Fatal Circle

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Johnny carried me to the bed and we spooned until he was snoring deeply. Then I slipped away, hoping to sneak out. Yeah, finally a chance for cuddling after sex and I’m leaving.

He roused and sleepily asked, “Where you going?”

“To shower.” To keep it from being a lie, I went and showered. The wine had matted my hair anyway. By the time I’d finished, he was sleeping soundly, so I found the soft, white couture robe that Risqué had mentioned. I donned the robe and its matching slippers, intending to creep quietly from the room.

The industrial door and the noise beyond it was going to be a problem, but I had to find Menessos and confront him about this. Bastard. I put him in his place, and at his first chance, he’s harassing me in a new way.

Releasing all the bolts and then twisting the handle, I opened the door. I slithered out fast and shut it as quietly as possible.

I hurried down the stairs and to Menessos’s door where I knocked loudly. I was going to get an answer about what had just happened. Plus Xerxadrea’s warning about being Bindspoken gave me a second line of questioning to pursue.

No one answered the door. I tried the knob. Locked.

Stalking through the green room and into the backstage area, I found a Beholder washing out paintbrushes in a deep sink. His jeans, T-shirt, and work boots were spattered with dark paint. He was wiry, but his upper body bulged with lean muscles.

“You there.”

“Yeah?” He glanced up. His eyes were an unusual green-gray-brown, and conveyed a brokenness that made me uncomfortable, like the eyes of a pit fighting dog. When he recognized me he stood straighter and said, “Yes, my lady?”

“Do you know where Menessos is?”

He bowed his head. “Follow me.”

Tromping around the theater wet-headed and wearing nothing but a robe wasn’t quite what I’d had in mind, but I couldn’t back out now. We passed into the theater. I saw Mountain carrying thick bolts of fabric on either shoulder, but the bulk of the crew was vampire. My guide gave a shrill whistle. Everyone stopped and came to a respectful attention.

Seeing that the nearest half-dozen of them were scenting me, I called out, “You may continue.” The painter led me through the house, past Seven at the podium—she gave me a distracted nod—and into the lobby. We went up one flight of now-cleaned and restored stairs to the hall. At the end of the hall to my right, two pale and lean vampires stood on either side of a cherry door with an elegant polished brass knob.

“The future Erus Veneficus would see the Master,” the Beholder said, and bowed, leaving me with the vampires. Both seemed formidable and fierce. One could have been a skinny Viking; the other could have been a Zulu warrior. If an expression other than “badass” happened to take either face, neither of them would have survived.

They waited expectantly, radiating the threat of being hungry and on edge. I had an urge to throw my arms up and shout “Boo!” but that probably would have gotten me killed.

“May I go in?”

“Always,” the Zulu said.

The Viking opened the door for me. He breathed in as I passed, scenting me like a ravenous waerewolf standing outside a steakhouse on Friday night.

Inside, the room was like a gentleman’s library, cherry paneling, dark leather-upholstered furniture. A full suit of armor stood in one corner, relics and weaponry of ages past in glass museum cases. A newer, gleaming dagger with wicked curves rested in a case upon the desk Menessos sat behind. He smiled up at me as smug as a Cheshire cat.

Stopping between the two guest chairs before his desk, I demanded, “What the hell did you do?”

“I have been in here for hours, tending my administrative duties, taking a few calls, approving orders, payment on other orders, and—”

“I don’t see any paperwork.” His desk was empty except for decorative items and a closed laptop sitting on an unmarked blotter.

“I completed it just before you arrived all lovely in that robe and smelling of wolf.” The look in his eyes made me truly understand the meaning of “devour.” “Your cheeks are flushed. I might think I’d embarrassed you but your hands have risen to perch defiantly on your shapely hips, so”—he steepled his fingers—“I conclude the flush is more anger.”

“We both know I can force answers from you, Menessos. Don’t make me.”

“You are not attempting to threaten me, are you, my dear?”

He’d just turned my anger switch from “almost” to “on.” I fought to rotate it back. “Must everything be a struggle?”

“Life is a struggle.”

“I’ve been here a little more than twenty-four hours, and already I am sick of the damned games you play. Every time things appear clearly established, you pull some new stunt. I may walk away from it having learned something, but it’s wearying nonetheless. Is there never a moment of contentment for you?”

The predatory, masculine countenance returned, and his eyes became glistening pools of gray. He rose and came around his desk as he spoke. “We all fight for what we achieve and what we want, don’t we?” He settled into a lean against the front of his desk, then lifted a tendril of my damp hair, admired the bandage, and reached toward my neck. In the next instant, he ripped the wide Band-Aid free.

