SEQ CHAPTER \h \r 1Author's Note: Apologies to Ryan Reynolds and David Goyer for stealing one of their unused jokes and reproducing it here. Then again, this is fanfiction, so it's almost all stolen anyway, isn't it?
"Yes, everything's ready for your arrival." A delicate pause, then, "I'd prefer not to say. I have a guest. It's not for his ears, even if he is asleep. I will contact you later." The next period of silence on her end was less friendly and conciliatory. "I will contact you later. You may call here Wednesday. Speak only to me. Goodbye."
King kept his body loose, something that was not easy to do when he wasn't actually asleep. His soul was one born to move, to make itself known, not to fade. If not for the Nightstalkers and the copious amounts of training they'd put him through, he'd have burnt himself out from living fast, shooting off at the mouth - well, okay, he still did that, but not so's it had gotten him in trouble…too much.
"Wake up, lover," a silken voice purred in his ear. He pretended not to hear, rolling naturally away from the breath on his face. One thing about vampires he had never liked - one of many things - was the permanent halitosis. Something to do with being a living corpse, he guessed. Like they'd never heard of Listerine?
A thin slice of pain danced along his temple. Startled, he jerked awake and upright. Feliar smiled next to him, laying her head on the pillow he vacated and licking the tip of a fingernail; the white of her French manicure was tinted crimson. His hand wandered to the side of his face and his fingertips came away bloody. The raw skin burned under his touch. That was going to leave a mark
"Aww," Feliar fussed, scratching his head as he lay back down next to her. "Did I hurt you, my not-so-little one?"
King swallowed, shaking his head and passing off rage as nerves. He hated the nicknames. The scratches, the scars, even the fucking bites, he could handle; hearing baby talk twenty-four seven was another story. Hell, even Zoe didn't have to put up with that.
"It's time to get up. Time to go out."
"Why?" His shaky grin approximated hopefulness and fear. "Nothing we can't get here." He ran his fingers down from her throat, stopping suggestively at the point of the V made by the fold of her dangerously unprofessional low-necked blouse.
"Mm, perhaps later," Feliar laughed, breathily. "I want you to meet someone."
"Is it Celine Dion? She's a Canadian treasure, you know."
"I hated that song," she sneered, but her lips were too curved for malice.
"I still cry every time."
"Are you finished?" She sighed, flicking his lip with her index finger. He took this as his cue to stay quiet. "You've missed all the excitement because you've been sleeping, silly." She pouted, an incongruous expression to pair with the suspicion burning in her eyes. "You were sleeping this whole time. It's late." He checked the clock. Two in the afternoon. That was late.
Truthfully, he had only been asleep a few hours, snatched between Feliar's attentions and her exits. Abby teased him about sleeping so deeply the undead couldn't wake him - or she had until the business with Drake and then wisely dropped it. He could keep himself in shallow sleep, as he did when Feliar was with him, and take advantage of her frequent outings to go deeper, catch maybe forty minutes to an hour of full sleep to take the edge off.
"I was conserving my energy," he smiled for her, thinking of Abby. Teasing was really her turn-on. Vamps dug pain - boy, did they ever - more than acerbic wit and devilish charisma.
"Mm," Feliar hummed, her irritation vanishing for an instant as she ran a scaly, cold hand down his chest, stroking his stomach with the very tips of her nails. It sated her impulse to go farther, and her businesslike demeanor reasserted itself. "But not any more," she pushed herself up and onto her elbow. "You're going to get up so you can meet our guest when she arrives."
She? He didn't like the sound of that, but as her tone left no room for disagreement he nodded. "But why?"
"Because I said so, your highness." And she was off the bed, moving around the suite to the kitchen where, he knew, she would have blood stored and waiting. Despite being well within her rights - as far as such things existed between vampires and victims - she hadn't bitten him. Not that he wasn't grateful for it, but it set off his trusty internal alarms - the ones that always sang out when something devious and female was around.
Your highness. That one was the worst. Naked, he walked to the bathroom. After their first night, she had told him that, while he was in her suites, if she saw a single piece of clothing on him, she would 'do something unpleasant.' Her company was unpleasant enough as was, so he didn't contest her rules.
The bathroom was a palatial thing, ivory marble tile with tasteful splashes of tan and black. No visible theme, no tacky animal print. The separate shower was entirely made of crystal, not glass - he'd read the brochure about thirty times in the past thirty-six hours out of sheer boredom - also indicative of the client the hotel expected to occupy its most expensive room; no one shy about showing off would rent out the penthouse suite. One too many sessions in the Jacuzzi later, and King made for the shower like his life depended on it.
