Hierarchy Read Free Page B

arrived. A young woman was curled up on the floor at his feet, stroking his thigh. A second, 10
    completely naked, was sprawled on the couch beside him, her knees bent, her thighs spread wide. The naked girl was stroking her clit, her eyes closed, her face slack with pleasure.
    Constantine was watching her from beneath hooded lids, but as Stephen entered, he turned a cool look upon him. “As you can see, I’m busy,” he murmured.
    Stephen froze in his tracks but resisted the urge to beat a retreat. “You’ll want to hear this,” he said with more confidence than he felt.
    Constantine lifted one tawny brown. “You sound very certain, day-walker.
    Convince me.”
    Stephen swallowed convulsively. “She’s here. She just walked right up to me at the door. I told Marco to look out for her.”
    Constantine frowned, but he tensed, abruptly sitting upright. “She?”
    “The lady,” Stephen said shakily. “ Your lady!”

    11
     

Chapter Two

A mixture of disbelief and more excitement than he’d felt in centuries swept over Constantine. Flicking the woman off of his leg, he got to his feet slowly. “It could be nothing more than some vampire wannabe … someone who’s heard of the prophesy and thinks to profit from it,” he muttered to himself, then flicked a piercing look at Stephen.
    “Show me.”
    Stephen swallowed a little sickly, but he couldn’t have evaded the hand Constantine stretched out if he’d tried and he knew better than to try. He was one of Constantine’s favorites, but no one who crossed him—or attempted to—remained in favor long.
    Blinding pain shot through his head as Constantine pilfered his memories, pausing so long to study the incident at the door that Stephen fell to his knees when he was finally released, curling into a tight ball as he struggled with the urge to vomit.
    Constantine was peripherally aware of it, felt a momentary pang, but no more than that. As fond of Stephen as he was, he’d learned long, long ago not to allow himself to grow too attached to a day-walker. They were pathetically weak, their life spans so fleeting that allowing himself to feel any fondness at all was welcoming pain to himself, and he’d never been particularly fond of pain—especially not when it was avoidable.
    Striding to the door, he left Stephen to recover and dispose of the women. They would be disappointed that he hadn’t fed on them, but they’d get over it. They always did … and they always came back.
    As early in the evening as it was, the club had already begun to fill by the time he reached the main salon. Regardless of the half naked bodies gyrating on the floor, however, his height gave him the advantage of being able to scan the room quickly and spot his quarry—or at least Marco. Frowning when he didn’t see the woman, he strode across the dance floor, oblivious of the day-walkers and his brethren alike as they parted before him, clearing a path.
    Relief flickered through him when he saw that there was a woman standing at Marco’s elbow, and then wry amusement at the touch of panic that had seized him when he hadn’t spotted her at once. She was a tad shy of medium height—maybe a little more than a tad—but he dismissed it along with the brief, wry reflection that he might have known she wouldn’t be just to his taste—call him old fashioned, but he’d always preferred the tall, buxom feminine form. And spotted, he didn’t doubt, if the gleam of red highlights in her woefully common brown was any indication. There’d been nothing in the prophesy to suggest she would be ‘perfect’ … only that she was the one … the first.
    Actually, the prophesy had no more than suggested that she would be the first.
    She might very well be the only , although how the prophesy was to unfold if that was the case, he was damned if he knew.
    He shook his thoughts off as he reached Marco and their mystery lady. At closer range, he saw that she was definitely short, but certainly no