7
IT WAS AN ongoing police investigation, but these vampires had been willing to die rather than risk being in Jean-Claude’s power. If you’re willing to die to avoid being part of someone’s power structure, it’s only a small step to being willing to kill to destroy that power structure. I normally don’t share information on investigations with my boyfriends, but… if I didn’t share and something bad happened to Jean-Claude, or one of my other lovers, or friends, I’d never forgive myself. They could have my badge, if it was a choice between losing it or losing one of the people I loved.
Was I trying to justify what I was about to do? Yes. Was I going to do it anyway? Yes.
I moved to the side of the courtyard, out of the way of the crime scene techs and the dozens of extra cops that always seem to flock to a murder scene. I found a little piece of alley between two of the buildings. Admittedly the “alley” was big enough to drive a beer wagon through, back in the day when the brewery was built for just that, but it was shadowed, and away from everyone. I leaned my shoulder against the cool bricks and had what privacy I was likely to get.
I didn’t have to pick up a phone and call Jean-Claude; all I had to do was drop the shields I kept in place between him and me. It was like opening a door that I kept bolted shut, because without real effort to block it, we invaded each other’s emotions; thoughts, even physical sensations could be shared. At the most extreme the boundaries between where one of us ended and the other began blurred; it got confusing as hell, and frankly, scary as hell. I didn’t like being that far into another person’s mind, body, and heart, and I sure as hell didn’t want him seeing that far into me.
But it didn’t mean that all I had to do was unlock that “door” in my head, and then knock on the shields that kept me from falling too far into Jean-Claude’s head, because we’d found that it wasn’t enough for only one of us to block. If only one of us did it, then we got echoes back and forth at odd moments. Mostly strong emotions, strong sensations, but not always; it could be very random.
Jean-Claude opened to me, and I knew he was sitting in his office at Guilty Pleasures. I could feel the sweat on his skin as he wiped his naked upper body down with a towel. He’d danced, which was rare, since he was owner and manager of the club. On the nights when he danced, the club would be full to bursting with women and men who wanted to see the sexiest vampire in St. Louis take off some of his clothes onstage. He never stripped down as far as his other dancers. Nothing as common as a G-string for my main squeeze, but he had some pants with enough lacings and holes that they didn’t hide much more. I’d learned that most of the time the more dominant personalities liked to keep more clothes on, and the submissive ones were more comfy getting naked. The days when Jean-Claude had been anyone’s submissive little bloodsucker were years in the past. Outside the bedroom neither he nor I was very fond of stripping down, or at least not first.
He looked down the line of that long, lean, finely muscled body, so I could see that the leather pants were the ones with the very open ties that went from waist to ankle, so that it was more like he had the fronts and the backs of the pants on, but the sides were sort of missing-in-action. They were mostly the white, perfect skin of his long legs revealed through the black laces of the leather.
Just his looking down his body, so that I could see, tightened things low in my body and made me have to let out a deep, shaking breath. I even put a hand out to steady myself against the cool bricks of the wall. Jean-Claude had affected me that way almost from the moment I’d seen him.
He spoke to the empty office, “Ma petite, I love that you react to me so.”
I whispered, my face close to the bricks, “You just got offstage; everyone reacted to you that way.”
“But that is the lust of strangers, that first flush of desire where all is possibilities and fantasy. To have someone react as you do after seven years of being together, that means more.”
“I can’t imagine anyone ever not reacting to you like that,” I said.
He laughed, and it was that touchable, caressing sound, as if his laughter spilled down my skin, underneath my clothes, and touched all the naughty places.
“Stop that,” I said, “I’m still working.”
“You do not usually contact me until after work. What is wrong?” We had been dating long enough for him to understand that when I was on the job, I was a Marshal, not anyone’s girlfriend. Other men had had a problem with that division of mind-set; not him. Jean-Claude understood compartmentalizing your life, your emotions, and your people. Vampires that are successful at living for hundreds of years are the ultimate compartmentalizers. They have to be, or they’d go crazy. You can’t dwell too much on the bad stuff, because after a few lifetimes, there’s too much of it. I had found enough bad stuff in just one lifetime that I’d had to do it; I couldn’t imagine nearly six hundred years’ worth.
I told him the shortest version that I could think of, and added, “Have you heard any rumors about shit like this?”
“Not this precise one, no.”
“That means yes, doesn’t it?” I said.
“I heard rumors of dissatisfaction at the idea of the ruling council of all vampires being here in America. There are some that fear that the old council members that remain alive will simply set up shop here, and rule as they did of old. To keep that from happening was one of the main reasons that I have been encouraged, by most, to set up an American vampire council. I and the vampires here are more trusted than the old European masters.”
“I’ve met enough of the old council to agree with that,” I said.
“I had not heard that some vampires were actually contemplating having no master at all. Only the very young among us would dream of such a thing.”
“The vampires here were, and are, young. None of them were over a hundred, most of them between fifty and twenty, and then ten years and under.”
“Were all of them American?”
I thought about it. “I think so.”
“Americans, living and undead, are an odd lot. They value their ideal of freedom beyond anything the rest of us would dream of.”
“We’re a young country,” I said.
“Yes, in another day and age, America would be in its expansive, empire-building stage, but you came of age too late. The world leaders, and military, would never allow such conquest now.”
“It would be nice to start keeping some of the land and resources that our soldiers are dying for,” I said.
“Ma petite, are you a secret imperialist?”
“Just tired of watching our guys and girls die on the news, and have nothing to show for it except body bags.”
“You have the freedom and gratitude of the people you are helping,” he said, voice very mild.
I laughed. “Yeah, they’re so grateful they keep trying to blow us up.”
“It is at an odd moment in history that America comes of age, that I will agree.”
“These guys were willing to die rather than risk blood-oathing themselves to you, but I could sense them as if they were already blood of our bloodline.”
“That is interesting, and unexpected. Are you certain they are not from our bloodline?”
I took in a deep breath, let it out, and really tried to think about it, feel what I’d felt. I let him feel the memory with me. I just stopped talking and let him get it directly from my mind.
“I will think upon this.” He was drawing back away from me, shielding a little.
“You’ve thought of something, and I’m not going to like it, am I?”
“I have an idea, that is all. I wish to think about it, and ask opinions of some of the older ones that I trust most, before I share it with you.”