Lace spilled over pale, long-fingered hands. The shirt hung open, giving a glimpse of lean bare chest framed by more frothy lace. Most men couldn't have worn a shirt like that. The vampire made it seem utterly masculine.
“You two know each other?” Monica sounded surprised.
“Oh, yes,” Jean-Claude said. “Ms. Blake and I have met before.”
“I've been helping the police work cases on the Riverfront.”
“She is their vampire expert.” He made the last word soft and warm and vaguely obscene.
Monica giggled. Catherine was staring at Jean-Claude, eyes wide and innocent. I touched her arm, and she jerked as if waking from a dream. I didn't bother to whisper because I knew he would have heard me anyway. “Important safety tip-never look a vampire in the eye.”
She nodded. The first hint of fear showed in her face.
“I would never harm such a lovely young woman.” He took Catherine's hand and raised it to his mouth. A mere brush of lips. Catherine blushed.
He kissed Monica's hand as well. He looked at me and laughed. “Do not worry, my little animator. I will not touch you. That would be cheating.”
He moved to stand next to me. I stared fixedly at his chest. There was a burn scar almost hidden in the lace. The burn was in the shape of a cross. How many decades ago had someone shoved a cross into his flesh?
“Just as you having a cross would be an unfair advantage.”
What could I say? In a way he was right.
It was a shame that it wasn't merely the shape of a cross that hurt a vampire. Jean-Claude would have been in deep shit. Unfortunately, the cross had to be blessed, and backed up by faith. An atheist waving a cross at a vampire was a truly pitiful sight.
He breathed my name like a whisper against my skin. “Anita, what are you thinking?”
The voice was so damn soothing. I wanted to look up and see what face went with such words. Jean-Claude had been intrigued by my partial immunity to him. That and the cross-shaped burn scar on my arm. He found the scar amusing. Every time we met, he did his best to bespell me, and I did my best to ignore him. I had won up until now.
“You never objected to me carrying a cross before.”
“You were on police business then; now you are not.”
I stared at his chest and wondered if the lace was as soft as it looked; probably not.
“Are you so insecure in your own powers, little animator? Do you believe that all your resistance to me resides in that piece of silver around your neck?”
I didn't believe that, but I knew it helped. Jean-Claude was a self-admitted two hundred and five years old. A vampire gains a lot of power in two centuries. He was suggesting I was a coward. I was not.
I reached up to unfasten the chain. He stepped away from me and turned his back. The cross spilled silver into my hands. A blonde human woman appeared beside me. She handed me a check stub and took the cross. Nice, a holy item check girl.
I felt suddenly underdressed without my cross. I slept and showered in it.
Jean-Claude stepped close again. “You will not resist the show tonight, Anita. Someone will enthrall you.”
“No,” I said. But it's hard to be tough when you're staring at someone's chest. You really need eye contact to play tough, but that was a no-no.
He laughed. The sound seemed to rub over my skin; like the brush of fur. Warm and feeling ever so slightly of death.
Monica grabbed my arm. “You're going to love this, I promise you.”
“Yes,” Jean-Claude said. “It will be a night you will never forget.”
“Is that a threat?”
He laughed again, that warm awful sound. “This is a place of pleasure, Anita, not violence.”
Monica was pulling at my arm. “Hurry, the entertainment's about to begin.”
“Entertainment?” Catherine asked.
I had to smile. “Welcome to the world's only vampire strip club, Catherine.”
“You are joking.”
“Scout's honor. I glanced back at the door; I don't know why. Jean-Claude stood utterly still, no sense of anything, as if he were not there at all. Then he moved, one pale hand raised to his lips. He blew me a kiss across the room. The night's entertainment dad begun.
4
Our table was nearly bumping up against the stage. The room was full of liquor and laughter, and a few faked screams as the vampire waiters moved around the tables. There was an undercurrent of fear. That peculiar terror that you get on roller coasters and at horror movies. Safe terror.
The lights went out. Screams echoed through the room, high and shrill. Real fear for an instant. Jean-Claude's voice came out of the darkness. “Welcome to Guilty Pleasures. We are here to serve you. To make your most evil thought come true.”
His voice was silken whispers in the small hours of night. Damn, he was good.
“Have you ever wondered what it would be like to feel my breath upon your skin? My lips along your neck. The hard brush of teeth. The sweet, sharp pain of fangs. Your heart beating frantically against my chest. Your blood flowing into my veins. Sharing yourself. Giving me life. Knowing that I truly could not live without you, all of you.”
Perhaps it was the intimacy of darkness; whatever, I felt as if his voice was speaking just for me, to me. I was his chosen, his special one. No, that wasn't right. Every woman in the club felt the same. We were all his chosen. And perhaps there was more truth in that than in anything else.
“Our first gentleman tonight shares your fantasy. He wanted to know how the sweetest of kisses would feel. He has gone before you to tell you that it is wondrous.” He let silence fill the darkness, until my own heartbeat sounded loud. “Phillip is with us tonight.”
Monica whispered, “Phillip!” A collective gasp ran through the audience, then a soft chanting began. “Phillip, Phillip … “ The sound rose around us in the dark like a prayer.
The lights began to come up like at the end of a movie. A figure stood in the center of the stage. A white t-shirt hugged his upper body; not a muscleman, but well built. Not too much of a good thing. A black leather jacket, tight jeans and boots completed the outfit. He could have walked off any street. His thick, brown hair was long enough to sweep his shoulders.
Music drifted into the twilit silence. The man swayed to the sounds, hips rotating ever so slightly. He began to slip out of leather jacket, moving almost in slow motion. The soft music seemed to have a pulse. A pulse that his body moved with, swaying jacket slid to the stage. He stared out at the audience for a minute letting us see what there was to see. Scars hugged the bend of each arm, until the skin had formed white mounds of tissue.
I swallowed hard. I wasn't sure what was about to happen, but was betting I wasn't going to like it.
He swept back his long hair from his face with both hands. He swayed and strutted around the edge of the stage. He stood near table, looking down at us. His neck looked like a junkie's.
I had to look away. All those neat little bite marks, neat little scars. I glanced up and found Catherine staring at her lap. Monica leaning forward in her chair, lips half-parted.