Biting me softly, p.29
Biting Me Softly, page 29
She turned into a Lilly-sized anvil. “No. I gotta wash my hands.”
The short restroom hallway made an H with two main corridors. As I tried to lug forty pounds of uncooperative three-year-old toward the Farm Tech side, a shadow passed the mouth of the H. Another Lestat? Ruthven himself? We’d find out if we didn’t get a move on. Desperate, I dug in my purse, but I was a geek, not a mom. I didn’t have instant germ-killer or even diaper wipes.
So I grabbed Lilly’s hands and blew on them. “There. All clean.” Hey, mother’s spit is the universal solvent, right? Everyone knows that. And I’d be a mother someday. Maybe. Probably. With Logan, it wouldn’t be for lack of trying.
Anyway, it worked. Lilly miraculously turned lighter than air and bounded along at my side. My destination the Fairy Castle, I trotted into Farm Tech.
And ran into Ruthven.
“My minions have let me down again.” He sighed extravagantly. “I shall simply have to kill you myself.”
“Have to? Is that a moral, physical or existential necessity?” My feet froze but apparently my sarcasm was still online. “You don’t actually have to kill me. Just sayin’.”
“Oh, but I want to. After a small snack.” His eyes heated to a hungry red and wandered to—the children. He licked his lips.
The sick fuck.
I fought to maintain my self-control. My imaginary shoulder buddies were right, Logan would come, finding me by the blood scent of a donor. I only had to delay Ruthven until then.
But I had to get the children away now. I put Lilly’s and Angela’s hands in Tad’s and covered the maneuver by talking. “Why bother with minions in the first place? Or why not get smarter ones?” I released the children with a little push. “Where’d you get yours anyway? Oxface University? Mount Holy Moses?”
Ruthven’s eyes bored into mine. “Do not dare insult the underlings of Lord Ruthven, Liese Schmetterling.”
Tad might have a weak stomach but he had a great brain. He edged the three of them away while I kept my eyes locked with Ruthven’s, a little dangerous since Ruthie was a vampire. But Logan said I was immune to mind control. I trusted him about that, at least. “Then what was on their resume? Sets low standards and fails to achieve them? Water weekly and turn toward the sun?”
“Liese Schmetterling, you flirt with a painful death.”
Logan was right about the corny dialog. “Well, I suppose they grew on you. Sort of like E. coli.”
Ruthven surprised me by laughing. He laughed like a cat with a hairball. “Do not think to distract me with such an absurd attempt at humor, Liese Schmetterling.”
“It was worth a try.” The kids were gone. Maybe they’d run into more vampires, but anything was better than creepy-sick Ruthven. “Though really, you could stick a hose in Shiv’s ear and rent him out as a vacuum cleaner.”
“Enough. Come to me, Liese Schmetterling. Perhaps if you are nice to me I will let you live—as my sex thrall.”
Ew. I cased my surroundings. Yellow stairs to my right, red stairs some distance to my left. Bathroom hall behind me. “Had you ever thought maybe it’s you? That your minions are underachievers because you’re an incompetent boss? I bet if I put my ear to your skull could I hear the ocean.”
“I said enough.” Ruthven’s eyes fired like flares. “Come to me. Now.” His voice echoed with dark compulsion. The people nearest us jerked toward him like iron filings caught by a magnet, some even taking a few unwilling steps.
Fortunately Logan was right. I was a perversely willful creature. I turned tail and ran.
I dodged through fifty or more people—a milling crowd on their way to exhibits, headed into the bathrooms or just waiting for friends or family. I dared a glance back.
Ruthven stalked me, human-slow but confident. I only had to make one mistake, move into one unpopulated area, and he’d hijack me. I had no illusions as to what he’d do then. Ruthven hated Logan. Logan was an important Iowa Alliance vampire. Logan was Ruthven’s enemy twice over. But Ruthven would know Logan was strong, smart, and had incredible training.
And Ruthven was a coward. He’d never use a direct attack when he could psych Logan out. Which was unfortunately very easy. Just destroy the new household like the first one. Bleed one person like he’d bled Adelaide.
No, I had no delusions. Ruthven would bleed me.
