of course not. Pride was not in her lexicon. Nor could she claim heroics, such as racing into a burning building. She’d even caved and staked her own husband, for Christ’s sake. That made her less than human, and closer to the creatures she stalked.

Lark swallowed and tested the threshold with a boot toe.

You go inside, and forget what the Order taught you, you break every rule Todd had and become something he was not.

“Free,” she whispered, not knowing why that word came to her, but also feeling it in her heart as truth.

Domingos appeared before her and gave her a wondering look—the Mad Hatter sizing up Alice’s moxie—and offered his hand. The edge of that hand was scarred with what looked like a burn patient’s skin. She’d not noticed that before. Had he been out in the sun recently?

Sliding her palm over his and tracing a finger along the scarred skin, she noted that it felt fragile, almost papery. He bent to kiss her hand and then tugged her inside and slammed the door shut.

“Frightened?” he asked as he walked her down the dark hallway toward a room lit by a low-watt lamp.

Lark checked her nerves and kept her calm. “I told you I’m only frightened by falling.”

“You’ve fallen into la maison du vampire,” he teased.

“I entered freely and of my own will.”

Oh, Lark. Did you really just quote Dracula?

She’d read the book in high school and had identified with Renfield for reasons beyond her ken. Lucy and Mina had seemed too flighty and easily led by the menfolk.

Domingos’s chuckle unhinged the first of her nerves. It was so bellowing and deep and shameless. And yet its masculine chord strummed at her innate desire for protection by someone bigger, stronger and male. And curiosity got the better of her as she followed the vampire deeper into Wonderland.

She strolled the gray shadows of the hallway, through the kitchen, where she was surprised to see it looked normal. Gray granite countertops boasted a mica gleam, and black leather bar stools queued neatly before the counter. In the living room, where one wall was completely windows shielded by heavy maroon damask draperies, she ran her fingers along the back of the leather sofa, noting the creases from wear and age.

The furniture was comfortable, the bookshelf filled with dusty hardcovers boasting gilded titles. A small television housed within a laminated vanity screamed 1950s, and assorted rugs and pillows completed the homey look. A cushy, thick rug lay beneath her feet. Were she shoeless, she could sink her toes into it.

Dragging her gaze from the rug, Lark decided there was no sign that a musician lived here, for she’d expect sheet music, a music stand and perhaps an instrument in a case. Nor was there any sign a vampire held residence, save the drapes drawn before the windows. No coffin? A literary trope, she knew, but it felt as though something was missing.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“It’s so...”

“Normal? You expected the Mad Hatter’s tea party?”

She shrugged. “Actually, yes.”

“Well, then, welcome, Alice. Won’t you have some tea? Sorry, I’m out of Earl Grey, but I could do with a spot of the chap’s blood.”

She flashed him a wary glance, and he countered with a jesting smirk.

“Sorry,” she replied, “that was, just... Sorry.”

“Don’t do that, Lark. You never apologize. It’s not in your nature to appease others. I like your honesty. If you think me mad, then say so.”

“I’m not sure what I think of you. I’ve been told you are insane, and have seen an example of what I suspect insanity might look like, and yet you’re also very clear and lucid at times.”

“At times are the key words in that statement. I am much more lucid around you, I’ve noticed.” He brazenly took in her attire from head to toe. “Do you wonder why that is?”

“No,” she said quickly, because it felt too intimate to agree.

“Go ahead and look around. I know how women like to snoop. And a hunter in a vampire’s home? You’ve hit the mother lode.”

“I could say the same about you. A vampire who has lured an Order knight into his lair. Will your vampire buddies cheer you on when you bring them my head?”

“I don’t kill mortals,” he said. “That’s abominable.”

“Even a hunter?”

He shrugged. “Never a pretty one.”

Domingos slid off the dark jacket he wore and tossed it across the back of the couch. Beneath, a black shirt was unbuttoned to reveal taut abs, and at the waist above his leather pants the shadow of dark hairs.

So normal, Lark again thought. Yet he only ever seemed to manage the one button. Weird. And...sexy.

“The woman I hire to clean is short,” he noted, unaware that her eyes had fixed on his abs. “She never can dust higher than the tops of the pictures.”

