"Top?" I asked.
"Dominant," Zane said.
Ah.
Nathaniel curled onto his side, drawing the bedspread around him. "The master, Colin, paid her to bring one of us to them. Anyone of us. It didn't matter who. It could have been Jason, or Zane, or Cherry. One of their animals, he said." He huddled down into the blankets, eyes fluttering shut, then open, then shut.
I looked at Cherry. "Is he alright?"
"I gave him something to help him sleep. It won't last long. Our metabolisms are too fast, but he'll get maybe half an hour, an hour if we're lucky."
"If you're not going to take a shower, I'd like to," Damian said.
"No, I'm getting in."
"But you can't wear what you've picked out," Asher said.
I frowned at him. "What are you talking about?"
"Jean-Claude sent a trunk of clothes just for this occasion," he said.
"Oh, no," I said, "no more leather and lace shit."
"I agree with you, Anita," Asher said. "If we were simply going to kill them it wouldn't matter what we wore, but we are putting on a show as much as anything. Appearance will matter."
"Well, shit," I said. "Fine, I'll dress up, we won't kill anyone, but you better come up with something that we can do to them. They can't abuse our people like this and just walk away."
"They will expect retribution, Anita. They are waiting for it."
I looked at Nathaniel cuddled so deep in the blankets that only the top of his head showed. "This retribution better be good, Asher."
"I will do my best."
I shook my head. "You do that." I went into the shower without any clothes to put on because the trunk was in the other cabin. I figured with both coffins in my room I didn't need the trunk. I'd really hoped we wouldn't be opening the damn thing. I hated dressing up in normal dressy clothes. Jean-Claude's idea of dressing up was always worse.
15
It took three rounds of shampoo to get my hair clean. The stuff on my body didn't seem to want to come off unless I scrubbed. There is that point in the middle of the back that you just can't do yourself. It is one of the few areas that married people have an edge on us single folk. I finally had to turn the shower on as high as it would go and just let it pound the middle of my back. The stuff finally sloughed off and floated down the drain.
The stuff clung like nothing I'd ever had to clean off before. That included real rotting corpses and zombies. None of it had ever been as tough to get rid of as Damian's ... fluids.
Cherry was the one who knocked on the door and brought in a pile of clothes. I didn't like any of them. Too much leather for my taste. It took two trips back and forth, wrapped in nothing but a towel, to find clothes that I was willing to wear. There was one red leather bodysuit that seemed to be nothing but straps. It might be interesting for private use just between Jean-Claude and myself, but wearing it in public was definitely out.
I ended up in a short-sleeved, black velvet, midriff top with such a low neckline that it took a special bra under it just so the bra didn't show. Jean-Claude had kindly packed the bra. It was one of those uplifting ones, and if there was one thing my chest didn't need, it was more lift; but it was also the only bra I had access to that plunged low enough that it didn't show with the shirt. There was a velvet dress that would have needed the bra for its neckline, too. Jean-Claude had been a busy little vampire.
Everything fit perfectly, if you were willing to wear it. I picked a leather skirt as the lesser of evils. There was a pair of thigh-high black boots that zipped in the back. The tops of the boots were wide and stiff and open at the back. The fronts of the boots came up to the absolute limit of my legs, brushing my groin at odd moments if I walked wrong. The boots had to have been custom-made for me. I didn't remember Jean-Claude ever measuring me for shoes. He'd held pretty much every inch of me in his hands at one point or another. Apparently, that had been enough.
But the leather skirt had belt loops for my shoulder holster, and the velvet midriff had enough sleeves that the shoulder straps didn't dig into any bare flesh. The side straps felt a little strange against my bare sides when I moved, but it was doable. Of course, there was no way to wear an inner-pants holster in the skirt.
I had added the spine sheath down my back and both wrist sheaths. The spine sheath showed underneath the midriff, but hey, they expected us to be armed. Frankly, I wanted a second gun with me. One of the good things about flying on Jean-Claude's private jet as opposed to an airline was that I had several guns to choose from.
It was a mini-Uzi on a shoulder strap. It had a clip that attached to the back of the skirt so it didn't swing around too much, but you could pull it out into the open with one hand.
When I put it on, Asher's only comment had been, "We can't kill them, Anita."
I looked at the weapons that I'd laid out on one of the last clean spaces of floor. There was an American Derringer, a second Browning Hi-Power, a sawed-off shotgun, and one pump-action shotgun.
I looked up at him. "I didn't bring everything I had."
"So glad to hear it," he said. "But the machine gun is a killing weapon, nothing more."
"The reason I'm in this outfit is because you said we need to make a good show. Well, we can't cause harm from a distance. We can't spread corruption with any of your bites. What the hell are we going to do, Asher? What can we possibly do that will impress them?" I swung the Uzi into my left hand, pointing it at the ceiling. "If there's anyone with him tonight that we can kill, I'll kill them with this."
"And you think that will impress or frighten Colin?"
"Have you ever seen a vampire cut in half by one of these?" I asked.
Asher seemed to think about that for a few seconds as if he'd seen so many horrible things that he just wasn't sure. Finally, he shook his head. "No, I have not."
"Well, I have." I let the gun swing back to the small of my back. "It impressed me."
"Did you do it?" he asked, his voice soft.
I shook my head. "No, just saw it done."
Jamil knelt beside me. He was wearing something that had started life as a black T-shirt but had been cut so severely at the neck, arms, and midriff that it looked more like a wishful thought than a shirt. It covered his nipples, and that was about it. But his upper body was muscular and impressive nearly bare. We were going for impressive tonight. He'd gotten to keep his black jeans and I was jealous. But Jamil didn't belong to Jean-Claude, so there'd been no time to have some piece of leather specially made. Truthfully, I hadn't been a hundred percent certain Jamil was even going to come with us. Not only was Jamil coming but so was Richard. Surprise, surprise. Jamil took an armload of clothes for Richard to choose from. Shang-Da was coming along as well, and he needed to change. Though he, like Jamil, had never belonged to Jean-Claude intimately enough to have specially made clothes. So it was whatever they could find in his suitcase. Happy hunting.
16
Damian had refused to share a shower with Asher even though they were both dirty and would need someone to help scrape the stuff from the harder-to-reach places. I'd suggested they share a shower because they were both guys. I knew that Asher was bisexual, but I still had a hard time wrapping my Midwestern upbringing around the fact that it didn't matter what sex Asher shared a shower with, he saw both as sexual objects. I knew it, and it didn't really bother me, but every once in a while, the knowledge surprised me. I don't know why.