But as long as I stayed among other people, I’d be safe. I hunkered down amid the moving throng to wait for Logan.
And was shocked when a thin, strong hand grabbed my arm. “Darling,” Ruthven said in a fake syrupy tone. “There you are.”
I tried to shake him off. His fingers tightened. I pulled against his thumb-forefinger and yanked free but he’d already grabbed me with the other hand.
“We’ll go now,” he said, grinning like a malevolent snake. “Since you don’t feel well.” And he punched me in the gut.
I bent over, choking air. He dragged me a couple feet before I stuck my heels in automatically. “No, I…stop.” Next to me some men were watching. Maybe I could get them to intervene.
Ruthven put an arm around my bent shoulders. “Darling, I just want to take care of you.”
Just that fast the men turned away. They thought Ruthven was my boyfriend.
Ruthven tried to drag me off. “Come with me now, love.”
Love. What a terrible liar. Ruthven meant it no more than Botcher had. I stubbornly refused to move, automatically twisting my glass ring. God, I was getting so sick of men lying.
The ring came off. My hand felt amazingly light without Botcher’s empty promise. Free. In the midst of all my fear I smiled. Elena was right. I should have taken it off months ago.
Ruthven tugged at me. “Come on, darling.”
The ring was glass, but it looked like the real deal. An idea formed. A little theater… I had to move fast but the more I thought about it the more I liked it. Sweet progress bar of life, the rat-bastard would finally be good for something.
I held the ring up high so it caught the light, sparkles shooting everywhere. “How dare you have sex with that woman!” I yelled at Ruthven.
The milling crowd froze, turned toward me. Faces mixed with shock and avarice. I kept my eyes locked on Ruthven, shook the ring accusingly at him. “I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man on earth.” People appeared in the corridor behind Ruthven, drawn by my voice. More entered the corridor behind me.
Ruthven let out a growl like an angry badger. Okay, I don’t know what an angry badger sounds like, but imagine something really unattractive.
Anyway, time for me to move. “Take your damned diamond back, you lying cheat!” I twisted loose and threw the ring down between us.
Like baking soda tossed into vinegar, the ring fomented the crowd into a mob. Grabbing for the ring, diving for it, people pushed between Ruthven and me. He grabbed for me but I drew back. More people boiled out of the bathrooms, rushed in from the ends of the hall. They foamed into a big, mean, impenetrable wall between us.
Ruthven’s angry face, just above the diving heads, imprinted on my brain. Oh, he wasn’t happy.
I spun and hightailed it. Benches lined the wall ahead. To my right but some distance away were the blue stairs and the entrance to the Brain Food Court. To my left were the green stairs. They were cordoned off with a sign saying Maintenance Work—No Admittance but they were much closer. I went left.
A man-tall, elephant-wide vent in the left wall caught my attention. Just beyond it was a small set of unlabeled stairs. I wouldn’t have seen the stairs if not for the vent.
I paused. I didn’t know where the unlabeled stairs led, but the green stairwell in front of me was cavernous and open. Ruthven would get through the mob eventually, or head around. I had only seconds to hide. I ducked up the short flight of stairs.
They emptied into a corridor. Elevator left, bend ahead. The elevator was visible from the main hallway, so I bypassed it for the bend.
Which dead-ended in a door. I ran into it—and bounced off with a smack. Locked. Flash-fry my bios. Maybe I could just hide in the corridor?
“I am coming for you, Liese Schmetterling.” Ruthven’s voice rang from behind.
Maybe not.
The echo of polished hallways made it impossible to judge how far away he was. But if I could hear him at all, he was too close.
What to do, what to do? Head back out and hope that with the crowd I could dodge Ruthie until Logan came? Stay here and cower, hoping Ruthven wouldn’t find me? Either seemed a vampire recipe for Liese pâté.
The door had a window. I stared through, saw a bolt lever. Beyond it was a room, a really nice janitorial station by the look of it.
If I could break the window and reach the knob, I could open the door and hide in the room. Problem solved.
Except breaking a window was noisy. And vampire hearing, as I knew from experience, was super-keen. Ruthven would come running.