“Huh? Oh.” Forcing her gaze from the hard landscape of his tight muscles, Lark looked about and did indeed notice the dust that sat heavily on a picture frame, but only the top part. And then she noticed the decorations on the far wall. “Seriously?”

She strolled over to inspect the wall that could only be labeled a mini arsenal. A Kalashnikov, and a few pistols, and a melting stove where she examined silver bullets.

“This is my workshop-slash-living room,” he explained.

Tapping a silver bullet, she recalled her lessons on weaponry and defense. “You know the trajectory on silver bullets is piss-poor,” she commented. “They’re too soft.”

“You use them.”

“That we do, but only to dissuade.”

“I add an ash-wood core. Firms up the design.”

“Impressive. So you have much slaying to do?”

“I do have more than half a pack left to dispose.”

She lifted her chin to meet him directly in the eye. “I understand.”

“You do.” She followed his glance to a dusty clock on the wall near a machine gun: eleven forty-five. He leaned against the wall, crossed an ankle over the other and watched her survey the rest of the room. “We are more alike than you care to admit.”

“We both want to destroy that which brought irrevocable damage to our lives. I can agree we are alike in that respect,” she offered, gliding her fingers over a brass sculpture of a skull riddled with Celtic ribbons. Appropriately gothic, but she suspected it was more for looks than something he actually admired.

“I admire you,” he said.

Letting her fingers fall from the skull, Lark bowed her head, unwilling to meet his gaze. She did not deserve his admiration, nor did she want it.

“You have it,” he said, as if reading her thoughts. “Why do you punish yourself for something you could not prevent?”

“I don’t understand.”

“I get the need for revenge. But what I don’t get is why you put yourself at the bottom, the one who must pay for everyone else’s sins. Unworthy of standing your own ground, being your own person.”

“You don’t know me, vampire.”

He sighed and nodded. “Not as much as I’d like to.” Again he glanced at the clock. “Soon enough, eh? Come with me. This is not where I feel most comfortable. If I’m to die...”

Domingos strolled out of the room and Lark mocked his parting words. He didn’t expect to die tonight. Who was putting himself at the bottom now? He mocked her by toying with the bargain, their agreement to trust.

She followed him into a long, empty room framed on one end by a massive paned window that was curved along the top and fitted with a circle window, divided by six panes around the circumference. No color in the glass, but the beveled edge of each pane caught the moonlight as if lined with diamonds.

The moon was nearing fullness, and its silver shine bathed the vast floor with paned shadows. Domingos shrugged off his shirt, tossing it aside, and stood before the window, his back to it. Preparing for his death?

Nope. Just putting on an elaborate show, for reasons that she could only guess were explained through madness.

“I like to think the moonlight softens the pain,” he said.

Lark walked carefully toward the window, around behind him. She gasped at the sight of his back. The skin was wrinkled and tormented, as on his hands, yet looked fragile and paper-thin, as if to touch it would flake it away.

She wanted to touch it but knew the move would be too bold, and part of her was afraid. Yes, afraid, not of the creature, but of the pain she might cause him, and of the pain she didn’t want to connect with again. It would be worse than falling, because this fall would plunge her into her own pain.

“It’s from UV lights,” he said quietly. As he spoke the moon flashed silver in his hematite hair. “The wolves kept them on most of the time. My little cell had six light fixtures in it. They were caged with fine mesh so I couldn’t break the bulbs, though I did try. Difficult to hide from so much light.”

Lark caught a swallow at the back of her throat and splayed her palm before the horrible sight, but still did not touch. To do so would connect her to all things past. “Just your back?”

“Backs of my arms, hands and legs.”

Yes, she saw it on his arms now.

“I used to cower under the lights, trying to coil my body into as small a target as possible, protecting my belly and face. They’d stripped me to my skivvies, so I had to choose something to protect and the rest of me to sacrifice.”

The mind concocts the worst about torture, and Lark had gone beyond worst and into chaos imagining the things her husband might have experienced during his year and a day of captivity.

And right now her mind was kicking her for passing over the vampire’s threshold, and at the same time, shoving her toward the question. The question she’d always and never wanted answered.

What rabbit hole had she fallen into? This was not Lark, who ruthlessly staked vampires. This was...Lisa Cooper. The woman who had survived a year and a day in a madness of her own.