“Ow!” I tried to slap him. He restrained my wrist.

“I know how this works, Persephone.” He dropped the bandage into a waste basket. I tried to pull my wrist free; he held on. “I know how you work . . . and then you ‘pull some new stunt’ and I find that truly, I don’t.”

The skin on my neck was burning from the rough bandage removal. When he didn’t continue, I muttered, “Glad to know the feeling’s mutual.”

“But that’s just it, the ‘feeling’ isn’t.” The tone of his voice was laced with a despondency that touched my heart.

Enough of this. Every time he ignited my rage, he followed it with stirring my heart, or vice versa, shifting until my resistance was gone and my anger was fully triggered. Let’s skip ahead this time. Intending to invoke the power pull, I visualized it and felt the charge of energy materialize—

Menessos jerked on my arm, yanking me easily into his embrace, and sank his teeth into me.

I screamed and, my concentration lost, dropped the attempt.

He raised his mouth from my neck and stood straight, but his grip stayed vise-tight. He hadn’t fed, just reopened the wounds or made new ones. Drops of my blood stained his lips, ran into his beard. “You may have the means to drain my energy, but I can drain yours, as well.”

A trickle of blood slowly rolled down my neck.

Menessos came at me again. I feared he would bite me again, but he smeared blood from his lips across my cheek and whispered into my ear, “There’s much more to mastery than simply holding the upper hand.” He jerked the collar of my robe open, exposing my neck and breasts, and bent, licking where the blood had run.

I hadn’t dressed fearing that doing so would wake Johnny, but now I was wishing I’d taken that risk and put on more than the robe. I growled, “I still want answers.”

“And I still want what Johnny has.” Menessos fondled my breasts. He licked at my neck as a lover would, though the blood flow was fading.

My body was well satisfied, but even so, his touch was filling me with renewed yearning. I stepped backward to be out of his reach. It took more of an effort than it should have. “He doesn’t get my blood. You do.”

The vampire leaned once more against his desk. “He doesn’t want your blood!”

“But you do. You need blood to survive.”

“Ah, but I have Beholders and Offerlings to feed me. I wouldn’t starve because you denied me blood, nor will I survive only because you gave it.”

But you do need mine because I’m your master. I didn’t want to flaunt that tidbit unless he pushed. “You’re comparing sex to blood?”

“Both feed certain hungers.”

“Menessos. I think what you get should be more valuable to you.”

“Why? Because it doesn’t require such vigorous interaction?”

I refused to let that comment sting. “You said you weren’t sex starved. So what is this truly about?”

“Johnny gets more than sex.”

Aha. The sorrow in his voice beckoned my pity. I couldn’t deny it, but I could fight it with reason. I went forward and put my hands on his cheeks and tried not to think about the fact that my blood was yet on his chin. Earnestly, I said, “Menessos. I am not Una.”

That statement had an effect.

I felt the stirring within him cease and he stilled to his core. He sidestepped away from me and strolled to the suit of armor. His back remained to me. “You said you wanted to know about the bond between the two of you, of the imprint. I thought you would figure it out for yourself with my nudge.”

“So you admit you did something.”

“Through the hex, I used your passion like a ritual.”

“You can’t mark him through me.” Could he?

“No.” He took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped at the blood on his mouth and chin.

“You can’t make me hex someone else.” I wiped blood from my cheek with an unseen part inside the robe’s sleeve.

“No.”

“Then what ritual?”

“It is a link, but without a master. As if the two of you have bonded on equal terms.” He crumpled the hanky and shoved it into his pocket. “As mates.”

“Like a m-marriage?” I stammered.

“You sound bewildered by that notion. You love him, don’t you?”

My mouth was open. I clamped it shut.

Over his shoulder, he said, “You’re not an intemperate woman, Persephone. There are emotions between the two of you, or you would not have imprinted in the first place.”

All my warning flags were snapping in storm-brewing winds. “Basic rule of magic: you don’t perform magic for another unless they have asked you to. It’s wrong.”

Menessos chuckled softly. “That is your religion talking.”

I needed to get myself and this conversation back on track, but he’d opened another door and, while he’d likely done it on purpose, I couldn’t resist peeking through. “Are you suggesting my religion is not yours, as well, vampire-wizard? At the Eximium, I saw Hecate reach for you. I heard her tell you to be forgiven. What was that all about?”

Menessos twisted around. “What did you say?” Rushing back to me, he didn’t wait for an answer. “Say that again.”