I ran a finger over the glass. Unless I could break it without shattering it… A glint of light hooked my attention. Logan’s supposedly-diamond ring. If it were real, I could score the glass and break it with a crack instead of a crash, maybe so quietly Ruthven wouldn’t hear it over the crowd.
If it were a real diamond.
If Logan could be trusted.
Hell. I had wanted Logan to prove himself trustworthy. I just hadn’t expected my life to depend on it. I pulled off the ring, put it to glass. Ran it sharply over the surface. It made a hissing, etching sound.
To my amazement a line appeared. I don’t know if I was more surprised Logan had told me the truth—or that he’d given geeky, chubby old me a ring worth tens of thousands of dollars.
I slashed two more half-inch scores, used a knuckle to crack out the resultant tiny triangle. It hit the floor with a small tinkle. But now I could score a bigger piece and pull it out without a sound.
Then I simply reached through, opened the lock and ducked in. My eyes lit on a yarn mop which I used to jam the door shut. I wet the mop fibers to increase the force of the wedge.
Now I just had to wait. I sank to the floor, my back to the door. If Ruthven found me, his vampire strength might push open the jam, but maybe not if I added a hundred forty pounds of me. Well, that’s what I told myself. Really, my legs were shaking too hard to hold me.
Time is funny when your heart is pounding so hard you can feel it thump your chest. It was a second, it was an hour. It was a whole bunch of seconds but each one was terror anew. My memory of sitting there, waiting for Ruthven, is totally psychedelic. I know time passed but I only remember it moment to moment.
“There you are, Liese Schmetterling. I will enjoy this more than you know.” Ruthven’s face appeared at the hole in the window above me like a psycho Gatekeeper in The Wizard of Oz. I would have peed my pants if I hadn’t been potty thirty times already in the last half hour.
But Ruthven was here. I had hoped Logan would find me first, but he did have the kids to protect. I drew in a breath, gathering strength for battle, however short it might be.
Ruthven tugged at the door. It didn’t budge.
Well, good news. Apparently not all vampires had super strength.
“Liese!” And more good news! Logan’s voice echoed down the hallways. “I’m coming, princess.” He sounded far away but he was coming. I was saved.
I’d forgotten one tiny little detail.
Ruthven cackled. “Oh, this is too rich. The door cannot stop me, you know.” His face disappeared from the window.
And to my horror a thin stream of mist ran up the window and through the hole I had so carefully cut.
Chapter Twenty
I jumped to my feet. Logan was coming but I had no idea how far away he was or how soon he’d get here. A carotid artery cut with laughable ease. Ruthven could slash my throat long before Logan got here. And what if Logan arrived but couldn’t get through the door? What if he froze again and forgot how to mist?
What if this was just like Adelaide?
Mist boiled in. I had no stake, no bazooka, not so much as a nail clipper. I had pepper spray but that didn’t work on mist. I’d have to wait until Ruthven formed and hope I could squirt his eyes before his superior vampire speed made me an aperitif.
Damn it, no. I had to trust Logan. Trust his heart and nose to lead him to me. Trust his training, which from all I understood was the best in the business. Trust his nature as a lethal protector. Logan would come in time.
The mist started to solidify. Double damn. Even if Logan came soon, Ruthven was here now.
And if Logan panicked and forgot how to mist, he might not get in at all. I knew a slashed throat eventually led to bleeding out.
Then I would be dead. I might no longer care, but Logan would. If he couldn’t mist it would hurt his self-esteem. Hurt his self-esteem if he couldn’t selfa-steam. Get it? Ha.
I covered my eyes with my hand. Damn it, I was punning under stress just like Logan, who would probably pun while fighting the whole Coterie, lithe, graceful, deadly, his brain and tongue working as fast as his sword arm…I uncovered my face. I was punning. That meant my brain was working—no, it was in overdrive. Conversely my heart was no longer pounding so loud I couldn’t hear myself think and my breathing was completely under control.
Punning wasn’t merely a goofy reaction to stress. It was, like everything else in Logan’s arsenal, a deadly weapon.
With my brain online I remembered I wasn’t an eighteenth century sheeple meekly waiting for Logan to rescue me. I was a twenty-first century gal.
And better yet, a geek. I reached into my purse. Oh, I trusted Logan to come. But first I trusted myself. I had to delay Ruthven.
