Death's Mistress Read Free

fun?”
    “Loved him to pieces.”
    I stopped by vamp central, aka the East Coast Office of the North American Vampire Senate, to get my check. The vamps usually took care of fungus like Vleck themselves, holding each master responsible for his own servants’ behavior. But the system wasn’t as perfect as they liked people to believe.
    Vampires could be emancipated from their masters’ control when they reached a certain power level, freeing them from forced obedience. Others were under the control of senior- level masters on other Senates, who didn’t always care about the rules laid down by their North American counterpart. And then there were the revenants, who had had something go wrong in the Change, and ended up answering to nobody but their own twisted minds.
    When any of these types started causing trouble, the Senate stepped in. And luckily for me, the current war in the supernatural community had stretched their resources. It had gotten so bad lately that they were even willing to employ a dhampir—that hated cross between a vampire and a human—on the cleanup crew. But I always got the impression that they disinfected the office after I left.
    The elevator opened onto a scene of old-world elegance. Shiny cherrywood pillars surrounded a polished table set with exotic flowers, dappled by the light of an exquisite crystal chandelier. Underfoot, an inlaid marble floor in a sunburst pattern in warm shades of gold and amber anchored the scene. It would have been an attractive room, if not for the strokes of too-white meanness propping up the walls.
    One of them peeled off to block my path. Waspish and fine-boned, he was wearing a close-fitting coat and knee pants of midnight blue velvet and heels an inch higher than mine. His long, pin-straight blond hair was pulled back into a queue, and he had an honest-to-God cravat. He looked like he’d stepped out of a period movie—the kind where they don’t stint on the costumes—and his expression said he smelled something bad.
    “Who let you in?” he demanded.
    Every time they changed the guards, it was the same story. And it was always worse with the older ones. They recalled the good old days when dhampirs were killed on sight, preferably slowly. Their attitude pissed me off, considering that I’d been working here for over a month now, and the nightclub scene had left me spoiling for a fight. Vleck hadn’t been nearly enough of a challenge.
    But damn it, I’d promised a certain someone to be on my best behavior. “I’m here to see Mircea,” I told him, instead of punching the vamp through the pretty brocaded wallpaper.
    “ Lord Mircea.”
    “Whatever. I have a delivery,” I said, pushing past.
    And found my arm seized in a bruising grip. “You can wait in the alley with the rest of the garbage until sent for.”
    “I’m tired, I’m hungry and I have a head in a bag,” I warned him. “Do not fuck with me.”
    He slapped me, hard enough to rock my head back, so I nailed his hand to the wall with a knife. He pulled it out, the slice through his palm healing instantly, and lunged. And ended up dangling off the floor like an errant puppy.
    “Best behavior?” someone asked. I looked up to see the pleasant goateed face, curly dark hair and gleaming brown eyes of Senator Kit Marlowe. His agreeable expression didn’t stop him from squeezing the guy’s neck hard enough to make his eyes pop.
    Since Marlowe hates me only marginally less than, say, bubonic plague, the smile made me nervous. I suspected that was why he did it, but it worked every time. I shrugged. “I didn’t stick it in his heart.”
    “Perhaps you should have,” he said mildly, and opened his hand. The vamp hit the floor, jumped to his feet and went for me again in a blur of speed. So I grabbed him by the neck and punched his head through the pretty brocaded wallpaper.
    “Bring her in, Mikhail,” someone called from off to the right.
    Mikhail must have been the one with his head in