And Lilith hadn’t torn Ron’s throat out after all. That was mildly surprising. Teej lay on the grass, trying to cry very quietly. Lilith had backed Ron against the other wall and was holding him by his collar, several inches off the ground. His face looked sick in the light of the kitchen window.
Lilith, on the other hand, looked thoroughly inhuman, and outraged. You didn’t need to see fangs to feel the threat, and the alienness, pouring off her. “Who do you think you are?” she inquired of the deer, the stoat, the weasel she held in her grasp. “To come in my house, with a gun. To make someone here cry.”
Bailey heard a pause in Teej’s gasps, at that; heard him try to control his sobs.
Ron made a choking sound. She let his toes touch just the ground, taking some of the weight off his neck. He feet scrabbled for purchase.
Bailey hadn’t heard that in a long time — that edge of anger and hostility — of death, really — in Lilith’s voice. It was not anything he’d ever been on the receiving end of, nor did he want to be.
“Bailey, if there’s a reason you need this man alive, tell me now.”
Ron Zygmore had been a condemned man for weeks, ever since he cut out his partners; it wasn’t Bailey’s place to try and resurrect him, especially now that he’d seen Lilith in action. “I need his bank account number.”
She glanced back toward him, disagreement in her face. “Bailey, you’re bleeding. I can smell it from here.” Let me kill him now.
“It’s not serious. I want the account.” He met her glance with one of his own. Lilith considered Ron as Bailey’s prey, by right of professional courtesy — clearly she wanted to overrule him, but thought it would be rude.
“Christ,” said Ron. The voice came out hoarse. “Christ. Dear God.” He looked at Bailey in wonder. “How do you control her?”
Control her? What was that, some gender thing, or did he believe Lilith was some kind of demon Bailey’d called out of Hell and needed to be on the right side of a chalk circle to keep from being devoured by?
Shit, that bullet wound stung. “Sheer force of personality,” he heard himself saying, with perfect seriousness.
Lilith looked at him briefly. “And purity of heart. You forgot that.”
“Yeah, I do tend to forget that one.”
Ron stared at them both. “God,” he said again, softly. Lilith ran her fingernail gently across his throat, forcing him to turn to her. “Cariad,” she said softly. “My heart’s desire.” There was a kind of passion in her voice, and Bailey didn’t blame Ron for the way he paled. She kissed him, the way you’d kiss a seventeen-year-old who was a little shy and charming in his gawkiness. He’d moved his head back, as far away as he could, and Lilith chuckled, deep in her throat. The kiss went on for a moment, then her lips moved over his neck, his chin, up over his cheekbones; she bestowed one on each eyelid, with awful tenderness, as she passed; and then finally his forehead. When she drew back he followed her, trying to regain contact.
Her fingers were delicate, holding the line of his jaw, thumb under his chin. Bailey saw nicks of blood from the skin where her fingernails rested. Ron didn’t seem to notice.
She withdrew her hands and waited for his eyes to clear. She said, with that same terrible gentleness, “Bailey tells us you have a bank account number. It would be best to give it now, cariad.”
Cariad. A Welsh endearment, Bailey thought; why? Had her first prey been Welsh? Her first surviving lover? He put the question aside with the ruthlessness of practice — he was never going to know; the rules that allowed them to live safely together did not permit questions about the past.
Ron looked at the three people before him in the backyard as though somehow this would all make sense, in a minute. Confusion and fear were plain on his face, but he said nothing, pressing himself further against the wall of the house as though to remove himself from this entire nightmare. She sighed and moved in on him again.
Bailey couldn’t stop watching. Her breasts against Ron’s chest, her leg between his — as Bailey stared, she lifted her toy’s wrists, thumbs rubbing against each pulse-point, and held him outspread against the wall as though she couldn’t decide whether to fuck him or crucify him. Bailey was vaguely aware of a choking sound from Teej, kneeling in the grass.
Her tongue played with neck and collarbone and she took her first nick. A gasp of pain; then Ron’s expression changed, evening out, letting go. He moaned and sank down an inch or two, and Bailey knew from experience just what that extra bit of his own weight, rubbing his cock against Lilith’s knee, was doing to the man. That clamp of Lilith’s hands on his wrists was doing the bulk of holding him up now.
Bailey found his own cock getting hard. Great, he was wounded in the line of duty and he was getting turned on by watching a six-foot-four-inch vampire torture an embezzling drug runner. He definitely had problems. Maybe he should seek therapy after this six weeks were over.
She made a sound in her throat as she kissed the vein in her prey’s neck, a sound Bailey had often heard before. His knees weakened sympathetically.
— On the other hand, maybe this was good, maybe he was diverting the flow of blood away from the injured area. Maybe hard-ons were recommended for gunshot wounds.
Then she pulled back again and waited. The return to clarity took longer this time. After a minute or two, Ron asked, bewildered, “What are you doing—”
She spoke to a lover. “Heart of my heart. Tell us what we want to know.”
He gasped, half in despair. He still didn’t know what was happening, but the fear and loss of control were obvious. “No,” he said, like someone who held to a route through enemy territory.
But none of his maps were working. Lilith reached for him again, and tears were running down his face. She caressed his cheek, ran her hands through his hair, comforting him; then she kissed his mouth, long and hard, and when she moved back again to his neck there was blood on his lips. His eyes rolled back with ecstasy, then closed. When she finally let go of him, he sank to the ground, sitting aimlessly for several minutes. Eventually he looked up, trying to focus on her. He reached for her hand. She stepped back and said, “Bailey, come here.”
Walking wasn’t easy for him, but she was too concentrated to notice that right now. His leg throbbed with the effort, pain meeting each pulse of his blood, a connection he was not unaccustomed to. He was sweating by the time he reached her. He waited. She touched Ron’s cheek, getting his attention. “Tell him,” she said, gesturing to Bailey.
Ron looked at him blankly. Bailey said, “The four hundred thousand dollars. Where is it?”
Ron continued to regard him as though he were a stranger. Then, after a few seconds, he frowned. “They’re not dollars. They’re bearer bonds.”
“Where are they?” Bailey repeated. It was like talking to a six-year-old.
“A safety deposit box at the Bank of San Cristobel.”
Lilith knelt beside him. She didn’t know Bailey’s case, but she could see where this was going. “Do you have a key?”
He blinked at her, then reached into his jacket pocket and took it out. Bailey didn’t know why he was surprised; naturally Ron wouldn’t let that out of his sight. Lilith took the key, then held his face in her hands again. “Do you remember the box number?”
He whispered it, hoarsely, and she let go of him. “Do you need to write that down?” she asked Bailey, not looking at him.
He could replay every beat of that hoarse voice. “I really don’t think either of us will forget it.”
She ignored that. She stood up, lifting Ron with ease. She walked him back against the wall.
He said, “No more, please.” She kissed his hair.