A little surprise would do that. Or, should I say, shock.
In the sewer I’d fumbled through the entire contents of my purse to locate one item. Thanks to the centering effect of punning I reached in and laid my hand directly on the tape-mummy camera I’d made to entertain the kids and distract myself so long ago. I pulled it out and hit the picture-taking button. A whine swelled and died.
Crossing mental fingers, I stuck the wires into the gathering mist.
My home-made Taser discharged with a click and a bang. The click I expected, the electric current zapping from wire to wire, connecting through the mist.
The bright flash of light and bang I didn’t. Hadn’t seen that on the Internet. Apparently tasering vampire mist isn’t like tasering flesh. Electric current will shock a solid human, maybe disrupt some muscle and nerve action.
Tasering mist was more like setting a spark in a grain elevator. The fuliginous gray that was Ruthven poofed into flame.
Ruthven snapped into being with his face on fire. He screamed and started slapping at himself to put the fire out.
Well, I had to, didn’t I? I slapped his face too.
I laughed, pleased with myself. What a fitting insult to this creep who’d threatened to eat children and who’d ruined Logan’s life.
Except my slap zone was also Ruthven’s kill zone. He seized my wrist with a growl. Note to self. Good idea—indulge in a little slap-and-tickle with sexy good-guy vamp. Bad idea—bitch-slapping crazed, on-fire rogue.
Although it had been satisfying.
“Liese!” Logan’s angry face showed through the window only a second before a mist poured through, fast and furious. Guess I didn’t have to worry about him choking. His mist boiled up behind Ruthven like an enraged sea. It ran up and over the bad vamp’s body, swirling around him like a blanket.
Ruthven released me with a jerk, tried to dance back. Logan’s mist thinned and spread, wrapping Ruthven in mummy’s bandages, tighter and tighter. Ruthie’s face went from furious (and a little charred) to confused to downright terrified.
“Steel!” Ruthven struggled hard, managed to jab a hand into his coat pocket. “You cannot win. I am Lord Ruthven, Ruler of the Night.”
Whew. Talk about corny. Logan’s mist was streaming tighter and faster. Ruthven barely managed to jerk his hand free but when he did, he was holding—a Big Red Button. Race’s BRB, if I wasn’t mistaken. More corn but suddenly I wasn’t laughing.
“Stop,” Ruthven repeated. “I engineered this to topple Nosferatu but I will get a greater pleasure using it to destroy you.”
I nearly fell off my feet. Ruthven was the challenger for Nosferatu’s territory, the target of Project Shield. The terrorist who was going to destroy not the Willis Tower but the one-hundred-seventeen-year-old landmark Museum building.
Not of I could help it. “Hey, Lorne. Isn’t it a bit extreme to blow up thousands of innocent visitors just to kill Logan?” I snatched at the button as Logan’s mist rose on Ruthven’s body, gathering around the vampire’s neck.
It left Ruthven’s hands free. He yanked the button away from me, snarling. “I hate Steel and his whole family. Nothing is too extreme to rid me of him.”
Whoa. I thought I had issues. Ruthven had a whole can of festering hate-worms.
“And rid myself of you, Liese Schmetterl—gack.”
Logan’s mist whirled around Ruthven’s neck, so concentrated and fast it looked like a ghostly garrote, or a noose tightening.
Ruthven’s neck snapped.
I swallowed a shriek, jumped back. Good thing because an instant later Logan condensed from the mist, his long dagger drawn. “That’s for Adelaide. And this is for daring to threaten Liese.” A single, powerful slash severed Ruthven’s throat.
Blood spurted. Another hard cut severed the neck. The head toppled. And the body—
Ruthven’s final act was to slap a hand down on the button.
“Damn it!” Logan caught it as the body collapsed. But I could see the button was depressed and it was too late. I covered my head with my hands and breathed a final I love you to Logan and… and…
And nothing.
No pain, no shock. Not even a long black tunnel and beckoning point of light.
I opened my eyes. Logan was rapidly dismantling the button using a claw for a screwdriver. I trotted to his side, studiously ignoring the headless body. “Why didn’t we blow up? Is that a fake?”