Being locked up in a woman's pleasure palace sounded about as onerous and awful as being able to subsist on sunbathing and chocolate ice cream. None of his college friends would ever have listened to his complaints seriously, even minus the whole vampirism thing, if King'd ever been able to tell them about Danica. And somehow he got the feeling neither Stone nor Caulder were going to feel especially sorry for him this time either. God forbid the big man find out; he'd never live it down.
It didn't really matter what they thought. None of them had been at Danica's, and none of them were in Feliar's penthouse now. Just him and the vampire. He certainly didn't expect sympathy from her.
Feliar had made it very clear where the boundaries were. His were the confines of her suite, hers nonexistent. Goons were outside the doors, and he trusted the apartment was wired without really investigating it - Feliar had had considerable time to set herself up here, she could have bugged it worse than eight-year-old with lice. He'd been able to sneak a call to Abby out the window, but hadn't risked any since. Claustrophobia was starting set in with a vengeance, not helped by being penned in - again - with a vampire.
In the mirror-polished stainless steel of the showerhead's base, he could see Feliar walk past the door and rifle through his things, or what was left of them. On their first night, she'd connected all the holes in his jeans by ripping through them with her nails. She collected the pile of rags and disappeared.
Door hinges sang out and set the small hairs on the back of his neck to perpendiculars. Wrapping a downy fresh towel around his waist, he walked out of the bathroom to find a strange, Slavic-looking man standing in the foyer. This one, like the others he'd seen in the two days since his arrival, had definitely been eating his Wheaties.
"You are not Filia," the tall, thick-necked man said, his English grammar-perfect and accent-ruined.
"Thanks for letting me know," King shot back, gripping his towel tighter around his waist. This dude reminded him uncomfortably of Jarko Grimwood, though, if such a thing were possible, he looked stupider.
"Where is she?"
"I'm sorry, Boris, she's indisposed at the moment." He mouthed, "That time of the month."
"My name is not Boris."
"I wouldn't have pegged you for Natasha. I'd have to see you in a mink stole and heels to know, I guess."
"His name is Mischa," Feliar's voice came from nowhere. King looked up and down at the newly crowned Mischa.
"Mischa, you've grown an extra pair of legs." He stared directly into the other man's eyes. "Don't take this the wrong way, but they're pretty hot."
"Thank you, King, that is enough." Feliar stepped around Mischa, who appeared relieved to have her in his sight rather than at his back. She came to him, leaning her head into the crook of his shoulder, licking her lips as she nuzzled his neck; he imagined her forgetting herself and going for what she so obviously wanted there. Instead, she turned to Mischa, placing a hand in the small of his back at the same time, propelling him forward.
"Say hello to Mischa, King."
" 'lo," he said, sullenly as Mischa hesitantly extended one meaty palm in his direction. A black vampire glyph was tattooed on the inside of his wrist. He purposefully fisted his hands at his sides. "Sorry, I don't shake ever since I learned guys jerk off once about every ten minutes. I don't know where you've been."
"Is that so?" Feliar's lips curved into her best seductive smile.
"As far as I know from personal experience."
"Indeed. Now, be quiet."
"Right."
Feliar glared at third person in the room. "Now, then, Mischa, what are you doing here?"
"Taking him by violence is not-" Mischa blurted out the words before cutting himself off when Feliar made a chopping, downward motion with her hand. Very well trained, this familiar. King noted his accent and his glyph; he was not one of the local boys, nor did he belong to Feliar.
"I thought you were told to mind your business, Mischa."
"My..." Mischa started, then glanced at King and said something else. "I've been asked to make sure all goes well."
"Oh, of course," Feliar eased her way to him, patting Mischa's football-thick bicep. A foot above her head, sweat broke out on Mischa's brow. "I suppose," Feliar walked two fingers up his arm, "I suppose I don't have to remind you that you aren't allowed to interfere with the way I run things, hmm?"
"My mas..." Mischa stopped again.
"Yes?" Feliar coached him. King caught madness in her eyes and took an exaggerated step backwards, which did not reassure poor Mischa. "Tell me, Mischa, tell me what your master told you." She flashed King a predatory wink. He backed up another step.
"My master said seizing the...the...he says it is not a good idea. It will attract attention."
"Oh, so clever, your master. So aware of propriety, he is, hiding in his mountains." Whirling around, she stalked, stiff limbed, to King and began circling him. Suddenly, he was in Mischa's position, acutely aware of a very dangerous creature at his back. "King," she cooed in his ear. "Do you know who his master is?"