I backed up, bumping into the desk. Menessos gripped my arms. “What did you say?” he demanded.

Obviously, I had information he badly wanted. This was an opportunity to make that work for me. “Answer all my questions completely, and I’ll answer yours in kind.” As an afterthought, I added, “How forthcoming you are will directly dictate how forthcoming I will be.”

“No energy threats, just questions and answers?”

“If these are rules both sides will keep, then certainly.”

“Agreed.” He pressed his body to mine, nuzzled my ear, and licked again at the blood drying around the wound he’d reopened. “Ask away.”

My body’s yearning renewed. I struggled to form my lucid question.

“And no manipulative foreplay.”

“As you wish.” The vampire returned to his desk and seated himself behind it.

He gave in too easily. Or, perhaps not. Mentioning I wasn’t his ancient inamorata seemed to have—at least temporarily—dampened his passion. I’d take what I could get. I sank into one of the guest chairs. “What ritual did you work over us without our permission?”

“As I said, you are more fully bonded.”

“For what purpose?”

“I thought the two of you would come to understand on your own, by sharing a more fulfilling union. I told you bliss doesn’t have to be—”

“Hard to find. I remember. And?”

“You will share a mental connection, knowing each other’s moods more readily, empathically. If there is an emotion strong enough, like fear, it may call to the other—a benefit that, as your other role becomes clearer and more advanced, you may find as worthwhile as the more physical one.”

If he meant being the Lustrata was dangerous, that wasn’t a surprise. I crossed my arms and my legs. “And what’s the bonus in this for you?”

“Bonus?”

“You told me earlier that ‘if there is an advantage for me, I will command you to action’ and apparently you were commanding. All your altruistic claims aside, he’s a waere and what you dared was very dangerous.”

“With all that you are to me, for you to be bound to all that he is to become, I benefit. And with what he is to become, wizardry isn’t as much of a threat.” Menessos projected nothing but sincerity. “You must be safe, Persephone. I have acted only to increase his ability to provide protection. Think of it as a gift.”

He had an angle that, while I didn’t approve, I understood. “Speaking of protection.” My crossed arms fell. “I spoke with Xerxadrea. Are you possibly willing to share your secret with the vampire—what are they now?—lords or executives?”

“They are presently preferring the term ‘executives,’ but in my company you may use whatever term you like. And no, I am not willing to share.”

“Even if it would mean they came to your aid?”

“If they were to come to my aid, then too much would change, and nothing would change at all.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means perceptions would change, people would think the situation different than now, but it would not be.” He shook his head and stared off at one of the museum cases. “The world would have a target to blame, and an immortal sage to be hounded by museums and historians, begged for explanations of the eons. And I wish to be neither of those.”

“Enough to risk dying?”

With a steady stare, he said, “Yes.”

I couldn’t breathe; tension squeezed me like a vise. I stood. “Don’t put it all on my shoulders to save you. You have to do something, too!”

He also stood. “I am not putting it all on you. Believe me, I am being proactive about this.” When I didn’t respond, he asked, “Has WEC tried negotiating yet?”

“Yes. The fairies will not negotiate.”

He began pacing behind his desk. “Is there a time frame?”

“Headlands Dunes on Lake Erie at dawn this coming Sunday.”

He nodded.

“As Xerxadrea said, the council wants me to deliver you. Barring that, they’re giving consideration to asking the Vampire Executive International Network for approval to take you, a debt they’ll repay with their blood.”

“If you deliver me, what are they offering?”

“They recognize me as Lustrata.”

He stopped and considered it. “Not a small offer, WEC endorsement. But they still cannot force witches individually to believe it, or to like it. Depending on the influence of the higher-ups, and their take on what you represent, they could either undermine you with propaganda, or build you up with it. They could use the threat of repercussions to lessen opposition to you, or the punishments they dole out could be inconsequential.” He stroked his beard thoughtfully. “That offer could be good or bad. What’s the threat if you don’t?”

I sat again. “That was my other question for you. Xerxadrea said I’d be Bindspoken.”

His shoulders squared and his hands dropped, clenching. “They wouldn’t dare!” Then his chin dropped. “And yet . . . they just might.”

“How does that happen?”

“I do not know, exactly.”

“They can’t do that from afar, though. Right?”

His fists loosened as he considered it. “No.”

“Is there anything in the Codex that can protect me?”

“Yes.” He nodded and came around the desk and rested one hip on it, directly in front of me. “But first you’re going to have to go to Wolfsbane and Absinthe.”