It’s a ploy! He’s trying to get under your skin, connect with your soft, forgiving side. A side you’ve buried. Don’t let him do it.

Yet he’d not lied to her since she’d met him, so why suspect a trick now?

“Tell me about it?” Heavy exhales hushed quickly from her mouth. “I need to know,” Lisa said without regard for Lark’s inner warnings.

“Because of your husband?” He tilted his head to look over his shoulder at her, but he did not meet her eyes. Instead he continued to bathe in the moonlight’s silver glow.

She nodded, fighting desperately to contain tears. She would not cry. She could not. Tears had stained every inch of her apartment floor. Now she walked upon her pain daily, yet would she ever be able to trample it to oblivion?

Domingos stepped away, leaving her palms to cool, and her wishing she had dared touch him, to offer some solace, or maybe just feel another person’s pain. He wandered to the center of the room where the moonlight barely lit the dull hardwood floor and squatted, wrapping his arms about his shoulders in a position of desolation.

“They strip away your soul,” he said quietly.

Lark sucked in her breath and closed her eyes. Stop him before he opens wide the wound on your heart.

It’s already open. Tearing it wider can’t do much worse, can it?

“It seems so effortless really. To reduce a man to madness.” His soft chuckle rippled across her heart, then clenched the aching muscle as if with a lasso of barbed wire. “They take away your clothes, your comforts, your means to identity. Naked. Alone. Shivering. You have nothing to anchor yourself to. No life raft.

“The pain of a weapon and the excruciating hunger for blood becomes your breath. The UV lights that burned into my skin? My air.”

Lark gasped, fighting the need to run out of the room. She trembled. Her skin felt warmer, uncomfortable. His experience could be similar to Todd’s. She’d never guessed they would strip him bare and humiliate him with such horrors.

“You become a child,” Domingos said softly. “And all that child desires is reassurance.”

He began to rock back and forth. A child who had learned to comfort himself because of the evils inflicted upon him.

She looked away. Had Todd done much the same? Had he been left alone in a small room after hours of torture, with no one to hold and comfort him?

“To be held...” His words cut through her wire-wrapped heart. “A foolish wish,” he said, his voice sharpening. “You will never have it. You will be denied! But it is what keeps that small spark glowing deep within. A minute flash that prays for release. Freedom.”

Freedom. That was what she’d felt when stepping across his threshold. How odd. They both wanted the same thing. And yet she hadn’t identified what her freedom looked and felt like.

Lark stepped forward softly, wanting to touch him, but sensing he was not finished speaking. And for a split second he became her husband, a man she had dreamed about holding to chase away the nightmare. But truthfully, she had not the strength then, and might have let him down if she had been allowed the contact.

“My spark has gone out.” He chuckled again. “Of course, you know that. Just look at my eyes. One is completely lacking in light.”

“There’s something in your eyes,” she offered. “Don’t give up, Domingos.”

“Madness is not so pretty, but it is what keeps me alive. Had I not the mad revenge stalking my soul, I would have nothing to live for. Although...”

“Yes, what else? There must be more than revenge that keeps you going. Do you have hope? You can, you know.”

Lifting his head, still facing away from her, he said clearly, “My hope is a pretty little hunter. She speaks to my soul. She taunts it with music and a promise of death, but in her kiss I taste desire and need, and know we are the same.”

He was right. She did desire him. Against her better judgment she desired this damned creature. But the need he tasted was so much darker. Yes, they were the same; she could not argue with that.

Coiled forward into himself, Domingos rocked, his head tucked against his knees. And she wanted to have been there. For her husband. And for Domingos. To wrap his child in her arms and make it all better.

Lark dropped to her knees and wrapped her arms about Domingos’s shoulders. He did not resist but continued to rock, which made it difficult for her to maintain hold. But she persisted.

He cried out. A shattering sound that reminded her of broken animals, such as birds with tattered wings. She hugged him tighter, knowing it must pain his tortured flesh, but not knowing how to release him—because she needed this connection.

He did not ask her to stop. Matching his slowing rhythm, she held on to him as she had never held on to a person before. His muscles flexed against her body and he shivered and moaned, but she did not relent. With him wrapped within her arms, she could keep him safe, above water. And he, unknowingly, lured her toward a secret dark safety she knew would never harm her.

It was what he needed. It was what she could give him. And in turn, she took.