"No," he said, at once. If this were a test, he'd still pass. He didn't recognize the glyph - no one bearing it had ever come through Danica's apartments that he had seen. And if she believed his story, she wouldn't expect him to have spent a great deal of time memorizing tattoos. He didn't know the guy from Adam. That was his story, and he was sticking to it.
"His master," Feliar's breath whistled through her teeth, "was my sire."
"Small world."
"Not so, King," she slunk away from him and towards Mischa again. "My sire has never quite let me run free. Isn't that so, Mischa?"
"This is his project," Mischa offered in his own defense.
"Yes, but he trusted me to run it, did he not? Could not be bothered to leave the Great Tits out east and come." Great Tits, King processed. The Grand Tetons. He filed that one away in his mental 'in' box.
"I am supposed to make sure he survives until the conference."
Feliar's expression soured and froze some hundred degrees cooler than it had been already at this declaration. Whatever fine line Mischa had been walking, he'd just toed over it. Make sure he survives until the conference. He? Leung? Questions. He wasn't good with questions. He mostly just hurt people.
Feliar's response was icy. "He'll be just fine."
"He's supposed to-to present," Mischa continued, sounding more confident. God alone knew why. King was considering exit strategies and Mischa was missing the sulfur from a volatile fuse directly under his nose.
"And be on display," Feliar nodded, "I know. Don't worry. He will put on such a performance." She patted Mischa's cheek. "Don't worry, sweetheart."
It was the 'sweetheart' that finally sent his nerves subsonic. Almost as one, King vaulted over the couch in the main room and Feliar leapt one foot vertically upwards to sink her fangs into Mischa's throat. Mischa's unfortunately chosen white shirt bloomed scarlet as his meaty arms tore at the woman fastened to his neck by her teeth. It was a kind of funny, seeing a man large enough to tackle the entire AFC East go down under a woman who weighed no more than 130 pounds altogether.
Feliar stood after a minute, her clothes miraculously unbloodied while her face was a smudged crimson mess. Flush from feeding, she rounded on him, smacking her lips and letting out a satisfied, "Ahhh!" Like a soda commercial.
"You missed a spot," King motioned with his thumb at the corner of his mouth. Feliar licked at her mouth in the mirror image of where he pointed. "Good, good, now, you've got a little bit right here," he waved his hand all over his face.
"Oh," Feliar giggled, licking her hands then wiping at her face. She looked at the mirror on a nearby wall, licking up every last drop. Vampires, King cringed internally, desperate to forget that, once upon a time, he, too, had found human blood to be like Maxwell House: good to the last drop. Feliar straightened her hair, frowning at an invisible spot of blood she seemed to have missed, then dismissing it.
"Such a bother. First her, now this."
'Her' hit a few buzzers. He needed to get on the wire to the others. There was only one 'her' he could put any faith in Feliar finding as much a nuisance as a dead body in her suite. He faked indifference and smiled for the vampire, who was biting her lower lip and looking him up and down like so much meat. When he'd gone over the couch, he'd lost his towel.
"Is that what happens to me if we break up?"
"Ki-i-ing," Feliar laughed, actually breathless. "I would never, you know that. Now, up." She yanked hard on his bad shoulder. Brushing him off and resettling the crisp pleats in her outfit at the same time, she led him behind her, slapping away his hand when he tried to retrieve his towel.
"What did I say?"
"Sorry," he mumbled, "You know me. I'm shy. I've got issues. Loads of them."
"Mmm," Feliar rumbled, "thankfully, not such as affect your performance. She reached up on tiptoe to lick his upper lip and over his nose, sighing as she pulled away. "Get dressed."
"In what?"
"I want you in this," Feliar said from his elbow, guiding him towards a splay of surprisingly conservative wear, newly laid out on the rumpled king-sized bed. It was a suit, a dark gray one, with a slate blue shit and complementing cornflower silk tie. "I want you in this," she hummed in his ear while grabbing his stomach, digging her nails in and squeezing once before reaching down to grab his dick. "I want you anyway, but for now, in this."
And then she was gone, heels clacking on the tile by the front door as she slipped outside without another word. Hot and cold, that was how she ran. If not for the infinite amount of practice he had with that kind of woman, it might have been disconcerting. Danica could have crazied circles around her.
The things he did for revenge. He lifted the outfit by the heavy rosewood hangar, rifling through the layers to find she hadn't gotten him any boxers. That, he could only assume, was on purpose. If she came to him later, she wouldn't want them in the way. He concentrated on the promise of a shower and the urgency of the next call he would have to make.
Hopefully, Gidge was still awake.